Chapter 1: Beast problem

Helena couldn't believe this had happened. She never thought that she would be hunting for beasts in Mora. What made her the sickest was how so many had gotten inside the Outer Mora walls in the first place: a handful of sheltered adult non-immunes convinced that the Rash was a fabrication and an excuse to restrict their liberty of movement. They had spent months building a passage from someone's basement to a hidden spot of the nearby cleansed forest. From there, their plan had been to reach the non-cleansed part of the forest, on foot. That they only put themselves in danger, Helena would have been able to bear with. Unfortunately, they had been so confident that the Rash was one big hoax that they hadn't bothered to take any real measures to keep anything from getting inside the town via the passage, unaware of the damage even healthy vermin could do. Beasts, mostly vermin that had gotten past both scouts and cats, had found their way into the town. Helena was tired, but she had to check every single square meter of her assigned area. The beasts themselves, the immune humans and cats could take care of. Humans and animals that had been bitten, but where at a stage of infection that even Grade A cats couldn't detect yet while she could, were another story. It was only her and Lalli for all Outer Mora, doing it under cover of helping the local scouts that could be spared in patrolling the town. She and Lalli had been informed of the situation upon returning from the expedition to burn down that old slaughterhouse that had been gestating a giant for the last ninety-six years, which Helena had seen in a vision a few weeks ago. This had meant that there had been no way in the world that Reynir was not going to spend the next two weeks in quarantine, especially in a country where most people didn't believe in magic.

She stopped in front of the house neither her nor Lalli had really wanted to have to inspect. She knew exactly what to expect in that one. Helena's aunt-in-law and Lalli's cousin, both non-immune, were in there. The children currently living in the house were all either at school or at work, but three of the four weren't immune either. Lalli was returning the favor by going to check on them. Helena knew it was ridiculous to treat Tuuri's life as being any more precious than Reynir's, Siv's, Håkan's, Sune's, Anna's or Sven's. Unfortunately, the knowledge that their reality existed only because Tuuri had died in the "real" one and someone had wanted to see what would have happened if she had lived made it difficult at times. Fortunately, Helena was powerful enough to check the entire house, its garden and its underground just from walking in front of it slowly enough. She let out a sigh of relief when nothing alarming showed up within the range of her senses. Helena knew the occupants of that house had made sure at least one of its rooms would be safe in such a situation, even during times where money was tight. She also knew both non-immunes inside it knew the Rash was both real and dangerous, unlike certain people she wouldn't name. Between this and the scan, she could now confidently mark it as "low risk" on her map. This was the lowest she could allow herself for a place that actually contained non-immunes and where the cat was the kitten that had been adopted after Bosse had passed from old age. Helena was moving to the next house when she saw a signal flare be fired from the part of town Lalli was taking care of. The color was the one agreed upon for when a non-immune had been found bitten in a place where there were other non-immunes. With Sven's help, she and Lalli had agreed to drop their inspections and run towards these flares to keep an eye out for anything that a mage-less Swedish team would miss. Actually, this was currently the only thing working in their favor: anyone stupid enough to pretend to not have been bitten or hide a non-immune loved one who had been would account only for the means of detection used in Sweden. They wouldn't prepare for a Norwegian or Finnish mage. Just as she was pondering whether to go there despite the fact it was actually on Lalli's side or not, she realized that it was coming from the school district.

Emil put the flare gun away and went back inside the classroom, hoping that he hadn't made a mistake in trusting Lalli's word. Unfortunately, Lalli reading a kid who was immune according to the class roll-call as non-immune hadn't been the only red flag. While Emil had been arguing with the teacher, Lalli had taken a look at the roll-call, elbowed Emil and pointed at the child's last name, which was identical to that of a married couple that was part of the group currently detained for endangering the entire Outer part of Mora. The boy looked a lot like the couple's male half, too. Someone from that group passing their non-immune child as immune wasn't that much of a stretch of imagination. But the main reason they needed to make sure was the infected mouse currently confined in a glass jar and the bite on the little boy's hand. The child was currently made to sit as far away from the other students as possible while still being inside the room. Emil realized that he may not be only child in a situation that needed Lalli's attention in the school and that a good use of their waiting time would be to have him visit other classes. But there were three things keeping both of them in the room. The first was that he was the only one in the room who could verbally translate for Lalli to an extent. The second was that isolating the kid was going to look completely arbitrary to the teacher until qualified testers showed up, and she could terminate the isolation it if they left. The third was more personal: Janine was one of the students and Sune was the teacher's assistant. Sune still looked like a younger, if no longer much shorter version of himself. Janine had run to him calling him "papa" upon his arrival; there was no use in pretending that he wasn't extremely reluctant to leave the room until the situation was sorted out. Janine was five and Sune not immune. Emil sighed and turned to Lalli:
-Hey, can you check the rest of the school without leaving the room, by any chance?
Emil could feel the teacher's glare. Part of her job was teaching those kids that magic was a thing only religious people believed in. He and Helena had needed to be very careful before making Janine attend the Mora school and reach a compromise with the teacher that he was technically breaking just by asking Lalli if he could do the assignment he had given himself. As Lalli hadn't responded, he tried to ask the question in Finnish, but couldn't remember most of the words he wanted. He really wondered how Sven had been able to remember them all so quickly.

