Chapter 3: New friend

The squeal of enthusiasm that Tuuri let out was so high-pitched that Lalli had to cover his ears and noticed Sven was doing the same. What was the big deal anyway? She had already spoken to both Sigrun and Mikkel through the radio. He took his hands off his ears just in time to hear Tuuri be impressed about how much taller than Reynir they were. Sigrun decided that this was the right time to show Tuuri her arm and explain how it had happened. Mikkel took part in the conversation between Sigrun and Tuuri, while Reynir made a face at the sight of the arm and decided to go talk with Emil, Helena and Janine instead. Lalli suddenly realized that one of the members of the expedition was missing in his headcount, and tentatively looked in Sven's general direction. Sven had just made the great mistake of sitting down without obstructing his lap in any way, and the gwhite-and-ginger creature in a Grade B cat collar had taken advantage of it. Sven would now be unable to move a muscle:
-Get it off…
Lalli sighed, took the animal, put it next to Janine and came to sit next to Sven.
-Why were you on this expedition? Tuuri asked and I couldn't answer.
-There are people curious about mages here. I found this out recently. They have money to give people who want to study mages, but can't find people who want to. For too many people here, magic is not real, so it's not a bad thing to say they are going to study mages, take the money and use it for other things. Because of this, they want the people who want the money to show they are really going to study mages. So, I came to watch you, Helena and her idiot student. If they like it, I can get money for going to hide in Finland if I go to a place that has mages.
A thought suddenly occurred to Lalli. How had he not noticed when Sven had first told him or when he had told Tuuri about it?
-Why are you thinking of hiding in Finland now? The reason you are hiding happened six years ago.
Sven clenched his fists and stared at his own lap:
-The man who died from my mistake had a younger sister. I'm sure her parents didn't tell her the real reason when it happened. She's grown up now. She's also in the same class as Anna. She's old enough to be told what happened now. If she finds out I live in Anna's house, I… don't know what may happen. I don't want any of the kids to have to leave a training they like because of me.
Once he was done, Sven collapsed in his chair, suddenly looking very tired and blew a little air out of his lungs. Lalli hovered over him:
-Are you all right?
-Yes, I just need a few minutes.
Somehow, he and Sven had ended up sharing their stories of being responsible for the death of others because of paperwork-related mistakes during the trip to the old slaughterhouse. It had been an improperly filled out report for Lalli. For Sven, it had been delaying an urgent care facility transfer over a missing letter in the patient's long name as per his usual standard for properly filled out papers, while not realizing that this particular one had literally gone through all the unlucky delays possible before landing on his desk. The delay he had added to the procedure had made the difference on whether a man's life could be saved or not. Because all the other delays had been complete accidents and Sven had technically chosen to add his own, he was considered responsible for the man's death by his family, even though he'd never been formally punished for it in any way. That hadn't kept Sven for feeling guilty about it, and having no idea of how to properly do the only job he'd ever had anymore.

Sven had showed Lalli a trick to get edible food at the "nice place" where they had all eaten. While each pair of adults had been given one of those very thin books, Janine had been given a single card. Once she had chosen her food, Sven had asked her for the card, and told Lalli what their options were. Their food and Janine's had been much simpler, but what everyone else had been eating had looked just plain gross anyway. They had also finished their meal quickly, payed for their food and left the restaurant while everyone else was distracted. Sven had then told him he wanted to buy a kantele and needed Lalli's help make sure he got the best one he could afford. After that, Sven had taken him to a place that had benches and a handful of currently-leafless trees. Lalli had settled on the lower branch of one of them, while Sven seemed to be trying to play a few tunes that were definitely not of Finnish origin on his new kantele. It took a few moments for him to figure out how to play the instrument correctly, but once he had, he was doing very good for someone who had just started. Now he remembered why he wanted Sven to move to Finland, and preferably to Keuruu, so much. While Emil didn't force him to engage in things like others did, there still needed to be something to keep Emil occupied, even if it was just talking to Lalli without really expecting an answer. Sven liked the peace and quiet as much as he did, and never broke it without an obvious purpose.

