Barriers
-Do you need me to not come here anymore? The boat should be able to pick them up in three or four days, and we can keep news coming to you on the radio in the meantime.
If what was hunting the two Finnish cousins was that powerful and that dangerous, even coming to Onni's dream realm to convey information that he could get by easy to implement other means was a risk. Hildur suddenly remembered an aspect of the situation that Onni may like a little less:
-I unfortunately can't keep this to myself because Njala is especially wary about me lying to her again, since I didn't want to tell anybody about Reynir in case the seal I put on his powers was still holding. But I'll do my best to have as few other people know as it's possible. And keep my eyes and ears out for anything that could help against it.
Onni seemed to reconsider the situation for a few moments before speaking:
-Do what you need to do to keep it from figuring out how close it is to its goal. It must be nice to live in a place where you can afford to lock away a mage's powers for the sole reason of them not being part of your family's plans.
With what she now knew of this family's situation, what Onni had just told her felt extremely restrained compared to what she could easily imagine him to be actually thinking at the moment. And he was right. She couldn't even start grasping the concept of living in a place so strained for resources and people that if the younger relative you wanted to protect at all costs turned out to have immunity, magic or both, you couldn't afford to not have them trained as one of the community's protectors. On the way back to her own dream realm, she came quite near Lalli's place, and briefly squinted to get a good look at his face. She realized that once one made abstraction of the thin and worn face, he was probably just around Reynir's age.
xxxx
The last piece of news coming from the boat through Reynir this morning was about to make dodging the existence of magic around Michael harder than it already was:
-They don't want him in Iceland, and they've been in contact with the Mora mental ward to prepare a spot for him. They understand the situation enough to not expect him to know where he'll be going before he gets on the boat, but they are informing us now so you can make preparations with this in mind.
Mikkel was already starting to make a list of places he could try in Mora when the least subtle elbow nudge ever from Sigrun reminded him of one of the things he meant to do before going to see Michael:
-Do you feel able to do something else than share news with your sister yet? I know I've been busy and that I don't quite understand the situation, but don't let that keep you from asking me about anything you think I may be able to help with.
Judging by the look on Reynir's face, Sigrun had been right about him not considering talking with Mikkel about what had been happening, after all the times he had refused to take the subject of magic seriously. Mikkel looked back at the last several and realized that between getting used to magic being real, the news of Michael being alive and his attention being needed right and left, he had never actually taken the time to apologize for his past attitude about the subject. Doing it now felt like as good a time as any, and Reynir responded to it by saying he may be in the mood to talk later.
In the infirmary, Michael explained to Mikkel what he had been trying to do about the story he had been telling the trolls every evening all this time and his failed attempt to replace it the previous evening. Mikkel thought it was a good idea for something he had come up with on his own in his current state, and encouraged him to keep trying. During the conversation, Michael brought up one of the metaphorical giants in the room:
-I'm quite sure we were taught that trolls were killing machines that we must shoot in the head on sight. Why aren't you surprised that I was able to keep them from eating me just by telling them stories?
-Emil reported having more or less of a conversation with a member of that bunch before running into you. You have always been good at keeping people distracted with either conversation or stories you knew about. If these trolls have retained enough humanity to hold a conversation, it makes sense that you, of all people, would find a way to survive while being surrounded by them. Though to be honest, the fact that this is far from the strangest thing I've went through during this trip is probably a factor as well.
-What kind of thing would be stranger than that?
Mikkel thought of a few recent events which, in hindsight and taken together, should have been more than enough to get him rid of his skepticism. Unfortunately, the most unambiguous of the two was tied to the night during which Tuuri had been condemned, so he went with the detour by the old church instead. He kept having to refer to older events to give Michael context until the little he could remember from the top of his head enabled him to the fill the blanks on his own. He quickly got to the related events pre-dating Tuuri's death, including that time in Kastellet where Reynir had suddenly asked to leave after allegedly seeing "shadow-things". Right around that point, Michael declared that the whole thing was getting too complicated for him to follow and asked to do something else if he had any time left. Between the reminder that there was only a dwindling number of days before they would get quarantined into separate rooms and something slotting into place concerning the decade-old failed reclamation attempt, the next item on the docket for Mikkel ended up spending some time staring at the sea to collect himself.
Mikkel had come with the cat and left her behind upon leaving, saying he'd come to take her back to the barracks later. Michael picked her up and remembered a specific aspect of the story he'd been told:
-Trolls coming scare you. "Church" troll didn't scare you. Are trolls who like stories scary?
