My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(62)

So last night when she had the same dream, she realized where she had to go to fight the nightmares. To reclaim her nights from them.

“Mirevas!” she calls out firmly to the wurse, when it comes out of one of Granny’s smaller wardrobes followed by an unnameable jumble of things that Mum has not yet had time to put into boxes.

“We have to go to Mirevas!” announces Elsa to the wurse, waving her moo-gun.

Mirevas, one of the kingdoms adjoining Miamas, is the smallest principality in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and for that reason almost forgotten. When children in the Land-of-Almost-Awake are learning geography and have to reel off the names of the six kingdoms, Mirevas is the one they always forget. Even those who live there. Because the Mirevasians are incredibly humble, kindly, and cautious creatures who go to great lengths to avoid taking up unnecessary space or causing the slightest inconvenience. Yet they have a very important task, actually one of the most important tasks in a kingdom where imagination is the most important thing you can have: for it is in Mirevas that the nightmare hunters are trained.

Only smart-asses in the real world who don’t know any better would say something as idiotic as “it was only a nightmare.” There are no “only” nightmares—they’re living creatures, dark little clouds of insecurity and anguish that come sneaking between the houses when everyone is asleep, trying all the doors and windows to find some place to slip inside and start causing a commotion. And that is why there are nightmare hunters. And anyone who knows anything about anything knows one has to have a moo-gun to chase a nightmare. Someone who doesn’t know better might mistake a moo-gun for a quite ordinary paintball gun customised by someone’s granny with a milk carton at the side and a catapult glued to the top. Elsa, though, knows what she’s got in her hands. She loads the carton with milk and puts a cookie in the firing chamber in front of the rubber band on the cookie gun.

You can’t kill a nightmare, but you can scare it. And there’s nothing so feared by nightmares as milk and cookies.

Just as she’s starting to feel more confident, though, she’s startled by the doorbell, and to the infinite chagrin of the wurse she accidentally fires loads of milk at it but no cookie, and it scurries off in a huff. For a moment she wonders how a nightmare can be ringing the doorbell, but it’s only George. He looks upset. She doesn’t care.

“I’m going down to pick up the spare chairs in the cellar storage,” he says and tries to smile at her like stepdads do on days when they have an extra-strong sense of being sidelined.

Elsa shrugs and slams the door in his face. The wurse has reappeared, so she climbs onto its back and peers out of the spyhole to see George lingering there for what must be a minute, looking upset. Elsa hates him for that. Mum always tells Elsa that George just wants her to like him because he cares. As if Elsa doesn’t get that. She knows he cares, and that’s why she can’t like him. Not because she wouldn’t like him if she tried, but rather because she knows she definitely would. Because everyone likes George. It’s his superpower.

And she knows that in this case she’ll only be disappointed when Halfie is born and George forgets she exists. It’s better not to like him from the start.

If you don’t like people, they can’t hurt you. Almost-eight-year-olds who are often described as “different” learn that very quickly.

She jumps down from the wurse’s back. The wurse closes its jaws around the moo-gun and gently but firmly takes it away from her, then shambles off and puts it on a stool out of reach of her trigger finger. But it avoids eating the cookie, which, as anyone who understands just how much wurses love cookies knows, is a significant sign of respect for Elsa.

There’s another ring at the door. Elsa throws it open and is just about to snap impatiently at George when she realizes just in time that it’s not George.

There’s a silence lasting for probably half a dozen eternities.

“Hello, Elsa,” says the woman in the black skirt, sounding a bit lost. She’s wearing jeans, not a black skirt, today, admittedly. And she smells of mint and looks scared. She breathes so slowly that Elsa fears she’s about to expire from a shortage of oxygen.

“I’m . . . I’m very sorry I shouted at you in my office,” she begins.

They scrutinize each other’s shoes.

“It’s cool,” Elsa manages to say at last.

The corners of the woman’s mouth vibrate gently.

“I was a bit caught off guard when you came to the office. I don’t get many people visiting me there. I’m . . . I’m not so good at visits.”

Elsa nods guiltily without looking up from the woman’s shoes.

“It doesn’t matter. Sorry for saying that about . . .” she whispers, unable to get out the last few words.

The woman waves her hand dismissively.

“It was my fault. It’s difficult for me to talk about my family. Your grandmother tried to make me do it, but it only made me . . . well . . . angry.”

Elsa pokes at the floor with the tip of her toe.

“People drink wine to forget things that are hard, right?”

“Or to have the strength to remember. I think.”

Elsa snuffles.

“You’re also broken, right? Like Wolfheart?”

“Broken in . . . in another way. Maybe.”