The Brothers Lionheart

From Nangiyala. And please don’t forget to sit there like a snow-white pigeon on the windowsill will you?”

I began to cough then, and he lifted me up and held me in his arms as he usually did when it was worst, and he sang:

My little Rusky, I know, dear

that your soul is here

wanting to rest a while here,

in my arms so dear.

Not until then did I begin to think about what it would be like in Nangiyala without Jonathan. How lonely I would be without him! What good would it be to be where there were lots and lots of sagas and adventures if Jonathan were not there too? I would just be afraid and not know what to do.

“I don’t want to go there,” I said, and I wept. “I want to be where you are, Jonathan.”

“But I’m coming to Nangiyala, too, don’t you see?” said Jonathan. “After a while.”

“After a while, yes,” I said. “But perhaps you’ll live until you’re ninety year old, and in the meantime I’ll be there alone.”

Then Jonathan said that there was no time in Nangiyala the way it is on earth. Even if he did live until he was ninety, it wouldn’t seem like more than two days at the most before he came. That’s what it’s like when there isn’t any real time.

“You could manage on your own for two days, couldn’t you?” he said, “You could climb the trees and make a campfire in the forest and sit by a small stream and fish, all those things you’ve longed to do so much. And just as you’re sitting there, catching a perch, I’ll come flying in and you’ll say ,’Good heavens Jonathan, are you here already?’”

I tried to stop crying, because I thought I might be able to last out those two days.

“Just think how good it would be if you’d gone there first,” I said, “so that it was you who was sitting there fishing.”

Jonathan agreed with me. He looked at me for a long time, kindly as usual, and I noticed he was sad, because he said very quietly and rather sorrowfully:

“But instead I’ll have to live on earth without my Rusky. For ninety years perhaps!”

That’s what we thought!

chapter 2

Now I’m coming to the difficult part, the part I can’t bear thinking about, the part I cant help thinking about.