Eleven Years of Silence

“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” Sune said. Anna and Håkan didn’t answer. He’d said it so many times over the past week. They all had, ever since that awful morning when General Trond radioed from the rescue ship to report that they had found the members of the Silent World Expedition dead, killed by a troll swarm. At their advanced age of eleven, the boys thought they were too old to cry. Still, their eyelids were red and swollen in the mornings, and Anna had cried enough for all of them.

The triplets — Sune, Anna, and Håkan Västerström — sat shoulder to shoulder on the roof of their house, gazing out over Mora’s landscape of snowy roofs, their breath rising in puffs that blew away on the fitful breeze.

Pulling Emil’s wooden hairbrush from his pocket, Sune turned it over in his mittened hands, looking down so his hair hid his face. Their first cousin, Emil, had forgotten the brush on his last visit, and Sune had kept it hidden behind his bed. He’d used it every morning, carefully styling his shoulder-length blond hair the way Emil did. Now Anna wondered if he’d ever have the heart to use it again.

“Remember when Emil taught us to skip stones at the pond?” Håkan asked after a long silence. “And you threw yours so hard it hit that boat?”

Despite himself, Sune smiled, stuffing the hairbrush back in his pocket. “That man was so angry. Emil told him we were orphans, and he took us in out of the goodness of his heart …”

“And the man gave us all cookies!” Anna finished. “Emil always knew exactly what to say.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she looked away, blinking away tears.

At the clop-clop of a horse passing by far below, Håkan rolled a snowball down the roof to splatter far below. When no angry cries sounded, he shook his head and patted together another snowball, ready for the next passerby. Anna put an arm around Sune, and he sniffled and rubbed his nose. “It’s cold,” he muttered, and she nodded.

As they sat in silence, Anna watched a gull veer and soar across the sky above the snowy roofs and the chimneys that smoked like the volcanoes Mormor — their grandmother, Kristín Telmudóttir Nyström — had told them about. Though Mormor had never been to Iceland, she loved to tell her grandchildren the stories her own Icelandic grandmother had told her. Anna wished she could go to Iceland someday and see the volcanoes.

That morning, Anna’s parents had left for Iceland with Onni Hotakainen to pick up Emil’s ashes and those of Onni’s sister and cousin. They hadn’t taken the children, of course. They never took the children anywhere, leaving them with anyone who would watch them. For the past couple of months, that had been Onni, and he wasn’t like other grownups. Onni never screamed at them, never threw things, never stomped away to sulk, yet somehow, when he told them to do something, they did it. If he had been with them, he would have forbidden them to climb the house, and they would have obeyed.

And besides, Onni was the handsomest man Anna had ever seen. He had really nice ash-blond hair that flopped over his forehead, and she thought his eyes were blue. They were so light it was hard to tell, and it was so embarrassing when he caught her staring at his face, even though she was just trying to figure out his eye-color.

Anna pulled her collar together a little, making sure the string with its precious treasure remained hidden. The triplets never kept secrets from each other, but this was such a little secret …

A cold gust swept across them, bringing with it the sharp smell of wood smoke and a yeasty whiff of fresh bread, and blowing one of Anna’s long pigtails across her face. As she shivered, Håkan glanced over at her and scooted a little closer to block the wind. It was a small action, just a brother taking care of his sister. Brothers and sisters …

“Grownups lie,” Anna said, thinking hard. She felt the answer was just in front of her, blowing about with the snowflakes caught up in the wind.

Håkan rolled another snowball down the roof. “Yeah, so?” It was a fact of their young lives: grownups lied.

“Onni doesn’t lie.”

Her brothers nodded. She remembered Onni’s words when Sune lied to him about breaking a plate: “Reality is what it is, and lying about it can twist and distort your own relationship to it.” Although she didn’t entirely understand this, Anna thought it might explain why nothing ever seemed to work out for their father. He lied all the time, to them and to everyone else. After Onni’s words, the triplets had never lied to him again.

“Onni doesn’t lie,” she repeated, “and he never said they were dead. Never.”

Sune scooped up snow from the roof beside him and hurled it away. “He doesn’t believe it either.” He rubbed mittened hands across his face, disregarding the snow that clung and melted. “It’s so unfair!”

“He doesn’t believe it … no, he must know!” That was the answer she’d been trying to catch. “He’s a mage, and Mormor said mages don’t forget their families.” She paused, tried again as her brothers looked at her like she’d said something stupid. “Mages can feel if their kin are gone.”

Håkan shook his head and flung a snowball away as hard as he could. “Yeah, well, she said the brownies would clean your room if you left out a bowl of milk —”

“The brownies are in Iceland, so of course they couldn’t come drink the milk and clean my room. I should’ve thought of that before I put out the bowl.”

“Before Mom stepped in the bowl, you mean,” Håkan said with a grin.

Anna rolled her eyes. The brownies disaster had happened the last summer, but her brothers still brought it up. “Anyway, Onni knows if his sister’s dead. And, see, he isn’t acting right.”

Håkan snorted. “He’s a Finn. They don’t act right.” Even Sune managed a weak chuckle at that.

“Yes, but …” Anna hesitated, searching for the words to convince her brothers. “When General Trond said they were all dead, I was looking at Onni.” Her face heated a little and she tugged at her pigtails as she had to admit that she’d watched Onni while they all listened to the radio. “He was surprised.”

Sune shook his head. “We all were. So what?”

“So why was he surprised that General Trond said she was dead, if he knew? And Mom and Dad were shocked and … you know, Dad was even kind of sad. But Onni wasn’t sad. He was puzzled, even. It wasn’t like his sister died. I mean, if one of you died, the way I’d feel …”

The boys turned to look at her, and Sune nodded slowly. “That’s true …”

Håkan caught on. “He’s not sad because he knows his sister’s still alive, no matter what they say. And if she is, then Emil is too!”

As her brothers hugged her in relief, Anna looked over their shoulders at the snow-covered city. The snow was no longer cold and oppressive, but sparkling with hope.

“But then, where is Emil? And why didn’t Onni say anything?” Sune asked at last. “I’ve been thinking Emil was dead for a week, and he never said —”

“This must all be a grownup secret,” Anna said, gazing out across the city and wondering about all the secrets that grownups hid from them. “And I don’t know why.”

“No one dies from seasickness,” the healer said, though his voice was doubtful.

Onni opened his eyes long enough to look at the healer, Andri Valursson. Short for an Icelander, stocky, clean-shaven with curly dark hair and dark eyes, Andri seemed to fill the tiny cabin with his energetic presence. He stood rather than sit on the padded clothes-chest that was the only furniture besides the narrow bunk on which Onni half-lay, half-sat, leaning against the wall.

“You can die from dehydration, though,” the man went on, “so you have to keep this down.” He held out a half-full mug, shifting to keep his balance as the ship rolled hard left, then right again.

Swallowing hard several times to combat his rising nausea, Onni took the offered mug with muttered thanks, swigging it down as fast as he could so as not to taste the herbal flavors poorly masked by beef broth.

“I really think you should go up on deck. The wind in your face and the sight of the horizon will help you, and the fresh air —”

Although the thought of fresh air was appealing in the close air of the cabin, smelling of sweat and bleach and a hint of vomit, Onni shook his head, wincing as the motion made his head swim. “I can’t. I can’t go out there.”

Andri’s compassionate expression became concerned. “There, now, don’t worry about that. I’ll get a couple of sailors and a stretcher and —”

“No. No, you don’t understand.” Despite his increasing illness over the past five days and the healer’s increasing worry, Onni hadn’t wanted to explain the real problem. But if this kept up, he might die without finishing the tasks set before him. And if the healer took him up on deck while he was too weak to resist …

“I’m a mage,” Onni said, surrendering to necessity. “The sea affects me. It’s trying to … to drain the power out of me. These walls protect me. A little. But up on deck, I would have no chance.”

“We’ve had mages as passengers before, and we’ve never —”

No doubt the mages were Icelandic. “I’m different.” Though it galled him to admit personal weakness, he saw no reason to explain to this Icelander the peril Finnish mages faced at sea.

“All right. I guess mages are all different.” Biting his lip, the healer pulled open the steel door to the cabin. “I’ll see what I can do for you.”

As the door closed behind him, the ship rolled hard again.

Onni slid down the wall to lie on the hard, narrow bunk, wondering if he might die in this dark little cabin. Why had he agreed to go to on this voyage at all? The one-day voyage from Pori to Skutskär had been bad enough; how had he imagined he could survive a two-week voyage to Iceland?

But what else could he do? If Tuuri or Lalli died, Onni would feel it. He would know that something precious had passed out of the world. Yet Trond had said the whole team was dead. Was he mistaken, or was he lying? What could have happened?

So many possibilities tortured Onni, waking and sleeping. He imagined a horrifying scene: torn bodies strewn about, largely eaten and unidentifiable, and no live humans to be seen. Lalli would protect Tuuri with his life; they could have fled when their companions fell, finding somewhere to hide in the Silent World. Or perhaps all were alive, but Trond had abandoned them to their fate while he brought back the loot. Or perhaps he’d taken them prisoner for some unimaginable reason.

And then, did the other sponsors, Torbjörn and Siv Västerström and Taru Hollola, know what had happened? He didn’t think so, but didn’t dare ask in case revealing his knowledge that Tuuri and Lalli were alive would put his family or even the other sponsors at risk .

For a week after Trond’s report, Onni had sought to reach Lalli, but the dangers that always lurked in mage-space had grown more active. Each time he’d taken his luonto’s form, an eagle-owl, and flown for Lalli’s haven, a great creature of darkness and teeth had swooped on him, sending him fleeing back to his own haven. Had Reynir, the Icelandic mage, tried to reach him? Onni hoped not, or hoped the man had at least had the good sense to turn back.

On this terrible journey, Onni was too weak to reach mage-space, but even if he could, would the result be any better? No, so he had to find Trond and question him if he was ever to learn the truth. Such thoughts swirled through Onni’s mind as the endless voyage went on.

---

Onni didn’t answer the knock, but the door opened anyway. “Feeling any better, Onni?” Torbjörn Västerström boomed in Swedish-accented Icelandic. “Getting your sea-legs at last?” His tall, lanky frame seemed to crowd the cabin even more than Andri had.

Onni pushed himself to a sitting position and glared at the man as best he could with the room reeling around him. “What do you want?”

Torbjörn came in, seating himself on the padded chest without asking permission, and holding in his lap some papers and a quill pen. “Just checking how you are. Don’t want to lose another of the team, do we?” He laughed at his own quip.

“I’m alive. You can go now.”

“Ah, well, there is another matter.” The man leaned forward, flared his nostrils as if he smelled something bad, and leaned back. “Your brother and sister didn’t finish all the paperwork before they set out. You were supposed to go instead, you see, and so we had the paperwork done for you, not them.”

Onni closed his eyes in pain. He was supposed to go instead, but he couldn’t force himself to leave the safety of Keuruu, to brave the pull of the sea, to venture into the Silent World. Tuuri and Lalli had gone instead, and if he’d gone, they’d still be safe in Keuruu.

“You see the problem, right?” Torbjörn asked. “You’re their brother, their heir, so you can sign the paperwork in their stead. Work everything out legally for the Icelandic authorities. No pesky questions, right? No one wants to deal with those bureaucrats.” He took an ink bottle from his pocket, set it by his leg, and opened it to dip the pen. “You just sign right here and I’ll be out of your hair.” He held out the pen and paper.

“Go away.” Onni closed his eyes and slid a little down the wall, considering vomiting on the intruder, but realizing there was nothing in his stomach but broth. How had the man dealt with the team for months without noticing that Lalli was his cousin, not his brother?

“Ah, I know how you feel,” Torbjörn said, his voice dripping with sympathy. “I felt that way myself the first few times I sailed. You’ll get used to it, though, and then you can just stroll around the ship like it’s dry land. In the meantime, though, just help me out with this paperwork, and I’ll leave you to recover in peace.”

“Go away,” Onni repeated, eyes closed and hands fisted in misery. He slid further down the wall. If he lay down, the obnoxious Swede might get the message.

“Oh, there you are, Torbjörn,” Taru said in her Finnish-accented Icelandic. Opening his eyes a slit, Onni saw her standing just outside the door. “I’ve been looking for you. Oh, dear, Onni doesn’t look good. You shouldn’t bother him.”

“I’m not bothering him. He needs to sign this paper to straighten things out.”

“Oh, does he? What is that paper?” She bustled into the room and reached for the paper. Torbjörn drew it back, held it between himself and the wall. “What’s going on here? What’s he asking you to sign?” she asked Onni in Finnish.

“I don’t know. I can’t think.”

Taru made a sudden snatch and came away with the paper.

As Taru retreated to the corridor outside, Torbjörn leapt to his feet. “Give that back!”

“Huh, no, I don’t think so.” Taru turned her back to him and hunched her shoulders, twisting to keep the paper away from his reaching hands as she read. “Interesting paperwork. Did you explain it to him?”

“No need. You see what it means. For you, not just for me.”

Ripping the paper in halves and quarters as Torbjörn grabbed at it, Taru coldly stated, “Yes, I see what it means. Or meant. Onni would give his claim on Tuuri and Lalli’s shares to us, the sponsors. I would get a third-share. So would you. He would get nothing. Do you think I’ll let you cheat my cousin?” She flung the bits of paper to the floor. “You disgust me.”

As she strode away, Onni sat up to watch her go. She was his cousin, yes, but a distant cousin, and he hadn’t known that meant anything to her. But then, they were Finns; they would stand together against a dishonest Swede, regardless of family relations. He lay back down.

Torbjörn stood in the doorway for a moment, his back to Onni, before turning to him. “She misunderstood,” he said with a false smile. “She skimmed it, and her Icelandic isn’t very good. Obviously I had no intention of cheating you. We’d always intended that, if any of the expedition were to … fall, their share would go to the sponsors. Not to keep, not for our personal benefit as she thought; of course not. But to pay for another expedition, so their sacrifice would not be in vain.”

“Go away,” Onni said for the third time, and this time, Torbjörn went.

---

Much later, Onni opened his eyes a slit as the door opened again. This time, it was Andri with a couple of sailors and a stretcher, as he’d promised. Or threatened.

“No, no …” Onni pushed himself up, meaning to fight them though he felt weak as a kitten.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Andri said with a smile. “These gentlemen are giving up their cabin to you. It’s deep in the ship, near some smelly cargo, and they’re happy to trade it for yours. It has no portholes and many walls between you and the sea. That should help you, shouldn’t it?”

Onni stared at the three crowded into his cabin in confusion. “Many walls?” That sounded … promising. He hadn’t thought of changing cabins to somewhere deeper in the ship; in retrospect, that was an obvious solution. In his defense, he thought, he’d been sick almost since he set foot on the ship five days before.

“You’ll willing to move?”

At Onni’s tired nod, the sailors quickly but gently moved him onto the stretcher and carried him away. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see pity or contempt or disgust in those they passed, and he was almost asleep when Andri said, “Here we are.”

The cabin was larger than his former cabin, with two bunks and two trunks, but no other furnishings. A single small bulb provided the only illumination. Once Onni stretched out on a bunk, the sailors went their way, leaving Andri.

“This is another remedy I think might help,” Andri said. “It’s really to strengthen the wounded after blood loss, but it seems you’re suffering something similar. Drink it down, and let’s see if you’re better tomorrow.”

Dubious but willing to try anything, Onni swigged down the herbal mixture after only a brief hesitation. As the healer left, Onni locked the door behind him.

Later, Torbjörn, Siv, and Taru each in turn knocked at the door and called to him, but Onni didn’t answer as he revelled in the first good sleep he’d had since the ship set sail.

“I’ll never go back there! Never, ever!” Anna cradled her right hand against her chest as she held back sobs. The painkiller she’d been given at the clinic had hardly made a dent in the pain. She blinked away tears; she needed to see clearly as they walked home. Just thinking of tripping and falling on her injured hand made her feel sick.

Slipping a comforting arm around her bowed shoulders, Håkan said through gritted teeth, “We won’t either.” Though he’d cleaned the blood from a nosebleed off his face, bruises were already forming on his chin and right cheek.

“Yeah!” Sune, on Anna’s other side, sported a black eye and split lip. Though the boys had been sent to detention after the fight, they’d ditched it to find her and take her home.

Anna knew her own face was unmarked, but didn’t dare look down at the black and blue bundle of pain that was her splinted little finger. “What are we going to do about Ingrid, though?”

As their parents, General Trond, Onni, and Taru were packing for the long voyage to Iceland, the new babysitter, Ingrid, had knocked at the door. Ingrid was eighteen and a student herself, as she had informed the triplets. A new babysitter meant a new way of life. Since Onni and Taru hadn’t known they were supposed to be in school, they had tutored the children in the Finnish language, history, and culture while the other grownups were away, but Ingrid would have none of that.

“I’m a student too,” she’d told them, “so I have to go to school, and that means you have to go to school.” Though they had argued, whined, and begged, in the end, they’d obeyed. After all, the last thing Onni had told them before saying goodbye was, “Behave.”

Sune shrugged. “Just tell her we’re still going.”

Anna hugged her wounded hand a little closer as it throbbed after an incautious step on the cracked pavement. “Onni wouldn’t want us to lie —”

“Then don’t say anything,” he said with another shrug. “We’ll just go out like we’re going to school. She doesn’t care what happens at school, and she’ll never know the difference.”

Anna glanced up at Håkan, who nodded. Onni had wanted them to behave, but he hadn’t known about the bullies who’d mocked them every schoolday of past two weeks, hurling cruel insults about the fate of their “famous cousin Emil”, using the crudest language they could think of. And Onni hadn’t known that Marc, the biggest of the bullies, would shove Anna so hard he knocked her off her feet and into a desk. When she grabbed the edge of the desk, trying to catch herself, the desk went over too, crashing to the ground with her on top of it … and her little finger underneath the edge.

As she pushed away the desk and scrambled to her feet, furious, Anna hadn’t even felt the pain of her crushed little finger. At first. Then the wave of pain had swept over her, and she’d screamed. Håkan and Sune had charged Marc, and Denys had charged them, and the brawl had begun as she retreated, sobbing, out of the way. Frida Forsberg, who wasn’t a bad person despite being a teacher, had taken Anna to the clinic, while all the boys were sent to detention.

Anna shivered at the memory of her finger turning blue as Frida led her away, the boys shouting behind her. “If we don’t go to school, where do we go?”

“We’ll sneak home,” Håkan said.

“We can’t.” Sune shook his head. “Don’t know when Ingrid gets back. She doesn’t have class all day like we do — did. No,” he said with sudden decision, “we’ll have to work.”

“Work?” Anna and Håkan echoed together. Much as their parents, especially their father, whined about their poverty, they would never allow the triplets to work. “A Västerström doesn’t do menial labor”, their father would say. And, of course, the children could do nothing more advanced than menial labor, like running errands or stocking shelves.

“Yeah. How else are we going to eat if we don’t go to school?”

The mere mention of eating made Anna’s stomach growl; they’d been on their way to lunch when the fight broke out. “We don’t have any money to waste,” she admitted.

“He’s right,” Håkan said. “Poor kids work all the time; so can we. We can run errands or something. We already know our way around the city.” Before Onni took over watching them every day, their mother had kicked them out of the house all day on weekends, come rain, snow, or sunshine, and they’d thoroughly explored the city of Mora, even venturing out as far as the Third Wall.

Like all communities in the age of the Rash, Mora hid behind its walls. They lived within the original City Wall. As the city grew, the First Wall had been built outside the City Wall to enclose more land, which was cleared and reclaimed; then the Second Wall, and the Third. The Fourth Wall was under construction, but they could only see it from atop the Third Wall.

“We’ll go out to the First Ring,” Sune said, eyes intent as if seeing the plan laid out before him. “They don’t know us there. And we’ll split up to work.” Anna and Håkan nodded at that. As the only triplets in Mora, and possibly the only triplets in Sweden, if they stayed together, they might be recognized even in the First Ring, between the City Wall and the First Wall.

Anna bit her lip, seeing the problem they were overlooking. “Mom and Dad will be really mad when they find out we ditched school.”

Håkan squeezed her shoulder. “When they get back, we’ll be rich. Then we’ll have tutors instead of that horrible place. Dad promised.”

Their dad hadn’t actually promised. Rather, he thought Västerströms shouldn’t have to associate with the riff-raff at the city school. After the fight, Anna had to agree, although she thought no one should have to associate with them. But if the children didn’t work, and there was no money for a full-time babysitter, and the grownups didn’t trust them at home alone (for good reason), then there was nothing else to do with them but send them to school. And so off to school they’d gone.

“We’ll be rich,” Anna agreed, but her thoughts ran on beyond her words. We’ll be rich because Dad got Emil to go to the Silent World. And now Emil’s missing, and that’s a big secret, and it’s all Dad’s fault. She bit her lip, thinking about Emil and her dad’s lies.

Not for the first time, Anna thought about running away from home.

---

Ingrid was there when they got home, prompting Sune to give Anna a wink and smirk that said, “I told you so.” After one look at their bruises and Anna’s finger, the babysitter searched the medicine cabinet for willow bark, fixing tea for all of them. Anna’s explanation that bullies had broken her finger and beaten up her brothers, and that they’d all come straight home from the clinic, satisfied her as to why they were out of school in the middle of the day.

“What’s the school going to do about these bullies?” Ingrid asked with some heat. “Bruises and a black eye, yes, I know about boys and their fights, but a broken finger is something else!”

“The bullies have detention,” Sune said, not mentioning that so did they. “Marc claimed it was an accident that Anna’s finger got smashed.” The triplets rolled their eyes at that. “It wasn’t, but how do you prove it?” He shrugged at the unfairness of the world. “Anyway, we’ll keep away from them.” Which was, Anna thought with a hidden smile, the exact truth. Onni would be proud of their honesty.

Accepting the answer, Ingrid fixed lunch for them, asking only that they be quiet and allow her to study afterward. To avoid any further awkward questions, the triplets spent the afternoon huddled in Anna’s room, planning their next moves in whispers.

Since the fight had taken place on Friday, they were free of school without pretense the next day. Thus, on Saturday morning, Håkan suggested going to see Mormor, since she was half-Icelandic and might know some magic to help fix Anna’s finger. Though Ingrid rolled her eyes at the thought of magic, she let them go, thanking them for letting her study and promising to fix lunch for them when they got back.

As they trotted away, it occurred to Anna that there was something to be said for being kind to their babysitters. Ingrid didn’t want to babysit them any more than they wanted to be babysat; she was only doing it for the money. Much as their father complained about their poverty, there were much poorer people in Mora. Ingrid, for instance.

Mormor, their grandmother Kristín, lived near the center of Mora, just five minutes’ walk from their house, in the house where she’d been born and her daughters, including the triplets’ mother, Siv, had been born. This house, like their home, was a compact two-story rectangular structure, its walls paneled in whitewashed wood and its steeply pitched roof having wooden shingles. The frames of its pre-Rash, triple-glazed windows were painted black, and its door differed from that of every house they’d ever seen.

Kristín’s front door was heavy oak, like their own, but instead of a simple Dala horse carving, it bore six elaborately patterned tiles in three rows of two. As always, Anna stopped to admire the white, black, and red patterns on the blue tiles. It seemed as if they should mean something, as if they were galdrastafur such as Kristín described to the children. As always, the patterns seemed to change when she looked away, though she couldn’t put her finger on what was different.

Kristín opened the door almost as soon as Anna knocked, and Anna took a deep breath, savoring the smell of fresh bread and herbs that drifted out. Kristín was in her early sixties, still tall and straight-backed. Her shoulder-length hair was silver threaded with red, her eyes a faded green, and her lined face pale and sprinkled with freckles. On this day, over her gray sweater, she wore a square knitted shawl in a black-and-white geometric pattern. Looking them over as they shed their coats and boots, she shook her head in mock dismay. “Dear me, what have you been up to? Not fighting each other, I hope.”