Lalli noticed two young women coming to sit on one of the nearby benches, holding wrapped food that was probably their lunch. He took a few moments to realize one of them was the girl among Emil's noisy cousins after not having seen her face for several weeks. His memory managed to summon the name "Anna". Both her and her friend seemed to like the music. When Anna noticed it was Sven playing it, she almost yelled his name, looking at him wide-eyed. Sven immediately stopped playing, and greeted them in his usual formal tone. Both young women came to sit on the bench Sven had been using, without seeming to notice Lalli, who didn't mind, but made an effort to listen to the conversation because Tuuri had told him it was a good way to learn how to speak a language faster. From what he could tell, Anna's friend was the younger sister of the man he and Sven had been talking about earlier. Lalli didn't catch her name. Next, the younger sister seemed to be mad at Sven for enjoying himself after what he had done. Sven went on to start a discussion with her about whether what he had happened should keep him from being happy forever or not. Lalli didn't follow everything, but Sven at some point mentioned that he was having his first good day in several years and it was just bad timing that she should see him enjoying himself with a friend rather than doing whatever she thought he should be doing instead. When the young woman asked who was the friend he was talking about, Sven pointed at Lalli. Lalli was startled for a few moments, then put his mind to work. He guessed that if he and Emil could call each other friends, he and Sven qualified for the title as well. Both Anna and her own friend showed surprise upon noticing him. Anna admonished Sven for not pointing Lalli out earlier, while Sven replied that it was their own fault that they hadn't noticed Lalli earlier. Just as Anna's friend was pointing out that Lalli was in a tree, a bell tower rang, prompting both young women to say something about school, quickly finish what was left of their food and leave. Sven suggested to Lalli that they head home also, because at least one person among the others was probably going to start a town-wide search for them if they weren't at the house by the time they returned. Lalli jumped from the tree branch and decided to make sure of something before they left:
-Do you really consider me your friend? he asked in Finnish.
-You understood that part. I wasn't sure you had. Yes, I do. I can stop if you don't like it.
-I don't mind.

On the way back to the house, Lalli told Sven about what Tuuri had asked him for.
-Are you aware it could not work? You Finns have a weird immunity distribution in families. The Dagrenning program doesn't have Finnish donors because of this. If they really want an immune child, they should use one of the idiot student's siblings and an approved donor.
Lalli actually knew that, but not from Tuuri. He'd gotten an answer from his other self while waiting out the quarantine. He had explained the Finland immunity situation in detail. He had added that "some Swede" was going figure out the reason behind it soon and that there was going to be a test enabling one to distinguish "Dagrenning compatible" Finns from the others by Year 98. His other self had taken it out of curiosity and it had come back positive. But Lalli couldn't tell Sven that. Fortunately, Sven didn't seem to expect an immediate answer, which let him figure out what he would be saying if he didn't know:
-No. Why did she ask me if it may not work?
-Maybe she expects her and the idiot student to be lucky. Maybe she really wants it to be you and doesn't really care about the child's immunity.
The first option actually wouldn't have been that out of character from Tuuri. Barring the period around her breakdown and her early recovery from it, she tended to expect the better possible outcomes from events.
-What's the point of using my seed if it's not to be sure to be sure the child is immune?
-It doesn't look like you're going to have kids the usual way right now.
-She already told me that. And even if I get with someone, it will probably be a man, so she's right about that.
-Interested in men also? I thought Emil would be the only other one I would ever meet. There is very few of us and I don't know many people well enough to know things like that. Getting back to what we were talking about, it would be good if it is your child. Even if it's not immune, at least, it will not be the idiot student's child.
-What would be so bad about the child being Reynir's? I think he's annoying too, but not enough to think he shouldn't have his own child if he's okay with it not being immune.
Sven sighed:
-Sorry about that. My parents… have very strict ideas of who should be allowed to have children, even among the non-immune. Each time they don't like someone, they say that their parents shouldn't have had them or that they should be made unable to have children. Things like that. I thought it was normal when I was a kid. I only found out it was very, very, mean to say this to and about people after I left home. I still say them sometimes, even if I don't really want to. But I do think the world could use more of you more than it could use more of Helena's idiot student.
Lalli had been so focused on processing what Sven had been telling him that he didn't notice they had arrived at the house. The second they got in, Sven told him to take his boots off to not get the floor dirty and quickly found enough to do to keep himself occupied until the others returned.

