英语小说网

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.

It'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Later that night Elsa sits on the top step outside Granny's flat until the ceiling lights switch themselves off. Runs her finger over Granny's writing on the envelope again and again, but doesn't open it. Just puts it in her backpack and stretches out on the cold floor and mostly keeps her eyes closed. Tries one more time to get off to Miamas. She lies there for hours without succeeding. Stays there until she hears the main door at the bottom of the house opening and closing again. She lies on the floor and mostly keeps her eyes closed until she feels the night embracing the windows of the house and hears the drunk start rattling around with something a couple floors farther down.

"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.

Elsa's mum doesn't like it when she calls the drunk "the drunk." "What do I call her then?" Elsa used to ask, and then Mum used to look very unsure and sound a bit smarmy, while managing to suggest something like: "It's… I mean, it's someone who's… tired." And then Granny used to chime in, "Tired? Hell yeah, of course you get tired when you're up boozing all night!" And then Mum used to yell, "Mum!" and then Granny used to throw out her hands and ask, "Oh, good God, what did I say wrong now?" and then it was time for Elsa to put on her headphones.

That's what the drunk always does. Roars and screams and bashes things with that shoehorn. Then sings that same old song of hers. Of course, no one ever comes out and quiets her down, not even Britt-Marie, for in this house drunks are like monsters. People think if they ignore them they'll cease to exist.

Elsa sits up into a squatting position and peers down through the gap between the stairs. She can only make out a glimpse of the drunk's socks as she shambles past, swinging the shoehorn as if scything tall grass. Elsa can't quite explain to herself why she does it, but she heaves herself up on her tiptoes and sneaks down the first flight of stairs. Out of pure curiosity, perhaps. Or more likely because she is bored and frustrated about no longer being able to get to Miamas.

"Turn off the water, I said! No bathing at night!!!" the drunk stammers from below at no one in particular, whacking her shoehorn against the banister.

The door of the drunk's flat is open. There's a faint light cast by an overturned floor lamp. Photos on all the walls. Elsa has never seen so many photos -- she thought Granny had a lot of them on her ceiling, but these must be in the thousands. Each of them is framed in a small white wooden frame and all are of two teenage boys and a man who must be their father. In one of the photos, the man and the boys are standing on a beach with a sparkling green sea behind them. The boys are both wearing wetsuits. They smile. They are bronzed. They look happy.

"WHATAREYOUDOINGHERE?"

Beside the card hangs a mirror. Shattered.

Under the frame is one of those cheap congratulatory cards, the kind you buy in a gas station when you've forgotten to get a proper card. "To Mum, from your boys," it says on the front.

The words reverberating over the landing are so sudden and so filled with fury that Elsa loses her balance and slips down the bottom four or five steps, right into the wall. The echo throws itself at her, as if determined to claw her ears.

Elsa peers up through the railings at the deranged person wielding the shoehorn at her, looking simultaneously incandescent and terrified. Her eyes flicker. That black skirt is full of creases now. She smells of wine, Elsa can feel it all the way from the floor below. Her hair looks like a bundle of string in which two birds have got themselves tangled up during a fight. She has purple bags under her eyes.

The woman sways. She probably means to yell, but it comes out as a wheeze: "You're not allowed to bathe at night. The water… turn off the water. Everyone will drown…"

The woman looks confused. As if she has suddenly forgotten where she is. She disappears and, in the next moment, Elsa feels her mum gently plucking her from the stairs. Feels her warm breath against her neck and her "ssshhh" in her ear, as if they were standing in front of a deer and had got a bit too close.

"Shush," whispers Mum again, and keeps her arms tight around her.

Elsa opens her mouth, but Mum puts her finger over her lips.

The white cable she always talks into sits in her ear, but the other end just dangles against her hip, disconnected. Elsa realizes there has probably never been anyone there, and that's not an easy thing for an almost-eight-year-old to understand. Granny told many fairy tales about many things, but never about women in black skirts pretending to have telephone conversations while they went up the stairs, so their neighbors wouldn't think they'd bought all that wine for themselves.

Elsa curls up in her arms in the dark, and they see the woman in the black skirt drifting back and forth down there like a flag that's torn itself free in the wind. Plastic bags lie scattered on the floor of her flat. One of the wine boxes has toppled over. A few last drops of red are dripping onto the parquet floor. Mum makes a gentle movement against Elsa's hand. They stand up quietly and go back up the stairs.

And that night Elsa's mum tells Elsa what everyone except Elsa's parents was talking about on the day Elsa was born. About a wave that broke over a beach five thousand miles away and crushed everything in its path. About two boys who swam out after their father and never came back.

Elsa hears how the drunk starts singing her song. Because not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.