As all three described their parts of the fight at once, it took several minutes for her to get the story straight. “Disgraceful,” she said at last. “Just disgraceful. Well, when your parents get back, you won’t ever have to go to that wretched school again.” Waving them to the couch in her small, sunlit living room, she bustled off to fetch bread and tea for them. Anna bit her lip, reminding herself that Mormor didn’t know Emil and wasn’t related to him. Of course she didn’t really care what had happened to him. No one seemed to care about Emil except Anna and her brothers.

“Can you do anything about Anna’s finger?” Håkan asked with his mouth full of bread. “With magic, I mean.”

Kristín shook her head, sharing a glance with Anna that expressed wordless dismay about boys’ table manners. “I’m no mage, I’m afraid.” After a moment, she snapped her fingers and jumped to her feet. “Just a moment.”

The children watched her go before shrugging and returning to their bread and honey, a treat they seldom enjoyed at home. Anna finished her mug of willow-bark tea and poured more from the heavy stoneware pitcher.

Their grandmother returned with a wooden box perhaps thirty centimeters square and half that high, which she set on her lap as she seated herself. “Here we go.” Slipping open the simple latch, she lifted the lid and pulled out a knitted scarf, gray with an intricate repeating circular pattern in black and white and dashes of red. Standing, she draped it over her arm. It covered her forearm, both ends pooling on the floor by her feet.

“My mother made this.” She traced the edge of the pattern with a finger. “My brother was like you boys, always falling off things or getting into scrapes. This pattern is a galdrastafur; it’s supposed to promote healing when you wear the scarf. My father didn’t believe it was magic, and after a while, neither did my brother. They said bruises and scrapes and broken bones heal by themselves; a magic scarf doesn’t make any difference. Sometimes I think they might be right. Anyway, Jan left the scarf behind when he set sail.”

Kristín sighed, and Anna knew she was remembering her brother, whose ship had been lost in a storm years before the triplets’ mother was born. “So, here it is. It’s the only thing I have that might be magic.” She wound it around Anna’s neck with the ends hanging down her front. “Your finger will heal with or without it, and at least it’ll keep you warm.”

Anna lifted one end to admire the pattern, pushing away Håkan’s sticky hand. “You can look at it after you wash your hands!”

Kristín laughed, shaking off her momentary sorrow. “Finish your treat and wash your hands. Let’s take a walk while this fine weather holds; it’ll snow after lunch.”

They did as instructed, enjoying a walk with their grandmother before returning to lunch with Ingrid. She needed to study for an exam, and without even discussing it, they left her in peace, going out to the nearby park to throw snowballs as fresh snow fell. It didn’t occur to them to wonder how their grandmother had known when it would snow.

"Questions raised before the Nordic Council!"

The news-crier’s voice rose over the clop-clop of horses’ hooves and the muted rattle of cartwheels in slush, drawing a half-dozen passersby to him. When the three young women strolling along the sidewalk before Onni hurried to join the crowd, he sped up too, intending to slip past them and make his way to the park visible just ahead. The peaceful silence among the snow-covered trees seemed to call to him.

After two nightmarish weeks on the ship — the last three days anchored in Reykjavík’s harbor — Onni had staggered down the gangplank, mustering the strength to stumble to the nearest inn, get a room, and collapse on the bed. When, after several days, he’d ventured out into the city, he’d found the grove of pine trees in the park, and had sought comfort there these long days as he awaited the release of Trond and his crew from their ship.

"The family of Reynir Árnason asks why the crew of the first Silent World expedition was so unqualified, contending that he would not have perished with a proper crew."

Onni’s breath caught — the crew was unqualified? He stopped at the edge of the crowd and turned to listen.

The news-crier lowered the newspaper he held and winked at the young woman to Onni’s left. "Of course," the man said in a confidential tone, "Reynir Árnason wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place." With a swift glance that took in the entire crowd, he continued, "Bæjarblaðið newspaper has investigated the claim that the crew was unqualified, and regrets to report that the situation was far worse than supposed." His voice took on tones of dismay with the last four words. As he paused expectantly, the assembled crowd hastened to toss coins into the pot at his feet. Even Onni fumbled out a small coin to add.

Holding up the newspaper, the news-crier read, “The captain of the expedition, Sigrun Eide, is a troll-hunter of the Norwegian Eide clan. She was described by a customer of the clan as undisciplined and disorganized, though somehow successful in his case. Our — that is, the newspaper’s — reporter contacted the Danish Madsen clan, to which the expedition’s medic, Mikkel Madsen, belonged. The clan had no comment other than to say the man was dangerous and they are well rid of him.”

Onni’s fist clenched. Did Taru know this? Did she hire my family to travel with this person, knowing what he was? No, I can’t think about that. I must learn where they are now, and she won’t know that.

The news-crier added, “I’ve heard the Danish ambassador will receive the man’s ashes since the clan doesn’t want them.” A whisper of shock ran through the crowd before the news-crier read more. “The Swedish team member, Emil Västerström, had no discernible role. He had been a Cleanser, burning out grossling nests, but was rumored to have stolen supplies to make his work look better. The reporter was unable to confirm or deny these rumors.”

 

Tuuri and Lalli are next. Whom did the reporters question? Taru? Did she dare criticize my sister, after luring her into this expedition?

 

“As for the final two members, the Finns —” He hesitated, his gaze falling on Onni, who glared back, narrow-eyed, daring the man to slander them. As there were few Finns in Iceland, and Onni’s arrival to receive his family’s ashes had been widely reported, the news-crier seemed to recognize who stood before him. Licking his lips, the man continued rapidly, “Lalli Hotakainen was reported to be an experienced and successful scout, though he spoke only Finnish. The non-immune, Tuuri Hotakainen, was sent as his translator and the mission’s driver. So much for the team. Now, as to the planning, Reynir’s family complains that the expedition was poorly equipped, and no provision was made for rescue in the event of unforeseen disasters.”

As the news-crier described the complaints, Onni stalked away, all hope of peace gone. Is this why Trond is lying? Is he concealing some disaster caused by poor planning and an unfit crew? But if he is, where are Tuuri and Lalli? What does he plan to do with them? He can’t hold them forever. I must find out!

Onni’s every effort to reach Lalli through mage-space since arriving in Iceland had failed. The flying horrors that always lurked above the sea that goes on forever were more numerous and vicious than ever before, driving him back every time. With no way to learn the truth, horrifying images of what Trond might plan played through his mind as he sat on an icy bench among the pines, head in hands, waiting for the ceremony of handing over the ashes.

 

I should have gone instead. I should have gone and left Tuuri in safety. Or at least I should have held her back. Just a few seconds, and the ferry would have been gone.

 

The scene replayed in his mind as it had so many times before. The captain shouted that the ferry was leaving. Onni hugged Tuuri and Lalli to him, telling Taru they weren’t mature enough for such a mission. As Taru ran for the gangplank, Tuuri broke away from him and sprinted after her. When Lalli raced after Tuuri, Onni believed — but had he really believed, or only hoped? — that Lalli would stop her. Onni had hesitated, and then it was too late: Tuuri and Lalli were on the ferry as it pulled away.

I could have run after them. I could have stopped them. But I didn’t, because I’m a coward. And I knew — I knew the danger to her.

His thoughts went back to the scene when he was a child, his grandmother Ensi’s apprentice, and she came to test little Tuuri for magic talent. Ensi had had a “seeking stone”, one of those rare pebbles sometimes found in streams. They looked like normal pebbles, except to mages. To mages, a seeking stone glowed like fire. Even an infant with magic talent would react to it. Onni had reacted; Tuuri hadn’t.

Then, as Ensi turned away, Onni had frozen in horror, seeing the tendrils of the Rash twining their way up his baby sister’s innocent cheek. Ensi had turned back at Onni’s gasp, her eyes widening for a moment before she dismissed his alarm, assuring his parents it was nothing important. Once they were outside the house, she’d told him the omen was meant for him. It was and always would be his duty to protect his sister from the Rash that waited for her. Though the omen had never appeared again, he’d always sought to protect her from the fate it prophesied.

And he had let her go into the Silent World without him.

 

I did save her in the end. I fought the Rash spirits and led her spirit back to her body. She is alive and free of the Rash. But now … where is my sister now?

 

He fought back the tears that came so easily to his eyes, not wanting to weep before the few Icelandic passersby. Coward though he was, he would not humiliate himself that way.

---

When Onni entered the former church, he moved through a bubble of hushed voices and shuffling feet, as the assembled witnesses recognized him and stepped aside. He had eyes only for the black-draped table at the front and the six blue urns lined up on the black cloth. When Taru whispered his name, he didn’t turn, knowing that if he spoke, he would shout accusations. And then he would be thrown out, and lose all the knowledge he might gain from this ceremony.

Ignoring the usher who hurried to his side to guide him to his seat, Onni mounted the steps and stood before the urns. Silence fell behind him as he stepped along the table.

The rescuers had brought back the ashes in whatever containers they had — pots and pans, so rumor held. During the long four weeks of their voyage and quarantine, Icelandic artisans had made these urns, blue-glazed ceramic urns with silver inlay of each person’s name and a pattern depicting their home.

Sigrun Eide. With one finger, Onni touched the urn with its pattern of stylized ships. Emil Västerström. An intricate Dala horse motif. Tuuri Hotakainen. Onni took a deep breath and stroked the urn with its traditional Finnish geometric patterns. Lalli Hotakainen. Another stroke. Mikkel Madsen. A pattern of stylized lions. Reynir Árnason. Finally, he touched the urn with its depiction of traditional knotwork.

Though the deaths would have occurred a month ago, though the bodies would have been burned, and though the ashes lay within ceramic urns, human remains would still have held a trace of the human spirit. As Onni felt for those human spirits, prickly warmth against his psychopomp’s senses, he felt … nothing. Whatever lay within those urns had never been human. He stood for a long moment, studying the urns, created with such care and artistry, and used for such an unworthy purpose.

At last, Onni turned away and made his way to the usher, who waved him to his seat between an older Icelandic couple and the Västerströms. Taking his seat, he stared straight ahead, waiting for the charade to begin and doing his best to disregard the muted sobs of the Icelandic woman to his left and the excited whispers of the Västerströms to his right. Farther down the pew to his left, an older Norwegian couple sat grimly upright, and beyond them was a woman in the uniform of a Danish official: black trousers and jacket, white shirt, and gray vest adorned with gold lions.

Since Trond himself did not appear, Onni tuned out the Icelandic official who stood behind the table to tell the story he’d already heard. The tank had broken down somewhere, the team had brought the precious books to the outpost on wheelbarrows, and the very night before the rescuers arrived, a troll swarm attacked, slaying the entire party. The official effusively praised every member of the team, even Reynir, before inviting the family members up to take the ashes.

First were the Eide Generals, heads of the Norwegian Eide clan and parents of Sigrun Eide. Striding to the table together, they gave the Icelander a grave bow before the woman took the urn in her arms, and the two returned to their seats, backs straight and faces stern and proud. Next was the Danish ambassador, who claimed Mikkel Madsen’s urn and returned to her seat with the solemn but slightly bored expression of a diplomat doing her duty. The Västerströms were next, hurrying to take the urn without ceremony. Still, Onni thought he saw a trace of sorrow in Torbjörn’s face.

And then it was Onni’s turn. Playing his part, he stepped up, nodded to the official, wrapped an arm around each urn, and returned, eyes downcast so he didn’t see Taru in the pew behind his own. As he seated himself and settled the urns in his lap, he found himself strangely moved by them. Though the urns had no true connection to Tuuri and Lalli, some artisans had worked with hands and mind to honor his sister and cousin. He would treasure the urns because of those artisans’ efforts.

The last was the worst. Reynir’s parents were red-eyed, their faces lined with grief. Thanks to nosy news-criers, Onni knew their story. Shepherds from a village a few kilometers from the sea, they’d found themselves unable to conceive. By dint of making the necessary donations, jumping through the hoops, and pointing out the need of their village for immune young people to defend against dangers from the sea, they’d succeeded in adopting four immune children through the Dagrenning Project. And then, to everyone’s surprise, they’d conceived one last child when they’d thought themselves beyond childbearing. And now, that one child, so joyously received, had perished far away.

Reynir’s father carried the urn as his mother dabbed at her eyes with a cloth, and once they were seated, they cradled the urn between them, heads down and disregarding the crowd and the official, who cleared his throat and made a few closing remarks. Onni rubbed his forehead, wishing he could comfort the couple beside him.

And yet, what could he say? Their son’s ashes were not in that urn, but was he alive? Only Trond had the answers that Onni needed.

---

Snow was falling by the time Onni learned General Trond’s location. Leaving the precious urns in his room at the inn, he strode out to confront the man. Minutes later, he stalked into a meeting room to find Trond standing by the window, watching the snowfall.

“Why are you lying about the expedition?” Onni demanded without preamble.

Trond turned slowly, his face half-shadowed. “Close the door behind you.” When Onni didn’t move, Trond’s voice hardened. “Now.”

The click of the latch echoed in the silence, and Trond looked Onni up and down. “What makes you suppose I’m lying?”

“I’m a mage. I know my kin are alive and I know there are no human remains in those urns. Now I want to know why you lied.”

“Whom have you told?” Trond’s voice was dangerously quiet.

“No one. Yet. I’m giving you a chance to explain. Why shouldn’t I tell the Icelander’s parents that his urn is filled with wood ash?”

“Those people are not coming back, because of Tuuri’s … situation. She left a note explaining that. And I know you know what happened to her.”

As Onni held out a hand in wordless demand, the General pulled a folded paper from his breast pocket and held it out. Unfolding it, Onni recognized his sister’s handwriting. Ignored by the other man, who had turned back to the window, he read her account of the events, blinking away his tears.

To General Trond,

We’re not here. Don’t bother to look for us. Here’s what happened to us.

You know how things went until we reported about the cure. That night, we got swarmed and I had to help fight. I got scratched, but it was really a light scratch and we hoped I’d be okay.

Then there was that last radio contact. You upset Mikkel a lot. He said something about “unfinished business in Kastrup” and walked away into the night. Sigrun tried to stop him, but couldn’t. We think he’s dead.

A couple of days later, Emil went to gather firewood while Sigrun hunted. When he didn’t come back, Sigrun tracked him and found only scraps of his clothing and signs of a rat-beast attack. There wasn’t enough left to burn.

The rest of us went on to the outpost, but then I found out for sure I had the Rash. We had found crystallized samples of that experimental cure in Odense, so I took it, even though we all knew it would likely kill me.

My brother, Onni, is a psychopomp, and he somehow reached me through mage-space. I don’t fully understand what happened, but I know he fought for me, guiding my spirit back when it might have been lost. When I woke, the Rash was gone. It’s been days, and I seem to be cured.

If I return to the Known World, I’ll spend the rest of my life as a research subject. I would be examined, tested, and studied until death. I will not live as a specimen like that. All I ever wanted was to get out where there were no walls.

Sigrun, Lalli, and Reynir have chosen to remain with me. We have the tank, weapons, and skills to survive here.

We’re leaving the books we collected and all the research we found. Pay our families like you agreed! We’re leaving, though. Don’t follow us. Don’t look for us. We don’t want to be found.

Tuuri Hotakainen

Onni lowered the paper, forced his voice to remain steady. “But then why lie? Why not just say what happened?”

Trond’s cold, reptilian stare might intimidate others, but not Onni. He stared back until Trond folded his arms and said, “All right. Imagine what happens if I tell the Known World that there’s a cure in Silent Denmark, but what’s already there is all there is, because we can’t duplicate it. Imagine the rush of people — adventurers, smugglers, criminals — going to Denmark to grab whatever crystals they can find. How many people die in that effort? And then, once they’ve got the crystals, what do they do with them? Sell them to the highest bidder? Hold them until desperate infected people meet their price? Do we fight over them?”

Onni hadn’t thought of that. When he stayed silent, the General went on, “And then, suppose some infected person gets hold of the cure. It doesn’t work without a psychopomp. It doesn’t work without someone like you.” He jabbed a finger toward Onni’s chest. “How many more psychopomps are there? Do you know any?” After a moment of silence, he gave a thin smile. “So I thought. Now, you fought in this ’mage-space’ for your sister. Are you willing to fight for strangers? What happens if someone asks, and you refuse?”

Trond took the paper from Onni’s unresisting hand. “You see the problem.” Laying the paper down, he leaned forward, hands on the table. “And now, ask yourself this. Is your sister now immune? Has she — and you — accidentally found what we’ve all sought for so long: a way to create immunity? What is that worth? People will kill for that. You know that.”

He scooped up and refolded the paper, tucking it into his pocket. “The survivors of the expedition have gone off into the Silent World and they will die there. We can’t help them, and letting the news of their discovery slip out will damage — perhaps destroy — our civilization. It’s far more delicate than you know, Onni Hotakainen. We must lie.”

Trond’s gaze locked with Onni’s, his eyes cold and reptilian. The older man didn’t raise his voice or make a single threatening gesture, yet something in his stillness made the room feel suddenly airless. Onni’s heartbeat seemed loud in the deep silence.

Finally, the General said, “And so you must lie. Do you understand me?”

Onni took a step back. Despite being one of the most powerful mages in Finland, he felt himself intimidated by the sheer force of Trond’s will. Yet the man hadn’t threatened him. And his argument made sense …

After a long moment, Onni nodded. He turned and left in silence. The door clicked shut behind him.

Running footsteps in half-melted snow. Sune glanced over his shoulder at the sound. The bullies! He ran for his life.

There was no time to wonder what the bullies were doing in the First Ring, or how they’d spotted him. In the two weeks of peace and safety since the triplets had stopped attending school, he’d grown careless in his routine, falling into a predictable pattern. He’d taken to trotting along this quiet connecting alley every afternoon — a shortcut from the bustling main street through a small park to the busy marketplace where his favorite food vendor set up shop. The route saved time and saw little traffic.

But now five bullies were chasing him and there was no one else in sight.

They were a year older, taller, and faster. In a footrace, they would catch him. He needed a plan … and he had one. If he could just make it to the park.

On this blustery Friday afternoon in mid-March, there would be no visitors in the park, no grownups to offer Sune protection. But there were oak trees. The oak trees had stood strong in this place as the city died around them; now they stood tall and sturdy in a small park surrounded by two- and three-story buildings.

As he sprinted into the park, pounding footsteps growing ever closer behind him, Sune leapt for a low branch. Swinging himself up onto the branch, he scurried to the trunk and scrambled higher. Lighter and more skillful than the older boys, he could get up too high for them and remain there, stamping on any reaching fingers, until the bullies got bored or some grownup came along to shoo them away. He’d done that before at the school.

But he was not at the school. In this unvisited park, they could do as they pleased. And it pleased them to throw rocks.

The first rock hit him between the shoulder-blades, and though his heavy jacket took the worst of the blow, it sent pain shooting through him. And more than pain, shock. Marc and his gang liked to scare the younger children, even knock them down, but this was a frightening escalation. First, they’d broken Anna’s finger, and now, they were stoning him. Treed like this, he had little defense but to hunch his shoulders and pull up his hood as slight protection for his skull.

Another rock hit his shoulder as Sune studied the problem. He had to escape somehow. There, he thought, tracing a route with his eyes. Clinging to the trunk with one hand, then the other, Sune yanked off his mittens with his teeth, shoving them into his pocket. The rough, icy bark bit into his fingers, but he needed the better grip that bare hands provided. The pain of the cold was better than risking a fall.

As he climbed to a higher branch, a rock hit the trunk beside his hand, bits of bark falling past him. Shivering, thinking of rocks hitting his fingers, he climbed faster to a broad branch reaching to the south. Even as the branch creaked faintly under his weight and his left foot slipped for a terrifying instant, he kept moving, picking his way across the branch. Scrabbling noises told him one of the bullies — probably Denys, as he was the lightest — was climbing up after him, but he couldn’t afford to look back.

This is it. Sune had superb balance and no fear of heights, but the prospect daunted even him. Still, another rock striking his leg simplified the problem. I’ve got to do or die.

Sune took a deep breath and leapt across the gulf to the extended branch of another oak tree. His chest struck; he slid; his fingers clawed and clutched at the rough bark; his feet kicked as if they could find purchase in the air …

And he held tight, swinging himself onto the branch with a gasp. Below, Marc bellowed at Denys to get down and climb the other tree. Another rock cracked against the branch as he crawled along it to the trunk. A quick clamber to the next branch, a scramble to the end, and another jump, this to the roof below and a meter from the end of the branch.

Though Sune landed on his feet, he slipped and fell flat on the icy shingles, the impact knocking the breath out of him. Sliding, grabbing for handholds with numb fingers, shaking with fear, he caught himself with one foot in the gutter and the other off the roof entirely. The shouting continued behind him as Marc demanded that Denys make the same leap. Ignoring the commotion, Sune crept up to the roof-crest.

A gutter ran along the edge of the roof; a hole off to his left meant a downspout. Sune crawled and slid to the downspout. He had experience with downspouts, much as his parents and even his siblings had tried to convince him climbing them was dangerous. After tucking his freezing hands into his armpits for a moment, he rolled on his belly and slid down. A fearful instant as his body went over the edge … and his hands caught the gutter while his feet felt for the downspout.

Bolts squealed, dragged out by his weight, as Sune half-climbed, half-fell down the sturdy downspout. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he tucked his hands into his armpits again and looked up and down the street. A dozen grownups, mostly women, had observed his descent, but they didn’t interfere, simply shaking their heads and moving on.

There were crossroads, both north and south. He could flee either way, but which way would the bullies come around the block of buildings? They could even split up and take both streets. Trapped, Sune dithered for several seconds before his gaze fell on a small shop where golden light shone behind a diamond-paned window. He saw no one going in and out; perhaps this would be a safe place to hide.

Sune ran across the street, pushed through the door as a bell tinkled above him. He stopped, staring.

His first horrified impulse was to turn and flee, but the bullies would still be out there. In that moment of hesitation, his mind caught up with his body, realizing that what he’d taken for the headless, dismembered torsos of women were just models. And their purpose was apparent; they displayed ladies’ undergarments.

This shop was nothing like the utilitarian shops that sold practical clothing, the sort of shops he’d run errands for. Such shops offered rough linen and wool garments hung on simple pegs. Here, the model torsos wore delicate camisoles, sleek drawers, and brassieres that seemed impossibly intact, without a single patch or mend, dyed in pastel colors or trimmed with fine lace.

“May I help you, young man?”

He jumped, startled by the voice. The speaker was an elderly woman, tall and slender, her white hair in a neat bun. She wore a simple black dress at odds with the glories around her.

“I–I–I’m hiding from bullies,” Sune said, deciding to tell the truth as Onni had counseled. He pulled his hands from inside his wet, stained jacket and showed them to her: red with cold, scraped and dirty. “I had to climb to get away. They’ll be looking for me in the street outside.”

The woman stepped to the single window and peeked out. “Hmm, yes, I believe they are. Looking into the shops, too.”

Sune licked his lips, studying the tiny shop. Maybe I could lie down under the window? Will she let me?

“Oh, dear. Someone’s pointed this way.” She looked down at him. “Well, we can’t have that. Come here.” Leading him behind the short wooden counter at the back, she ordered him to stay quiet and out of sight. Moments later, the bell jangled as someone shoved open the door.

“May I help you, young men?” the woman asked as politely as she had asked Sune.

“We’re looking for a boy,” Marc said in his rough voice.

“Oh, dear me, no. For that sort of merchandise, you’ll need to go elsewhere. Finland, perhaps. No, don’t touch that, young man. All these garments are bespoke. However, if you’ll just stand still, I’ll fetch my tape measure, and we can discuss the lingerie you all prefer. Pink lace, perhaps?”

Several gasps of horror preceded the renewed jangle of the bell and the receding clatter of feet. Silence fell. After several seconds, the woman giggled. Sune listened in astonishment. He had never heard an old lady giggle before. He had never realized old ladies could giggle at a successful prank.

