And at the peak of the highest mountain in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, known as the Telling Mountain, the enphants open their nets and let the stories fly free. And that is how the stories find their way into the real world.
At first when Elsa’s granny started telling her stories from Miamas, they only seemed like disconnected fairy tales without a context, told by someone who needed her head examined. It took years before Elsa understood that they belonged together. All really good stories work like this.
Granny told her about the lamentable curse of the sea-angel, and about the two princelings who waged war on each other because they were both in love with the princess of Miploris. She also talked about the princess engaged in a fight with a witch who had stolen the most valuable treasure in the Land-of-Almost-Awake from her, and she described the warriors of Mibatalos and the dancers of Mimovas and the dream hunters of Mirevas. How they all constantly bickered and nagged at each other about this or that, until the day the Chosen One from Mimovas fled the shadows that had tried to kidnap him. And how the cloud animals carried the Chosen One to Miamas and how the inhabitants of the Land-of-Almost-Awake eventually realized that there was something more important to fight for. When the shadows amassed their army and came to take the Chosen One by force, they stood united against them. Not even when the War-Without-End seemed unlikely to end in any other way than crushing defeat, not even when the kingdom of Mibatalos fell and was leveled to the ground, did the other kingdoms capitulate. Because they knew that if the shadows were allowed to take the Chosen One, it would kill all music and then the power of the imagination in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. After that there would no longer be anything left that was different. All fairy stories take their life from the fact of being different. “Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”
And then she used to talk about the wurses. And Elsa should have understood this from the beginning. She really should have understood everything from the beginning.
Dad turns off the stereo just before she jumps into Audi. Elsa is glad that he does, because Dad always looks very downhearted when she points out to him that he listens to the worst music in the world, and it’s very difficult not pointing it out to him when you have to sit in Audi and listen to the worst music in the world.
“The belt?” Dad asks as she takes a seat.
Elsa’s heart is still thumping in her chest.
“Well, hi there, you old hyena!” she yells at Dad. Because that’s what she would have yelled if Granny had picked her up. And Granny would have bellowed back, “Hello, hello, my beauty!” And then everything would have felt better. Because you can still feel scared while you’re yelling “Well, hi there, you old hyena!” to someone, but it’s almost insane how much more difficult it is.
Dad looks unsure about it. Elsa sighs and straps herself in and tries to slow her pulse by thinking about things she isn’t afraid of. Dad looks even more hesitant.
“Your mum and George are at the hospital again. . . .”
“I know,” says Elsa, as you do when something has not succeeded in allaying your fears.
Dad nods. Elsa throws her backpack between the seats and it lands lying across the backseat. Dad turns around and straightens it up very neatly.
“You want to do something?” he says, sounding slightly anxious when he says “something.”
Elsa shrugs.
“We can do something . . . fun?”
Elsa knows he’s only offering to be nice. Because he has a bad conscience about seeing her so seldom and because he pities Elsa because her granny has died and because this Wednesday thing was rather sudden for him. Elsa knows this because Dad would never usually suggest doing something “fun,” because Dad doesn’t like having fun. Fun things make Dad nervous. One time when they were on holiday when Elsa was small, he went with Elsa and Mum to the beach, and then they had so much fun that Dad had to take two ibuprofen and lie down all afternoon for a rest at the hotel. He had too much fun once, said Mum.
“A fun overdose,” said Elsa, and then Mum laughed for a really long time.
The strange thing about Dad is that no one brings out the fun in Mum as much as he does. It’s as if Mum is always the opposite pole of a battery. No one brings out order and neatness in Mum like Granny, and no one makes her as untidy and whimsical as Dad. Once when Elsa was small and Mum was talking on the phone with Dad, and Elsa kept asking, “Is it Dad? Is it Dad? Can I talk to Dad? Where is he?” Mum finally turned around and sighed dramatically: “No, you can’t talk to Dad because Dad is in heaven now, Elsa!” And when Elsa went absolutely silent and just stared at her mum, Mum grinned. “Good God, I’m only joking, Elsa. He’s at the supermarket.”
She grinned just like Granny used to do.
The morning after, Elsa came into the kitchen with shiny eyes when Mum was drinking coffee with loads of lactose-free milk, and when Mum, looking worried, asked why Elsa was looking so upset, Elsa replied that she had dreamed that Dad was in heaven. And then Mum went out of her mind with guilt and hugged Elsa hard, hard, hard and said sorry over and over and over, and then Elsa waited almost ten minutes before she grinned and said: “Good God, I was only joking. I dreamed he was at the supermarket.”
After that, Mum and Elsa often used to joke with Dad and ask him what it was like in heaven. “Is it cold in heaven? Can one fly in heaven? Is one allowed to meet God in heaven?” asked Mum. “Do you have cheese-graters in heaven?” asked Elsa. And then they laughed until they couldn’t sit straight. Dad used to look really quite hesitant when they did that. Elsa misses it. Misses when Dad was in heaven.
“Is Granny in heaven now?” she says to him and grins, because she means it as a joke, and she imagines he’ll start laughing.
But he doesn’t laugh. He just looks that way, and Elsa feels ashamed of saying something that makes him look that way.
“Oh, never mind,” she mumbles and pats the glove compartment. “We can go home, it’s cool,” she adds quickly.
Dad nods and looks relieved and disappointed.
