So when a fat lady who looks like she’s combed her hair with a toaster starts reading poems, Elsa thinks it’s just about enough and she pushes her way out between the pews. She hears Mum whispering something behind her, but she just shuffles along the shiny stone floor and squeezes out of the church doors before anyone has time to come after her.
The winter air bites at Elsa; it feels like she’s being yanked out of a boiling hot bath by her hair. The cloud animals are hovering low and ominous. Elsa walks slowly and takes such deep breaths of the December air that her eyes start to black out. She thinks about Storm. Storm has always been one of Elsa’s favorite superheroes, because Storm’s superpower is that she can change the weather. Even Granny used to admit that as superpowers went, that one was pretty cool.
Elsa hopes that Storm will come and blow away this whole bloody church. The whole bloody churchyard. Bloody everything.
The faces from inside spiral around inside her head. Did she really see the accountant? Was Alf standing in there? She thinks so. She saw another face she recognized, the policewoman with the green eyes. She walks faster, away from the church because she doesn’t want any of them to come after her and ask if she’s okay. Because she’s not okay. None of this will ever be okay. She doesn’t want to listen to their mumbling or have to admit that they are talking about her. Over her. Around her. Granny never talked around her.
She’s gone about fifty yards between the headstones when she picks up a smell of smoke. At first there’s something familiar about it, something almost liberating. Something that Elsa wants to turn and embrace and bury her nose in, like a freshly laundered pillowcase on a Sunday morning. But then there’s something else.
And her inner voice comes to her.
She knows where the man between the headstones is before she has even turned around. He’s only a few yards away from her. Casually holding his cigarette between his fingertips. It’s too far from the church for anyone to hear Elsa scream, and with calm, cold movements he blocks her way back.
Elsa glances over her shoulder towards the gate at the road. Twenty yards away. When she looks back he’s taken a long stride towards her.
And the inner voice comes to Elsa. And it’s Granny’s voice. But it isn’t whispering. It’s yelling.
Run.
Elsa feels his rough hand grasping her arm, but she slips out of his grip. She runs until the wind scrapes her eyes like nails against a frosty windshield. She doesn’t know for how long. Eternities. And when the memory of his eyes and his cigarette crystallizes in her brain, when every breath punches into her lungs, she realizes that he was limping; that’s why she got away. Another second of hesitation and he would have grabbed her by her dress, but Elsa is too used to running. Too good at it. She runs until she’s no longer sure whether it’s the wind or her grief that is making her eyes run. Runs until she realizes she’s almost at her school.
She slows down. Looks round. Hesitates. Then she charges right into the black park on the other side of the street, with her dress tossing around her. Even the trees look like enemies in there. The sun seems too exhausted to go down. She hears scattered voices, the wind screaming through the branches, the rumbling of traffic farther and farther away. Out of breath and furious, she stumbles towards the interior of the park. Hears voices. Hears that some of them are calling out after her. “Hey! Little girl!” they call out.
She stops, exhausted. Collapses on a bench. Hears the “little-girl” voice coming closer. She understands that it means her harm. The park seems to be creeping under a blanket. She hears another voice beside the first, slurring and stumbling over its words as if it’s put on its shoes the wrong way round. Both of the voices seem to be picking up speed as they come towards her. Realizing the danger, she’s on her feet and running in a fluid movement. They follow. It dawns on her with sudden despair that the winter gloom is making everything look the same in the park, and she doesn’t know the way out. Good God, she’s a seven-year-old girl who watches television a hell of a lot, how could she be so stupid? This is how people end up on the sides of milk cartons, or however they advertise missing children these days.
But it’s too late. She runs between two dense black hedges that form a narrow corridor, and she feels her beating heart in her throat. She doesn’t know why she charged into the park—the junkies will get her, just as everyone at school said they would. Maybe that’s just it, she thinks. Maybe she wants someone to catch her and kill her.
Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.
She never hears the snapping of branches in the bush. Never hears the ice being crushed under his feet. But in an instant the slurring voices behind her are gone. Her eardrums grate until she wants to scream. And then everything goes back to silence. Slowly she’s lifted off the ground. Closes her eyes. Doesn’t open them until she’s been carried out of the park.
Wolfheart stares down at her. She stares back, lying in his arms. Her consciousness seems to float off. If it wasn’t for the realization, in some part of her inner self, that there aren’t enough paper bags in the whole world to breathe into if she dribbles on Wolfheart in her sleep, she would probably have gone to sleep there and then. So she struggles to stay awake and, after all, it would be a bit impolite to go to sleep now that he’s saved her. Again.
“Not run alone. Never run alone,” growls Wolfheart.
She’s still not quite sure if she wanted to be saved, although she’s happy to see him. Happier than she expected to be, actually. She thought she’d be angrier at him.
“Dangerous place,” growls Wolfheart towards the park, and starts putting her back down on the ground.
“I know,” she mumbles.
“Never again!” he orders, and she can hear that he’s afraid.
She puts her arms around his neck and whispers “Thanks” in the secret language before he can straighten up his enormous body. Then she sees how uncomfortable it makes him and she lets go at once.
“I washed my hands really carefully, I had a mega-long shower this morning!” she whispers.
Wolfheart doesn’t answer, but she can see in his eyes that he’ll be, like, bathing in alcogel when he gets home.