“Well, now,” the woman said, grinning as she came around the counter. “They ran down the street to the south, and it may be a while before they stop running.”

Waving away his stumbling thanks, she sent him on his way. He sprinted to the north, already planning a safe — that is, crowded — route to where he might find Anna and Håkan.

Once he reached a busy street, Sune slowed to a brisk walk. A boy running through the crowd would attract attention, a wave of heads turning towards him as he passed. At a brisk walk, avoiding jostling any elbows, he passed without notice. As he walked, scanning ahead and behind for the bullies, he considered which sibling to find first.

Anna was more vulnerable, less able to fight even without her finger being broken, but she was working in a greenhouse. She ought to be safe there, with grownups around her, even if the bullies spotted her. Håkan, though, would be out running errands just as Sune had been that morning, and as he had planned to be that afternoon. Best to find Håkan first, then. Sune’s stomach grumbled, and he gave a single wistful thought to the street vendor. Lunch would have to wait; his siblings came first.

Since they’d wanted to avoid being identified as the only triplets in Mora, Sune had stayed in the northeast of the First Ring while Håkan had taken the center area and Anna the south. Thus, Sune had to work his way southwards, staying close to crowds and keeping a watchful eye out for threats.

A few minutes later, Sune’s breath caught. Marc and his gang were ahead of him, moving his way, though they didn’t seem to have seen him. Yet. He slipped behind a window-shopping couple, followed them for a few steps, then ducked into a shop.

This was the sort of shop he was used to: a woolens shop with jackets, gloves, socks, and scarves hung on pegs or laid out on the counter. Hands in pockets so as not to appear to be a thief, Sune drifted from display to display. He stopped at the scarves, studying a gray scarf with an intricate pattern in black.

“Find something that interests you?” The shopkeeper’s voice made him jump.

“This scarf. My sister has one like it.” Sune looked at it again. “But hers has some red.”

“Ah, that’s an Icelandic pattern. Quite pretty.” The man lifted the end to display the short tassels. “Knitted here, of course. This is warm, sturdy — perhaps you have another sister? Or you’d like it for yourself?”

Sune hesitated. Could this scarf be magical? He wouldn’t mind having a healing scarf of his own. But if it were magical, wouldn’t the shopkeeper know? And it was the wrong color, anyway. “No, I guess not.”

The shopkeeper looked him over, and Sune knew he wondered why this boy was in his shop. The bullies should have moved on by now, so he nodded to the man and made his way to the door, stopping to check for lurking enemies before stepping out. Time pressed on him; he had to find and warn his siblings.

“Sune!”

Sune spun around at Håkan’s call in the market square some streets away from the woolens shop. Waving his brother to silence, he scanned the street for any threats before jogging to meet him. As they met, he gave a rapid explanation of the problem.

Håkan shook his head. “We can’t go to Anna right now. I just made a delivery so I’ve got to take the payment back to the butcher.”

Much as he wanted to run at once, Sune agreed. Though education was required by law for children up to age twelve, the City Guard looked the other way when children worked instead. They knew about poverty. But they didn’t look the other way about theft, even theft by children.

A few minutes later, while Sune fairly danced with impatience, the butcher counted the coins Håkan had brought, handed him his pay, and assured him that there would be more work if he needed it. Håkan thanked him politely — they might work another day despite the bullies — and they set out at last for Anna at the greenhouse.

“There they are,” Håkan murmured. The brothers walked with their heads down and their hoods up, staying with a group of shoppers as they moved briskly down the street.

Sune gave a quick glance towards the bullies. “I only see Marc, Denys, and Oskar. Do you see Axel and Viktor?”

“No. They’re not here. Maybe they gave up and went home.”

“Or maybe they split up and they’re looking for us.”

“Why? Why would they look for us?” Håkan asked, bewildered.

“Who knows? But they’re ditching school just like us, and they were after me. They tried to hurt me. And the other two could be after Anna right now.”

As soon as the three bullies were out of sight, the brothers broke into a run.

The boys reached the greenhouse without incident. Once more, Sune had to wait impatiently, this time with Håkan by his side as Anna finished watering plants, apologized to the owner, and received her pay. When, at last, they left the greenhouse and headed north for the City Gates, Axel came out of a side street directly in front of them. He stared for a moment at the three before him, then darted away.

“That’s it,” Sune said. “We’ve got to beat them to the City Gates.” They ran, weaving in and out among annoyed shoppers.

The City Gates were open, as always. They were closed only on New Year’s Eve and reopened the next morning. Still, City Guards were posted there, ready to close the gates, just in case. As the triplets ran up, panting, they saw the bullies, all five together again, waiting for them in the square before the gates.

Marc smirked at them, arms folded, his gang behind him.

Sune looked around in desperation. The gang would never dare attack them in front of the City Guards, but how long could they stand around in the square? Eventually, they’d have to leave, and the bullies would follow them.

Anna looked from one to the other of her brothers, rolled her eyes, and stepped up to the nearest Guard. “Those boys are chasing us,” she said.

“We weren’t,” Marc said, stepping closer as Anna edged away from him. “We were here first and they just ran up. You saw them.”

The Guard looked from one group to the other, and Sune held his breath. The man must see three frightened children, one a girl, on one side, and on the other, five larger boys. Surely he would side with the three of them!

“Yes,” the Guard said, “I can see you’re not chasing them.” Sune was too old to cry in frustration. “And since you’re not chasing them,” the man went on, “you won’t mind staying right here with us while they go on their way.” He shooed the triplets away, and they fled, Marc’s objections fading into the distance as they ran.

“Where to?” Håkan asked, panting.

“Home is safest,” Anna said, slowing to a trot. “And Ingrid said she has class all day, so she won’t be there.”

Except she was.

“What are you doing here?” said Ingrid, Anna, and Sune at the same time. The door swung shut behind them as the children froze in surprise.

Ingrid stood just outside the entryway with a steaming cup of tea in her hand, staring at them with narrowed eyes. “You’re supposed to be in school.”

“The bullies are after us again and we came home to escape them,” Sune answered. Anna thought Onni would have been pleased with his perfect truthfulness.

“But we thought you were in classes,” Anna said.

The babysitter sighed as she crossed the living room, removed a thick book from the couch, and seated herself. “The professor’s sick, so no classes today. I went all the way to class in the cold, just to come all the way back.”

As the children pulled off their boots and hung up their outdoor gear, Sune winced and rubbed his shoulder. Seeing this, Håkan asked the air, “Why are those guys so determined to hurt us?” As Anna made a helpless gesture, he went on, “It doesn’t make any sense. What did we ever do to them? Are they going to keep chasing us around forever?”

“Oh, as to that,” came Ingrid’s voice from the living room, “I think I know.”

The triplets crowded into the room to regard her with astonishment. How could Ingrid know when she didn’t even know who the bullies were?

Ingrid set her tea on the small table beside her, and her voice took on a professorial tone. “You see, your family was rich.”

“That was a long time ago,” Håkan objected.

“Five years is a long time to you, not to Mora.” Ingrid tapped the book with a finger. “As I was saying, your family was rich. They owned the Västerström Chemical Shops. Those are all closed now, but back then, your father ran them. He was arrogant, used his wealth to control people, and treated everyone like his subordinates. He fired people if they weren’t sufficiently ’respectful’. There was a lot of bad feeling towards him over that. Still is, in fact. There’s a lot of people that don’t like you because of him. Like my mother. He fired her.”

“Oh, uh,” Anna said, “I’m sorry. He fired your mother? I’m sorry. He’s just …” She felt they were in the wrong somehow, even though whatever happened to Ingrid’s mother wasn’t their fault. More than that, she worried that their babysitter had an inherited grudge against them.

Håkan folded his arms at Anna’s side. As usual, he and Sune didn’t look at all apologetic.

Ingrid turned her gaze on Håkan and Sune, not acknowledging Anna’s stumbling apology. “She’s not happy I got this job babysitting Torbjörn Västerström’s children. Not happy at all.” She gave Anna a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s why I took the job — because it made her angry. Anyway, I expect these bullies don’t like you because their parents don’t like you. Because you’re Västerströms.”

Anna glanced at her brothers and then back at Ingrid. “It’s worse now, though. They tried to hurt Sune. I mean, really hurt him. They threw rocks at him.”

“I can make a guess about that, too. Your family’s going to be rich again pretty soon. Everybody knows the Silent World Expedition collected a bunch of valuable books and then got killed, so all the money for those books goes to their families. Your family, in particular, will get a bunch of money. I expect all the people that disliked your father before dislike him even more now. And so their kids are going after you.”

Sune shook his head. “That’s not fair. We didn’t do anything to them.”

Ingrid looked down at the battered book in her hand. “One thing you learn studying the sad and sorry history of humanity is that most things people do aren’t fair.”

There seemed no answer to that. The triplets shuffled their feet for a moment, before Sune said, “I’m hungry. I missed lunch because of Marc and his gang.”

With a soft sigh, Ingrid set down the book and got to her feet. Watching her, Anna thought of her father, and what he would say: “I don’t care about your studies. Your job is to take care of these children. Get to work!”

Anna stepped in front of Ingrid. “Wait. You don’t have to fix lunch for us. We can manage it. You go ahead and study.”

Ingrid bit her lip, looking from Anna to the book and back again. “I don’t know …”

“I promise we won’t make a mess. Promise.” Anna glanced at her brothers, willing them to agree.

When the boys nodded, Ingrid hesitated for another moment, but returned to her seat and took up the book. “Okay. But tell me if you need any help.”

As always when Anna was around food, she removed the scarf so as not to stain it. And as always when she removed the scarf, Håkan was there to take it from her. Retreating to a corner of the kitchen, he folded it neatly and held it close.

Sune snickered from where he knelt, pushing twigs into the stove. “Look at him! Next, he’ll be asking to sleep with it under his pillow.”

Håkan took up the end of the scarf and ran his fingers over the intricate pattern. “Are you sure this scarf doesn’t feel … weird? Warm?”

Anna measured out oats and dumped them in a pot, careful not to spill any. “Of course it’s warm, silly. It’s a scarf.” She added water and set the pot on the stove.

“No, I mean …” Håkan shook his head. “It’s different. I think it is magic.” He pointed at her. “Does your finger hurt?”

“Not a lot, not anymore, but it’s been two weeks. That doesn’t mean the scarf —”

Håkan set the scarf on the table. “Mormor said it was magic.”

Sune got to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers. “She said it might be magic. But you keep pawing at it like it might start doing stuff any second.”

Anna looked closely at the water, stirring it with a big wooden spoon. Was it beginning to simmer? She felt hungry herself, now. “What would you do with magic if you had it?”

“I’d turn Marc and Denys into toads.” Håkan turned away to look at the kitchen window as if he could see the bullies outside. “Then we could chase them.”

“Toads?” Sune grinned at him. “Good idea. Something that matches your running speed.”

“Maybe I’d turn them into squirrels and let them chase you up another tree!”

Sune charged at him, trying to kick his feet out from under him. As Håkan dodged, bumping into the table with a clatter, Anna waved her big spoon at them. “Hey! I told Ingrid we wouldn’t make a mess. Go fight upstairs.”

After taking a moment to stick his tongue out at her, Håkan darted out, pursued by Sune. Their footsteps thundered up the stairs and across the floor above, before they stopped and the scuffling began. Anna shook her head and examined the pot again. Still not boiling.

 

This is all Dad’s fault. He was mean to people like Ingrid’s mom, so they hate us. Because of him. Now we’re going to be rich again, so they hate us even more. And we’re only going to be rich because he got Emil to go on that expedition, and now Emil’s … somewhere. That’s a big secret, and Dad doesn’t even care!

 

Emil hadn’t known the plans for the expedition. She was sure of that; she’d overheard him telling the Finnish woman — Onni’s sister, Tuuri, though Anna hadn’t known that then — that the expedition would “sling-shot him into a better position in the Cleansers”. Watching unseen from the top of the stairs, she’d seen how surprised he was to hear her dad talking about the valuable books the expedition would bring back. Emil worried about money, but then, all grownups did, and he was … well, she couldn’t deny that he was a grownup. He was different, though, and she missed him so much. And it was all her dad’s fault.

Anna wanted to throw the pot, porridge and all, across the room, to scream and cry and break things. But Ingrid would have to clean it up, and Ingrid would be blamed for anything that got broken. And that wasn’t fair. She was only the babysitter, after all. She wasn’t their mother.

I wish Onni were here. He could go to the park with us, and nobody’d dare mess with him. We wouldn’t have to go to school ever again. Lost in thoughts of Onni’s return, she hardly noticed the time passing as she stirred the porridge. Just another week or so, and then Onni will be back. Mom and Dad, too. In a week.

“Hey, guys, it’s ready!”

The scuffling above stopped, footsteps thundered down the stairs, and the boys took their seats as Anna poured porridge in three bowls and added a little honey to each. She took a few steps to the door to peek at Ingrid, engrossed in her book, and retreated. The babysitter hadn’t said anything about wanting lunch, and she needed to talk to her brothers, anyway.

With everyone seated, Anna gave the door another quick look, checking that Ingrid wasn’t listening. “Mom and Dad and Onni will be back in about a week.” Her brothers didn’t answer, intent on their bowls. “We have to figure out what to do until then. We can’t go back to the First Ring, not with Marc and his gang running around.”

Håkan glanced at the scarf, now lying on the windowsill, away from grimy hands. “Let’s go to Mormor’s.”

Sune slapped his porridge with the back of his spoon, splashing it. “She works all day, stupid.”

Anna caught his hand. “Quit that! You’re making a mess. We promised we wouldn’t.”

“You promised. I didn’t.” Still, he spooned up some porridge and continued with his mouth full. “We can go outside and hide until Ingrid leaves, then come back in.”

Håkan stuck out his tongue at his brother. “That won’t work, dummy. She’s not gone all day every day.”

Scooping up more porridge, Sune made as if to use his spoon as a catapult, then grinned at Anna and pushed it into his mouth.

Anna rolled her eyes and checked the door again, before taking a deep breath and facing her brothers. She was pretty sure she was right, but she wanted them to agree. If they didn’t, well, she couldn’t do something so risky on her own accord. “I think we should tell her. Ingrid, I mean. We should tell her we’re ditching school.”

“Are you nuts!” Sune gave the door a quick glance as Anna waved at him to keep his voice down. “Are you nuts?” he repeated in a lower tone. “She’ll tell Mom and Dad, and then we’ll really be in trouble.”

Anna leaned forward to make her point. “Why should she tell them? She doesn’t like Dad. If we behave, like Onni told us, and we don’t make any messes, she doesn’t have to do anything about us. And, anyway, even if she tells, Mom and Dad won’t kill us. Marc might.”

Not answering at once, Håkan turned to look at the scarf again. As if it had prompted him, he said at last, “She’s right. Telling Ingrid won’t make it any worse. After all, she can’t make us go to school or even leave the house, if we don’t want to go.” He scraped up the last bits from his bowl. “And Onni will be pleased if we’re really honest.”

Sune raised his bowl to lick the last drops. “Yeah, okay,” he said with the bowl still before his face. “Then you tell her.”

Onni didn’t trust anyone in Iceland enough to give the task to them, so he made the journey himself.

The day after the ceremony and, though Onni didn’t know it, after the triplets had ditched school for four days, Taru had taken him to the bank. There, she and Icelandic-speaking officials explained how to claim his share — that is, Tuuri and Lalli’s shares — of the proceeds of the lost expedition. “So there you go,” she said at last. “I'm off to the embassy, going to be an envoy from Keuruu for a few weeks. Safe travels!” And she was gone.

As soon as she left him in peace, he found a bank official who spoke Finnish, an official who understood his request.

An hour later, with paperwork in hand and the official’s instructions in mind, Onni made his way to the livery stable and hired a coach drawn by a small, sturdy, bay horse and driven by a portly gray-haired man who waved Onni into the coach with a grin and a booming welcome. Soon, they were beyond the bounds of Reykjavík, trotting along a trail across the snow-covered lava wastes.

When Onni recovered from the grueling sea voyage, he’d felt as if he’d been struck deaf. The moans and wails of the trapped spirits of the trolls — lost, fearful, despairing — had been the background noise of his life, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, but always there. Even in the safety of Mora with its reclaimed lands, he’d heard the trolls outside its walls. But in Iceland, there was only silence.

In Reykjavík, Onni had had his worries to distract him, along with the busy people and the watch-cats on their posts. Here, in this wasteland of rock and snow, there was nothing. The rational part of his brain knew there were no grosslings in Iceland. An older, deeper part of his brain, the part that had sat through a million years of midnights, watching for wolves beyond the circle of firelight — that part saw every hummock and hollow as the hiding place of trolls.

Onni looked up and forward. The driver couldn’t see him without bending down and, after all, he was an Icelander. Even if he saw it, the sight of mage-light shouldn’t distress him. Onni shifted to a comfortable position, closed his outer eyes, and opened his inner eyes.

A glow of satisfied duty: the horse. Far off, the brilliance of loyalty and a mass of contentment: sheepdog and sheep. Onni frowned, and one might say that he squinted. Embodied human spirits were hard to see, like the Moon behind dense clouds. Still, he saw the faint shimmer of the driver and the distant glitter of several people. Nowhere within his range was the dark stain of the Rash.

Onni closed his inner eyes, resting. He was safe, for now. He would check again later.

---

“Just up that track about half a kilometer,” the driver said, pointing with one hand as he stroked the horse with the other.

With a brief nod, Onni turned and trotted up the track. He wanted to get this over with and return to Reykjavík before dark, and while the days grew ever longer, they were still shorter than the nights. As he passed the carved wooden sign — Brúardalur — he looked to his right for the large house he’d been told of. Two two-story houses were joined into one by a one-story connection; under the peaked roofs on either side, a small window revealed a garret above the second story.

Making his way to the front door with its elaborate carved rune, Onni knocked with a sheep-shaped knocker. The young woman who answered the door was in her late twenties, slender and taller than Onni, her blonde hair shoulder-length and curly. He recognized her as Reynir’s sister, one of four siblings who had been to the ceremony. Now was the moment he’d steeled himself for. “I am Onni Hotakainen. May I speak to the mother and father of Reynir Árnason?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, please come in.” The woman ushered him into a cozy room with a rag rug on the floor and two worn but comfortable couches on either side of a fireplace, where coals glowed amidst the ash. Voices came from the next room. The deceitful urn which he had dreaded to see stood on the mantelpiece. She waved him to a couch. “Please, just wait here.”

As he waited on the couch, Onni looked around the room, avoiding the sight of the urn above the fireplace to his right. In the middle of the room, a steep open wooden staircase led up to an opening above; beyond the staircase was the doorway through which the woman had left. Paintings of landscapes and portraits of redheaded men and women hung on the walls. Sunlight poured in through large multi-paned windows on either side of the front door.

Within moments, the woman returned with the middle-aged couple Onni had seen at the ceremony the previous day, Reynir’s other three siblings following. The four siblings could hardly have been more different: a tall, massive, broad-shouldered, man of perhaps thirty with long, dark hair; a compact man in his early twenties, with dark hair that was cropped close to the skull on the sides but formed a spiky crest; the woman who had greeted Onni; a shorter, more rounded young woman in her mid-twenties, with straight, dark, shoulder-length hair. The father, Árni Ragnarsson, was as tall as his taller son, and had red hair going gray, while the mother, Sigríður Jónsdóttir, had wavy blonde hair tied back in a bun. Even the shortest of the women was taller than Onni, who was reckoned average height in Finland.

“Welcome to our house,” Árni said, his tone subdued and his voice grave. He offered his hand, and Onni shook it with an uneasy feeling that the gesture alone was a lie.

Onni didn’t want to stay and pretend to grieve with these people when their son might well be alive, and his ashes certainly were not on that mantelpiece. “Your son was as much a part of that team as my sister. He deserves a share of what they recovered with his help. Tuuri’s share.” He held out the document he’d brought, conveying to them half of what he’d received. “Take this to the bank in Reykjavík, and they will give you the money.” It had been too much for him to carry with him.

Árni stepped back with a look of horror. “Oh, no. We can’t —” he said, as Sigríður turned away, and her larger son enfolded her in his arms. The blond daughter put a consoling hand on her father’s arm, while the other two stepped closer together.

“If Tuuri could be here, I’m certain she’d be happy and proud that she could help Reynir’s family as he helped her,” he said with complete honesty. Though he had saved Tuuri’s spirit from the Rash and the cure, Reynir had led him to her. “Please take it.”

The family seemed frozen as Sigríður sobbed against her son’s broad chest. Feeling acutely his intrusion on their grief just the day after the ceremony, Onni gave the urn a guilty glance. “I wouldn’t have come so soon, but my ship sails tomorrow.”

He waved the document, willing them to take it so he could flee this house of grief. At length, the dark-haired girl reached for it, holding it close as if it represented some part of her lost brother. As if this had melted their shock, the family murmured thanks and invitations for him to eat with them, to stay with them, to allow them to help him in any way they could.

Refusing their offers as politely as he could, Onni escaped to trot down the track to the coach and its patient horse and driver. The younger brother ran to catch up with him and thanked him again and again until he climbed into the coach for the long ride back to Reykjavík.

---

On his last evening in Iceland, Onni took a long, hot bath. The Icelanders had geothermal hot water, a luxury he had never experienced in Finland or Sweden. When he was ready to crawl into the soft, warm covers of his rented bed, he stood by the window and looked out over the streets of Reykjavík. There would be no moon that night, for the third-quarter moon had set hours earlier, but the Northern Lights danced above the city, green and red and silver.

Watching the Lights, Onni thought about Reynir’s grieving family and wished he could have told them the truth. At least he’d given them Tuuri’s share; she would appreciate that. He’d kept Lalli’s share of the expedition’s proceeds, though he’d have preferred to give it to them, since he would need funds to make his way into Silent Denmark.

Still watching the Lights, he reviewed his plan. Take ship to Sweden, despite the unwelcome presence of the Västerströms. From there, take the armored train to Öresund base, where he would pay (or bribe) someone to row him across to one of the outpost piers. If they would not approach the shore, he would swim the last stretch, defying the powers of the sea. And then he would proceed on foot until he found his family.

His plan would be suicidal for an ordinary non-immune, but Onni was by no means ordinary. He was one of the most powerful Finnish mages, fully capable of avoiding the worst of the grosslings and fighting those he could not avoid. He would find Tuuri and Lalli.

With that determination, Onni lay down and reached for mage-space.

Onni climbs the steep, narrow path to the crest of the rocky hill which forms half of his haven. With his luonto, an eagle-owl, perched on a boulder beside him, he looks out over the sea. As always, dark clouds lie on the distant horizon all around, but now the clouds churn, and black thunderheads rise like angry fists that punch at the sky, only to fall before rising again.

Closer motion catches his eye, and he looks up to see a creature of shadow, a dragon with its broad black wings and long clawed limbs, circling nearby. It hasn’t seen him yet, and it can’t reach him if it does … so long as he stays in his haven. If he takes the form of his luonto and tries to go to Lalli, it will pounce at once.

Onni looks down at the sea, wishing for once that the Icelander will come striding over the waves. But the mist that shrouds the sea lies undisturbed. It seems denser than usual, as if to hide what lurks in the deep waters.

With a sigh, Onni turns away, meaning to climb down to his seat beside the cliff, when he sees a red glow in the mist. It is still far away, but closer than the last time he saw it.

Onni snapped awake. In a comfortable bed, wrapped in soft, warm blankets, he shivered, heart pounding, as he stared up at the colors of the Lights playing on the ceiling. Far to the east, beyond the walls and the sea, a baleful spark glowed in his perceptions: the Kade. For eleven years it had festered in the forest north of Saimaa; for eleven years he had cared for his orphaned sister and cousin, hoping someone else would deal with it.