At dinnertime, the good mood in which Lalli and Sven had left the others at lunch had vanished. Siv, Emil's aunt, had made her announcement in Swedish upon returning from work so late they hadn't waited for her to eat, but the rest of the conversation had happened in Icelandic. Helena had wanted Janine out of the room the second the conversation had started, and it had fallen upon Emil to have her finish her meal in another room and get her ready for bed. Lalli who couldn't speak Icelandic and would only find out about the finer details in the dreamspace from Helena and Reynir later, helped him as he could. He had understood the Rash-stricken boy's name and the word "medicine" in Siv's statement. From the latest news from the two foreign mages of the subject, Lalli could guess the reason they had started a tense discussion. Neither the Icelanders nor the Swedes had managed to change the recipe in a way that didn't cause patients turn into strange ghosts yet. For the past six years, when neither Helena nor Reynir were in Mora, there always "just happened" to be an Icelandic or Norwegian mage in town because of this.

Emil decided to stay at his daughter's bedside long after she had fallen asleep. A question crossed Lalli's mind:
-Is she going to fight trolls when she's older?
-If she wants to. Granted that her chances of going into farming in this family are slim, but she may take after me and go into academia.
Emil fancied himself as a brainy person who had chosen to join the army because he didn't get along with other brainy people. For someone like that, he showed little interest in books. He claimed that it was because all the good books were in Icelandic, yet that didn't seem to bother him enough for him to start learning the language. Even Swedish books, Lalli had only seen in his hands when he was reading his daughter stories. Tuuri and Sven, on the other hand, seemed to be unable to live without reading or writing something on a regular basis. His other world self seemed to have plenty of books too, for that matter. This reminded him that he had agreed to let his other self take the next morning to visit a couple locations in Mora's shopping district. Lalli decided to give Emil what he called his "you can't fool me" look. Janine could turn out to be like Tuuri and Sven, but it would definitely not be due to taking after Emil.
-Anna told me she saw you and Sven in the park today. Wasn't too boring hanging out with him?
-No. It was nice, actually.
Emil raised an eyebrow:
-Really? He hates hanging around with other people about as much as you d… Wait… the two of you hate the same things… does it mean you like the same things as well?
Lalli was about to call Emil's reasoning stupid before he realized that all of the day's pleasant activities had been entirely Sven's idea. He'd gone along with the idea of befriending Emil in part because he had given up on ever meeting someone who actually enjoyed the same things as him.
-Maybe.
-Anna also told me she saw him play music and that he was good. I sometimes hear him humming while he's working, but I didn't know he could play. Too bad it's always the same song, though.
-Why would he play anything else? It's a nice song.
-I guess you're right. But hearing it too often can get annoying, sometimes.

Lalli got a sudden and grim reminder that Janine was actually sleeping in a cot in the room belonging to the three noisy cousins when the Emil copycat among them walked into the room in tears, let himself drop onto one of the beds and was soon followed by his siblings. They hadn't really made that much noise, but the little girl had inherited her mother's perception of any possible sign of danger, which caused her to wake up. Emil took her in his arms and started walking towards the guest room that was Sven's when there were no guests, before changing his mind and taking her to his aunt and uncle's room. Lalli followed him there, holding the stuffed toy that he had forgotten to collect in his haste. Just a few seconds after retuning the toy to its rightful owner, Lalli got called by Helena, who used the handful of Norwegian words that he knew to mean that she was expecting him in the dreamspace as soon as he could get to bed.

The cure injection was to happen the next evening. It had been decided that Reynir would be the one to guide the boy, to help him be ready on the off-chance that he would ever have to do something similar for his own child. Helena also thought it would be a good idea for Lalli to be there when it happened, so he could get a glimpse of what they had had to deal with in Silent Denmark. Once they had made the finer arrangements for the following evening, Reynir breached a familiar conversation subject:
-Lalli, I know you're still thinking it over, but would you mind at least telling me in which direction you're leaning right now? I'm going to see one of my brothers soon and I'd like to know if it's worth asking him or if I should only ask my sisters.
It took that for him to find out that Reynir had actually had a vision telling him that things would work out if Lalli's seed was used, that he had told Tuuri and that he had assumed Tuuri had told Lalli when she had asked him for the favor. The look of resignation on Reynir's face somehow managed to worsen:
-She's going to act like this with our child when… if we have one also, isn't she? I… need to talk to her tomorrow morning.
Reynir ran out of Lalli's dream area, leaving Lalli's own feelings torn between "good, he finally noticed" and "is this one of those situations where I should have kept my mouth shut?".