英语小说网

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

(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 indeterminate 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.

"Are you scared?" asks Mum.

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.

"Yes," admits Elsa.

Mum doesn't tell Elsa not to be afraid, and she doesn't try to trick her into believing that she shouldn't be. Elsa loves her for that.

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.

Elsa reaches out and feels Mum's belly and Halfie contentedly kicking in there. Halfie is not afraid either. Because she/he is completely Mum and George, whereas Elsa is half her dad and Elsa's dad is afraid of everything. So Elsa gets afraid of about half of everything.

They are in the garage and have pushed the backrest down in Renault. The wurse floats out over everything between them, and Mum unconcernedly scratches its pelt. She wasn't even angry when Elsa confessed that she'd been keeping it hidden in the storage unit. And she wasn't scared when Elsa introduced her. She just started stroking it behind its ear as if it were a kitten.

"Do you know who he is? The man who was chasing me?" she asks.

Shadows more than anything.

The wurse buffets its head against hers. Mum gently caresses her cheek.

"Yes. We know who he is."

Mum takes a deep breath.

"Lennart and Maud. And Alf. And me." It sounds as if she's going to reel off more names, but she stops herself.

"Who's we?"

"Lennart and Maud?" Elsa bursts out.

"I know," whispers Mum.

"No. I know you had things there that she never showed me. And it was long ago. I was about as old as you are now. The Land-of-Almost-Awake was very small then. The kingdoms didn't have names yet."

Mum shakes her head.

"I didn't want to scare you."

"And Miamas?" asks Elsa.

Mum nods. "I'm afraid they know him best of all."

"So why did you never tell me about him, then?" Elsa demands.

"Do you?"

"Your grandmother tried to tell me the stories, darling. About the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the shadows."

"It's a shadow," whispers Elsa.

Mum sighs. Scratches the wurse's pelt. The wurse, in turn, licks Elsa's face. It still smells of sponge cake mix. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to be angry when someone smelling of sponge cake mix is licking your face.

"That hardly worked, did it?"

Elsa interrupts impatiently: "I know! They got their names when Granny met Wolfheart, she named them after things in his mother's language. And she took his own language and made it into the secret language so he'd teach her and she could talk to him. But why didn't she bring you with her, in that case? Why didn't Granny show you the Land-of-Almost-Awake?"

"Why not?"

"She wanted to bring me, darling. Many times. But I didn't want to go."

Gently, Mum bites her lip.

"I wasn't an easy child, darling. I argued a lot. I said no to everything. Your grandmother always called me 'the girl who said no.' "

"I was getting older. I was an angry teenager, and I didn't want my mother telling me fairy tales on the phone anymore, I wanted to have her here. I wanted her in reality."

Elsa's eyes open wide. Mum sighs and smiles at the same time, as if one emotional expression is trying to swallow the other.

Elsa hardly ever hears her say "my mother." She almost always says, "your grandmother."

Elsa lies in silence staring up at the ceiling, with the wurse breathing softly in her ear. She thinks about Wolfheart and the sea-angel, living next door for so many years without anyone knowing the first thing about them. If holes were drilled in the walls and floors of the house, all the neighbors could reach out and touch one another, that was how close their lives were, and yet in the end they knew almost nothing about the others. And so the years just went by.

"Well, I was probably many things in your grandmother's stories. Both the girl and the queen, I think. In the end I didn't know where the fantasy ended and reality began. Sometimes I don't even think your grandmother knew herself."

Mum shakes her head.

"Have you found the keys?" asks Elsa, pointing at Renault's dashboard.

"Does Britt-Marie even have her own car?" asks Elsa, because from where she's lying she can clearly see BMW, Kent's ridiculously oversize car.

"I think your grandmother hid them. Presumably just to tease Britt-Marie. That must be why it's parked in Britt-Marie's space…"

"No. But she had a car many years ago. A white one. And it's still her parking spot. I think it's about the principle. It's usually about the principle with Britt-Marie," says Mum with a smirk.

Elsa doesn't quite know what that means. She doesn't know if it makes any difference either.

"How did Renault get here, then? If no one has the key for it?" she thinks aloud, although she knows Mum won't be able to answer because she doesn't know either. So she asks Mum to tell her about the shadow. Mum brushes her hand over her cheek again and levers herself up laboriously from the seat, with one hand over Halfie.

"I think Maud and Lennart will have to tell you about him, darling."

They put blankets over the wurse in the backseat and Mum calmly cautions it to stay still if it hears anyone coming. And it agrees. Elsa promises it several times that she'll find a better hiding place, although it can't seem to see the point of this. On the other hand, it looks very pleased about her going off to find more cookies.

Elsa wants to protest, but Mum has already climbed out of Renault, so Elsa doesn't have much choice but to follow her. That is Mum's superpower, after all. Mum brings Wolfheart's coat. She says she's going to wash it so he can have it when he comes home. Elsa likes thinking about that. How he's coming home.

"I made coffee," he mutters.

Mum gratefully accepts a cup. Alf hands Elsa the other cup.

Elsa peers into the cup, surprised.

Alf is standing guard at the bottom of the cellar stairs.

"Where'd you get this from?" she asks. Mum never lets her have O'boy at home because there's too much sugar in it.

"It's not bloody coffee, it's one of those O'boy drinking-chocolate bastards," Alf answers indignantly.

"I told you I don't drink coffee," says Elsa tiredly.

"I can bloody go to the shop, can't I?" says Alf sourly.

"From home," mutters Alf.

"So you also know who was chasing me in the churchyard, don't you?" she asks Alf, with half of the cup's contents in the corners of her mouth and on the tip of her nose.

"You have O'boy at home?" Elsa asks skeptically.

"It should bloody taste of something, shouldn't it?"

"How many spoonfuls of O'boy did you put in this?"

"Yes. But you're not the one he's hunting."

"It's not you he's after."

"You're supposed to put in, like, three!"

Elsa grins at him. She's thinking of calling Alf the Knight of Invective because she's read about invective on Wikipedia and she feels all in all there are too few knights of it. Then she takes a deep gulp and comes close to spitting it out all over Alf's leather jacket.

"I don't know. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe?" Alf mutters defensively.

"Err, hello? He was chasing me."

Elsa eats the rest with a spoon.

Alf looks indignant. Or at least Elsa thinks so. She put "indignant" in Dad's word jar one time, and she imagines that's what it looks like.

Alf just slowly shakes his head.