Lalli walked towards the class door and opened it to let a couple people in protection suits inside as they were about to knock. Emil heard a noise coming from the corner of the room in which in the bitten boy was sitting. The next instant, Lalli had grabbed the kid by his shirt and kept him from running out of the room before the door was closed. If the boy turned out to be immune after all, Emil was going to suggest he join the scouts. He introduced himself and Lalli to the newcomers properly, asked if they had any quick immunity test kits and pointed to the child Lalli was still holding:
-You need to test him, now.
They pricked the boy's finger and ran the blood drop through the kit:
-Not immune.
Emil gave them the roll call, and pointed to the kid's name, which had his official immunity status on it, on the "off-chance" it became relevant. The people in protection suits both uttered baffled "how" at the same time. Emil explained the situation and the implications he had thought of so far. One of the people in protection suits sighed:
-We are going to need more people for this.

-Mama!
-There you are! Wait, where's Sune?
-Bitten non-immune in the class, they only sent the immunes home.
Tuuri's eye twitched a little. She had just managed to convince Onni that she was at absolutely no risk of contracting the Rash despite the fact that the entire Outer part of Mora was going to be in quarantine for couple of weeks because of a beast infiltration, on the basis that no infected animals had come anywhere close to the house in which she was staying. She hadn't realized just how loudly Helena and Emil could speak before this, and she was quite sure Onni had heard at least some of it through the radio.
-A bitten non-immune in who's class?
Tuuri's guess turned out to be right. She let out a sigh:
-Emil's non-immune cousin who stayed at the school is the teacher's assistant in Emil and Helena's immune daughter's class. Lalli was the one checking the school district for things the Swedish army and their cats could have missed and Emil was with him, so I guess they were in that class at some point and…
Her mind finally clicked onto the fact that while this meant she was safe, it meant that Sune wasn't. She had been hoping none of the non-immune members of the household would be at risk. She hadn't so far payed attention to the fact that they didn't have any news of Håkan and Anna either, but now she was suddenly worried, and realized that their family members were probably more so.
-Onni, some people may need to use the town's radio system more than we do right now. You're the one who called, what did you want to tell me?
Tuuri hear the sound characteristic of someone else grabbing the radio's microphone on the other side:
-Let's just say that in a few months, Onni may finally start leaving you and Lalli in peace.
Tuuri recognized the voice of Cecilia, Onni's wife.
-You're pregnant?
-Yes.
She congratulated them, checked whether Lalli had actually come back with Emil and Janine or not, told him the news and made him come to the radio to talk to Onni and Cecilia. But while he was doing so, Tuuri couldn't help thinking of the conversation she and Reynir had had recently. They had been weighing the pros of the cons of using the Dagrenning program to have an immune child before that call from Helena that had boiled down to "We're all going on an expedition to kill a giant, want to come?". The day's events had given a lot of weight to the main pro, which made her think of the cons. One of them was that she would have to marry Reynir to take part in the program and she didn't feel ready to do so quite yet. The second was an offshoot from one of pros: the program accepted private use of donations from immune family members under certain conditions, and Lalli was showing absolutely no interest in the things one needed to be interested in to start family. She really wanted to ask him, but had no idea how to breach the subject, feared how much she would have to explain to make him understand what she wanted from him and knew it was something too important to have someone else ask in her stead.

