There are more trolls and dragons in Miamas than in any other of the five kingdoms in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, you see, because the main export industry in Miamas is fairy tales. Trolls and dragons have excellent employment prospects in Miamas because stories need villains. “Of course, it hasn’t always been like this,” Granny sometimes muses. “There was a time when the dragons had been almost forgotten by Miamas’s storytellers, particularly the ones who’d grown a little long in the tooth.” Then she recounts the whole story about how the dragons were causing too much trouble in Miamas, drifting about without jobs, drinking schnapps and smoking cigars and getting involved in violent confrontations with the city wall. So in the end the people of Miamas begged Granny to help them come up with some kind of practical job-creation scheme. And that’s when Granny had the idea that dragons should guard treasures at the ends of the tales.
Up until that point, it had actually been a massive narrative problem, the fact that heroes in fairy tales looked for a treasure and, once they had located it in some deep cave, only had to nip inside to pick it up. Just like that. No epic closing battles or dramatic apexes or anything. “All you could do was play worthless video games afterwards,” Granny said, nodding somberly. Granny knows all about it, because last summer Elsa taught her how to play a game called World of Warcraft and Granny played it around the clock for several weeks until Mum said she was beginning to “exhibit disturbing tendencies” and banned her from sleeping in Elsa’s room from then on.
But anyway, when the storytellers heard Granny’s idea the whole problem was solved in an afternoon. “And that’s why all fairy tales nowadays have dragons at the end! It’s my doing!” Granny chortles. Like she always does.
Granny has a story from Miamas for every situation. One of them is about Miploris, the kingdom where all sorrow is kept in storage, and its princess who was robbed of a magical treasure by an ugly witch whom she’s been hunting ever since. Another story is about two princeling brothers, both in love with the princess of Miploris, and practically breaking the Land-of-Almost-Awake into pieces in their furious battle for her love.
One story was about the sea-angel, burdened by a curse that forced her to drift up and down the coast of the Land-of-Almost-Awake after losing her beloved. And another story was about the Chosen One, the most universally loved dancer in Mimovas, which is the kingdom all music comes from. In the fairy tale the shadows tried to abduct the Chosen One in order to destroy Mimovas, but the cloud animals saved him and flew him all the way back to Miamas. And when the shadows came after them, all the inhabitants of the six kingdoms of the Land-of-Almost-Awake—the princes, princesses, knights, soldiers, trolls, angels, and the witch—agreed to protect the Chosen One. And that was when the War-Without-End started. It raged for an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales, until the wurses and Wolfheart came out of the forest and led the good army into the last battle and forced the shadows back across the sea.
Of course, Wolfheart is a whole fairy tale in his own right, because he was born in Miamas but just like all other soldiers he grew up in Mibatalos. He has a warrior’s heart but the soul of a storyteller, and he’s the most invincible fighter ever seen in any of the six kingdoms. He had been living deep in the dark forests for many eternities of fairy tales, but he came back when the Land-of-Almost-Awake needed him most.
Granny has been telling these fairy tales for as long as Elsa can remember. In the beginning they were only to make Elsa go to sleep, and to get her to practice Granny’s secret language, and a little because Granny is just about as nutty as a granny should be. But lately the stories have another dimension as well. Something Elsa can’t quite put her finger on.
“Put ‘Pennsylvania Railroad’ back,” says Elsa tersely.
“I bought it . . . ?” Granny tries.
“Mmm, sure you did. Put it back.”
“This is how it must have been playing bloody Monopoly with Hitler!”
“Hitler would only have wanted to play Risk,” mutters Elsa, because she’s checked out Hitler on Wikipedia, after there were some rows between her and Granny about her use of Hitler as a metaphor.
“Touché,” mutters Granny.
And then they play in silence for about a minute. Because that is about the usual length of time they can be bothered to keep feuding.
“Did you give the chocolate to Our Friend?” asks Granny.
Elsa nods. But she doesn’t mention how she told it about Granny’s cancer. A little bit because she thinks Granny would be annoyed, and quite a bit because she doesn’t want to talk about cancer. She checked it on Wikipedia yesterday. And then she checked what a will is and then she was so angry that she couldn’t sleep all night.
“How did you and Our Friend become friends?” she asks instead.
Granny shrugs. “The usual way.”
Elsa doesn’t know what the usual way is, because she has no friends other than Granny. But she doesn’t say anything, because she knows Granny would be upset if she heard that.
“Anyway, the mission is done,” she says in a low voice.
Granny nods keenly and throws a searching look at the door, as if concerned someone could be watching them. Then she reaches under her pillow. The bottles clink against each other and she swears when she spills some beer on the pillowcase, but then she hauls out an envelope and presses it into Elsa’s hand.
“This is your next mission, my knight Elsa. But you mustn’t open it until tomorrow.”
Elsa looks at the envelope skeptically.
“Haven’t you heard of e-mail?”
“You can’t e-mail something this important.”
Elsa weighs the envelope in her hand, presses the lumpy bit at the bottom of it.
“What is it?”
“A letter and a key,” says Granny. And then she looks both serious and frightened, both of which are very rare emotions in Granny. She reaches out and grabs hold of Elsa’s index fingers. “Tomorrow I’m going to send you out on the biggest treasure hunt you’ve ever seen, my brave little knight. Are you ready for that?”
Granny has always loved treasure hunts. In Miamas, treasure hunting is considered a sport. You can compete in it, because it’s an approved Olympic field event. But in Miamas it’s not called the Olympic Games, it’s actually known as the Invisible Games, because all the participants are invisible. Not exactly a spectator sport, as Elsa pointed out when Granny told her about it.
Elsa also loves treasure hunts, but not as much as Granny. No one in any kingdom in the eternity of ten thousand fairy tales could love them like she does. She can make anything into a treasure hunt: if they’ve been out shopping and Granny can’t remember where she parked Renault; or when she wants Elsa to go through her mail and pay her bills because Granny finds this insanely boring; or when there’s a sports day at school and Elsa knows the older children are going to lash her in the shower with rolled-up towels. Granny can make a parking area into magic mountains, and rolled-up towels into dragons that must be outsmarted. And Elsa is always the heroine.
This sounds like a different kind of treasure hunt altogether, though.
“The one who’s supposed to have the key will know what to do with it. You have to protect the castle, Elsa.”