My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(68)

“Why did you disappear?” she whispers accusingly. “Why did you leave me with that terropist?” Wolfheart’s face disappears under his hood.

“Psychologists want to talk. Always talk. About war. Always. I . . . don’t want to.”

“Maybe you’d feel better if you talked?”

Wolfheart rubs his hands together in silence. He watches the street as if waiting to catch sight of something.

Elsa wraps her arms around her body and realizes that she left both her jacket and her Gryffindor scarf in the church. It’s the only time she’s ever forgotten her Gryffindor scarf.

Who the hell could do that to a Gryffindor scarf?

She also looks up and down the street, searching for she doesn’t know what. Then she feels something being swept over her shoulders, and when she turns she realizes that Wolfheart has put his coat around her. It drags along the ground by her feet. Smells of detergent. It’s the first time she’s seen Wolfheart without the upturned hood. Oddly enough, he looks even bigger without it. His long hair and black beard billow in the wind.

“You said ‘Miamas’ means ‘I love’ in your mother’s language, right?” asks Elsa, and tries not to look directly at his scar, because she can see he rubs his hands even harder when she does.

He nods. Scans the street.

“What does ‘Miploris’ mean?” asks Elsa.

When he doesn’t answer, she assumes it’s because he doesn’t understand the question, so she clarifies:

“One of the six kingdoms in the Land-of-Almost-Awake is called Miploris. That’s where all the sorrow is stored. Granny never wanted t—”

Wolfheart interrupts her, but gently.

“I mourn.”

Elsa nods.

“And Mirevas?”

“I dream.”

“And Miaudacas?”

“I dare.”

“And Mimovas?”

“Dance. I dance.”

Elsa lets the words touch down inside her before she asks about the last kingdom. She thinks about what Granny always said about Wolfheart, that he was the invincible warrior who defeated the shadows and that only he could have done it, because he had the heart of a warrior and the soul of a storyteller. Because he was born in Miamas, but he grew up in Mibatalos.

“What does Mibatalos mean?” she asks.

He looks right at her when she asks that. With those big dark eyes wide open with everything that is kept in Miploris.

“Mibatalos—I fight. Mibatalos . . . gone now. No Mibatalos anymore.”

“I know! The shadows destroyed it in the War-Without-End and all the Mibatalosians died except you, for you are the last of your people and—” Elsa starts saying, but Wolfheart rubs his hands together so hard that she stops herself.

Wolfheart’s hair falls into his face. He backs away a step.

“Mibatalos not exist. I don’t fight. Never more fight.”

And Elsa understands, the way you always understand such things when you see them in the eyes of those saying them, that he did not hide in the forests at the far reaches of the Land-of-Almost-Awake because he was afraid of the shadows, but because he was afraid of himself. Afraid of what they made him into in Mibatalos.

His eyes flit past her and she hears Alf’s voice. When she spins around, Taxi is parked with its engine running by the edge of the pavement. Alf’s shoes shuffle through the snow. The policewoman stays by Taxi, her eyes making rapid hawklike sweeps over the park. When Alf picks up Elsa, still rolled up in Wolfheart’s sleeping bag–size coat, he says calmly: “Let’s get you home now, shall we, you can’t bloody stay here getting frozen!” But Elsa hears in his voice that he’s afraid, afraid as one can only be if one knows what was chasing Elsa in the churchyard, and she can tell by the watchful gaze in the policewoman’s green eyes that she also knows. They all know more than they are letting on.

Elsa doesn’t look around as Alf carries her towards Taxi. She knows that Wolfheart has already gone. And when she throws herself into Mum’s arms back at the church, she also knows that Mum knows more than she’s letting on. And she’s always known more than she lets on.

Elsa thinks about the story of the Lionheart brothers. About the dragon, Katla, who could not be defeated by any human. And about the terrible constrictor snake, Karm, the only one that could destroy Katla in the end. Because sometimes in the tales, the only thing that can destroy a terrible dragon is something even more terrible than the dragon.

A monster.





22





O’BOY


Elsa has been chased hundreds of times before, but never like in that churchyard. And the fear she feels now is something else. Because she had time to see his eyes just before she ran, and they looked so determined, so cold, like he was ready to kill her. That’s a lot for an almost-eight-year-old to handle.

Elsa tried never to be afraid while Granny was alive. Or at least she tried never to show it. Because Granny hated fears. Fears are small, fiery creatures from the Land-of-Almost-Awake, with rough pelts that coincidentally look quite a lot like blue tumble-dryer fluff, and if you give them the slightest opportunity they jump up and nibble your skin and try to scratch your eyes. Fears are like cigarettes, said Granny: the hard thing isn’t stopping, it’s not starting.