An idea crossed his mind, before he realized that not doing something like that was probably the main reason he was being kept in the building. Yet, if he could get enough time alone in the daytime while having the cat with him, he would find out something the others probably really wanted to know. Maybe one of them could try it. But who? The captain with a bad infection? The two exhausted young men he had followed here? The non-immune who wasn't even supposed to be on the mission? Mikkel, who hardly had the time? He thought again. Maybe people would come back with a cat and find out the truth. But what if they didn't bother with the cats and just shot any troll they ran into? Or if they did and the cats were still scared of them? That Emil guy knew where they were, so the new people would know how to find them. He needed to tell them to go hide somewhere else before he left. He realized nothing was keeping him from trying to leave with the cat right now. He picked the cat up in his arms, ran out the door, and quickly found the pair of chain-link fences on the small bridge between the platform on which the outpost was built and the ancient harbor to which it connected. However, as he got about a meter away from the innermost fence, it suddenly felt like he had had the tip a large, fully extended spring glued to his back all along. The invisible spring felt like it was pulling him away from the fence. In his surprise at the sensation, he accidentally let go of the cat.
xxxx
If Mikkel squinted a little more than usual, he could see a resemblance between the rune Reynir was drawing with a piece of coal on the floor of the storage space on top of the infirmary and the one he had handed everyone before the antique shop raid. He had said that it was modification of a rune meant to keep sheep from straying too far away from it at the time, and he had more recently correctly guessed the modifications to make so it could work on people. The fact that it would have the same effect on all people in the outpost until it was erased according to Reynir brought the Old World "it's not a bug, it's a feature" saying to Mikkel's mind. The rune that had kept Michael from leaving in the first place had been drawn on a whim on the wall next to Reynir's near-ceiling bunk the previous day, in a patch that was hard to see from the floor, but too easy to accidentally smudge while sleeping in Sigrun's taste. Prescience was another power Icelandic and Norwegian mages were supposed to have.
xxxx
There it was already. The limit of what he could do for Michael. Mikkel had been hoping that the fact that he would have to hand him over to someone more competent within a few days would at least leave him with too little time to actually hit some kind of obstacle. Pity for Rash victims ranged from tolerated to appreciated, as long as it led to concluding that taking them out of their misery was the nicest thing that could be done for them. That pity resulting in someone wanting trolls to actually stay alive in their current state wouldn't stand anywhere in the Known World, despite how understandable is was coming from someone who had spent a decade with them as their only companionship. The helpful insight on the subject ended up coming form, of all people, Emil, who had decided to get a breath of fresh air right around the time Mikkel was taking a small break of his own work and casually asked what was on his mind:
-It was able to do this to me because I considered killing it was doing it a favor. Maybe it wouldn't have worked if I didn't think of it that way. And the trolls your… brother was with. I attracted the others because I thought killing the first one was a good idea. And even before that, we didn't just kill all the trolls that got into our range because we would have attracted far more than we could deal with. Is there a way that we can report the place as being very dangerous because there are too many trolls in it? Lalli said they were a type that can start roaming at dusk, which means that they probably can also resist early sunrise, so it would be an extra reason to mark the place as dangerous.
-We could do that, but it would also mark it as a priority target if those lands ever gets cleansed.
-And when would that be, exactly?
Emil apologized almost as soon as he realized what he had said, but Mikkel had never been so relieved to hear a jab about Denmark's slowness at reconquering its old mainland from a Swede. It could work as reassurance for Michael, if anything else.
Once Mikkel went back to work, Emil decided to have one last walk around the outpost platform before going back to bed. When he found himself facing the gate, he suddenly got curious and tried to see how close he could get before Reynir's spell kicked in. When he felt it happen brutally in spite of having walked as slowly as he could without actually standing still, he saw how someone who wasn't expecting it at all to could be surprised enough to go unresponsive for a few minutes. This, along with the alarm raised by Kitty, had enabled them to bring Mikkel's bother – whose name Emil still had trouble pronouncing differently from Mikkel's – back to the infirmary without getting much resistance. He'd seen Reynir scribbling runes on random scraps of paper plenty of times, but was only now starting to wrap his mind around the idea that he was a mage; getting used to the idea where Lalli was concerned had taken enough brain-space for him to not even consider asking about Reynir until he had seen his anti-troll runes painted on some of the outpost's walls.
When he went back inside the barracks, Lalli was awake, and watching Reynir playing chess alone yet again. Emil grabbed a chair and went to sit next to Lalli's bed:
-Ready to hear a story?
Lalli replied with some of his limited Swedish vocabulary.
-No.
Emil followed Lalli's gaze and saw that he was still watching Reynir.
-Is there any reason you'd rather watch him play chess alone?
-Want learn how play. Harder than I thought. Need watch a lot.
It was only then that Emil realized that while Reynir could have very well played from a seat that would have obstructed the board from Lalli's view, he was sitting on the end of the table that made his game visible to someone lying on the lower bunks. He really had no idea how Lalli managed to understand what was happening while only seeing the board sideways. Emil decided to get himself a better view and move his chair to the table's side, in a spot that put him on the other side of the board so Lalli could still see it. After a few moves, Reynir got stuck on how to move the pieces on the side closest to Emil. Emil, meanwhile, saw what move could be made. Realizing he couldn't point it out to Reynir verbally, he decided to suggest it by taking the piece, tapping the square on which he thought it should go a couple times, then putting it back where it had originally been. Reynir shrugged his shoulders and followed Emil's suggestion. He countered the move, but got stuck on his non-existent opponent's move again. Near the end of the game, they got hold of Mikkel just long enough for Reynir to tell Emil he could just go ahead and make the move he had in mind himself next time he got stuck on the opponent's move.