My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (16 page)

“It’s just a routine checkup.

“No it isn’t, no one has so many routine checkups in a pregnancy. I’m not that stupid.”

Mum massages her temples and looks away.

“Please, Elsa, don’t you start making trouble about this as well.”

“What do you mean, ‘as well?’ What ELSE have I been making trouble with you about?” Elsa hisses, as one does when one is almost eight and feels slightly put upon.

“Don’t shout,” says Mum in a composed voice.

“I’M NOT SHOUTING!” shouts Elsa.

And then they both look down at the floor for a long time. Looking for their own ways of saying sorry. Neither of them knows where to begin. Elsa thumps down the lid of the packing crate, stomps off into Granny’s bedroom, and slams the door.

You could hear a pin drop in the flat for about thirty minutes after that. Because that is how angry Elsa is, so angry that she has to start measuring time in minutes rather than eternities. She lies on Granny’s bed and stares at the black-and-white photos on the ceiling. The Werewolf Boy seems to be waving at her and laughing. Deep inside, she wonders how anyone who laughs like that can grow up into something as incredibly doleful as The Monster.

She hears the doorbell go and then a second ring following incredibly fast, much faster than would be feasible for a normal person when ringing a doorbell. So it can only be Britt-Marie.

“I’m coming,” Mum answers politely. Elsa can tell by her voice that she’s been crying.

The words come flowing out of Britt-Marie, as if she’s fitted with a windup mechanism and someone has cranked it up using a key on her back.

“I rang your bell! No one opened!”

Mum sighs.

“No. We’re not home. We’re here.”

“Your mother’s car is parked in the garage! And that hound is still loose on the property!” She’s talking so quickly it’s clear she can’t prioritize her various upsets.

Elsa sits up in Granny’s bed, but it takes almost a minute before she manages to take in what Britt-Marie just said. Then she bounces out of bed and opens the door, and has to muster all her self-control to stop herself dashing off down the hall, because she doesn’t want to make the old busybody suspicious.

Britt-Marie stands on the landing with one hand very firmly inserted into the other, smiling at Mum in a well-meaning way, nattering on about how in this leaseholders’ association they can’t have rabid dogs running around.

“A sanitary nuisance, a sanitary nuisance is what it is!”

“The dog is probably far away by now, Britt-Marie. I wouldn’t worry about it—”

Britt-Marie turns to Mum and smiles well-meaningly.

“No, no, of course you wouldn’t, Ulrika. Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not the type to worry yourself about other people’s safety, even your own child’s, are you? It’s something you’ve inherited, I see. Putting the career before the children. That is how it’s always been in your family.”

Mum’s face is utterly relaxed. Her arms hang down, apparently relaxed. The only thing that gives her away is that she’s slowly, slowly clenching her fists. Elsa has never seen her do that before.

Britt-Marie also notices. Again she switches the position of her hands on her stomach. Looks as if she’s sweating. Her smile stiffens.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Ulrika, obviously. Obviously not. You make your own choices and prioritizations, obviously!”

“Was there anything else on your mind?” says Mum slowly, but something in her eyes has changed hue, which makes Britt-Marie take a small, small step back.

“No, no, nothing else. Nothing else at all!”

Elsa sticks out her head before Britt-Marie has time to turn around and leave.

“What was that you said about Granny’s car?”

“It’s in the garage,” she says curtly, avoiding Mum’s eye. “It’s parked in
my
space. And if it isn’t moved
at once,
I’ll call the police!”

“How did it get there?”

“How am I supposed to know?!” Then she turns to Elsa’s mum again, with renewed courage. “The car has to be moved at once, otherwise I’m calling the
police
, Ulrika!”

“I don’t know where the car keys are, Britt-Marie. And if you don’t mind, I need to sit down—I seem to be getting a headache.”

“Maybe if you didn’t drink so much coffee you wouldn’t get headaches so often, Ulrika!” She turns and stomps down the stairs so quickly no one has time to answer her.

Mum closes the door in a slightly less self-controlled and composed way than usual, and heads into the kitchen.

“What did she mean by that?” asks Elsa.

“She doesn’t think I should drink coffee when I’m pregnant,” Mum replies. Her phone starts ringing.

“That’s not what I meant,” says Elsa. She hates it when Mum pretends to be stupid.

Mum picks up her telephone from the kitchen counter.

“I have to answer this, sweetheart.”

“What did Britt-Marie mean when she said in our family we ‘put the career before the children?’ She meant Granny, didn’t she?”

The telephone continues ringing.

“It’s from the hospital, I have to answer.”

“No you don’t!”

They stand in silence looking at each other while the telephone rings two more times. Now it’s Elsa’s turn to clench her fists.

Mum’s fingers steal across the display.

“I have to take this, Elsa.”

“No you
don’t
!”

Mum closes her eyes and answers the telephone. By the time she starts talking into it, Elsa has already slammed the door to Granny’s bedroom behind her.

When Mum gently opens the door half an hour later, Elsa pretends to be asleep. Mum sneaks up and tucks her in. Kisses her cheek. Turns off the lamp.

By the time Elsa gets up an hour after that, Mum is sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Elsa sneaks up and tucks her and Halfie in. Kisses Mum on the cheek. Turns out the lamp. Mum is still holding Granny’s tea towel in her hand.

Elsa fetches a flashlight from one of the boxes in the hall and puts on her shoes.

Because now she knows where to find the next clue in Granny’s treasure hunt.

13

WINE

I
t’s a bit tricky to explain, but some things in Granny’s fairy tales are like that. You have to understand, first of all, that no creature in the Land-of-Almost-Awake is sadder than the sea-angel, and it’s actually only once Elsa remembers this whole story that Granny’s treasure hunt begins to make sense.

