My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(31)

The Monster returns to see the wurse nibbling at her backpack, where it clearly believes there are some Daim bars. The Monster looks as if he’s trying to go to a happier place inside his head. And there they stand, all three of them: a wurse, a child, and a monster with a need for cleanliness and order that clearly is not at all well suited to the company of wurses and children.

On the other side of the door, the police and Animal Control have just broken into a flat where there’s a lethal hound, only to discover the telling absence of said hound.

Elsa looks at the wurse. Looks at The Monster.

“Why do you have the key to . . . that . . . flat?” she asks The Monster.

The Monster seems to start breathing more heavily.

“You left letter. From Granny. In envelope,” he replies at long last, deep-throated.

Elsa tilts her head the other way.

“Did Granny write that you should take care of it?”

The Monster nods reluctantly.

“Wrote ‘protect the castle.’?”

Elsa nods. Their eyes meet fleetingly. The Monster looks a great deal as one does when wishing that people would just go home and filthify their own halls. Elsa looks at the wurse.

“Why does it howl so much at night?”

The wurse doesn’t look as if it greatly appreciates being spoken of in the third person singular. That is, if it counts as a third person; the wurse seems unsure about the grammatical rules of the case. The Monster is getting tired of all the questions.

“Has grief,” he says in a low voice towards the wurse, rubbing his hands together although there is nothing left to rub in.

“Grief about what?” asks Elsa.

The Monster’s gaze is fixed on his palms.

“Grief about your grandmother.”

Elsa looks at the wurse. The wurse looks at her with black, sad eyes. Later, when she thinks about it, Elsa assumes this is when she really, really starts liking it a lot. She looks at The Monster again.

“Why did my granny send you a letter?”

He rubs his hand harder.

“Old friend,” he mutters from behind his mountain of black hair.

“What did it say?”

“Just said sorry. Just sorry . . .” he says, disappearing even deeper into his hair and beard.

“Why is my granny saying sorry to you?”

She is starting to feel very much excluded from this story, and Elsa hates feeling excluded from stories.

“Not matter for you,” says The Monster quietly.

“She was MY granny!” Elsa insists.

“Was my ‘sorry.’?”

Elsa clenches her fists.

“Touché,” she admits at last.

The Monster doesn’t look up. Just turns around and goes back into the bathroom. More running of water. More alcogel. More rubbing. The wurse has picked up Elsa’s backpack now with its teeth and has its whole snout inserted into it. It growls with great disappointment when it finds there is a palpable absence of chocolate-related materials in it.

Elsa squints at The Monster, her tone stricter and more interrogative: “When I gave you the letter you spoke our secret language! You said ‘stupid girl!’ Was it Granny who taught you our secret language?”

And then The Monster looks up properly for the first time. His eyes open wide, in surprise. And Elsa stares at him, her mouth agape.

“Not she who taught me. I . . . taught her,” says The Monster in a low voice, in the secret language.

Now Elsa sounds out of breath.

“You are . . . you are . . .”

And just at that moment as she hears the police closing up the remains of the door to the wurse’s flat and walking out, while Britt-Marie protests wildly, Elsa looks directly into The Monster’s eyes.

“You are . . . the Werewolf Boy.”

And, a breath later, she whispers in the secret language: “You’re Wolfheart.”

And The Monster nods sadly.





11





PROTEIN BARS


Granny’s fairy tales from Miamas were fairly dramatic, as a rule. Wars and storms and pursuits and intrigues and stuff, because these were the sorts of action stories that Granny liked. They were hardly ever about everyday life in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. So Elsa knows very little about how monsters and wurses get along, when they don’t have armies to lead and shadows to fight.

It turns out they don’t really get along.

It starts with the wurse totally losing its patience with The Monster when The Monster tries to wash the floor under the wurse while the wurse is still lying on it, and then, because The Monster is extremely reluctant to touch the wurse, he accidentally spatters some alcogel in its eye. Elsa has to intervene to stop a full-blown fight, and later when The Monster with extreme frustration insists that Elsa must put one of those blue plastic bags on each of the wurse’s paws, the wurse thinks it’s gone far enough. In the end, once twilight is falling outside and she’s certain that the police are not still hanging about on the stairs, Elsa forces them both outside into the snow, to give herself a bit of peace and quiet to think over the situation and decide what to do next.

She would have worried about being seen by Britt-Marie from the balcony, except that it’s six o’clock sharp and Britt-Marie and Kent have their dinner at exactly six o’clock because “only barbarians” eat their dinner at any other time. Elsa nestles her chin into her Gryffindor scarf and tries to think clearly. The wurse, still looking quite offended by the blue plastic bags, backs into a bush until only its nose is sticking out of the branches. It stays there, its eyes focused on Elsa with a very dissatisfied expression. It takes almost a minute before The Monster sighs and makes a pointed gesture.