“Not run alone. Never run alone,” growls Wolfheart.
She’s still not quite sure if she wanted to be saved, although she’s happy to see him. Happier than she expected to be, actually. She thought she’d be angrier at him.
“Dangerous place,” growls Wolfheart towards the park, and starts putting her back down on the ground.
“I know,” she mumbles.
“Never again!” he orders, and she can hear that he’s afraid.
She puts her arms around his neck and whispers, “Thanks” in the secret language before he can straighten up his enormous body. Then she sees how uncomfortable it makes him and she lets go at once.
“I washed my hands really carefully, I had a mega-long shower this morning!” she whispers.
Wolfheart doesn’t answer, but she can see in his eyes that he’ll be, like, bathing in alcogel when he gets home.
Elsa looks around. Wolfheart rubs his hands together and shakes his head when he notices.
“Gone now,” he says gently.
Elsa nods.
“How did you know I was here?”
Wolfheart’s gaze drops into the asphalt.
“Guard you. Your granny said . . . guard you.”
Elsa nods.
“Even if I don’t always know you’re close by?”
Wolfheart’s hood moves up and down. She feels that her legs are about to give way beneath her.
“Why did you disappear?” she whispers accusingly. “Why did you leave me with that terropist?” Wolfheart’s face disappears under his hood.
“Psychologists want to talk. Always talk. About war. Always. I . . . don’t want to.”
“Maybe you’d feel better if you talked?”
Wolfheart rubs his hands together in silence. He watches the street as if waiting to catch sight of something.
Elsa wraps her arms around her body and realizes that she left both her jacket and her Gryffindor scarf in the church. It’s the only time she’s ever forgotten her Gryffindor scarf.
Who the hell could do that to a Gryffindor scarf?
She also looks up and down the street, searching for she doesn’t know what. Then she feels something being swept over her shoulders, and when she turns she realizes that Wolfheart has put his coat around her. It drags along the ground by her feet. Smells of detergent. It’s the first time she’s seen Wolfheart without the upturned hood. Oddly enough, he looks even bigger without it. His long hair and black beard billow in the wind.
“You said ‘Miamas’ means ‘I love’ in your mother’s language, right?” asks Elsa, and tries not to look directly at his scar, because she can see he rubs his hands even harder when she does.
He nods. Scans the street.
“What does ‘Miploris’ mean?” asks Elsa.
When he doesn’t answer, she assumes it’s because he doesn’t understand the question, so she clarifies:
“One of the six kingdoms in the Land-of-Almost-Awake is called Miploris. That’s where all the sorrow is stored. Granny never wanted t—”
Wolfheart interrupts her, but gently.
“I mourn.”
Elsa nods.
“And Mirevas?”
“I dream.”
“And Miaudacas?”
“I dare.”
“And Mimovas?”
“Dance. I dance.”
Elsa lets the words touch down inside her before she asks about the last kingdom. She thinks about what Granny always said about Wolfheart, that he was the invincible warrior who defeated the shadows and that only he could have done it, because he had the heart of a warrior and the soul of a storyteller. Because he was born in Miamas, but he grew up in Mibatalos.
“What does Mibatalos mean?” she asks.
He looks right at her when she asks that. With those big dark eyes wide open with everything that is kept in Miploris.
“Mibatalos—I fight. Mibatalos . . . gone now. No Mibatalos anymore.”
“I know! The shadows destroyed it in the War-Without-End and all the Mibatalosians died except you, for you are the last of your people and—” Elsa starts saying, but Wolfheart rubs his hands together so hard that she stops herself.
Wolfheart’s hair falls into his face. He backs away a step.