Now … it felt more powerful, closer. He didn’t think the Kade could break into his haven, but could it break into Lalli’s? The ghosts had broken in, after all, but that was two months ago. Lalli must have repaired his bounds by now. Still, the Kade was searching for them again, and with mage-space suddenly disturbed and hostile, he couldn’t reach Lalli to warn him.

Nor could he fight the Kade in mage-space. At least, not from Iceland. Nor from Denmark. He needed to be close to it in the material realm; then he could defeat it.

Maybe.

He hadn’t been conscious of making a decision, but the decision was made. Before seeking his family, he would go to Finland to end the battle that had begun so long ago.

---

Sixeen miserable days later, when the Västerströms stepped off the ship at Skutskär, Onni remained in his tiny cabin deep within the ship, drinking a cocktail of antiemetics and restoratives, as he waited for the ship to make the last leg of the journey to the Saimaa canal.

“What are you doing here?”

Håkan froze half-way down the stairs at the sound of his father’s voice.

Just moments ago, the triplets had been in the boys’ bedroom playing “Trolls and Hunters” with their toy soldiers. When the front door opened, they’d assumed it was Ingrid coming home early. Since she’d agreed to let them stay home from school a week before, provided they behaved and didn’t damage anything, they’d come to be quite friendly with her, enjoying her stories of what she’d learned in history classes. Thus, when the door opened, they’d run to the stairs to greet her.

“What are you doing here?” Torbjörn demanded again. He and Siv looked tired, frustrated, and angry as they stood just inside the door, taking off their coats and boots.

Anna nudged Håkan aside. “We came home because the bullies from the school tried to hurt us again.” Håkan thought even Onni would agree that was a truthful statement, though they’d come home a week before. Anna held out her hand with the little finger still splinted. “Look, they smashed my finger.”

Siv gazed at the splint for a heartbeat, her expression troubled. Håkan thought the sight of his sister’s injury had touched her heart, but then she glared at Håkan with her usual cold annoyance. “And you boys did nothing to protect your sister from bullies.”

As Anna cradled her injured and ignored hand against her chest, Håkan opened his mouth to defend himself and his brother, though he didn’t know what he could say. Before the words could come, his father interrupted, “Where is your babysitter? Why isn’t she here?”

“She has school,” Sune said. “She has school all day on Fridays, so we came home and we thought she wouldn’t know and —”

Their father folded his arms and looked down his nose at his children. “So you sneaked home. You ran away from bullies. Västerströms do not run. I am disgusted by your behavior.” As the children shuffled their feet without answering, he added, “So you’re going to go back to that school every single day until we find an appropriate tutor for you.”

Anna took a step down the stairs, leaning to look past her parents. “Isn’t Onni our tutor?”

Siv sniffed as if she smelled something bad. “Onni Hotakainen has gone back to Finland, where he belongs. We will find a proper Swedish tutor for you.”

The triplets looked at each other in dismay. Onni was gone, and they had to go back to the school?

“Since you’re afraid of those bullies,” Torbjörn said, his lip curled, “I’ll go to the school and explain to them that they’d better to keep the bullies away from my children.”

For a bare moment, Håkan found that reassuring.

“No, no, no,” Sune said. “We — it’s better if you don’t. The bullies would think we’re afraid. No, we’ll just go. Okay?”

A little slower than his brother, Håkan chimed in, “We’ll face the bullies by ourselves.”

Anna nodded, though Håkan thought she looked afraid. And rightly so; the bullies had targeted her once and might again.

“Very well,” Torbjörn said, turning away to gather their luggage.

Siv pointed at Anna. “Where did you get that scarf? From Mother? Did she fill your ears with her nonsense about that rag having healing magic knitted into it?”

Ducking his head and peeking at Anna, Håkan sought to look innocent as his mind raced. If she discarded the scarf, he could retrieve it — he thought he could feel it through a pile of rubbish — but what if she burned it? He couldn’t bear to see that wonder going up in smoke …

Anna clutched the scarf with her injured hand. “She said her mother made it. It’s pretty and warm. She didn’t say anything about magic.” Håkan winced mentally on her behalf; he and Sune remained flexible about telling the truth, but Anna had taken Onni’s words to heart. Still, if their mother knew what her mother had told them, they might never be allowed to see her again.

“Hmph. Good. I’ve told her to keep that nonsense to herself. Now go to your rooms and stay there. I don’t want to see you again today. And don’t expect supper tonight. You don’t deserve it.”

The children fled back up the stairs.

---

“Now what do we do?”

Håkan shrugged at Sune’s question. “What can we do?” He poked at a toy soldier on the floor beside him. “I’m already hungry.” He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one; Sune was hungry too.

They sat together on the floor of their bedroom, while Anna was in her own room. Sune drummed his fingers on his knees in silence for several seconds before replying. “We should warn Ingrid. If she walks right in, they’ll surprise her and maybe scare her enough to get her to talk.”

“How do we warn her? You want to climb down there with Marc and his gang?”

“It might be okay.” The bullies didn’t watch their house full-time; instead, they turned up now and again to stroll past the house, making sure their victims knew they might be around.

“And they might see you. Then you’d really be in trouble.”

“You’re a big help.” Sune went to the window and stared down at the street. After a long moment, he turned. “Hey! I know what to do! Remember that story Emil told us, about the princess in the castle, and the way she dropped a letter to the troll-hunters?”

Håkan joined him at the window. “Yeah, but … she doesn’t even walk past this window. She wouldn’t see a letter if we dropped one. And it would blow away —”

Sune waved a dismissive hand. “Your writing’s better than mine. Write the note. I know how we’ll do this.”

With an ostentatious eyeroll, Håkan went to their shared desk (an age-scarred wooden table) and took out a scrap of yellowed paper, a quill pen, and their bottle of ink. As neatly as he could, he wrote, “Mom and Dad are here. They caught us. We said this was the first time and you didn’t know.”

After burrowing in the small chests that held their clothes, Sune came up with a pair of socks from each chest: Solstice socks that Mormor, their grandmother Kristín, had knitted for them. Stuffing three socks inside the fourth, he came to Håkan’s side. “See, this’ll weight it down so I can throw it to her from the roof.”

“Just a sec.” On the back of the scrap, Håkan wrote, “Please give socks to Mormor.”

With the message tucked into the sock, Sune opened the window, letting in a blast of cold air. Already shivering, Håkan hurried to the window to watch him climb onto the sill. Sune grabbed the downspout, and swung himself out, swarming up in a way that Håkan couldn’t have done even when he was smaller and lighter. As soon as Sune was outside, Håkan closed the window and leaned against the sill to wait.

Thinking the better of it after a couple of minutes, Håkan crossed to their bunkbeds and arranged Sune’s pillow and blankets to resemble a sleeping body, if you didn’t look too closely. He didn’t expect his parents to look in on them — they generally didn’t as long as the children were quiet — but it was better to be prepared. That done, he sat on the floor and moodily pushed the toy soldiers around. Playing “Trolls and Hunters” was no fun without the others to voice the toys.

At long last, a tap on the window brought him to his feet. As soon as the window was open, Sune crawled in, shivering, and went straight to his bed to wrap up in blankets. “Done. She picked up the sock, read the note, and waved to me.” The distinctive thump of the front door interrupted him. “You go listen. I’m freezing.”

Since Håkan knew which board creaked, he made his way to the head of the stairs without a sound, finding Anna sneaking along the hall, bent on the same mission. They settled side by side to listen to the conversation below. Much as he wished he could reassure Anna that Ingrid knew the situation, Håkan didn’t dare whisper to her.

Below, Ingrid said, sounding surprised, “Mr. Västerström, Mrs. Västerström, welcome home. I didn’t expect you until —”

Siv’s voice was cold. “No, I’m sure you didn’t expect us to come home and find the children running wild in this house.”

Håkan and Anna looked at each other in outrage. Håkan hoped Ingrid would understand that his mother was lying; they’d behaved themselves just as they’d promised when she allowed them to stay home. Not a single item was out of place, and they’d even washed their own lunch dishes.

“But their school doesn’t let out for another half-hour.”

Torbjörn responded instead of Siv. “You were responsible for them, and they’re not in school. You’re fired, and I’m inclined not to pay you for your poor performance.”

There was a silence for a moment before Ingrid replied. “Mr. Västerström, you and I both know why you hired me, even though you knew I’m a student and can’t babysit full-time. You couldn’t get anyone else to babysit your changelings.”

Håkan winced. The babysitter before Onni had called them changelings, and it seemed the name had spread. Is that why Mom and Dad are so mean to us? If we aren’t really their children, maybe that’s why they don’t love us.

“I can’t make you pay me, but if you won’t pay a babysitter what you owe her, you won’t get anyone to babysit them. And so, if you do not pay me, I am going to make this conversation very widely known.”

As the silence stretched below, Håkan bit his lips, worrying for Ingrid. She needed the money from her babysitting …

There was a clink of coins. “Take it and get out,” Torbjörn said. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

At a scuffle of feet and the thump of the front door closing, the children hurried back to their rooms.

---

The next morning, a silent Siv served the children a breakfast of plain porridge without honey or milk. Hungry as they were, they gulped it down without complaint. As soon as they finished, Torbjörn ordered them to come with him to their grandmother’s house. Though Håkan wanted to cheer, like his siblings, he followed in silence for the five-minute walk. He thought he saw someone peek out at them as they passed an alley, but the movement was too quick for him to identify the person. Maybe it was one of the bullies; maybe not.

After the grownups exchanged polite greetings, Torbjörn said, “Siv is very tired from the trip. Would you be able to keep the children for the weekend? I can come back for them Sunday evening.”

Håkan put his hands behind his back and crossed his fingers. Despite his eagerness, he held his tongue, as did Anna and Sune.

Kristín looked startled, but swiftly agreed. As soon as he saw their father leave and the door close behind him, Håkan turned to ask, “Mormor, are we really changelings?”

“Oh, dear. You heard someone call you that?” Kristín’s frowned, tugging at the black-and-white shawl draped over her gray sweater. From the shawl, her pale, freckled hands with their trimmed nails moved to smooth non-existent wrinkles from her skirt as she led the children to her small living room.

“Yes,” Anna answered before Håkan did. “Ingrid did, she was our babysitter but she got fired yesterday, and Mathilda did too. She was our babysitter before Onni. He didn’t call us changelings, though.”

Kristín gestured them to sit on the couch while she took a seat on her overstuffed armchair. “No, you’re not changelings. You —”

“Then, are we their children?” Håkan asked. “They don’t love us, so —”

“You’re their children, yes.” Kristín sighed. “I think — well, I hope — they do love you in their own way.”

Håkan shifted uncomfortably and glanced at Sune, who shrugged.

“I wish they treated you better. Maybe it’s best you know the reasons.” She looked into the fireplace, where small flames flickered above a charred beam. “You see, Siv had a lot of trouble having children.”

“Because Dad is immune?” Anna said. They learned about the low fertility of immunes in class that year.

“No, not in this case. Siv got pregnant — let’s see, three, no, four times — but she lost the babies.”

Sune leaned forward, brows furrowed. “Lost them?”

“They were born too early, too small, and they died.”

Anna covered her mouth in dismay at her grandmother’s words.

“They were miscarried; that’s the term. So, she decided she didn’t want to try again. She would just have no children. But then, somehow, she got pregnant again. With you. With triplets. Pregnancy is hard on a woman, and pregnancy with triplets is very hard. She nearly died when you were born. It wasn’t your fault, obviously. You didn’t choose to be born together. But still, she just never could bond with you, and Torbjörn is … not a warm person.”

Kristín shook her head. “So then they hired the nanny, and that made things worse.” Håkan looked up in surprise. He remembered Nanny, who had been a kind, warm person. How could she have made anything worse?

“Your nanny was a good woman who took good care of you. Of course you grew attached to her. I understand how it happened, but still, it might have been better if Siv had cared for you instead. By that time, though, she had her research. And then there was the disaster, and Torbjörn’s family lost all its money. So the nanny had to go. You remember that?” All three nodded. They’d been six when Nanny left, and they’d cried themselves to sleep for a week.

“It was obvious you loved Nanny, not Siv. Not your mother.” Håkan shuffled his feet, feeling ashamed that he didn’t love his mother as he should.

“But it wasn’t your fault; you were just little children. And you really were little monsters.” She gave them an indulgent smile. “Not to me, of course. But to your mother, and to anyone they hired to babysit you. That’s why people started calling you ’changelings’. You aren’t, though.” She ruffled Anna’s hair. “You’re real children. And you have been behaving better, lately. Though if Ingrid called you ’changelings’ … What did you do to her?”

“Nothing!” Håkan said. “We behaved, just like we were supposed to. She was arguing with Dad and she said no one wants to babysit changelings.”

Their grandmother chuckled at his words. “Well, I’m glad to hear you weren’t terrorizing poor Ingrid. But now that you’re here, you know my rules — everyone helps!”

Kristín got to her feet and led the children to the kitchen to gather broom, mop, and dusting rags. For the rest of the day, they cleaned the already clean house, shoveled the path to the street, and even knocked snow off the trees in back, ducking and dodging the falling snow.

That evening, as the children, weary but happy, collapsed on the rug before the fireplace, Kristín went upstairs and returned with a small red book.

“This was my mother’s sketchbook,” she said, opening it to show the first page, an intricate abstract charcoal drawing. “She tried to draw all the galdrastafur — these patterns — that she could remember. This one here was supposed to strengthen roof beams. Because of the snow, you know. It’s even heavier there in Iceland.” The children gathered around her to examine the sketchbook.

Kristín turned the page. “This one was supposed to keep trolls away. Icelandic trolls are nothing like grosslings; we just used the name. And this one …”

There were dozens of sketches, and Anna and Sune soon grew bored and lay down to rest, while Håkan sat with his grandmother and listened to her explanations. After his fervent promise that he wouldn’t damage the book, she allowed him to hold it and turn the pages.

Even as his siblings dozed off in the warmth before the fire, Håkan studied the sketchbook. Not daring to touch the charcoal lest he smear it, he traced the lines with a finger just above them. They didn’t feel like the patterns on the scarf, not warm and tingly, and yet there was something powerful about them, if he could just grasp it.

Håkan stands at the edge of a clearing in the dappled sunlight among tall oak trees. For a moment, he peers about with puzzled interest, until a rustle in the undergrowth sends a jolt of terror through him.

This is no manicured city park; this is a forest, a wild place. And he is alone, with no immunes to protect him. He scans around, searching for safety. Seeing a large granite block in the center of the clearing, he runs to it, crushing wildflowers and grasses underfoot.

As Håkan scrambles onto the block, his mind overcomes his fear. How did he come here? The last thing he remembers is crawling into bed in Mormor’s house. And that means …

“I made it to mage-space! I did it! I really am a mage, and this is my haven.” He looks around at the forest in wonder, now seeing beauty rather than threat. As he does so, a large goshawk drops onto the block in front of him, peering at him with orange eyes under white eyebrows. Boy and hawk stare at each other for several seconds before Håkan says, “You must be a, uh …”

“Fylgja.”

Håkan stares, recovers himself. “Onni didn’t tell me fylgjas could talk.”

The hawk raises its wings in a shrug.

After another look around, Håkan turns back to the hawk. “This is an island, right? So there’s a sea around it. Can I walk on the water like that guy Onni told us about — Reynir?”

The hawk shrugs again, then leaps into the air and flits to land on a branch above a narrow path through the underbrush. Taking this as an invitation, Håkan hops down from the granite block and trots down the path. Though tingles of fear still shoot through him at each rustle of leaves, he feels a freedom he has never known before. He savors the earthy smell of loam, the sweet fragrance of blooming wildflowers, and the musky scent of the trees. For the first time in his life, if he wants, he can run anywhere in the forest without the threat of the Rash.

The path leads Håkan out onto a rocky headland. To his right, waves roll against the low cliffs, while to his left, a steep path leads down some ten meters to a small oval cove. A second headland shelters it on the far side, and the forest behind the cove slopes down to the beach, where gentle waves lap at the white sand. Beyond lies the open sea, shrouded by mist after perhaps thirty meters. Håkan has never before seen the sea, and he gazes at it in awe, drinking in every detail, nostrils flared to catch its unfamiliar odor.

Far off on the horizon, he sees roiling dark clouds and rising thunderheads. Onni said the horizon was dark and threatening, but Håkan had no idea he meant storms like this.

At last, Håkan turns away from the view and follows the path to the cove, stopping to kneel and scoop up sand in his hands. “Emil said this is what they build sand castles with. But —” He lets the sand dribble through his fingers. “But I don’t see how it would stick together.”

The puzzle of sand castles is forgotten as he runs to the sea — runs out onto the sea, in fact. The surface feels damp and spongy. As he hops up and down on it, marvelling at the effect, he thinks it feels much like his parents’ bed (which he is not allowed to jump on but does), if their bed were dropped in a pond.

“Now I can go find Onni, like that Icelander did. I must be Icelander enough to do it.” He runs to the cove’s entrance between two rocky headlands. As he steps onto the rolling waves, he peers around for the break in the mist that Onni said would appear.

Before he can take another step, the hawk dives before him, twisting in mid-air to flare its wings before him. Håkan jumps back, trips, falls on his backside on the odd water. “What was that for?”

The hawk circles just above him. “Danger.” As it veers towards the open sea, it raises its head to look up. “Danger.”

Håkan follows its gaze to see a creature of shadow cruising high over the sea, broad wings spread, long clawed limbs dangling, and red eyes glaring down. He scrambles to his feet and sprints to the forest, his back crawling with the anticipation of raking claws. “What is that thing?” he asks as he shelters behind a tree. The hawk shrugs. “Then, can it get me if I stay in my haven?”

“No.”

Håkan peers out to see the creature soaring away to his right. Still shaking, he turns to the forest. If the thing cannot reach him, then he refuses to worry about it. He trots away to enjoy the freedom of the forest.

On Sunday morning, Håkan told his siblings and their grandmother about his visit to mage-space. Though Anna and Sune were enthralled, Kristín was unsure, pointing out that this could be an exceptionally vivid dream suggested by Onni’s story. Accustomed as he was to grownups ignoring or dismissing their words, Håkan dropped the subject in some disappointment after trying several times to convince her. Even the best of grownups, he thought, could let you down.

As the day was cold but clear, the four went to a park, where the children built snowmen and held a snowball fight while their grandmother watched. If the bullies saw them, they stayed away since Kristín was present. By afternoon, the triplets were exhausted but happy, returning to Kristín’s house for a late lunch. After washing the dishes and cleaning up the resulting mess in the kitchen, the children settled on the couch before the fire to listen to Mormor’s stories about her mother until Torbjörn came to collect them. As usual, he seemed less than pleased to see them and didn’t speak to them as he led them home for a supper where the children ate in silent boredom while their parents discussed investments.

The next day, Monday, began surprisingly well. Despite their fears, the three made it to the school unharmed. As the children first entered their regular classroom, their teacher murmured to Anna, “So, you honor us with your presence,” but otherwise made no mention of the fact that they had been truant for three weeks. Children often missed class for one reason or another, and the teachers took little note of who attended or didn’t. The bullies didn’t attend — they’d been ditching school too — and the other students gave the Västerströms sidelong looks, but didn’t bother them. On the way home, Anna spotted Denys lurking in a neighbor’s doorway, and the children sprinted for their house, reaching safety before he could catch them or call for allies.

“That was lucky,” Sune said, as they took off their coats and boots in the safety of the house. But as Håkan turned from the coat rack, he realized they were not lucky at all.

Torbjörn stood from his plush, worn chair in the living room and stalked to the triplets where they stood, his face set and his eyes narrowed. Like a striking snake, his hand shot out to grab Håkan’s upper arm in a punishing grip. To Håkan’s left, his father’s other hand seized Anna’s wrist. Gritting his teeth, refusing to beg, Håkan stumbled into the living room as his father dragged him and Anna to face their mother, who sat in her own chair, arms folded. Her lips tightened as she looked over their heads to their father’s face, but she said nothing.

“Here are two of the liars,” Torbjörn stated. He jerked the children’s arms, making them stagger. “Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”

Håkan knew better than to answer. He looked past Anna to Sune, who had followed them in, and shook his head. Sune couldn’t help them, and the longer he stayed with them, the more likely he was to be punished as well.

“I went to the school to help my children,” Torbjörn said in a false conversational tone. “They said they had trouble with bullies, and so I decided to discuss the matter with the administrators. Västerströms do not tolerate bullying of their children. And what did I find?” He jerked the children’s arms again. “What did I find? Answer me!”

“They smashed my finger —” Anna began.

“We ditched school,” Sune said, stepping to stand beside Anna. “We went to the First Ring, and we — and we hung out in a little park. It has oak trees. I can show you where —”

Siv gave a sharp gesture, waving him away. “Stay out of this.”

“So I talked to the administrators, and they smiled.” Torbjörn’s voice rose in fury as spoke. “They were amused that I was worried about my children, who weren’t even bothering to attend!” His voice fell to a menacing growl. “You have humiliated me. Not yourselves; you’re incapable of shame. Well, you don’t want to go to school. Fine, then, you won’t. You’re going to stay in your rooms until we decide you’re fit for human company.”

Torbjörn dragged the two children with him to the stairs, Sune hurrying alongside. At the foot of the stairs, their father flung Håkan and Anna at Sune, so all three fell in a heap. As they scrambled to their feet and fled upstairs, he stamped back to the living room. “Torb —” their mother said behind them.

The children’s rooms were on either side of the short hall that led south from the stairs, while their parents’ room and study were on either side of the north hall, with the bathroom just opposite the stairs. Because of this arrangement, the children could cross between Anna’s room and the boys’ room without being seen by someone on the stairs. Since every tread creaked, they would hear anyone climbing the stairs. Thus, Anna sneaked into the boys’ room to talk, staying close to the door to listen for their parents.

“This is so unfair,” Anna said, rubbing her wrist and blinking back tears. “Why didn’t Onni come back to us? He’d never let him do this to us.”

“Onni belongs in Finland,” Sune said as he and Håkan moved to stand with her and listen. Håkan slipped off his shirt to examine his arm. It was already turning red, his father’s handprint clearly visible.

Anna turned to Sune, outraged. “He belongs with us!”

“Yes. He belongs in Finland. With us.”

Håkan frowned at Sune. “They’ll never take us to Finland.”

“Who said anything about them?”

On the same Sunday morning that Kristín took her grandchildren to the park, Onni was offloaded from the Icelandic ship to the Nuijamaa Port at the south end of the Saimaa Canal. He took a certain forlorn pride in the fact that he walked onto the pier without assistance. Thanks to a note from Andri, the medic on the first ship, he’d had what he needed on this ship: a cabin deep in the bowels of the ship and a cocktail of remedies to control the effects of the sea. He’d been nauseated and weak for the entire trip, but he hadn’t been — or even felt — near death.

Stepping out of the way of laborers shifting cargo from ship to pier, Onni adjusted the straps of his heavy backpack. He’d bought it in Reykjavík to carry the two urns wrapped in all his clothing. Though the urns contained nothing of his kin, he felt it only right to take them to the family’s home, the dead village of Toivosaari. It might be that they would have no other memorial.

Onni focused on the sturdy warehouses, taverns, and shops of Nuijamaa, hoping his eyes could convince his inner ears that the ground was not rocking under his feet. Even as the land steadied, the sound began, like the voices of a crowd far away, but rushing closer with each heartbeat, the wailing, the raging, the begging.

Had the voices always been so loud? Onni pressed his hands to his temples, closing his eyes in pain, but hastily opening them again when the ground heaved to the left. He turned to look at the ship, still there as laborers now carried cargo up the gangplank. Despite the misery of the voyage, it had been bearable and just two weeks away was the silence of Iceland.

 

I can go back. I can wait for the trouble in mage-space to die down, then ask Lalli where they are and pay someone to take me there. Even if Tuuri can’t come back — if none of them can come back — we can work our way overland, and then Lalli and I can face the Kade together.

