Sorry I left you and sorry for this bloody cancer. Sorry I was a shit moor than a not-shit sometimes.
I luv you more than 10000 eternities of fairytails. Tell Halfie the fairytails! And protect the castel! Protect your frends because they will protect you. The castel is yours now. No one is braver and wyser and stronger than you. You are the best of us all. Grow up and be diffrent and don’t let anyone tell you not to be diffrent, because all superheros are diffrent. And if they mess with you then kick them in the fusebox! Live and larf and dream and bring new fairytails to Miamas. I will wait there. Maybe grandad as well—buggered if I know. But it’s going to be a grate adventure anyways.
Sorry I was mad.
I luv you.
Damn, how I luv you.
Granny’s spelling really was atrocious.
Epilogues in fairy tales are also difficult. Even more difficult than endings. Because although they aren’t necessarily supposed to give you all the answers, it can be a bit unsatisfying if they stir up even more questions. Because life, once the story has ended, can be both very simple and very complicated.
Elsa celebrates her eighth birthday with Dad and Lisette. Dad drinks three glasses of mulled wine and dances the “spruce dance.” Lisette and Elsa watch Star Wars. Lisette knows all the dialogue off by heart. The boy with a syndrome and his mum are there, and they laugh a lot, because that is how you overcome fears. Maud bakes cookies and Alf is in a bad mood and Lennart gives Lisette and Dad a new coffee percolator. Lennart noticed that Lisette and Dad’s coffee percolator has loads of buttons, and Lennart’s is better because it only has one button. Dad seems to appreciate this observation.
And it’s getting better. It’s going to be fine.
Harry is christened in a little chapel in the churchyard where Granny and the wurse are buried. Mum insists on all the windows being kept open, even though it’s snowing outside, so everyone can see.
“And what will the boy’s name be?” asks the vicar, who’s also an accountant and a doctor and, it’s emerged, works a bit on the side as a librarian.
“Harry,” says Mum, smiling.
The vicar nods and winks at Elsa.
“And will the child have godparents?”
Elsa snorts loudly.
“He doesn’t need any godparents! He has a big sister!”
And she knows that people in the real world don’t understand that sort of thing. But in Miamas a newborn doesn’t get a godparent, newborns get a Laugher instead. After the child’s parents and granny and a few other people that Elsa’s granny, when she was telling Elsa the story, didn’t seem to think were terribly important, the Laugher is the most important person in a child’s life in Miamas. And the Laugher is not chosen by the parents, because Laughers are far too important to be chosen by parents. It’s the child who does the choosing. So when a child is born in Miamas, all the family’s friends come to the cot and tell stories and pull faces and dance and sing and make jokes, and the first one to make the child laugh becomes the Laugher. The Laugher is personally responsible for making it happen as often and as loudly and in as many situations as possible, particularly those that cause embarrassment to the parents.
Of course, Elsa knows very well that everyone will tell her Harry is too small to understand the whole thing about having a big sister. But when she looks down at him in her arms, the two of them know damned well that it’s the first time he’s laughing.