My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(28)
She hears one of the police talking into a telephone, mentioning the words “Animal Control” and “to be destroyed.” Britt-Marie is standing halfway up the stairs, close enough to be able to give the police suggestions about what they should do, but at a safe distance in case the beast manages to get out the door. She smiles in a well-meaning way at Elsa. Elsa hates her. When she reaches the top floor, Our Friend starts baying louder than ever, like a hurricane of ten thousand fairy tales. Looking down the shaft between the flights of stairs, Elsa can see that the police are backing away.
And Elsa should have understood it all from the beginning. She really should have.
There is an absolutely unimaginable number of very special monsters in the forests and mountains of Miamas. But none were more legendary or more deserving of the respect of every creature in Miamas (even Granny) than the wurses.
They were as big as polar bears, moved as fluidly as desert foxes, and were as quick on the attack as cobras. They were stronger than oxen, with the stamina of wild stallions and jaws more ferocious than tigers’. They had lustrous black pelts as soft as a summer wind, but underneath, their hides were thick as armor. In the really old fairy tales they were said to be immortal. These were the tales from the elder eternities, when the wurses lived in Miploris and served the royal family as castle guards.
It was the Princess of Miploris who banished them from the Land-of-Almost-Awake, Granny used to explain, a sense of guilt lingering in the silences between her words. When the princess was still a child she’d wanted to play with one of the puppies while it was sleeping. She tugged its tail and it woke in a panic and bit her hand. Of course, everyone knew that the real blame lay with her parents, who had not taught her never ever to wake the wurse that’s sleeping. But the princess was so afraid and her parents so angry that they had to put the blame on someone else, so they could live with themselves. For this reason the court decided to banish the wurses from the kingdom forever. They gave a particularly merciless group of bounty-hunting trolls permission to hunt them with poison arrows and fire.
Obviously the wurses could have hit back; not even the assembled armies of the Land-of-Almost-Awake would have dared face them in battle, that was how feared the animals were as warriors. But instead of fighting, the wurses turned and ran. They ran so far and so high into the mountains that no one believed they would ever be found again. They ran until the children in the six kingdoms had grown up without seeing a single wurse in their entire lives. Ran for so long that they became legendary.
It was only with the coming of the War-Without-End that the Princess of Miploris realized her terrible mistake. The shadows had killed all the soldiers in the warrior kingdom of Mibatalos and leveled it to the ground, and now they pressed in with terrific power against the rest of the Land-of-Almost-Awake. When all hope seemed lost, the princess herself rode away from the city walls on her white horse. She rode like a storm into the mountains and there, after an almost endless search that made her horse succumb to exhaustion and almost crushed her too, the wurses found her.
By the time the shadows heard the thunder and felt the ground shaking, it was already too late for them. The princess rode at the front on the greatest of all wurse warriors. And that was the moment of Wolfheart’s return from the forests. Maybe because Miamas was teetering on the edge of extinction and needed him more than ever. “But maybe . . .” Granny used to whisper into Elsa’s ear when they sat on the cloud animals at night, “maybe most of all because the princess, by realizing how unjust she had been to the wurses, proved that all the kingdoms deserved to be saved.”
The War-Without-End ended that day. The shadows were driven across the sea. And Wolfheart disappeared back into the forests. But the wurses remained, and to this day they are still serving as the princess’s personal guard in Miploris. On guard outside her castle gate.
Elsa hears Our Friend barking quite madly down there now. She remembers what Granny said about how “making a racket amuses it.” Elsa feels a bit unsure about Our Friend’s sense of humor, but then remembers what Granny said about Our Friend not needing to live with anyone. Granny didn’t live with anyone herself, of course, and when Elsa pointed out that perhaps she shouldn’t compare herself to a dog, Granny rolled her eyes. Now Elsa understands why.
She should have got all this from the start. She really should have.
Because this is no dog.
One of the police fumbles with a big bunch of keys. Elsa hears the main door opening downstairs and between Our Friend’s barks she hears the boy with a syndrome dancing up the stairs.
The police gently shove him and his mother into their flat. Britt-Marie minces back and forth with tiny steps on her floor. Elsa hates her through the banisters.
Our Friend is completely quiet for a moment, as if it has made a strategic retreat for a moment to gather its strength for the real battle. The police jingle the bunch of keys and talk about being “ready in case it attacks.” They all sound fuller of themselves now, because Our Friend is no longer barking.
Elsa hears another door opening, and then she hears Lennart’s voice. He asks timidly what’s happening. The police explain that they have come to “take charge of a dangerous dog.” Lennart sounds a bit worried. Then he sounds a little like he doesn’t know what to say. Then he says what he always says: “Does anyone want a cup of coffee? Maud just made some fresh.”
Britt-Marie interrupts, hissing at him that surely Lennart can understand that the police have more important things to get on with than drinking coffee. The police sound a little disappointed about this. Elsa sees Lennart going back up the stairs. At first he seems to consider staying on the landing, but then seems to realize this might lead to a situation of his own coffee getting cold and conclude that whatever is going on here, it could not possibly be worth a risk like that. He disappears into the flat.