 

He took a step towards the ship, then another.

 

No. I can’t do that. There’s no telling how long the trouble will last — I don’t even know what caused it — and the Kade might find us even if I’m in Iceland and Lalli’s … wherever he is.

 

Onni turned away from the ship and scanned the buildings of the village again. There!

The sign identified the business as “Bank”, and no more identification was needed, for there was only one bank in the Known World: the Bank of Iceland. Onni strode towards it, reeling slightly as the land rocked under him. He had one task to carry out here, and then he could take the ferry for the next leg of his journey.

---

“We can’t exchange cash for this.” The head banker was tall for a Finn and slender, neatly groomed and clad in the dark blue uniform of the Bank of Iceland. “We don’t keep that much on hand.”

Onni shook his head and offered the document again. “I have cash for my needs, for now. I want to leave this with you until I return. Then, I’ll need some cash to travel with, but not that much.”

The banker nodded and accepted the document, which represented Lalli’s share of the proceeds. “Of course. We’ll keep it safe. Now, do you have any identifying marks?”

Onni considered the problem, pulled up his trouser leg to show the scar where he’d fallen from a tree and gashed his calf on a rock. With a nod, the banker turned and yanked a bell-pull on the wall, once, again, and a third time after a pause. The staff of the bank, a dozen men and women in their uniforms, filed in to be introduced to Onni Hotakainen and to study his face and scar.

As the last of them left, the head banker said, “Everyone here can identify you now. When you return, you need only ask, and your funds will be returned. Our cash is limited, however, as I said.”

Onni nodded. “One more thing. If I don’t return within a year, you will send the funds to Mora in Sweden, to be held for the Västerström children until they come of age. Here are their names.” On the endless voyage from Iceland, he’d considered what to do with Lalli’s funds if he couldn’t use them. It came down to Reynir’s family or Emil’s cousins. Though he’d never seen the triplets suffer physical abuse, he’d seen emotional abuse, and he suspected they would want to strike out on their own as soon as they could. They could use the funds more than Reynir’s adult siblings.

The banker accepted the scrap of paper bearing the children’s names. “Of course. I’ll make a note of this. Is there anything else?”

As there was nothing else, Onni took his leave, striding to the ferry, a sternwheeler steamboat built a few years after the coming of the Rash and lovingly maintained since. Once again, he avoided the laborers hauling cargo into the hold and made his way to the purser, paid for a seat, and followed directions to a tiny passenger compartment.

The passenger compartment was modest. One might even say it was spartan. As there were no windows, it was lit by a single weak bulb. Bare wooden benches lined the walls, and ventilation was provided — or would be, once the steamboat was underway — by a vent on the forward wall and another on the rear wall.

Since Onni would be the only passenger, he took a seat in front of the forward vent and leaned his head against it. The fresh water of the canal wouldn’t drain him as did the sea, but he would be motion-sick. Again. He looked down at the backpack by his feet, considering the precious remedies he’d bought from the healer before leaving the ship.

No. I’ll need those later, when I take ship to Denmark. If I take ship to Denmark. He shook his head. Thoughts like that won’t help me. I have to believe that I’ll defeat the Kade, go to Denmark, and find my family.

Onni stared into the dimness of the compartment and concentrated on blocking out the voices of the trolls.

---

The ferry arrived at Mikkeli, the capital of the Saimaa Lake area, in the late afternoon. Onni hurried down the gangplank and off the pier, eager to stand on stable ground again. Stopping on the shore, he looked around the many shops of the village. He needed food, drink, and a boat to continue his journey. But it was already late, and even if he found a boat-seller without delay, leaving now would just mean he spent an extra night on the lake.

Am I stalling? No, this is a reasonable decision. I will do better if I eat well, sleep in the inn tonight, and set out fresh in the morning. This isn’t stalling. Onni hitched up the heavy backpack to a more comfortable position and headed to the Inn and Restaurant (its official name) for supper and bed.

That night, Onni lay in a comfortable bed, digesting the best meal he would have for a long time. The voices of the trolls were now the same background noise he’d heard as long as he could remember (except on the sea or in Iceland, his traitor brain reminded him). Safe here within the village walls, he closed his outer eyes and opened his inner eyes.

There was no taint of the Rash near him, but far north and a little east, there was a dim glow, like an ember within the ashes in a dark room. The Kade was there.

It was waiting for him.

On Monday morning, as the Västerström triplets prepared to go to school, Onni Hotakainen loaded a rowboat with camping gear, several weeks’ worth of dried fish, crispbread, and hard cheese, added his backpack with its precious cargo, and pushed off into the great Saimaa lake system. Some residents of Mikkeli watched him go, speculating among themselves as to his goal, but no one questioned him. They were Finns, and his business was his business, after all.

He supposed the bystanders likely thought him immune. Since generations of hunters, fishermen, traders, and travellers had killed every grossling that showed its head in the lake, the main section was considered clear, though it was still risky for a non-immune travelling alone. But Onni was no ordinary non-immune. He would feel the corruption of a grossling as far away as fifty meters, and he could fight several grosslings at a time — or even a giant — with magic. Though he couldn’t defeat a swarm, he could detect it at a distance and avoid it.

As he rowed up the lake, Onni felt the strain in his shoulders and back. He hadn’t rowed a boat in eleven years, not since that day when, at sixteen, he took his ten-year-old sister and eight-year-old cousin to safety, leaving behind their home, their family, their village, and everything they’d ever known.

Onni shivered in the chill morning air, shook his head as if he could dislodge the memories, and bore down on his task. It was a long way to Toivosaari. He meant to make it in four days, driving himself hard, but not to exhaustion, as he would need his strength when he faced the Kade.

After several hours of rowing, as the Sun approached its zenith, Onni tied up to a simple stone jetty and climbed the rough-hewn stairs up a rocky islet. The islet’s barren top was flat enough and wide enough for camping, and a ring of blackened stones showed where previous travellers had built their campfires. Onni built a small fire and sat on the edge of a low cliff, dropping a line into the lake. As he fished, he opened his inner eyes and checked his surroundings. Within his range of half a kilometer, no animal lived but the bundles of fear and hunger that were fish and the well-fed curiosity of seagulls.

Onni inhaled the smell of the lake, the smell of home. He blinked at the sunlight glittering off the waves all about him. Seagulls called and the rowboat thumped as waves bumped it against the jetty. He had passed through here before, though he’d seen none of it then.

Eleven years ago, Onni, Tuuri, and Lalli had been in a quarantine cell of the containment ship, as they were taken away to distant Keuruu. When the crew said only the non-immunes would be quarantined, Lalli, who hated to touch or be touched, had flung himself on Onni, arms tight around him. With one arm around Lalli and the other around trembling, sobbing Tuuri, Onni had said, “We will not be separated. Not now, not ever.”

And they hadn’t been, not for eleven years. The line twitched and Onni pulled in a fish. No longer hungry, he nevertheless killed and cleaned it, cooking it for his lunch. He would save his dried food for later, when he was on foot.

Something splashed near the west shore, perhaps a kilometer away, and he turned to study the spot. Was that a grossling jumping in? Or a fish leaping? An otter diving in? Even wet snow falling from the overburdened branches? He couldn’t tell, and he watched with eyes narrowed against the glare as he fixed his lunch.

Despite his worries, nothing troubled Onni as he ate, rested his weary body for an hour, then climbed down the stairs to his boat and cast off. He camped on another rocky islet late that afternoon, caught another fish for his supper, and slept deeply that night, relying on his magical senses to alert him if anything approached, but nothing did.

And so Onni rowed up the lake system for days. Several times during those long days, Onni saw trader vessels pass — sleek sailboats with their distinctive triangular sails, heading south toward Mikkeli with holds full of fish, furs, and crafted goods, or north with goods from far away. The traders waved as they passed, and Onni raised a hand in return, but kept his distance. He had no desire to explain his solitary journey north.

---

Sunset painted the sky in red and orange on Thursday as Onni brought the boat to a halt near the south end of Toivosaari’s island. The wooden palisade was in good repair, not what he’d expect if it had been left abandoned since the village died. No threat lurked within fifty meters, so he dropped anchor and opened his inner eyes to study this end of the island.

Squirrels, hares, voles, even a pine marten on the island. Fish in the lake, birds in the trees and the sky. No vile taint of the Rash.

Onni up-anchored and rowed up the east side of the island, anchoring again after half a kilometer to check for grosslings. The palisade was well-maintained all along the east side; a repair showed brown against the weathered gray. Finding no enemies, he went on, and soon rounded the island’s north end.

With a gasp, Onni rowed backwards for a moment, then dropped anchor. The dock, like the palisade, was in good repair. And there was a rowboat tied up to it.

Who could this be? Every villager had been at the fatal harvest party, even their traders. Only Onni and Tuuri had been late, because she had wandered off to gather blueberries while he was loading the boat. He’d had to go and find her, so they hadn’t reached the party before their grandmother, Ensi, called a code O.

For a moment, Onni’s heart leapt with hope. Did Tuuri and Lalli make it back here? Where better to hide from General Trond and his organization than an abandoned village deep in Finland? And where else would they expect me to meet up with them, besides our own home?

But the logistics of travel from Silent Denmark to Finland were daunting. Much as he hoped to find his family, he had to admit it was unlikely. So who was in the village? After a quick check for nearby enemies, Onni opened his inner eyes, grimacing as he pressed his mage sight to find the faint signs of embodied human beings.

There! He found a single person, a man, but unfamiliar to him. Was this the Icelander? But he couldn’t find any other humans nearby and finally, reluctantly, closed his inner eyes, took up his anchor, and rowed to the dock. With the boat tied up, he checked once more: still only that one man. He climbed onto the dock and strode up the hill to the gate in the palisade, studying tracks in the snow. Only one person had walked this way, someone with bigger feet than Onni’s.

The gate was locked, of course, but he knew where the spare key was stored, in a pre-Rash steel box behind a rock ten meters from the gate. Only the villagers had known that, and so the containment team had not disturbed it. Onni took out the key, unlocked the three locks, and returned the key to its rightful place before letting himself in and locking the gate behind him.

The person’s footprints marked the paved path from the gate to the village square. To either side of the path had stood modest houses, now nothing but charred beams rising from snow-covered rubble. That one, to his left, had been Lalli’s home. Onni gazed at the ruin for a long time before he went on.

The village square was snowy and desolate, the benches and tables gone — they’d been used as fuel in the pyres that had devoured the villagers. On the far side, however, was something new: a trim new whitewashed cabin with smoke rising from the chimney. A quick check with his mage-sight told him that the stranger was within. Tamping down the outrage he felt at this intruder in his home village, Onni strode forward and knocked at the front door.

The stranger who answered the door looked rather scruffy. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his dark blond hair, which had obviously once been cut short, had grown out rather untidily. “Welcome! I didn’t expect anyone today. I’m Mauri Möttönen, a skald, stationed here through the summer. And you are?”

Onni studied him, feeling no threat. “Onni Hotakainen. This is my village.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Hotakainen! Of course I know your name. Please come in, warm up by the fire. Please understand that I make no claim to your village; no one does. I’m assigned to maintain the graveyard, the palisade, and the dock until the village is settled again. But that’s up to you, not to me.”

Onni took a seat in one of two sturdy, handmade chairs by the fireplace, set the backpack beside the chair, and gestured to Mauri not to worry. “Thank you for caring for the village. I’m passing through and … and I have urns to place in the graveyard.”

Mauri looked down at his hands. “I heard of the fate of the Silent World expedition. I was sorry to hear of your loss.”

Onni shifted on his seat, uncomfortable at letting the lie stand. “Thank you. I don’t wish to speak of that.”

“Of course, of course.” Mauri hesitated. “Will you join me for supper?”

After a tasty supper and desultory conversation about current affairs, Mauri showed him to one of the four bunks in a back room of the cabin for a night much more comfortable than he’d expected.

---

As the Sun rose Friday morning, after a good breakfast with Mauri, Onni went down to the graveyard, which Mauri had, indeed, maintained, cleaning the most recent snow from the gravestones. The graveyard had been set on a hill so visitors could look out over the palisade to see the wide world, and Mauri had trimmed the trees so the view would be clear even after the trees leafed out.

Onni walked along the long line of gravestones showing death in Y79. Finding the gravestones of Juha and Anne-Mari Hotakainen, he knelt and scratched a small hole with the trowel Mauri had lent him. He settled Tuuri’s urn in the hole, half-buried with her name visible. After packing the dirt around the urn, he moved on to the gravestones of Jukka and Tuulikki Hotakainen, where he likewise placed Lalli’s urn.

Onni stood, dusting his hands, and looked out at the eastern shore almost two kilometers away. He had done what he could to give Tuuri and Lalli a proper memorial even if they perished far away and their bodies were never found.

With a sigh, Onni turned away and paced along the gravestones again, looking for one he’d missed: Venla Järvinen. When they were sixteen, Onni had been a man and Venla a woman for three years by Finnish law. They’d been old enough to marry, and if they had married, she would have been with him and Tuuri on the livestock island all summer, spared infection with the Rash. But although it was legal to marry at sixteen, it was discouraged, and they had meant to wait until they were eighteen. They would never marry.

Tuira Järvinen. Mertti Järvinen. Here were her parents, and beyond, her brothers. But where was Venla?

Onni strode along the rows of gravestones. Perhaps she hadn’t been identified? But while he, Tuuri, and Lalli huddled on their refuge, listening to gunshots echoing across the lake, the villagers had written notes for the containment crew, making sure their bodies would be identified.

There was no gravestone for Venla, no gravestone for an unidentified body. Onni sank to his knees, staring out at the far shore and imagining Venla, mad and paranoid as the Rash sank its tendrils into her brain, rowing away from the village before anyone thought to sink all the boats.

Venla was out there, and no one knew but Onni.

We did what was right. We didn’t marry, and that’s why she —

Onni ran a hand through his hair, trying to think what to do.

She must be dead. Even if she survived the change, she was out there where the grosslings are. They don’t hesitate to kill each other. Eleven years of dodging other grosslings. How could she still be alive?

He had felt the deaths of his parents, of his uncle Jukka, his father’s twin. He hadn’t felt Venla’s death, but he hadn’t expected to, as she wasn’t blood kin. What if he hadn’t felt it because she wasn’t dead?

Onni looked to the north, where the Kade lurked, and to the south, where his sister wandered in peril. His duties lay with them, but … but … He closed his eyes, lowered the barriers he had built against the voices of the grosslings, and let them flood in.

“It’s so cold.”
“I’m lost, where am I?”
“Help me!”
“Where are you?”

Voices out of the past, voices of strangers. Onni took a shaky, relieved breath.

“I’m so lonely.”

He knew that voice.

Venla was out there, out among the monsters. Had been out there for eleven years, while he believed her to be sleeping peacefully in Tuonela. Had been a monster out there for eleven years.

North. South. East. Duty tore at him.

He dragged himself to his feet and stumbled to Mauri’s cabin. With mumbled thanks, he took his backpack and the food Mauri pressed on him, made his way to the dock and his rowboat, and cast off.

Onni rowed. As he passed the north end of the island, he turned east.

“So, we figured it out,” Sune said as the triplets ate their breakfast in the boys’ room on Tuesday morning.

Anna looked up from her bowl of unsweetened porridge. She sat closest to the door, listening for their parents, while Sune and Håkan leaned against the wall beside her. “What did you figure out?”

Sune gave a triumphant grin, the effect somewhat dimmed by porridge on his chin. “We figured out a grownup to go with us.” They had discussed the problem the night before: three children trying to travel from Sweden to Finland alone were going to raise questions. Although they had discussed those adults they knew, none seemed likely to help them run away.

“So, who is it?”

Håkan set down his bowl and got to his feet. “I am Matti Hollola,” he announced in Icelandic. “I am thirteen, so by Finnish law, I am a man. This is my brother, Kalle, and my sister, Liisa. Our grandmother was half Swedish, and we came to Sweden to look for her family, but we didn’t find any survivors and we don’t speak good Swedish. So now we are going home to Finland. Isn’t that right?” he added in Finnish.

Anna set down her own bowl and pretended to applaud. “Perfect!” she said, also in Finnish. “That’s perfect.” She thought about the solution while her brothers grinned at their own cleverness. “Oh, but wait, no, I’m not Liisa. I’m …” She thought about it, trying to remember more names from Onni’s stories. “Pekka. I’m Pekka Hollola.”

“That’s a boy name,” Sune objected.

“I know, but they’re going to be looking for two boys and a girl, so we’ll be three boys. I’m Pekka.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s great,” Håkan said. “We’ll do that.”

“Yeah, so —” Anna raised a hand. “They’re coming!” Leaping to her feet, she took her bowl with her, set it gently on the floor outside her door, darted into her room, and closed the door behind her. Snatching up her knitting, she settled on her bed as if she’d been there all morning.

Light footsteps approached the door and then receded. That was their mother coming to fetch the plates, then; their father had a heavier tread. Anna slipped forward and cracked the door to listen as her mother’s footsteps faded down the stairs. Anna sighed, wishing that things were different somehow with her mother, then sneaked out and into the boys’ room again. She looked around the room, seeing only Håkan. “Where’s Sune?”

“He’s gone to check on the train schedules and the ships at the ports. He’ll be back soon.”

“He’d better be! When Mom brings lunch up, she might look in on us, or Dad might.”

“I heard Dad go out. I think he’s gone, um, wherever he goes these days. And you know Mom doesn’t want to look at us. She won’t check on us. It’ll be all right. And Sune’ll be back soon, anyway.”

“Soon” was a relevant term. After pacing around and quarrelling with Håkan in whispers about trivial irritations for a while, Anna went back to her room to work on her knitting. The hat was coming out lopsided, but she hoped to have finished it before they ran away. For now, they didn’t know when that would happen: the next day, the next week? It all depended on the trains and ships.

Being forced to keep quiet in a single room for hours is punishing for active eleven-year-olds, which is why their parents forced them to do it, sometimes for days at a time. But Anna well knew it could be worse. They could leave their rooms to visit the upstairs bathroom, but if they were caught outside their rooms for other reasons — if Anna was caught visiting her brothers, for instance — they would be locked in a closet for hours instead. They had all experienced the closet, and none would do anything to suffer it again.

Thus, Anna sat quietly in her room, knitting and worrying about Sune until she heard her father’s heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. She held her breath, heart pounding, as she waited for him to open the boys’ door and find Sune missing. But there were only the thumps of plates being placed on the floor and then her father’s footsteps descending the stairs. When silence returned, Anna sneaked over to the boys’ room, picking up her plate of bread and cheese as she went.

Håkan had both boys’ plates and was deep into his bread and cheese. “Maybe we can split his share,” he suggested through a mouthful of cheese.

“No, you can’t,” Sune said, pulling the window open and clambering in. “Give me that.”

As Håkan handed over the disputed plate, Anna asked, “What did you find out?”

“There’s a train to Skutskär twice a day, morning and evening, every day. There’s a cargo ship at Skutskär Thursday about noon. It goes to both Finnish ports, so we can take that ship to wherever Onni is. It takes passengers. And it’s cheap.”

Their father’s constant complaints about poverty since they were six had made the children paranoid about spending money. They had saved most money that had come into their hands over the years — gifts from Mormor, their earnings from the weeks when they ditched school, even a few coins from their parents — and so, based on Sune’s report, Anna saw with relief that they had enough to buy train and ship tickets for all of them, with some left over.

“We need clothes, though,” she said. “Our clothes are a lot nicer than Onni’s were. Even though Dad always says we’re really poor, I think Onni was poorer.”

Sune drummed the fingers of his left hand on the floor as he ate. “I know where there’s a third-hand store in the First Ring,” he said when his plate was half empty. “I’ll sneak over there and buy some stuff when I finish.”

Anna nodded along with Håkan. “I wish we could help —”

Sune shrugged. “Pudges over there’s too heavy to climb, and you’re too slow.” His normally merry expression turned grim. “I’ll do whatever I have to so we can escape.”

Looking down at her plate, Anna shivered. Escaping into Finland was a terrifying prospect, but what would happen if they stayed? I thought things would get better when we were rich again, but things are only getting worse. Dad is even meaner than before, and what kind of tutor will he find for us? If he knew how nice Onni is, he wouldn’t have let him be our babysitter.

The children finished their lunch in silence. As Sune climbed out the window, Anna took all the plates, set them outside their doors, and settled herself in her usual place, listening for anyone coming up the stairs.

Håkan sat down beside her. “I’ve been thinking about Onni. Where he is, I mean.”

“You have an idea?”

“Not where he is, but how we can find out.” Håkan shifted as if uncomfortable. “Mormor said the Icelanders have seers who can see all kinds of things, like where people are. So, they probably have one at their embassy. I mean, I would, wouldn’t you? We can go ask them where he is.”

Anna slipped a finger inside her collar to touch the string hidden beneath. “We can at least try.” She wondered how much would it cost. “It’s better than asking around a port to see if anyone knows him.”

By the time Sune came back with their new clothes, patched and worn but warm and comfortable, it was too late to go out again before supper.

---

The next morning, Wednesday, they decided there would be more time between lunch and supper than between breakfast and lunch. So it was that after a lunch of bread and cheese, Sune climbed to the roof to check for bullies or anyone else who might recognize them. When he found the coast clear, all three climbed down the downspout and raced away to the Icelandic embassy.

The Icelandic embassy was housed in a pre-rash office building, squat and blocky. In the lobby, they found an older woman, slender and short, in a comfortable blue and white uniform with a red kerchief around her neck, who asked their business. When they requested a seer, she raised an eyebrow.

“But you’re Swedes.” Swedes were notoriously skeptical of magic.

“Yes, but we need to find someone, so we need a seer,” Håkan said.

With a shrug, she pointed out the way to the seer. With hasty thanks, they darted away and soon knocked at the door with its hand-painted nameplate: Hulda Vitradóttir.

Hulda was a woman about their grandmother’s age, with hair that perhaps had once been red as well. Tall and plump, wearing a uniform similar to the first woman’s, she welcomed them with a smile. As she ushered them in, her gaze fell on Mormor’s scarf that Anna wore as always, and her eyebrows rose, but she made no comment. Gesturing them to seats in her small, cluttered office, she asked their business.

After an uncomfortable pause as the triplets hesitated in the presence of an actual seer, Anna said, “We’re looking for a man, Onni Hotakainen. He’s a Finn. He was our babysitter, and he left us, and we want him back.”

The seer seemed to hold back a smile as she took a seat behind her desk and put a hand to her chin. “Your babysitter. That’s a new one on me. Very well. Where is he? In Finland? Good. Wait here.”

They waited, shifting uneasily in their wooden chairs, as she hurried out and soon returned with a pre-rash road map of Finland. Seating herself, she put a finger on the map and looked up at them. “Describe him to me.” Their three-way descriptions were disjointed, but enough to convey his appearance.

“A mage. They are usually in Keuruu.” She put a finger on Keuruu, staring down at the map. “No, he’s not there.” She rubbed her chin. “Do you have anything of his? That would help.”

Somehow, Anna had known this moment would come. Slowly, reluctantly, she pulled the string from under her collar and over her pigtails, and held it out to show the small ring of ash-blond hair strung on it. “This, this is his hair,” she said, without looking at her brothers. “I took it from his brush before he left.”

“Anna’s got a crush on Onni,” Sune said in a sing-song as Håkan snickered.

“Shut up, Sune.”

The seer patted the air as if to silence them. “The gods must have guided your hand. Without this, I couldn’t help you. Now then, be still.”

The boys grinned at Anna, and she knew she had not heard the end of this. Nevertheless, they were silent while the seer closed her eyes and swung the string with its little ring over the map round and around until it stopped. She opened her eyes. “Joensuu.”

Anna leaned forward to examine the map. “Is that where he is?”