Elsa looks around. Wolfheart rubs his hands together and shakes his head when he notices.
“Gone now,” he says gently.
Elsa nods.
“How did you know I was here?”
Wolfheart’s gaze drops into the asphalt.
“Guard you. Your granny said . . . guard you.”
Elsa nods.
“Even if I don’t always know you’re close by?”
Wolfheart’s hood moves up and down. She feels that her legs are about to give way beneath her.
“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.
It was the Noween who brought the fears to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, in another of Granny’s tales, more eternities ago than anyone could really count. So long ago that at the time there were only five kingdoms, not six.
The Noween is a prehistoric monster that wants everything to happen immediately. Every time a child says “in a minute” or “later” or “I’m just going to . . .” the Noween bellows with furious force: “Nooo! IT HAS TO BE DONE NOOOW!” The Noween hates children, because children refuse to accept the Noween’s lie that time is linear. Children know that time is just an emotion, so “now” is a meaningless word to them, just as it was for Granny. George used to say that Granny wasn’t a time-optimist, she was a time-atheist, and the only religion she believed in was Do-It-Later-Buddhism.
The Noween brought the fears to the Land-of-Almost-Awake to catch children, because when a Noween gets hold of a child it engulfs the child’s future, leaving the victim helpless where it is, facing an entire life of eating now and sleeping now and tidying up right away. Never again can the child postpone something boring till later and do something fun in the meantime. All that’s left is now. A fate far worse than death, Granny always said, so the tale of the Noween started by clarifying that it hated fairy tales. Because nothing is better at making a child postpone something than a fairy tale. So one night the Noween slithered up Telling Mountain, the highest mountain peak in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, where it caused a massive landslide, which demolished the entire peak. Then it lay in wait in a dark cave. For Telling Mountain is the mountain the enphants have to climb in order to release the tales so they can glide over into the real world, and if the tales can’t leave Telling Mountain the whole kingdom of Miamas will suffocate, and then the whole Land-of-Almost-Awake will suffocate. For no stories can live without children listening to them.
When dawn came, all the bravest fighters from Mibatalos tried to climb the mountain and defeat the Noween, but no one managed it. Because the Noween was breeding fears in the caves. Fears need to be handled carefully, because threats just make them grow bigger. So every time a parent somewhere threatened a child, it worked as fertilizer. “Soon,” a child said somewhere, and then a parent yelled, “No, nooow! Or I’ll—” And, bang, another fear was hatched in one of the Noween’s caves.
When the warriors from Mibatalos came up the mountain, the Noween released the fears, and they immediately transformed themselves into each individual soldier’s worst nightmare. For all beings have a mortal fear, even the warriors from Mibatalos, and the air in the Land-of-Almost-Awake slowly grew thinner. Storytellers found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
(Elsa obviously interrupted Granny at this point because her whole thing about fears transforming themselves into what you are most afraid of was actually nicked from Harry Potter, because that’s how a boggart works. And then Granny had snorted and answered, “Maybe it’s that Harry muppet who nicked it from me?” And then Elsa had sneered, “Harry Potter doesn’t steal!” And then they had argued for quite a long time about that, and in the end Granny gave up and mumbled, “Fine, then! Forget the whole bloody thing! Fears don’t transform themselves, they just bite and try to scratch your eyes, are you SATISFIED now or what?” And then Elsa had left it there and they went on with the story. )
That’s when the two golden knights showed up. Everyone tried to warn them about riding up the mountain, but they didn’t listen, of course. Knights can be so damned obstinate. But when they came up the mountain and all the fears welled out of the caves, the golden knights didn’t fight. They didn’t yell and swear as other warriors would have done. Instead the knights did the only thing you can do with fears: they laughed at them. Loud, defiant laughter. And then all the fears were turned to stone, one by one.
Granny was fond of rounding off fairy tales with things being turned to stone because she wasn’t very good at endings. Elsa never complained, though. The Noween was obviously put in prison for an in
determinate length of time, which made it insanely angry. And the ruling council of the Land-of-Almost-Awake decided to appoint a small group of inhabitants from each of the kingdoms, warriors from Mibatalos and dream hunters from Mirevas and sorrow-keepers from Miploris and musicians from Mimovas and storytellers from Miamas, to keep guard over Telling Mountain. The stones of the fears were used to rebuild the peak higher than ever, and at the foot of the mountain the sixth kingdom was built: Miaudacas. And in the fields of Miaudacas, courage was cultivated, so that no one would ever again have to be afraid of the fears.
Or, well. That is what they did until, as Granny once told Elsa, after the harvest they took all the courage plants and made a special drink of them, and if you had some of it you became incredibly brave. And then Elsa did a bit of Googling and then she pointed out to Granny that it wasn’t a very responsible analogy to divulge to a child. And then Granny groaned, “Oh, right, okay, let’s say they don’t drink it, it’s just THERE, okay?!” So that’s the whole story of the two golden knights who defeated the fears. Granny told it every time Elsa was afraid of anything, and even though Elsa was often quite right in her criticism of Granny’s storytelling technique, it actually worked every time. She wasn’t at all as afraid afterwards.
The only thing the story never worked on was Granny’s fear of death. And now it wasn’t working on Elsa either. Because not even fairy tales defeat shadows.
The Fredrik Backman Box Set Page 49