They spent dinner eating in silence, listening to the radio as the rules to follow during the quarantine were announced and explained in loops, only to be interrupted when news came in. Many of the measures translated to Håkan, Sune and Anna all having to stay wherever they had been when the intrusion of the beasts had been discovered. Finally, someone at the table spoke:
-What is immune?
The radio had spent the evening saying what both immunes and non-immunes could and couldn't do. Between this and what had happened in her class, of course Janine would wonder. Emil had had to take her home while leaving Sune behind just a few hours earlier. The least Helena could do was share the burden:
-Do you remember the strange mouse from today? It's very sick and it can make some people very sick also if it bites them. But some people never get sick if strange mice bite them. We call those people immune.
Janine stayed silent a few moments before asking the question Helena dreaded:
-Kevin is sick?
Kevin was the fake immune from her class.
-We don't know yet. Not immune means it can both happen and not happen. But we need to wait a few days to know if he will be sick or not. Do you understand so far?
Janine nodded.
-Why did Sune stay at school? The mouse didn't bite him.
-There were many sick animals in town today. Someone… left a door open and they got in from outside. One of them could bite Sune while he's walking home. This is why Håkan and Anna aren't home either.
-Can I get sick? And you? And papa?
-Neither of us can. All three of us are immune. But Tuuri and Siv can get sick, so it's important to not have the windows or doors open longer that we need, okay?
-Okay.
Helena looked at the time, realized that Janine's bedtime was coming close, and decided to take her to the bathroom to get washed up while it was still free. She picked her up and hugged her a little harder than usual. Janine's hands were clutching her quite hard, as well. She really, really didn't want to be the parents of any of the children who had to stay at the school tonight. She gave Torbjörn, Siv and Emil a glance as she left the room.

Lalli apparently took Helena and Janine's departure from the table as a sign he could leave also. Tuuri followed him into the living room:
-So, how was it out there?
-A lot of old buildings on the way to the giant. I used a strong spell to help kill the giant, so I slept all the way back.
-How did you like going on a mission with Emil?
-He's good at his work and not too noisy, but his Finnish is bad. Sven started learning after him and he was much better at it.
Tuuri took a few moments to process what Lalli had just said:
-Why in the world would Sven learn Finnish? He's a Swedish academic, he doesn't exactly need it.
-Something about going to hide in a village in Finland if he needs to.

Helena, Emil and Reynir had all been quite vague about the event that had made Sven end up part of the first Silent World expedition. Reynir didn't know much simply because Sven never interacted with him unless he had to. From the two others, Tuuri had only found out that Sven had very badly chosen the time and thing to nitpick at the job he had before the expedition, the people who had suffered the consequences lived in Mora, he timed his errands as to not risk running into them and Tuuri was'nt supposed to bring the event up. The event being bad enough that Sven didn't want to run into the people he'd wronged if he could help it, she could understand. She'd spent years feeling that way about Lalli before finding out he hadn't been quite himself when he had thrown their expedition paperwork in the river going through Keuruu. But could it really be bad enough that Sven would potentially need to run away to Finland? She had managed to get on his good side by helping him make breakfast once, but had otherwise found no common ground with him despite their similar jobs. She had always seen the paper-pushing part of the job as the price to pay to be able to enjoy all the knowledge found in books. Sven seemed to be the complete opposite, to the point that the fact that he no longer could do paper-pushing jobs – she wasn't sure whether the restriction was imposed by the Swedish skald community or Sven to himself – managed to come across as a little sad. Between the fact that he had already survived the Silent World once and what some knew to have happened to her in the other world, Sven had been the one going back out there with the crew, while she manned the radio in home base. Now that she thought of it, she wasn't sure why they had needed a skald for that trip. The first expedition had officially been, for all intents and purposes, a skald, a medic and their escort. The second one had been to burn a literal sleeping giant to crisp before it woke up and decided Mora looked like a good breakfast. Sigrun was an experienced troll hunter. Mikkel had a set of skills that would otherwise require to hire at least three other people. The usefulness of Lalli, Reynir, Helena and Emil was self-evident. The financing had been better this time around, but not that much better.

She might as well ask:
-What was Sven doing on the expedition anyway?
-Making food I liked and throwing a blanket on me if I stopped moving for too long. I saw him use the typewriter in the office once or twice, but I didn't ask him what he was doing.
Tuuri couldn't help but chuckle. During Reynir and Helena's dream area troubles, Tuuri had accompanied them and Janine to central Saimaa for the purposes of their research. Lalli's description of Sven's attitude reminded her of how Helena had described Emil's during the first expedition. Tuuri briefly considered the reason could be the same, before remembering that if she knew someone who seemed less interested in romantic matters than Lalli, it was probably Sven. This, fortunately, helped redirect her mind towards the question she had initially set out to ask:
-Lalli, you know how babies are made, right?
-Yes.
So far, so good.
-You know specific things are actually needed, right? Do seed and egg sound familiar to you?
-Yes.
She explained the Dagrenning program as simply as she could, then popped the question. Lalli stared at her for a few moments, then darted upstairs to the guest room. Tuuri wasn't sure how she was supposed to understand this, but at least it wasn't an outright "no".