Hulda looked at the map again, swinging the string. “I don’t know. But the gods say that Joensuu is where you must go if you wish to find him.”

“Uh, do, do we owe you anything?” Anna asked.

“No. It is the will of the gods that you will go to Joensuu. And who am I to ask pay for that advice? Off you go now. You have a long journey before you.”

The children ran. Back at the house, they couldn’t climb back up the downspout. Instead, they took a riskier route, ducking under the windows to sneak around to the back where the trellis stood. So many times they had climbed that trellis to the roof, and now they did it again. Once they were all on the roof, they climbed down the downspout and back into the boys’ room.

Weak with relief, Anna went back to her room and fell on her bed to wait for supper. Tomorrow, Thursday, they would run.

---

With trembling hands, Anna dressed in her new clothes and looked around her bedroom. Unhappy though she’d been there, it had been her home all her life. She would miss it.

One last look around, one last sigh, one last tear wiped away. Anna shouldered her knapsack with its few essentials and left, closing the door behind her and setting her empty breakfast bowl before it. The boys’ empty bowls were already in place, and once she joined them, all three climbed out the window without a word.

Two blocks shy of the train station, the three ducked into an alley and Sune pulled scissors from his knapsack to cut off Anna’s pigtails and trim both hers and Håkan’s hair into something approximating Onni’s haircut. Anna then roughly trimmed his hair. As he restored the scissors to his knapsack, they clacked against something.

“What is that?” Anna asked, leaned close to look. “A pistol? Where did you get that?”

“I stole them — two of them — from Dad last night.” Sune looked smug. “I sneaked out and no one heard me at all.”

Anna opened her mouth and closed it again. He’d taken a terrible risk without telling them, but he was right: adventurers going into the primitive country of Finland would need weapons. She nodded, donned her knapsack, and led the way back to the main road as fallen hair blew away in the icy wind.

No questions were raised when Håkan bought their tickets to Skutskär. The three trooped onto the train and retreated into a compartment, being careful to speak only their bad Finnish among themselves. Though passengers glanced at them, no one commented as time passed.

And time passed. The departure time passed, and the train sat in the station. Anna wrung her hands, envisioning her furious father storming the train and dragging them out to fling them into the closet forever. She was near panic when the train finally — finally! — jerked into motion and took them away from Mora.

Two hours on the train, and they were in Skutskär, Anna and Sune trailing after Håkan as he made his way to the port authority and bought their tickets on the steamship Göteborg, already tied up and loading. The Swedish clerk asked a few questions, giving Håkan a doubtful look when he claimed to be both thirteen and Finnish, but shrugged and waved them on.

He’ll remember us when word comes that three children have run away. But by then we’ll be at sea, and maybe he’ll be off work and busy somewhere else.

At long last, the triplets trotted up the gangplank and found their tiny cabin, settling in for the voyage to Finland, to Joensuu, to Onni.

Onni tied up his boat in a peaceful inlet, pausing to open his inner eye and look around. He was surrounded by life: birds, fish, small mammals foraging in the leaf litter under the snow, but not a trace of the foulness of the rash. Off to his right, almost at the edge of his perception, a glittering blue pattern floated in the air, twisted, reformed, and cast a warning glow over all he could see.

He recognized it as a wardstone that kept the Kade away. While at Keuruu, he’d seen the wardstones created from stones gathered in the stream that flowed past the settlement and gave Keuruu its location. At the time, Onni had been a refugee, trained only in the Finnish tradition, not the Finnish-Icelandic fusion that the Keuruu mages were developing, so he hadn’t joined in making the wardstones, but he’d seen them sent out.

Along with the wardstones had gone the sentinels with their linked animals traveling to the Saimaa Lake area to defend the wardstones against animals, grosslings, or even corrupted humans who might try to move them. Onni didn't know which sentinels were here now, but he knew they would be watching him. Having confirmed that the area was safe, he closed his inner eye, clearing everything from his backpack except for some food for lunch. After a quick check that all was secure, he donned his backpack and strode forward through the wet snow and leafless underbrush, searching for that fugitive voice of Venla.

Onni was more than a kilometer inland before he encountered the first grossling. Not that he encountered it in the material realm; he was too careful for that. The creature was far away when he saw it with his inner eye. Seating himself on a low, snowy boulder, he extended himself into the in-between, taking the owl form of his luonto and winging to the twisting shadow-shape of the creature as it stood in the misty forest.

Dropping to the ground, Onni regained his human form and manifested a sword as the beast charged. Its form was much like that of the deer it had been, though it sported two extra legs and long, tree-like, intertwined horns. Onni stepped aside as it bounded towards him, swinging his sword at its neck with all his strength. Black blood oozed from the neck as the monster turned, its horns writhing and reaching for him. He dodged, darted to its other side, and struck again, this time severing that hideous head from the body.

The horror fell to the ground in two pieces, foulness oozing from it until it collapsed like an empty wineskin and faded away. With a last look around for enemies, Onni returned to his body, stood, and continued his journey. Far off, a mutated deer lay in the snow, dead without a wound.

Twice more, Onni perceived grosslings, though these were small, a rabbit and a squirrel. Even so, he struck them down. In the material realm, they were as deadly to him as any giant. Moreover, they were suffering, their small minds confused by the unnatural forms forced upon them. He struck with mercy, not with fear or hatred.

As he set forth again after killing the squirrel, Onni turned to the north, checking on the Kade as had become his routine. To his surprise, it felt closer, hotter.

So it does perceive me as I perceive it. Onni had long wondered if the Kade could perceive him in the material realm. No other mage perceived the Kade the way Onni did, not even Lalli. The best guess of the Keuruu mages as to why was that the Kade had enslaved Ensi — Onni’s grandmother whose apprentice he’d been for eight years. Though Lalli had the same blood connection with Ensi, he’d been her apprentice for only two years. Also, of course, Onni was a far more powerful mage than Lalli.

I suppose now it knows I’m outside the wards, so it’s coming for me. Well, that saves me from rowing any farther. At least I won’t be tired. And as long as I stay close to my physical body, I’ll have all my strength to fight it. With an inner quiver of fear, he ducked under a dangling branch and listened again for that voice, the voice that he had missed for so long.

He strode forward, still confirming his safety every hundred meters. As the Sun approached its zenith, he saw a village ahead, a small village, empty now but for four trolls. Once more, Onni stepped into the in-between, studied the trolls. Even he could not take down four at once, and they were too close together for his usual approach of luring them away and killing them one by one. Still, there were other ways, effective though messier. With a quick glance at the Kade — still safely distant — he took his luonto form and swept towards his foes.

The four were much alike, snake-like creatures with long wolfish muzzles and disconcertingly human eyes. They turned those eyes on him, raising their upper bodies to snap at him while their tails slapped at the misty ground. Onni beat his way high above, then dove down on the tallest troll, raking his talons across its eyes. The creature shrieked, striking blindly about and burying its fangs into the troll beside it. As the second troll screamed and tried to pull away, Onni plunged down another troll, blinding it as well. Only one troll was still snapping at him, but its thrashing comrades knocked it aside, giving him a chance to blind it, then swing around to strike the wounded troll still entangled with the first one he’d struck.

Onni landed, regained his human form, and manifested his sword. As the tangled mass of blinded trolls rolled about on the misty ground, he stepped in, striking them down one by one. Soon, all four dissolved into foulness and faded away. Glowing bird-forms leapt from the remains and soared up and away, following the birds’ path to Tuonela. Onni waited until all four were gone before turning away and returning to his material body.

Weary from the fight, he stopped briefly to eat his lunch. Recovered by rest and food, he listened to the tortured cries of trolls, searching for the one he both wished and hated to hear. That way, he thought, getting to his feet and striding forward once more. Perhaps a kilometer later, his inner eye found Venla, curled up as if in a cave, her arms over her face. He winced, thinking of a hollow where she might have hidden for all those eleven years. Yet he dared not even approach her in the material world, couldn’t offer any comfort.

Onni glanced around again — no dangers nearby, the Kade still approaching — sat down against a tree, and extended himself into the in-between. In owl form, he soared to her, circling above her. He needed to end this before the Kade reached him, yet using his luonto’s form to slash at her was too terrible to consider. Dropping to the misty ground, he resumed human form and manifested a sword.

Venla uncurled, got to her feet. In the in-between, Venla's hair was long, blond, and shining with brushing. Her body was young and lithe, her eyes wide and brilliant blue. But her mouth Onni had so often kissed was a horror, a maw full of needle-sharp teeth, and the hands he had so often held were drawn out in long talons. She hissed and snarled as she faced him. And now the Kade was near. He felt it like a fire at his back, but he couldn't turn to fight it with Venla before him.

Onni raised his sword. "I'm so sorry, Venla. I didn't know. I should have come back, but I —"

She lunged, snarling, and he leapt aside, wanting to strike but unable to force his arms to swing. "Please forgive me. You must move on —" She lunged again and he dodged. "Please, Venla, this must end."

Another charge, faster than before, and she darted past him, those taloned hands extended. He spun about, seeing the dragonish form of the Kade behind him and Venla lunging at it though it was twice her size. A slashing leap, a triumphant shriek, a cry of agony — the Kade turned and fled, blood weeping from its left eye, its corrupting eye. Venla ran after it, screeching something almost like words, but it was too fast, swiftly vanishing into the misty distance.

Venla turned back to Onni, blood dripping from the talons of her right hand. He swallowed, bracing himself for another fight as she paced forward, hissing, those blue eyes fixed on him. As she approached, Venla slowed, raised her hands to cover her ghastly maw, and …

With a hiss that was more of a sigh, Venla fell to her knees and bowed her head, baring her neck to him. Onni wished he could turn away, could at least close his eyes to his act, but he had no choice. He raised his sword and struck with all his strength. Dropping the sword, he pressed his fists to his face in grief.

"Onni."

Slowly, reluctantly, he lowered his hands to look at her, now a shining white swan, her graceful neck curving towards him. The hideous troll-body was gone, leaving only a black stain, already fading.

"Onni, my love, you did what you must," Venla said. "There is nothing to forgive; you did what was right. But remember always that you have my forgiveness, if you need it. Farewell! You know we'll meet again!"

Before he could answer, Venla leapt into the air and, in a few wingbeats, the bird-form took her spirit away to follow the birds' path to Tuonela.

It is possible to weep in the in-between. Onni wiped his eyes, looked towards the fleeing Kade, but shook his head. Though he could fly after it, the farther he went from his body, the weaker he would become. Flying down through the in-between to fight the ghosts in Denmark had nearly made him lose his luonto, and he couldn't afford any weakness while fighting the Kade.

Returning to his material body, Onni trudged on as he had before. Without Venla’s voice to lead him, he could only go in the right direction for the right distance, then scan about for the cave or hollow she must have hidden in. Perhaps half an hour later, he saw a shadowy gap in rocks. With his mask in place and the time since her death, he was safe from the Rash as he gently pulled her distorted body from the hollow.

Though he needed to go on, needed to take on the wounded Kade, he couldn’t leave her body like this. He gathered fallen branches for a pyre, laid her atop it, lit it, and stood back to watch through tears. After eleven years as a troll, he thought, she had still felt the evil of the Kade and struck at it rather than him, wounding it and destroying its greatest weapon, the corrupting eye. The eye would grow back; he had no doubt of that. But she had given him a chance against it. He would not waste her sacrifice.

Troll bodies burn much quicker than human bodies, but the Sun had fallen far down the western sky before the pyre burned down and, guided by his psychopomp senses, Onni gathered Venla’s ashes into his backpack and hurried back to his boat. It was far too late to go north, and he needed to talk to Mauri anyway.

Perhaps a quarter kilometer from his boat, Onni found himself blocked by a flock of gulls sweeping about and buffeting him with their wings. When he stopped, waving his arms to keep them away, a large sturdy gull landed before him, raised its wings, and stared at him.

Onni stared back at the gull as the rest of the flock settled to the ground around him. There was a shimmer about the bird … He opened his inner eye to see the spirit of a man beside the spirit of the bird itself.

Onni bowed. “Sentinel, I am Onni Hotakainen. I must —”

A gull landed on his head. When he raised an arm to knock it off, the gull before him screeched and the sentinel’s spirit lifted a hand to stop him. Though Onni gritted his teeth and tolerated the bird pacing on his head, when it pecked him hard, he swung at it despite the sentinel’s action. But it and all the other gulls leapt into the sky and flew away, just one remaining to circle above him.

When Onni glared up at it, seeing only a bird spirit, he closed his inner eye and stalked on, ignoring the gull as he sought his boat, cast off, and rowed back to Toivosaari. As evening shades closed in, Onni tied up to the dock and made his way through the palisade and up to Mauri’s house.

“Welcome! I didn’t expect you back,” Mauri said. “But you — are you all right?”

“No. I had to give peace to —” Onni had to stop for a moment. “To one of our villagers. I brought her ashes. I need to carve a marker. Do you have tools and a board?”

And so, as night fell, Onni carved a grave marker for Venla. By the light of the full moon, he buried the ashes with Venla’s family, placing the marker above the ashes. Mauri pressed him to eat to keep up his strength, and after supper, he fell into the same bunk as the night before, where he could cry himself to sleep in privacy.

While Onni watched Venla's pyre burn, the children disembarked from the ferry in the village of Mikkeli, more crowded than Mora, hemmed in by high brick walls with walkways where guards patrolled even in daylight. Standing out of the way as busy dockworkers rushed past them to unload and reload the ferry, Håkan shivered at the reality of their situation. They were three children in a foreign land, where they scarcely spoke the language, where they knew only one person, and there were no adults to help them, however reluctantly.

We were so excited at the thought of escaping. We were so sure of Onni's care that we didn't stop to think whether he would want to take us in, or if he even could. I've been playing at being a grownup, but now I have to be one for real.

As his thoughts ran along these directions, Sune nudged him. “I'm hungry.”

“Me too,” Anna said from the other side.

Håkan sniffed the air, finding the scent of fresh-baked bread somewhere close by. The other two did the same, and by unspoken agreement, they wended their way through the crowd toward the bakery. No one spoke to them, but they felt all eyes on them as they made their way to the bakery and bought a loaf of bread to share. Anna, whose Finnish was better than the others, had to ask the baker, a kindly woman in her early forties, where there was a cheese shop. There were no signs on the shops as the villagers needed none. Following her directions to the shop, the children bought a hunk of cheese, and soon sat to eat on a stone bench in a small copse where the trees were just budding out. Though their supper was the same meal they would have had in their cold home, here they were free, if also alone and in danger.

Once Anna finished her share of cheese, she turned to regard Håkan, her brow furrowed. “I don’t get it. I thought we had just enough to pay for the train and the ship. Then there was the ferry, and now this food … Where did you get the money?”

Håkan and Sune exchanged guilty glances before Sune answered. “You know that flower pot that Mom keeps the emergency money in?” As he spoke, Håkan saw realization dawn on Anna.

“You stole it? You stole the emergency money?”

Håkan patted the air. “Keep your voice down. And speak Icelandic. If they figure out we’re Swedish —”

“I stole it at the same time I nabbed the pistols. We needed that money to get away. Håkan spent so much on the clothes and stuff, we didn’t even have enough for the ship. And they don’t need it for emergencies anymore anyway. They’re rich, remember?”

“Yeah, but … I mean, when Onni finds out … and you didn’t tell me!” Her voice rose on the final words, and Håkan gestured again to keep her voice down.

“Onni will understand we needed that money.” He glanced at Sune again, but Sune was intent on licking the last crumbs off his fingers. “And we didn’t tell you because we knew you’d be upset.”

“Upset! I’ve been thinking maybe Mom would help us — maybe just a little — but now that you stole from her, she’ll be as mad as him.” Anna took a deep breath, studying the crust in her hand. “So, okay, done is done.” She looked out at the port, with the ferry and a scattering of fishing boats. “Where are the trading boats?”

Håkan welcomed the change of topic. “We can ask after we eat.” He hoped there would be one soon, so they could get out of Mikkeli before word of three Swedish runaways made it to the authorities.

They had hardly finished their meal and started for the port when a man approached them. Stocky, gray-haired, in his sixties, the man had an air of authority as he raised a hand to stop them. Håkan gulped, fearing that word of their flight had already reached this distant village.

“I’m Teemu Huhtala,” the man said in Finnish, “commander of defenses.”

As the designated adult, Håkan stepped forward to reply, determined to keep up the charade in case the commander didn’t know their status. Since they couldn’t pass here as Finns, they had become Icelanders on the ferry, inventing names from their grandmother’s family. “Haki Vakursson,” he said, “my brothers, Jan and Sigarr.”

“We have few Icelandic visitors, and fewer still so young. What is your business here?”

“We’re looking for Onni Hotakainen,” Anna said. Even though he was the adult, Håkan let her answer, as her Finnish was best.

“Onni Hotakainen,” Teemu repeated. Of course he would recognize the name; the saga of the Silent World Expedition had enthralled the Known World for weeks. “He’s not here. He came through, bought a boat, and went north. On Monday, I think that was.” He frowned. “Why are you looking for him?”

Anna glanced at Håkan for permission, and continued at his nod. “He was our babysitter. But he left us, so we came to look for him.”

Teemu’s face hardened. “I would not have thought —” He looked to the right and snapped his fingers. Several young dockworkers looked up at the sound, left their tasks, and came to his side. “You need not look for him. We’ll find the —” Onni’s vocabulary lessons hadn’t covered the terms Teemu used, but his harsh tone made their meaning clear.

“Wait, wait,” Sune said. “Onni didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Our Finnish is not good,” Anna said. “Maybe we said something wrong? We don’t mean to get Onni in trouble.” She waved her hands helplessly as Teemu frowned, looking from one child to the other.

“Wait here,” the commander said with a gesture that included both children and dockworkers, and he strode away through the light crowd which cast curious glances at the children.

As Håkan waited with the others, wondering what had gone so terribly wrong, a mechanical groaning and squealing drew his gaze to the port, where the water gate swung slowly and ponderously shut, closing off the village from the dangers of the night. Though the ferry and many fishing boats remained docked, there would be no more boats until morning. Håkan swallowed. They were trapped in this village, in this country, and Onni’s help was a faint and distant hope.

Teemu soon returned with a middle-aged woman of medium height, slender, with ash-gray hair and light blue eyes. Regarding the children with a kind expression, she said in school Icelandic, “I’m Noora, the teacher in this village. Teemu asked me to translate for him about Onni Hotakainen. Abandoning children is a very serious crime here. Is it not so in Iceland?”

The triplets looked at each other in surprise. Anna spoke first. “He didn’t abandon us. He was just our babysitter.”

As the woman looked puzzled, Håkan clarified, “Our … the grownups … hired him to watch us when they weren’t around.” He hoped she hadn’t caught his hesitation as he didn’t want to acknowledge that they had living parents. “He left because of, you know, the Expedition and everyone dying. They hired another babysitter, but we didn’t like her, so we came here to look for Onni.” When you put it that way, our decision sounds silly and childish. And perhaps it is. But now we’re stuck with it.

“Then he was not entrusted with your care? He made no vows to protect and support you?”

“No, nothing like that,” Anna said. “They just paid him to stay with us and teach us Finnish and … things,” she finished weakly.

Noora gave Teemu a swift translation, and much of the tension went out of him. With a gesture, he dismissed the dockworkers, who nodded to the children and darted away. “Still,” Teemu said, “your guardians allowed you children to travel alone to find him?”

“We’re not children!” Håkan said. “Or, I mean, I’m thirteen, so I’m a man by your laws.” He tried to look grownup and not at all like a frightened child.

Noora frowned. “The Icelandic age of majority is fourteen. No, fifteen.”

“But he’s not in Iceland; he’s here,” Sune put in. “Why should he have to wait more years to be a man, just because of where he was born?”

The two Finns looked at each other, and Håkan saw the corners of Noora’s mouth quiver as if she suppressed a smile.

“Fair enough,” Teemu said. He turned to Håkan. “You are responsible for your brothers’ behavior in our village.” He gave them a curt nod and strode away.

“I suppose Onni has gone home,” Noora said, “even though — well, you won’t go anywhere until morning. Where are you staying the night?”

“We haven’t found an inn yet,” Håkan admitted.

This time, Noora smiled openly. “This way, then.” She led them to the Inn and Restaurant, the only building with an identifying sign, and left them. Inside, Håkan requested the cheapest room, as they needed to save as much of their remaining funds as possible. Though this room was tiny, with a single cot which the boys gave to Anna as they spread their bedrolls on the floor, it was dry and safe, and soon warmed up with their body heat.

As they settled down for the night, Anna counted on her fingers. “What?” Sune asked, looking over at her and drawing Håkan’s attention as well.

“It’s been four weeks since Marc broke my finger. That means it’s healed and I can take off this stupid splint.”

Håkan gave the wounded digit an uncertain look. “Maybe you should have somebody look at it before you —” But she was already unwinding the bandage.

With the splint on the bed beside her, Anna opened and closed her fist several times, her face intent. “It’s a little stiff, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s healed.” She patted the scarf, which she’d worn day and night. “Mormor’s magic worked!”

“Then can I have the scarf?” Håkan reached for it, and after so long, Anna handed it over. He folded it and added it to his knapsack while Sune snickered at his careful actions. But Håkan’s happiness at possessing the scarf soon wore off, and he lay awake for a long time, worrying. Will Onni want us, or send us away? How did we ever think this would work? And what if we’re caught?

Saturday morning, after they had breakfast in the Inn and Restaurant, which further reduced their small purse, the triplets went down to the port to watch the water gate open. By mid-morning, a single trading boat had sailed in. The children watched, staying out of the way, as dockworkers swarmed aboard, removing cargo and carrying more on board. Three cats strolled among the piled cargo, jumping up on crates and sniffing at bundles. While the dockworkers scurried about, the captain and his crew of four young people, hardly older than the children, made their way through a welcoming crowd to the Inn and Restaurant.

The triplets hesitated, watching the door to the inn and wondering how to arrange a voyage. Since there seemed to be no one to ask for tickets or even a schedule, they would have to approach the captain personally. They still hadn’t worked up their nerve to follow him into the restaurant when he came out, looked around the port, and strode directly to them.

“I’m told you need me to take you to Onni Hotakainen’s village.” At their eager nods, he added, “I can get you there by evening.”

Sune was always practical about money. “How much?”

All three winced at the price. “We can’t do it,” Håkan said, looking out at the port. “Maybe someone else —”

“No, no one else can do any better. We all have schedules, people waiting on us. To take a couple of days running you up there would cost any of us.”

Håkan’s thoughts sought desperately for their next move. Can we find work in this small village? Or will we have to crawl back to Mom and Dad? What will they do to us?

The captain turned to gaze at the inn before turning back to the children with a slight smile. “Well, there’s another way. His village isn’t far off our loop. You can come with us — stay out of our way, sleep on board, bring your own food — and we can get you up there in a week. How about that?”

“How much?” Sune asked again.

The man regarded them thoughtfully. “Taking you along won’t cost us anything, so no charge for friends of Onni Hotakainen.”

Håkan’s knees felt weak with relief. They wouldn’t have to go home, and surely Onni would still be there in a week.

“But you’ll have to fish for your meals if you don’t bring food,” the captain continued. “So why don’t you run along and buy supplies. We leave at noon.” As the children, overjoyed, offered their thanks, he added, “By the way, I’m Jimi Karppinen. Be back by noon.”

Onni donned his backpack with a weary sigh and clambered onto the dock below the bridge, leaving the boat tied up. If he made it back, he would use it; otherwise someone else could take it. The boat could go no farther on the river, for there were rapids beyond the bridge, and he lacked the strength to carry the boat past it.

Looking up, he examined the sturdy stone bridge before him. Sideways on top was a pre-Rash bus, its whitewash and windows dazzling in the late afternoon sunlight. On the bus, on the bridge railing, and wheeling above him were dozens upon dozens of seagulls calling, swooping, watching. Even if Mauri had not told him, he would have known that this was the station of the North Sentinel, Eyes of Gulls, the Gull Mage, Väinö Väänänen.