Elsa’s birthday was always extremely important to Granny. Maybe because Elsa’s birthday is two days after Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve, when most people celebrate the holiday, is very important to everyone else, and as a result no child with a birthday two days after Christmas Eve ever gets quite the same amount of attention as a child born in August or April. So Granny had a tendency to overcompensate. Mum had banned her from planning surprise parties, after that time Granny let off fireworks inside a hamburger restaurant and accidentally set fire to a seventeen-year-old girl who was dressed up as a clown and apparently supposed to be providing “entertainment for the children.” She really was entertaining, Elsa should say in her defense. That day, Elsa learned some of her very best swearwords.

The thing is, in Miamas you don’t get presents on your birthday. You
give
presents. Preferably something you have at home and are very fond of, which you then give to someone you like even more. That’s why everyone in Miamas looks forward to other people’s birthdays, and that’s the origin of the expression “What do you get from someone who has everything?” When the enphants took this fairy tale into the real world, someone here managed to get the wrong end of the stick, of course, making it “What do you GIVE to someone who has everything?” But what else would you expect? These are the same muppets who managed to misinterpret the word “interpret,” which means something completely different in Miamas. In Miamas an interpreter is a creature most easily described as a combination between a goat and a chocolate cookie. Interpreters are extremely gifted linguistically, as well as excellent to grill on the barbecue. At least they were until Elsa became a vegetarian, after which Granny was not allowed to mention them anymore.

Anyway: so Elsa was born two days after Christmas Eve almost eight years ago, the same day that the scientists registered the gamma radiation from that magnetar. The other thing that happened that day was a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Elsa knows that this is a sickeningly big wave caused by an earthquake. Except sort of at sea. So more like an ocean-quake, really, if you want to be persnickety about it. And Elsa is quite persnickety.

Two hundred thousand people died at the same time that Elsa started to live. Sometimes when Elsa’s mum thinks Elsa can’t hear, she tells George she still feels guilty—it cuts her to the quick to think that this was the happiest day of her life.

Elsa was five and about to turn six when she read about it online for the first time. On her sixth birthday, Granny told her the story of the sea-angel. To teach her that not all monsters are monsters in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside.

The very last thing the shadows did before the ending of the War-Without-End was to destroy all of Mibatalos, the kingdom where all the warriors had been brought up. But then came Wolfheart and the wurses, and everything turned, and when the shadows fled the Land-of-Almost-Awake they charged out over the sea with terrible force from all the coastlines of the six kingdoms. And their imprint on the surface of the water stirred up hideous waves, which, one by one, smashed into each other until they had formed a single wave as high as the eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. And to stop anyone pursuing the shadows, the wave turned and threw itself back in towards land.

It could have crushed the whole Land-of-Almost-Awake. It could have broken over the land and decimated the castles and the houses and all those who lived in them far more terribly than all the armies of the shadows could have managed through all eternity.

That was when a hundred snow-angels saved the remaining five kingdoms. Because, while everyone else was running from the wave, the snow-angels rushed right into it. With their wings open and the power of all their epic stories in their hearts, they formed a magical wall against the water and stopped it coming in. Not even a wave created by shadows could get past a hundred snow-angels prepared to die so that a whole world of fairy tales could live.

Only one of them turned back from the massive body of water.

And even if Granny always said that those snow-angels were arrogant sods who sniffed at wine and made a right fuss, she never tried to take away from them the heroism they showed on that day. For the day when the War-Without-End came to an end was the happiest day ever for everyone in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, apart from the hundredth snow-angel.

Since then, the angel had drifted up and down the coast, burdened by a curse that prevented it from leaving the place that had taken away all those it loved. It did this for so long that the people in the villages along the coast forgot who it used to be and started calling it “the sea-angel” instead. And as the years went by, the angel was buried deeper and deeper in an avalanche of sorrow, until its heart split in two and then its whole body split, like a shattered mirror. When the children from the villages sneaked down to the coast to catch a glimpse of it, one moment they might see a face of such beauty it took their breath away; but in the next, they would see something so terrible and deformed and wild looking back at them that they would run screaming all the way home.

Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.

According to one of the most-often-told stories in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, it was a small child from Miamas who managed to break the curse on the sea-angel, releasing it from the demons of memory that held it captive.

When Granny told Elsa that story for the first time on her sixth birthday, Elsa realized she was no longer a child. So she gave Granny her cuddly toy lion as a present. Because Elsa didn’t need it anymore, she realized, and wanted it to protect her granny instead. And that night Granny whispered into Elsa’s ear that if they were ever parted, if Granny ever got lost, she would send the lion to go and tell Elsa where she was.

It has taken Elsa a few days to work it out. Only tonight, when Britt-Marie mentioned that Renault had suddenly been parked in the garage without anyone knowing how it got there, did Elsa remember where Granny had put the lion on guard.

The glove compartment in Renault. That was where Granny kept her cigarettes. And nothing in Granny’s life needed a lion guarding it more than that.

So Elsa sits in the passenger seat in Renault and inhales deeply. As usual, Renault’s doors weren’t locked, because Granny never locked anything, and he still smells of smoke. Elsa knows it’s bad, but because it’s Granny’s smoke she takes deep breaths of it anyway.

“I miss you,” she whispers into the upholstery of the backrest.

Then she opens the glove compartment. Moves the lion aside and takes out the letter. On it is written: “For Miamas’s Bravest Knight, to be delivered to:” And then—scrawled in Granny’s awful, awful handwriting—a name and an address.