My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(101)

“Very old, Elsa. Very, very tired,” whispers Wolfheart.

Then he tenderly puts his fingers over the wound that Sam’s knife cut through the thick pelt.

It’s hard to let go of someone you love. Especially when you are almost eight.

Elsa crawls close to the wurse and holds it hard, hard, hard. It manages to look at her one last time. She smiles and whispers, “You’re the best first friend I’ve ever had,” and it slowly licks her on the face and smells of sponge cake mix. And she laughs out loud, with her tears raining down.

When the cloud animals land in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, Elsa hugs it as hard as she can, and whispers: “You’ve completed your mission, you don’t have to protect the castle anymore. Protect Granny now. Protect all the fairy tales!” It licks her face one final time.

And then it runs off.

When Elsa turns to Wolfheart, he squints at the sun as you do when you haven’t been to the Land-of-Almost-Awake for an eternity of many fairy tales. Elsa points down at the ruins of Mibatalos.

“We can bring Alf here. He’s good at building things. At least he’s good at making wardrobes. And we’ll also need wardrobes in the seventh kingdom, won’t we? And Granny will be sitting on a bench in Miamas when we’re ready. Just like the granddad in The Brothers Lionheart. There’s a fairy tale with that name, I read it to Granny, so I know she’ll wait on a bench because it’s typical of her to nick something like that from other people’s fairy tales. And she knows The Brothers Lionheart is one of my favorite fairy tales!”

She is still crying. Wolfheart as well. But they do what they can. They construct words of forgiveness from the ruins of fighting words.

The wurse dies on the same day that Elsa’s brother is born. Elsa decides that she will tell her brother all about it when he’s older. Tell him about her first best friend. Tell him that sometimes things have to clear a space so something else can take its place. Almost as if the wurse gave up its place on the bus for Halfie.

And she thinks about how she will be very particular about pointing out to Halfie that he mustn’t feel sad or have a bad conscience about it.

Because wurses hate traveling by bus.





33





BABY


It’s difficult ending a fairy tale. All tales have to end sometime, of course. Some can’t finish soon enough. This one, for example, could feasibly have been rounded off and packed away long ago. The problem is this whole issue of heroes at the ends of fairy tales, and how they are supposed to “live happily to the end of their days.” This gets tricky, from a narrative perspective, because the people who reach the end of their days must leave others who have to live out their days without them.

It is very, very difficult to be the one who has to stay behind and live without them.

It’s dark by the time they leave the vet’s. They used to make snow-angels outside the house on the night before Elsa’s birthday. That was the only night of the year Granny didn’t say crappy things about the angels. It was one of Elsa’s favorite traditions. She goes with Alf in Taxi. Not so much because she doesn’t want to go with Dad, but because Dad told her Alf was furious with himself for being in the garage with Taxi when the whole thing with Sam happened. Angry because he wasn’t there to protect Elsa.

Alf and Elsa don’t talk very much in Taxi, of course; this is what happens when you don’t have so much to say. And when Elsa at last says she has to do something at home on their way to the hospital, Alf doesn’t ask why. He just drives. He’s good in that way, Alf.

“Can you make snow-angels?” asks Elsa when Taxi stops outside the house.

“I’m bloody sixty-four years old,” grunts Alf.

“That’s not an answer.”

Alf turns off Taxi’s engine. “I may be sixty-four years old, but I wasn’t sixty-four when I was born! Course I can make bloody snow-angels!”

And then they make snow-angels. Ninety-nine of them. And they never talk much about it afterwards. Because certain kinds of friends can be friends without talking much.

The woman in jeans sees them from her balcony. She laughs. She’s getting good at that.

Dad is waiting for them at the hospital entrance when they get there. A doctor goes past who, for a moment, Elsa thinks she might recognize. And then she sees George, and she runs across the entire waiting room and throws herself into his arms. He is wearing his shorts over his leggings and he has a glass of ice-cold water for Mum in his hand.

“Thanks for running!” says Elsa, with her arms around him.

Dad looks at Elsa and you can see he’s jealous but trying not to show it. He’s good like that. George looks at her too, overwhelmed.

“I’m quite good at running,” he says quietly.

Elsa nods.

“I know. That’s because you’re different.”

And then she goes with Dad to see Mum. And George stays behind for so long with the glass of water that in the end it’s back to room temperature.

There’s a stern-looking nurse standing outside Mum’s room who refuses to let Elsa inside, because apparently Mum has had a complicated delivery. That’s how the nurse puts it, sounding very firm and emphatic when she pronounces the “com” in “complicated.” Elsa’s dad clears his throat.