At the end of the dock was a ladder and beside it a square grill rigged to a pulley above, apparently intended to lift supplies. With arms that ached with effort, Onni climbed the ladder, stopping halfway up to sniff the air. Behind the smell of mud and rotting vegetation and a whiff of ammonia from bird droppings, there was a hint of cooking odors: meat, maybe mutton.

That had nothing to do with him.

Onni climbed the rest of the way to the bridge, meaning to turn right and follow the road from here, but at the top was the Gull Mage himself, beaming at him in welcome. The man had a massive belly that hung over his belt, a long, bushy white beard, and a completely bald head on which a gull stood to peer down at Onni.

“Welcome,” the Gull Mage said. “Welcome to my grand home! The stew is ready and the nettle tea is brewing. And I’ve set up a cot for you.”

Onni blinked at him. He had only a faint memory of the man, seen from a distance at Keuruu eleven years ago.

“Where are my manners! Väinö Väänänen, at your service.”

The courteous answer came to his lips without thought. “Onni Hotakainen.”

“Of course, of course. I remember you from Keuruu.” Väinö’s smile widened. “And I’m not the only one.” At Onni’s blank look, he added, “A trader recognized you as you rowed, and all the lake knows now that Onni Hotakainen has come home.”

Onni shook his head with a shrug. As one of the handful of survivors of the Kade’s attack, as a mage of Keuruu, as kin to two of the lost Silent World Expedition, he often drew notice. But what did it matter? No one would come to intrude on him in Toivosaari.

The ancient bridge had been transformed by the addition of topsoil, leaving a paved path between garden plots, leading to an ornate wooden door that had been built into the side of the bus. Dozens of gulls perched here and there, peering at them intently.

“Come, come!” The Gull Mage turned to lead the way to that door, and Onni followed. The mage seemed eager for human company. Onni was not, but he had not the energy to argue with the man after the events of the day before and his day-long journey up the lake and up the river.

Väinö waved Onni to a seat by a small table already set with two places and disappeared behind a screen, returning with two bowls of fresh mutton stew. Placing the bowls on the table, he returned for two mugs of nettle tea, and seated himself, digging into his supper with enthusiasm. Onni ate in silence, glancing up now and then at the gulls that poked their heads inside to examine him and then retreated. While he would have liked to say his grief for Venla killed his appetite, emotionally it had been eleven years for him since she died, and he’d been working hard all day. The stew was delicious, and he accepted a second serving. He would need his strength for the next day, the next week … or however long it took.

“My condolences,” Väinö said, sitting back with his nettle tea when their bowls were empty. “I heard about your family.”

Onni had not lied. He had never said that Tuuri and Lalli were dead, but he had allowed others to believe the lie. How much had that damaged his connection to reality? He wasn't sure, but as a mage, he needed reality on his side, especially when he planned to take on so formidable an enemy.

“They are not dead,” he said. “They’re still in the silent world, but there are good reasons they must be thought dead.”

Väinö blew on his nettle tea and gave Onni a long thoughtful look. As a fellow mage, he must understand Onni’s need to speak truth. “I see. Thank you for your confidence.” He smiled. “No one will ask me anyway. You are going after the Kade, though, aren't you?”

“Yes.” Onni didn't mean to argue about it. If the older mage tried to stop him, Onni would simply leave.

“Well, others have tried and they have failed. Perhaps you will be the one to finally destroy the thing.” He straightened as if summoned, closed his eyes, and was gone from Onni’s senses. After a moment, he opened his eyes and smiled. “The gulls noticed a deer approaching, but it was clean. Let’s see … ah, you should know of some dangers out there. In particular, do you have a firearm?”

“No.” Onni had trained with a rifle from the moment he was old enough to lift it, but once he came into his full strength as a mage, he had not found it necessary to carry one.

“That's good because there is a giant out there to the north. The survivors who have seen it called it Surma. It’s extraordinarily dangerous; it can slash its talons through a human body. And it's attracted to loud noises, particularly firearms. Several bands of hunters have learned this to their sorrow. But if you have no firearm, you should be safe from it. As long as you’re quiet. Beyond that, I’ve heard there is a settlement of acid-spitting trolls. I'm not sure exactly where it is along the road, but be wary.”

At Onni’s shrug, the older mage added, “Of course you will be wary. There is little else I can do to help you, but I have a cot for you for the night and food to take with you in the morning.” Onni nodded, and they finished their tea in silence.

Väinö was the perfect host, so far as Onni was concerned. After serving supper and imparting his warnings, the mage sat back, closed his eyes, and communed with his gulls. Onni stepped out of the bus to look around as the evening shadows fell. The road, overgrown but passable, led off to the east. And out there, north, northeast, he felt the burning presence of the Kade. It waited for him.

In the morning, Onni set out on foot after a hearty breakfast with Väinö. He’d slept well on the cot, better than he would for many days, he suspected. As he slept, he’d visited mage-space, finding it as disturbed as before.

Much as he wished to discuss that disturbance with another mage, he hadn’t gone to Keuruu to speak to the mages there; they would have tried to dissuade him from going after the Kade. To his shame, he suspected he would have given up his quest if they’d pressed him. When he tried to discuss mage-space with Väinö, he’d learned the older mage was weak in mage-space, seldom visited, and hadn’t known about the problem. Disappointed, Onni had given up the question and settled for thanking Väinö for his hospitality before taking his leave.

Step by step, Onni trudged along the overgrown road, stopping frequently to open his inner eyes and check for grosslings or even large natural animals within his range. He gave all threats a wide berth; though he could kill them in the in-between, he was reluctant to risk such combat with the Kade so near. At times, he had to break through the leafless branches of bushes to keep going, leaving a trail behind him. The grosslings were more active than they usually were in the daytime, for the sky was overcast and he endured several brief showers. By evening, he was over eight kilometers from the sentinel’s station.

Onni made camp in a hollow among rocks, protected on three sides, and ate a cold supper of bread and fried fish given by Väinö. He made no fire; beasts and natural animals avoided fire, but it might attract trolls from kilometers away. While his body slept, he stood watch in the in-between, observing the small lives of forest creatures as they foraged or hunted around him. Once, a roiling darkness moved through his view, and he manifested a sword. If it came close, he would fight despite the nearness of the Kade. But the grossling moved on, and the Kade remained glowing sullenly to the northeast. In the morning, Onni gathered his things and moved on.

On the evening of the fourth day, Onni found himself on the outskirts of the abandoned city of Joensuu. Though the Kade was now just kilometers away, he dared not camp in the city. Small mammals in the wild generally fell to predators when they were ill, but cities provided them protection. Thus, cities swarmed with grosslings that had been rats, mice, or squirrels, besides the trolls and dog-beasts. Even so formidable a mage as Onni would struggle to defend himself in a city at night, especially with the Kade lurking, ready to strike.

Casting about for a safe camping spot, Onni felt an odd warmth between him and the Kade. He worked his way eastward, curious but alert to threats. As he approached the river that flowed through the city, the warmth grew stronger, and he recognized it: ahead was a lehto, a place sacred to and protected by nature spirits and the forest gods, Tapio and Mielikki. The lehto would be the perfect camping spot, safe even from the Kade, but to Onni’s dismay, it was an island, too far out for him to swim to.

Onni looked up and down the shoreline and its docks. Any boats that had been left anchored or tied up had sunk decades earlier, so his only hope was to find a rowboat in a boathouse, protected from the worst of the weather. With a last glance at the island in the distance, he made his way along the frost-heaved and overgrown street beside the river, scanning for threats as he tried the doors of likely buildings.

As the evening shadows grew long and the grosslings around him began to stir, Onni forced open yet another double door that opened onto the street. To his surprised joy, a rowboat lay inside, turned upside down with its oars leaning against the wall. The roof had failed, dark streaks of mold ran down the walls, and natural mice scurried away as he entered. He ignored all this as he heaved over the boat, tossed the oars inside, and dragged it to the river.

As soon as he stepped into the boat, water began to seep through the hull, for the wooden boat had dried out in its long decades of neglect. Onni took the oars and rowed with all his strength, gambling that he could reach the lehto before the boat sank. How he would get back if it sank was a problem for another day. The lehto was heavily wooded, and though he could not break branches without angering the spirits, he thought he could gather enough fallen wood to make a crude raft.

The water reached Onni’s ankles by the time the boat’s bottom scraped on the shore of the lehto. With a sigh of relief, he climbed out, pulled the boat to a sheltered location, dumped the water, and left it tied up. The peace of the lehto enclosed him, his fears and pains falling away as birds called and squirrels chittered from above. As he explored the forest of ancient spruces and silver-barked birches in the fading light, he found an abandoned homestead. The main cabin was largely ruined and uninhabitable, but there was an intact building which he recognized as a sauna, a circular stone well with no bucket, and an intact hexagonal grill hut. An oak tree cast its vast shadow over the grill hut.

Onni gathered wood, careful not to damage any trees, and built a fire in the grill hut. Here in this lehto, he had no fear of what the fire might attract, and he relished the luxury of a hot meal and warm coals to sleep beside. One last check of his surroundings showed no threats nearby, and he slept soundly for the first time since leaving the Gull Mage’s station.

In the morning, Onni found the boat was more seaworthy as the boards had swollen as it sat in water overnight. Water still came in, but at a slower pace as he rowed to the far shore. Leaving the boat tied up, he made his careful way through the city, alert to the grosslings infesting the buildings around him. Soon he was just close enough to the Kade to observe it with his inner eyes as he stood atop the ruins of a collapsed building.

Onni stopped, frowning. There was the Kade, a twisting shadow around the sullen glow of embers, but close by were three masses of darkness. They gave the sense of spiritual importance, of power, of protection, even as grosslings. They were bears, he realized. The Kade was close to bear-beasts.

Onni closed his inner eyes and sat down to consider the problem. His inner eyes gave him only a blurred and indistinct view of the material world, but he knew the bear-beasts were sheltering somewhere deep in a building. More grosslings lurked near the Kade, making it risky for him to approach even in daylight.

Why is the Kade with those bear-beasts? He looked around, confirming no threat had come near. It knows I’m hunting it, and it’s wounded now. That thought sent a jolt of sorrow through him. I can’t attack the beasts without opening myself to the Kade, and I can’t get close to the Kade without risking the beasts. Is it possible it’s actually using the bear-beasts as guards against me? Whether or not, there’s nothing I can do right now.

Onni got to his feet and scrambled down, making his way back to the rowboat. After tipping it to dump the water accumulated in the hull, he climbed in and rowed back to the lehto. Eating his lunch beside his small fire in the grill hut, he mulled over his options.

I can’t go back. This is my best chance to destroy the Kade, now while it’s wounded and can’t corrupt me. But how soon will it heal? He stared out at the river and the collapsing buildings beyond.

This city is too dangerous. Somehow I have to drive it out. If only I had some wardstones … but I have no seeking stones and couldn’t make a wardstone if I did.

Onni looked down at the dried fish in his hand, sighed, and gnawed off a chunk. He needed to keep up his strength.

Perhaps I should just fish for a while and see if the Kade will move away from those bear-beasts. Fresh fish would be better than this.

That thought triggered something, an idea that trembled just out of reach but felt important. He scowled, retracing his thoughts.

Fishing. Fresh fish. Live fish. Living things.

He laid down the dried fish, walked to the oak tree, and knelt to fumble in the damp fallen leaves, coming up with an acorn. He stared at the acorn as the idea came clear. Living things have magic in themselves, magic that might repel the Kade, if I can strengthen it.

Onni returned to the grill hut with the acorn in his hand. He studied it for a long time.

Early on Thursday afternoon, as Onni neared the outskirts of Joensuu, the triplets sat cross-legged on the deck to finish their lunch of fish stew and hard cheese. They'd been with Jimi Karppinen for four days now, working their way up the west side of the lake system, stopping at every settlement, many of which were mere homesteads inside palisades. Every settlement had a dock, and at every dock, as soon as the boat tied up, the palisade gates would fly open and the residents would run out to meet them and trade. Woolens, hand-woven cloth, sacks of dried fish, bright dyes, iron tools: everyone had something to sell and something to buy.

Although Jimi had said the triplets would have to fend for themselves, in fact, he and the crew had been very generous with them. They’d given the children carved wooden bowls, lent them a pot, and allowed them to cook in the boat’s tiny galley at lunchtime — always under the watchful gaze of Artemis, the ship’s gray cat, who dozed on a coil of rope until someone lit the stove. Since none of them had ever fished before, Jimi’s lanky sixteen-year-old son, Runar, had fashioned simple rods from spruce saplings and shown them how to bait hooks and dangle their lines off the boat. In three days of effort, they’d caught two fish.

“We should become traders,” Sune said, licking the last drops of fish stew from his bowl.

“But,” Håkan said with a grin, his green eyes bright with mischief, “aren't you planning for us to be Cleansers?”

Sune glared at him. “That was in Sweden. We’re in Finland now.”

“Oh, I'm sure there're Cleansers in Finland,” Anna said. She always tried to be the peacemaker between her brothers.

“It's not the same,” Sune snapped, jumping to his feet and stomping to the back of the boat. No, to the stern. He had learned the terms from Jimi: bow, stern, port, starboard.

Sune gripped the polished wooden stern rail with both hands, glaring at the tree-lined shore and the blank face of the palisade around the latest settlement. His plans had unraveled so quickly. He had planned for them to become Cleansers. In three years, Emil would be a captain, and they would join his team as Cleansers. But thanks to their father, Emil was lost in the silent world, and everyone thought he was dead, even though he wasn't. And now they were on the run in Finland, looking for Onni.

Each night while they lay on the deck under the stars, Håkan and Anna had whispered to each other about whether Onni would really want them. Sune hadn't answered because his plan to go to Onni had made so much sense when they were still in Sweden, when they needed to run away. But now, well, now he had to make another plan. Just in case.

Sune always had plans, although, to be fair, many of his plans didn't work out. But he always had them. And his siblings always made fun of him.

“Hey, it's okay," Anna said from behind him. "We didn't mean to upset you. It'll be all right. We can be traders.”

Sune hunched his shoulders, refusing to turn to her. “We don’t have to. There’s lots we can do. We can find work in Onni’s village, like we did in the First Ring. Or one of these settlements. Or we can camp on one of those rocks out in the lake and fish. Even if Onni doesn’t — can’t keep us.”

“Yeah. It’ll work out.” After a long silence broken only by the lap of waves against the boat, she left him. He stared out at the water, wishing they could talk to Onni and settle the question. Then he could make a proper plan.

---

“How much longer to reach Joensuu?” Sune asked that evening, as the boat sliced through waves made golden by the setting sun.

“Joensuu?” Jimi frowned. “We’re not going to Joensuu. That's a dead city.”

“Can’t get there by boat anyway,” Runar said, looking up from the rope he was untangling. “Rapids on the river.”

“We’re not going there?” Sune couldn’t believe his ears. “But — but —”

Anna turned from watching the shoreline. “Isn’t Joensuu Onni’s village?”

“No, of course not.” The trader looked from one to the other. “Where did you get that idea?”

“The seer told us that's where we would find Onni,” Håkan said, coming to Anna’s side.

“What do you mean? What seer told you?”

When Håkan described their visit to the seer, omitting the hair ring and ignoring Sune's snickers and Anna's muttered, “Shut up, you”, Jimi rubbed his whiskered chin before glancing over at the ship’s cat lying at her ease in the prow, watching forward. “Artemis, did you hear all that?”

The cat twitched an ear but didn't turn her head.

“An Icelandic seer. The gods have spoken, then. You must go there, no matter what.”

Sune winced, seeing his plans shatter. Their escape had gone well so far, despite all their worries about the future, but he hadn’t planned on searching for Onni in a dead city. Could they do it? Would the gods (if any) want them to try? They were just children!

The trader seemed to share his thought as he studied the three of them, biting his lower lip. After several seconds' consideration, he asked, “But why would Onni Hotakainen go to Joensuu at all?”

The children responded with a shrug. They'd thought in terms of Onni going back to where he came from before joining the army at Keuruu.

There was a moment's silence as Jimi gazed off into the distance. “Joensuu is outside the perimeter.”

“Perimeter?” Anna asked. “You have a wall around the lake?”

“Not a physical wall, no. The lake is protected by wardstones, and there are sentinels to make sure the wardstones aren't moved.”

Håkan leaned towards him. “Wardstones? You mean magic? You keep the grosslings out with magic?”

“Not the grosslings, no, but the Kade.” They looked at him in puzzlement. “Onni never told you about the Kade?” At their headshakes, he continued, “It's an evil spirit of envy and spite. It hates good people and wants only to destroy us. Eleven years ago, it destroyed four non-immune settlements in the northern part of the lake. Including Toivosaari, the home village of the Hotakainens.”

Sune stared at Jimi in surprise. Onni's home village was destroyed?

Sitting up in the prow, Artemis regarded the four humans with intent amber eyes.

Jimi's expression turned sad. “I traded with all those villages. Knew so many of the people. Only a handful of survivors from that incident, so —” He stopped.

“So?” Anna asked. Sune looked past her at the lake, trying to imagine Onni, his sister, and their cousin driven from their home by some terrible attack.

The trader nodded to himself. “That's what he's doing, then. He's going after the Kade, just like Liam Kallio did. Liam was another of the survivors from what happened back then, but two years ago he went after the Kade. And never came back.” He rubbed his chin, studied the children again. “Did Onni ever tell you about Tapsa?”

Sune glanced at his siblings, and all three shrugged.

“Tapsa was my friend, lived in Toivosaari. Trained cats, all the cats in the north end of the lake. Smartest cats you ever saw.” Jimi looked at the cat again. “But the smartest were his own cats. Stayed with him all the time. When Toivosaari was lost, he left a note asking the containment team to take care of his cats. But they didn't. Couldn't find the cats and couldn't stay long to search for them. When I heard Tapsa's cats were missing, I went over to Toivosaari myself.”

He turned his head and spoke while looking out over the lake. “Terrible place. Never gone back. I called the cats, and they came out. Hid from strangers, but came out for me. So I took them with me.”

He stood, took a few steps forward, and sat on the hull beside the cat, stroking her. “Hera was old already; she died years ago. But Artemis ... she's getting older but still sharp.” The cat raised her head with its age-whitened muzzle to stare at his face as he addressed his words to her. “The younger Hotakainens died in the Silent World, both of them. You and Onni Hotakainen are the last survivors of Toivosaari.” Her ears flattened a little. “He's gone to find the Kade, to avenge the village. To avenge Tapsa.” She pricked her ears towards him as he leaned down. “Do you want to go with these young people to find and help Onni Hotakainen in his quest?”

As Sune watched, hardly noticing Anna gripping his arm in her eagerness, the cat looked over at them, at the trader, and back at them. Artemis stood, stropped her head against his hand, and then strolled over to join the children.

“Well, that's that, then,” Jimi said. “We can’t afford to abandon our loop, but in three days we can swing by Väinö Väänänen’s station. He's the north sentinel; from his station, you — you four — can make it up to Joensuu and … whatever waits there.”

---

“We could turn back,” Anna said as they huddled together in their bedrolls on the deck. Her voice was low and hesitant, as if she were ashamed of the words. “She said we’d find him there. She didn’t say we had to look for him.”

“How can we turn back now?” Håkan sounded outraged. “We came all this way to find him, and we’re just going to go — anyway, where would we go?”

“The Silent World is dangerous! Especially for you, but —”

“I have my mask!”

Sune watched the third-quarter moon sink into the west as he spoke. “Artemis will watch for grosslings so we won’t ever get near them. She’s the smartest cat in the world.”

“What if we get caught by a swarm?” Anna demanded. “What if we can’t avoid them?”

“Then we’ll climb a tree and stay silent. They’ll go away. You know the rule.”

“ ‘If you come across a Beast, a Troll, or a Giant, do not run or call for help, but stand still and stay silent. It might go away.’ ” Anna chanted the rule they’d learned in school. “It might go away. That doesn’t mean it will.”

“You want us to leave Onni out there alone against some monster that destroyed whole villages, when the gods themselves told us to go find him?” Håkan’s voice trembled with emotion. “I’m not turning back, not with Artemis going with us.”

“Yeah!” Sune said. He imagined Anna's eyes rolling as she answered with a resigned, “Okay, okay, I didn’t really want to turn back either.”

A footstep alerted them to one of the crew — Runar, perhaps, or his younger sister, or one of their cousins. The children fell silent, and soon Sune slept, his dreams all about exploration.

In the morning, fifteen-year-old Aarne sat down with the children to check their supplies and decide what they needed for their trek to Joensuu. When Anna objected that they didn’t have the money for a tent or even for cooking gear, he shrugged. “Uncle Jimi said the gods are sending you to Joensuu, and it’s our duty to help you along the way. Let’s see; what else do you need?”

Hiss!

The children crowded together, Sune and Anna flanking Håkan, Sune on the far right, freeing his right hand to draw his pistol. Väinö had warned them about Surma, but Surma was a distant threat, and the grossling that Artemis had detected was a very near threat.

Before them was a loud hiss — Artemis’s threat — and a snarl. The hissing continued, moving off to the right, and the snarling followed with much crashing of bushes. The forest seemed to hold its breath as the birds fell silent and even the breeze seemed to die. Sune couldn't see the grossling; whatever Artemis had found ahead, it was very large but still hidden in the underbrush on the overgrown road.

Anna patted the air and they crouched in mud and remnant snow, peering about fearfully. They were hidden in the leafless underbrush, but anything attracted to the noise ahead would be likewise hidden from them. Sune tracked the noise with the drawn pistol. Like all Swedish citizens, all three children were trained with both pistol and rifle, but he was the best marksman, and so he had taken charge of the pistol.

The crashing, hissing, and snarling continued, moving away, then stopped. The forest was silent for several heartbeats, and then the birds sang again and the breeze rustled the dead grasses around them.

Sune waited, anxious, the pistol still aimed at the point where he'd last heard the grossling. What had happened to Artemis? Had the thing gotten her?

But then the cat returned, eeling through the underbrush without a sound.

“Are you all right?” Anna asked in a whisper. They all whispered in the forest. Even with Artemis keeping watch, they worried what might overhear them.

Artemis sat on her haunches on a dry tussock and licked her paw, the universal gesture cats used to indicate safety.

As the triplets stood, Anna turned to Sune. “This is too dangerous. Artemis can't keep doing this. She's wearing herself out scouting.” She glanced at Håkan, who was studying the surrounding forest as if trying to stay out of the discussion. “How far have we come?”

Håkan always knew where he was. Now, he stared back to the west for several seconds before answering, “Almost four kilometers.”

Both Anna and Sune looked up at the Sun. It was mid-afternoon and they'd been travelling since dawn, following what appeared to be Onni's trail with Artemis scouting before them, ranging left and right to detect anything nearby. She'd found and lured away three grosslings already.

Anna waved at the sky. “It's going to take us weeks to reach Onni at this rate. We can't do it.”

Håkan shook his head. “But we have to.”

“I know, we have to reach him, but not this way. We've got to have help. So we've got to go back to Väinö, and get him to help us.”

The boys looked at each other, and Sune looked down at Artemis. She was surveying the bushes ahead; she was willing to go on. So was he, but …

“She's clever and brave and tough, but she's just one cat,” Anna said, as if following his thoughts. “She's got to sleep sometime. So do we. What do we do when she's asleep, when we have no way of knowing what's creeping up on us?”

Håkan stared at the ground but nodded. Sune stroked his hair, once shoulder-length, cut and styled by Emil, but now short and ragged thanks to Anna.

Two to two. But she's right. We can't do this. We're just three little kids with one cat and a single pistol.

With a sigh, he turned and led the way back along their trail. For a moment, it seemed Artemis would stay behind, but she ran after them and soon was scouting ahead.