They see the police car from a distance, in the street outside the house. And Elsa can already hear the barking as they are getting out of Audi. The stairs are full of people. Our Friend’s furious howling from inside its flat is making the whole building shake.
“Do you have . . . a key?” asks Dad.
Elsa nods and gives him a quick hug. Stairwells filled with people make Dad very tentative. He gets back into Audi and Elsa goes inside by herself. And somewhere beyond that ear-splitting noise from Our Friend she hears other things too. Voices.
Dark, composed, and threatening. They have uniforms and they move about outside the flat where the boy with a syndrome and his mother live.
Eyeing Our Friend’s door intently but clearly afraid of getting too close, they press themselves to the wall on the other side. One of the policewomen turns around. Her green eyes meet Elsa’s—it’s the same policewoman she and Granny met at the station that night Granny threw the turds. She nods morosely at Elsa, as if trying to apologize.
Elsa doesn’t nod back, she just pushes past and runs.
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 creatu
re 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.
The first bark after that is short and defined. As if Our Friend is merely testing its vocal cords. The second is so loud that all Elsa can hear for several eternities is a ringing sound in her ears. When it finally ebbs away, she hears a terrific thud. Then another. And one more. Only then does she understand what the noise means. Our Friend is launching itself with all its strength at the inside of the door.
Elsa hears one of the police talking on the telephone again. She can’t hear most of what’s being said, but she hears the words “extremely large and aggressive.” She peers down through the railings and sees the police standing a few yards from the door of Our Friend’s flat, their self-confidence dwindling as Our Friend throws itself at the door with increasing force. Two more police have turned up, Elsa notices. One of them has brought a German Shepherd on a leash. The German Shepherd doesn’t seem to think it’s a terrific idea to go wherever that thing, whatever it is, is trying to get out. It watches its handler a little like Elsa looked at Granny that time she tried to rewire Mum’s microwave.
“Call in Animal Control, then,” Elsa hears the policewoman with green eyes saying, at last, with a disconsolate sigh.
“That’s what I said! Exactly what I said!” Britt-Marie calls out eagerly.
The green eyes throw a glance at Britt-Marie that causes her to shut up abruptly.
Our Friend barks one last time, horrifyingly loud. Then grows silent again. There’s a lot of noise on the stairs for a moment, and then Elsa hears the main entrance door closing. The police have clearly decided to wait farther away from whatever is living in that flat, until Animal Control gets there. Elsa watches through the window as they make off, something in their body language suggesting coffee. Whereas the German Shepherd has something in its body language that suggests it is considering early retirement.
Everything is suddenly so quiet on the stairs that Britt-Marie’s lone tripping steps farther down are giving off an echo.
Elsa stands there of two minds. (She knows that “of two minds” is a phrase for the word jar.) She can see the police through the window, and in retrospect Elsa will not be able to explain exactly why she does it. But no true knight of Miamas could stand and watch a friend of Granny’s being killed without trying to do something about it. So she quickly sneaks down the stairs, taking extra care as she passes Britt-Marie and Kent’s flat, and taking the precaution of stopping on every half-landing to listen and make sure the police are not coming back in.
Finally she stops outside Our Friend’s flat and carefully opens the mail slot. Everything is black in there, but she hears Our Friend’s rumbling breath.
“It’s . . . me,” Elsa stammers.
She doesn’t know exactly how to start this type of conversation. And Our Friend doesn’t answer. On the other hand, it doesn’t throw itself against the door either. Elsa sees this as a clear sign of progress in their communication.
“It’s me. The one with the Daim
bars.”
Our Friend doesn’t answer. But she can hear its breathing slowing down. Elsa’s words tumble out of her as if someone had toppled them over.
“Hey . . . I mean this might sound mega-weird . . . but I sort of think my granny would have wanted you to get out of here somehow. You know? If you have a back door or something. Because otherwise they’ll shoot you! Maybe that sounds mega-weird, but it’s pretty weird that you’ve got your own flat as well . . . if you get what I mean. . . .”
Only once all the words have fallen out of her does she realize that she’s spoken them in the secret language. Like a test. Because if there’s just a dog on the other side of the door, it won’t understand. But if it does understand, she thinks, then it’s something quite different. She hears a sound made by a paw the size of a car tire, quickly scraping the inside of the door.
“Hope you understand,” Elsa whispers in the secret language.
She never hears the door opening behind her. The only thing she has time to register is Our Friend backing away from the door. As if preparing itself.
Elsa grows aware of someone standing behind her, as if a ghost has appeared behind her. Or a . . .
“Look out!” growls the voice.
Elsa throws herself against the wall as The Monster silently sweeps past with a key in his hand. In the next moment, she is caught halfway between The Monster and Our Friend. And these really are the biggest damned wurse and the biggest damned monster Elsa has ever seen. It feels as if someone is standing on her lungs. She wants to scream, but nothing comes out.
Everything goes terribly fast after that. They hear the door opening at the bottom of the stairs. The voices of the police. And someone else who, Elsa realizes, must be Animal Control. Looking back, Elsa is not completely convinced that she’s in control of her own movements. If she’s been placed under a spell or something it wouldn’t be so unlikely, considering that even if it was unlikely, it would be far less unlikely than running into a flipping wurse. But when the door closes behind her, she’s standing in the front hall in The Monster’s flat.
The Fredrik Backman Collection: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here Page 37