My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(100)

Britt-Marie is still there in the waiting room. Alone. If she left right now, probably no one would remember that she’d been there. She looks as if she’s thinking about that for a moment, then brushes something invisible from the edge of the table, straightens a crease in her skirt, stands up, and leaves.

The wurse closes its eyes. It almost looks as if it’s smiling. Elsa doesn’t know if it can hear her. Doesn’t know if it can feel her heavy tears dropping into its pelt. “You can’t die. You can’t die, because I’m here now. And you’re my friend. No real friend would just go and die like that, do you understand? Friends don’t die on each other,” Elsa whispers, trying to convince herself more than the wurse.

It looks as if it knows. Tries to dry her cheeks with the warm air from its nose. Elsa lies next to it, curled up on the treatment table, as she lay in the hospital bed that night when Granny didn’t come back with her from Miamas.

She lies there forever. With her Gryffindor scarf buried in the wurse’s pelt.

The policewoman’s voice can be heard between the wurse’s breaths as they grow slower and the thumping on the other side of the thick black fur gets more and more drawn out. Her green eyes watch the girl and the animal from the doorway.

“We have to take your friend to the police station, Elsa.” Elsa knows she’s talking about Wolfheart.

“You can’t put him in prison! He did it in self-defense!” Elsa roars.

“No, Elsa, he didn’t. He wasn’t defending himself.”

And then she backs away from the door. Checks her watch as if pretending to be disoriented, as if she has just realized there is something extremely important that she has to get on with in an entirely different place, and how crazy it would be if someone she was under very clear orders to bring to the police station would not be watched for a moment so that he could talk to a child who was about to lose a wurse. It would be crazy, really.

And then she’s gone. And Wolfheart is standing in the doorway. Elsa flings herself off the table and throws her arms around him and couldn’t give a crap about whether or not he has to bathe in alcogel when he gets home.

“The wurse mustn’t die! Tell him he mustn’t die!” whispers Elsa.

Wolfheart breathes slowly. Stands with his hands held out awkwardly, as if someone has spilled something acidic on his sweater. Elsa realizes she still has his coat at home in the flat.

“You can have your coat back, Mum has washed it really carefully and hung it up in the wardrobe inside a plastic cover,” she whispers apologetically and keeps hugging him.

He looks as if he’d really appreciate it if she didn’t. Elsa doesn’t care.

“But you’re not allowed to fight again!” she orders, her face thrust into his sweater, before she lifts her head and wipes her eyes with her wrist. “I’m not saying you can never fight, because I haven’t quite decided where I stand on that question. I mean morally, sort of thing. But you can’t fight when you’re as good at fighting as you are!” she sobs.

And then Wolfheart does something very curious. He hugs her back.

“The wurse. Very old. Very old wurse, Elsa,” he growls in the secret language.

“I can’t take everyone dying all the time,” Elsa weeps.

Wolfheart holds her by both her hands. Gently squeezes her forefingers. He’s trembling as if he’s holding white-hot iron, but he doesn’t let go, as one doesn’t when one realizes there are more important things in life than being afraid of children’s bacteria.

“Very old wurse. Very tired now, Elsa.”

And when Elsa just shakes her head hysterically and yells at him that no one else can die on her now, he lets go of one of her hands and reaches into his trouser pocket, from which he takes a very crumpled piece of paper and puts it in her hand. It’s a drawing. It’s obvious that it’s Granny who drew it, because she drew about as well as she spelled.

“It’s a map,” Elsa sobs as she unfolds it, the way one sobs when the tears have run out but not the crying.

Wolfheart gently rubs his hands together in circles. Elsa brushes her fingers over the ink.

“It’s a map of the seventh kingdom,” she says, more to herself than to him.

She lies down again on the table with the wurse. So close that its pelt pricks her through her sweater. Feels its warm breathing from the cold nose. It’s sleeping. She hopes it’s sleeping. She kisses its nose, so her tears end up in its whiskers. Wolfheart gently clears his throat.

“Was in the letter. Grandmother’s letter,” he says in the secret language and points at the letter. “Mipardonus.” The seventh kingdom. Your grandmother and I . . . we were going to build it.”

Elsa studies the map more carefully. It’s actually of the whole of the Land-of-Almost-Awake, but with completely the wrong proportions, because proportions were never really Granny’s thing.

“This seventh kingdom is exactly where the ruins of Mibatalos lie,” she whispers.

Wolfheart rubs his hands together.

“Can only build Mipardonus on Mibatalos. Your grandmother’s idea.”

“What does Mipardonus mean?” asks Elsa, with her cheek pressed to the wurse’s.

“Means ‘I forgive.’?”

The tears from his cheeks are the size of swallows. His enormous hand descends softly on the wurse’s head. The wurse opens its eyes, but only slightly, and looks at him.