Sam is afraid.
In the blink of an eye another shadow descends over him, so enormous that Sam’s shadow is engulfed in it. Wolfheart’s heavy fists rain down with fury, with a violence and a darkness no fairy tale could describe. He doesn’t hit Sam, he hammers him into the snow. Not to make him harmless. Not to protect. To destroy.
Elsa’s dad picks her up and runs up the stairs. Presses her against his jacket so she can’t see. She hears the door flung open from inside and she hears Maud and Lennart pleading with Wolfheart to stop hitting, stop hitting, stop hitting. But judging by the dull thumping sounds, like when you drop milk cartons on the floor, he isn’t stopping. He doesn’t even hear them. In the tales Wolfheart fled into the dark forests long before the War-Without-End, because he knew what he was capable of.
Elsa tears herself free of Dad and sprints down the stairs. Maud and Lennart stop screaming before she has reached the bottom. Wolfheart’s mallet of a fist is raised so high above Sam that it brushes the stretched-out fingers of the cloud animals before it turns back and hurtles down.
But Wolfheart freezes in the middle of the movement. Between him and the blood-covered man stands a woman who looks so small and frail that the wind should be able to pass right through her. She has an insignificant ball of blue tumble-dryer fluff in her hand, and a thin white line on her finger where her wedding ring used to be. Every ounce of her being seems to be yelling at her to run for her life. But she stays where she is, staring at Wolfheart with the resolute gaze of someone who has nothing left to lose.
She rolls up the tumble-dryer fluff in the palm of one hand and puts that hand against her other hand and clasps them together on her stomach; then she looks with determination at Wolfheart and says, with authority:
“We don’t beat people to death in this leaseholders’ association.”
Wolfheart’s fist is still vibrating in the air. His chest heaves up and down. But his arms slowly fall down at his sides.
She is still standing between Wolfheart and Sam, between the monster and the shadow, when the police car comes skidding into their street. The green-eyed policewoman jumps out, her weapon drawn, long before the car has stopped. Wolfheart has dropped on his knees in the snow.
Elsa shoves the door open and charges outside. The police roar at Wolfheart. They try to stop Elsa, but it’s like holding water in cupped hands: she slips through their fingers. For reasons she won’t understand for many years, Elsa has time to think about what her mother said to George once when she thought Elsa was sleeping. That this is how it is, being the mother of a daughter who is starting to grow up.
The wurse lies immobile on the ground halfway between Audi and the front entrance. The snow is red. It tried to get to her. Crawled out of Audi and crept along until it collapsed. Elsa wriggles out of her jacket and the Gryffindor scarf and spreads them over the animal’s body, curling up in the snow next to it and hugging it hard, hard, feeling how its breath smells of peanut cake, and she whispers, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid” over and over again into its ear. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, Wolfheart has defeated the dragon and no fairy tale can end until the dragon has been defeated.”
When she feels Dad’s soft hands picking her up off the ground, she calls out loudly, so the wurse will hear her even if it’s already halfway to the Land-of-Almost-Awake:
“YOU CAN’T DIE! YOU HEAR?! YOU CAN’T DIE BECAUSE ALL CHRISTMAS TALES HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS!”
32
GLASS