The evening shadows were long by the time they reached the rickety fence that marked the edge of the protected zone. Väinö waited there with a burning torch and a dozen gulls on the ground around him. “Welcome, welcome. I'm glad you made it back.” He turned to lead them back to his bus.

“Did you expect us to turn back?” Sune asked, already irritated at the man.

Väinö shrugged. “I was worried about you. Come, supper is ready, and the cots are still set up.”

They followed him back to the bus where they had spent the previous night.

The triplets ate in discouraged silence, and Väinö made no attempts at conversation. He served them all seconds on mutton stew and bread, and otherwise left them to their thoughts.

“So,” Sune said as Väinö cleared the table, “I've been thinking how we can get to Joensuu. Onni left his rowboat here. And I know Runar said there were rapids, but we can carry the rowboat around the rapids and take the — what?”

Väinö was already shaking his head. “No. You have no idea how heavy that boat is. Three grown men could portage it around those rapids, but not you three children. It's too heavy for you. If you tried again, you’d still have to walk.”

“Then we’ll have to walk,” Håkan said before Sune could argue. “We must go back. I feel that there's a pattern here. Us and Onni are part of that pattern, so we need to be there with him. We need to help him defeat that Kade.”

Anna looked from him to Väinö. “Will you help us?”

“I can’t.” Väinö gestured at his elderly, obese body. “You'd be slower with me than just walking by yourselves.”

Sune’s irritation boiled over. “Why haven't you sent your gulls out and dealt with this Kade? Why does Onni have to do it? Why do we have to do it?” His voice was rising.

Väinö's cheerful face hardened, anger showing through, and outside the gulls shrieked. Half a dozen flew into the bus, landed on the table, and raised their wings in a threat. “Hush, my chicks, hush,” Väinö said, his face softening. “There now, they mean no harm, no danger. Go on out.” The gulls flew out, all but two, who stayed in the doorway, watching the children.

“I would kill the Kade if I could.” Väinö's voice was cold. He stood, rifled through a drawer, pulled out an old driving map, and laid it out on the table. “We're here. The Kade is somewhere up there. I feel it sometimes, but I don't have enough gulls to search all of northern Finland. And even if I did, even if they found it, it's incorporeal. They can't hurt it, but it can hurt them. It can kill them. It entertains itself by killing birds. We've found the murdered flocks.”

Väinö leaned towards Sune, his fists on the map. “I can't kill the Kade. Do you really think I wouldn't if I could?” The gulls shrieked outside, and the two inside raised their wings. He glanced at them, took his seat, and visibly calmed himself. The gulls quieted.

Intimidated, Sune looked away from the man to his siblings. Anna bit her lip, then said hesitantly, “But still, the gods, I guess, have said that we need to go to Joensuu.” She glanced at the gulls in the doorway. “What if you send a couple of gulls with us? I mean, they could watch from overhead. They could see grosslings from farther away, and Artemis wouldn't wear herself out, searching back and forth. Their range would be greater than hers.”

“And they could look for Onni, too,” Håkan put in.

“So would you send a couple of gulls with us?” Anna persisted. “Wouldn't that help? Wouldn't that be something you could do?”

Väinö looked from her to her brothers to the gulls. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I can send some gulls.” The gulls straightened, bobbed their heads up and down. Sune would have sworn that they were excited at the prospect.

“Now,” Väinö said, “go to bed. We must keep watch for the night. It’s the dangerous time. The gulls will be ready for you in the morning.”

The next morning, Artemis rode on Anna's shoulders, and three gulls flew over the children's heads, circling, diving, searching ahead. Väinö had told them that the gulls’ names were Syksy, Talvi , and Halla. Sune couldn’t recognize them except by comparing their sizes — Syksy was smallest and Talvi the largest — but Anna claimed to recognize them by their markings.

Retracing their steps was faster with the gulls searching for dangers. The triplets detoured wherever Onni had, and were led away once from his trail by a gull (Halla, according to Anna) who hopped and fluttered through the underbrush for a dozen meters, then led them back to the road. On that first day, they hiked ten kilometers and camped in a ruined cabin.

It rained on the second day, a slow, cold rain that melted more snow into mud. The children pulled up their hoods and plodded forward as the gulls directed them, while Artemis rode on Håkan’s shoulders under his jacket with only her head suffering the water. Twice they heard the gulls screeching ahead, leading something away, but they didn’t see it and they kept moving. They slept in their tent, listening to the patter of rain. The rain stopped at last near noon of the third day, while the triplets pressed on.

On the third night, the children camped a kilometer west of the outskirts of Joensuu. Talvi and Halla had gone back to Väinö, but Syksy stayed and was joined by another gull. The children didn’t know the new gull’s name and addressed her respectfully as “Fru Gull”.

---

“Now what do we do?” Anna asked once they’d struck the tent and packed up. At first light, the gulls had flown off to the east over the city, leaving the children with no guides.

“Wait here?” Håkan suggested. “Onni could be anywhere in there.”

Sune bounced on his toes. He should be exhausted after three days of hiking, but he itched to move, to find Onni, learn the situation, and make new plans. “At least we can head into the city. We have to go in anyway, and I don’t want to wait for the gulls to come back and tell us so.”

The other two glanced at each other, shrugged, and donned their knapsacks. Artemis stood, stretched, and led the way, ears pricked and twitching at every rustle in the dry grass and leafless bushes of the abandoned city.

They were well within the city when the gulls returned, swirling above them as if to express joy and triumph. When the smaller gull, Syksy, dived to drop something before Anna, she scooped it up and held it out for her brothers: a small, off-white, rectangular object, its straight edges showing human action. “It’s cheese!”

“You found him!” Sune said to the gulls dancing above. “Which way? Show us, show us!”

While Fru Gull arrowed off to the southeast, Syksy swooped down to snatch the cheese from Anna’s hand and gulp it down as she laughed at his antics. The triplets followed the gulls, their steps light with hope, as Artemis ran before them. Several times, Artemis turned the group away from streets, guiding them to others a block or two away. Sune saw no threat, but knew her feline senses had found grosslings somewhere in the ruins.

Early in the afternoon, they halted at the river, looking around in confusion. There was no bridge; why had the gulls brought them here? “Look!” Håkan cried after a long moment, pointing to the island in the distance.

Sune’s knees went weak with relief as Onni Hotakainen rowed across the river to fetch them.

“What are you doing here?”

Of all the people he might find on the banks of the river in the ruined city of Joensuu, the Västerström children were the most unlikely. Even Tuuri and Lalli, somehow making their way up from Silent Denmark, would have been more likely. He would have thought this some trick of the Kade, if not for the gull. And Väinö.

Just minutes earlier, the gull had landed in the middle of his acorns. He would have shooed it away, but for the presence he’d felt of the Gull Mage. And so, when the gull flew to his rowboat, he’d followed. As he’d rowed across the river, he’d seen the figures on the shore, but he hadn’t believed — couldn’t believe — until he stood beside them.

Onni’s Icelandic was only fair, and not up to understanding three children talking at once. He caught only “gods” and “seers”, but before he could question them further, the cat came out from behind Anna's feet. She was dark gray with faint black tabby markings and intense amber eyes, and her muzzle was whitened with age, but Onni didn't see her physical markings; he saw the hue and the shape of her spirit.

Sinking to his knees, Onni held out his hand. The cat politely touched his finger with her nose, then leapt for him. And he caught her. Onni caught Artemis and held her in his arms, burying his face in her fur.

But only for a moment. There was no time for this as they stood by the river in a troll-infested city. And where were their parents? The children wouldn’t be standing here alone if their parents were nearby … and alive. There was no time for questions; they’d stood too long already. “Dump the water from the boat and get in,” Onni ordered. “You will tell me everything, but not here. Get in and bail, or we'll sink.”

He didn't know the words “bail” and “sink” in Icelandic, and he was certain the children didn’t know them in Finnish, but his meaning was clear. With Onni rowing, the children bailing with their hands, and Artemis supervising, they made it to the island. As soon as the boat scraped bottom, the children hopped out to drag it farther up the shore. When Onni climbed out, Artemis leapt into his arms and from there to his shoulders, wrapped herself around the back of his neck, and purred so hard he thought his body vibrated along with hers.

First things first. “This is a lehto,” Onni said, waving at their surroundings. “It's protected by nature spirits and by the forest gods, Tapio and Mielikki.” The children looked around, and then back at him, confused, and he wished he’d taught them more about Finland when he had the chance.

“This place is protected,” he said again. “Protected and sacred. Don't disturb the local animals, or you’ll anger the spirits and the gods. And don't disturb the plants either. Don't break off branches. Don't pick berries. Just leave everything alone. Do you understand?”

The triplets nodded, though they gave the trees nervous glances.

“Very well. Also, there are no grosslings here. There never will be. So, you can take off your mask.” As Håkan removed his mask with a relieved smile, Onni looked the children over. “You're filthy, all of you. Come along. There's a sauna, and you can clean up while you tell me what in the names of all the gods has happened.”

This time only Sune answered. “We talked to an Icelandic seer, and she told us we’d find you in Joensuu. So, we came to find you.” He shrugged as if he’d explained the situation in full.

Onni stopped to stare at him and the other two. They didn’t act like children suddenly orphaned; he knew what that was like. Tuuri had been ten, and she’d clung to him, crying, for three days. But then, they were Swedes. How did Swedes react to devastating loss?

“But your parents, what happened to them?” He waved towards the city, not wanting to upset them, but needing answers. “Why are you alone?”

He thought Anna looked sad, though not grieving, and all three looked embarrassed. Sune raised his chin, defiant. “They’re in Mora,” he said. “We ran away.”

“We wanted to find you,” Anna said, clutching her right hand with her left, “because no one else cares about us. Well, besides Emil, but he’s out there somewhere, and Mormor, only she’d have to give us back.”

Håkan picked up the thread of conversation. “So we went to the seer, and she told us you’d be here.”

Onni couldn’t believe his ears. “You ran away. You wanted to find me. Me, of all people. And you came by yourselves to this city in the middle of the Silent World.” He glared at Håkan. “And you aren’t even immune!” He clutched his head as he turned and strode away, deeper into the lehto.

“You aren’t immune either,” Sune said behind him.

“I’m a mage! And I’m more than twice your age!”

“You’re not very old,” Anna said, and Onni gripped his hair and pulled. She had a crush on him. He knew the signs; Tuuri had had a series of crushes in her early teens. He’d never imagined a girl having a crush on him until he took care of the Västerströms, and he’d thought she’d forget once he was gone. Yet now here she was, here they all were, in deadly danger.

Artemis purred, and he wished he could discuss the problems with her. She was older than these children and had had kittens of her own. At least that gave him another topic.

“Where did you find Artemis?”

Anna launched into the story of their journey with Jimi Karppinen and Artemis’s decision to join them. By the time she finished, they’d reached the sauna, and Onni set the triplets to work building a fire and fetching fallen wood. He needed time and silence to think.

Onni sat on the weathered bench in the grill hut and stared at the piles of acorns before him. He’d spent almost a week gathering acorns in the ruined city, since he dared not harm those in the lehto, bringing them back, and pulling the life energy from one to strengthen another. He thought another day of work would give him enough for his purposes; a tackle box full of spools of fishing line sat to the side, ready for use. Behind him rose a murmur of Swedish, while two gulls watched him from their perch on the other bench. He felt no trace of Väinö’s presence.

I can’t leave the children on the island while I go after the Kade, not with only one boat. If I even tripped and broke my leg, they’d be trapped. Yet I can’t take them with me into that danger. Onni thought of bear-beasts ripping the children apart as he fought the Kade. Even Artemis’s purring couldn’t stop his shudder of horror.

“I’ll have to take them back,” he told her. “What choice do I have?” His throat tightened; his eyes burned. “This was my best chance. Venla — Venla slashed its corrupting eye. But the eye will heal; I’m sure of it. When I come back …” He poked at the acorn he’d been working on before the gull interrupted him, and looked up at the gulls. Still no trace of Väinö.

“Why did Väinö help them? Why did anyone help them? They should have been sent back as soon as they reached Nuijamaa Port.” Artemis licked his ear. “Of course, if they’d been sent back, I wouldn’t have seen you before …” He pushed the acorn away. It was of no use now.

“Well. The gods do as they will, and not as you or I might wish. We’ll spend the night here and go back tomorrow. Maybe … I don’t know. Maybe Väinö can send for someone to take them back to Mikkeli. I’ll pay whatever it costs. I’ll lose a week, but still, maybe it won’t have healed …”

“You won’t take us back,” Sune said, and Onni jumped, startled.

Onni turned to see the boy behind him, dressed in his grimy clothes, skin rosy from the sauna. “What? Of course I —”

“We got here by ourselves, so we can go back by ourselves. Only we won’t, because we’re here to help you.”

Anna and Håkan joined their brother. “Yeah,” Håkan said, and Anna folded her arms and nodded.

“You can’t —”

“Me and Anna are immune, and anyway Artemis and the gulls can keep us from running into grosslings. We can fetch and carry whatever you need from the city. Håkan can fish, so we’ll have food. We’ll help you!”

Onni got to his feet and folded his arms. He wasn’t a tall man, barely average height, but he loomed over the children. “I’m not taking you into danger. The city’s bad enough, but the Kade is worse, and it’s been staying close to three beasts. Bear-beasts. It doesn’t matter if you’re immune or not with bear-beasts.”

“Three beasts and a Kade,” Sune said. “And you’re going up against them alone in the middle of the city?”

Onni closed his eyes, forcing down his frustration. “I didn’t mean to go up against them in the city. These acorns would work to drive the Kade back, almost like the wardstones. If I can set them up around the Kade, maybe it’ll flee and leave the bear-beasts behind. Even if they go with it, they’ll be outside the city, and still easier for me to deal with.”

Anna came forward to study the acorns. “How are you going to set them up?”

There seemed no way to discourage the children’s curiosity, and he couldn’t start their journey until dawn anyway. Telling them his plan would do no harm.

“I imbued these acorns with — well, it’s hard to describe. The magic of living things. Those acorns over there aren’t alive anymore. Don’t mix them up with these. There’s fishing line in this box. I was going to tie the acorns to the line, and then string them across streets and ruins so the Kade can’t cross, and —”

“And you can trap the Kade forever,” Anna said, gazing at him with awe. “That’s so —”

“Not forever. These acorns are — they’re overfilled with life magic. It’ll leak out in a week or two.” Onni stared down at the acorns. All that wasted effort; the acorns would be weak, maybe useless, by the time he got back.

Sune gave him a calculating look. “What about those wardstones at the lake? They don’t run out, do they? If you stuck those around the Kade, that would trap it forever.”

“Good idea. I can’t imagine why the sentinels never thought of that. Except that the Kade would feel the wardstones coming and run for it, so we’d never catch it.”

The boy took a step back, ducking his head. “Yeah, okay, dumb idea,” he said in a low voice, but then raised his head to glare at Onni. “Then why won’t it run from those things? Why will it let you trap it with them instead of —”

“It will run. I don’t mean to trap it; that was your sister’s idea. I meant to drive it out of the city so I wouldn’t have to deal with all the grosslings in here.”

Anna’s face reddened as she backed away. “It just sounded good.”

“Maybe we can help you, though,” Håkan said. “Do you need to tie the acorns to the strings, or can we? And then Sune can run around the city and tie them where you need them.”

“Hey, me too!” Anna put in.

“So that’ll be a lot faster than you doing it all alone,” Håkan finished.

“I can’t let you —”

“The gods told us to come here. Everybody says that.” Sune looked smug. “And anyway, you can’t stop us. We’ll run all around, and you can never catch us all at the same time.”

Onni glared from one child to the next. This was the sort of disobedience that Siv Västerström had warned him about when he first offered to babysit in exchange for room and board and contact with Tuuri. Sune was wrong; there were magical ways he could … but he wouldn’t corrupt his magic by using it against children. Especially not if the gods really had sent them here. His shoulders slumped.

“All right,” Onni said finally. “You can help. But you have to obey orders so I can keep you safe.”

As the triplets high-fived each other, Onni took out four spools of fishing line. “First, we need to tie the acorns to the strings.”

“How can you fight the Kade, really?” Håkan asked, taking up a magical acorn and gazing at it as he spoke. “Jimi said it destroyed whole villages. How can you fight it by yourself? And why do you have to?”

Onni sighed, because these were questions he’d asked himself as well. “I can reach it in the other realm that we call ‘mage-space’. I believe I’m strong enough to fight it there, if I can get close enough to it in the material realm. As for why me … I have a link to the Kade. I know where it is at all times. For ten years, I’ve felt it out here, and I’ve felt its hatred of me.”

Across the battered table, Anna finished tying an acorn to her current string before asking, “But how —”

“The Kade corrupts mages and … collects their spirits, you might say, to make it stronger. My grandmother Ensi was a powerful mage. The other mage in our village was Hilja.” Onni looked down at Artemis, enjoying a fish beside his feet. “And Tapsa. He had his own kind of magic.”

Deep breath. Get it over with.

“Anyway, the Kade corrupted Hilja and made her smuggle a grossling into the village and infect everyone. Except me and Tuuri, because we were on our family’s livestock island the whole time. Ensi and Lalli were the only immunes in the village, so they weren’t infected. Ensi was corrupted, though. Still, she managed to send Lalli away to warn us. And then … everyone died, the containment team took us to Keuruu, and they started working on defenses against the Kade. And after almost a year I felt Ensi perish, and then —”

“Wait,” Anna said. “You said everyone died before.”

Onni’s eyes burned as he fought to keep his voice even. “Everyone died at the time, but Ensi’s spirit didn’t move on as it should. It still hasn’t. She was corrupted, but her spirit was still fighting the Kade, though I didn’t realize what was happening at the time. After almost a year, she lost the battle.” He shrugged, not wanting to remember how that loss had felt. “Now she’s wrapped up with the other spirits captured by the Kade. I was her grandson and also her apprentice for eight years. The connection between her and me became this link between me and the Kade when she was defeated.”

“Wow,” Sune said. Beside him, Håkan tied his acorn to a string with a grim expression that sat oddly on his childish face.

Onni took up two unworked acorns from the pile before him and stared at them as he spoke. “The Kade hates everyone, but it especially hates me and Lalli. Maybe because we’re mages who escaped it, or maybe because it twisted Ensi’s love against us. Anyway, other mages may be content to keep it away from civilization, but I want to destroy it. I need to destroy it to protect Lalli and to free Ensi’s spirit.”

“Wow,” Sune said again.

“We’ll help you,” Anna said. “That’s why the gods told us to find you.”

Onni shook his head but didn’t answer. If the gods wanted to help me, the last thing they should have done was to saddle me with three children.

---

“Can't you tell which is which?”

The triplets had worked all morning tying acorns to strings. After they’d used all the acorns he had ready, they’d asked to play marbles with some of the dead acorns while he prepared more. And they were children. They should have some fun. Perhaps he had been a little harsh in telling them not to get the dead acorns near his magical acorns, so he did his best to keep annoyance out of his voice as he answered Håkan's question.

“Those ones are empty of life magic; I pulled it all out. These ones are overfilled with life magic, and the magic leaks. If you put them together, the magic will leak even faster, and then I have to do the work all over again.”

“Oh, okay.” The children turned back to their little pile of dead acorns on the ground.

Onni had been sitting still for too long. He rolled his shoulders and twisted to stretch his back before reaching for a fresh acorn. Then he stopped. There was something in what Håkan had said, something in his tone … “Wait. Håkan, can you tell which is which?”

“These magical ones, they glow, and those don't.”

Anna and Sune turned back. “They glow?” Both children stared at the acorns on the strings they’d set aside, as if they could make them glow by sheer effort.

Onni was no mage finder, and his grandmother's seeking stone had disappeared with her. But if ever there was a boy who should have been tested for mage ability, it was Håkan.

Anna caught on faster than Sune. “You mean he gets to be a mage?” She looked at Onni accusingly. “And we don't?”

Onni was familiar with sibling rivalry. Tuuri was six years younger, and when she realized that both her older brother and her younger cousin were mages, while she was not, she'd been outraged too. He looked from Anna to Sune and back again. What had his grandmother, Ensi, said to Tuuri?

“He doesn't get to be a mage. He has to be a mage. And being a mage means going up against things like the Kade. It means living alone in the Sentinel's base for months at a time, because somebody has to stand against the Kade and other such dangers. It means —”

Onni thought of his long flight down to Denmark and his battle against the ghosts. “It means wearing yourself out fighting things that other people can't even see. But you, you're immune. Because you're immune, and he isn't, you’ll have to fight in ways that he cannot. So you get to be immune, and he gets to be a mage. Or you could say, you have to be immune, and he has to be a mage.” Onni thought that would reduce the sibling rivalry, though he had no illusions that the problem would be solved entirely.

“Can I help you, then?” Håkan asked. “You can teach me to make —”

“No, I can't teach you. Your gods are different from mine. You have to get training from your own people.”

Håkan knelt, picked up a dead acorn, and flicked it like a marble. “My own people are Swedes. They won't teach me anything.”

Onni closed his eyes. This was a distraction he didn't need. “We’ll deal with that when we get back.” If we get back.

---

“I have to take you with me,” Onni said as he loaded sacks of acorn-strings into the boat the next morning. “You’d be safer here, but if anything happens to me, you’d be trapped. Get in.”

With the children aboard, mugs ready for bailing, he climbed in and took up the oars. “I’ll leave you somewhere safe, near the river, with Artemis and the gulls.” He glanced up at the gulls circling overhead, hoping they would stay with the triplets. He couldn’t order them to do so, and Väinö hadn’t shown himself since a brief look around the night before. “If I don’t come back by evening, you row back to the lehto. You’ll be safe there for the night. In the morning, you’ll have to make your way home.”

Though the children didn’t answer him, they muttered among themselves in Swedish until the riverbank drew near and Onni hissed at them to keep quiet before they attracted something. Once everyone was on shore and the boat tied to a broken chunk of concrete, he pointed out a nearby warehouse. Its brick façade had collapsed in a heap, and only jagged fragments remained of its windows. Still, it looked stable, and he sensed no grosslings in or near it.

“Stay in there until I come back. Or until evening.” He reached for the sacks of acorn-strings.

“No,” Sune said, stepping in front of him to block his hands. As Håkan moved to his brother’s side, Onni stopped in confusion.

“We were thinking about this,” Anna said, stepping to Sune’s other side. “If you know where the Kade is, doesn’t it know where you are?”

Onni didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. He could see they’d figured it out.

Sune folded his arms. “Yeah. So when you put those strings around the Kade, it’s going to know you’re up to something.”

“What stops it from siccing the bear-beasts on you while you’re doing that?” Håkan asked.

Before Onni could answer, Anna added, “Or why can’t it just make the bear-beasts move before the path’s ready? There’s a million places bear-beasts can hide in the city.”

They’d put their finger on the part of his plan that he worried most about. The acorn-strings would discourage the bear-beasts from attacking him, but might not stop them. Moreover, though they wouldn’t like it, they could probably change shelters in daytime. What if the Kade simply forced them to move every time he had them nearly trapped? What if he were forced to chase them around the city for days while its corrupting eye healed and the magic leaked out of the acorns?

He had been silent for too long. “Yeah,” Sune said again. “But we figured it out. Me and Anna put the strings around the Kade. You and Håkan put the strings that go out of the city. The Kade’ll be busy looking at you, but it won’t know what you’re up to. And it won’t notice us because we’re not mages.” He raised his chin with a proud grin while his siblings nodded beside him.

“No,” Onni said. “No, no, no. I'm an adult, and you're children. I can't allow you to take such a risk.”

“But we'll have Artemis,” Anna said, “and the gulls. They can keep over-watch for us. And you can protect Håkan.”

Onni looked from one to the other. They’re right about what the Kade can do … and they made it through the Silent World to me with just Artemis and the gulls … and it’s broad daylight, with only a few clouds …

“All right,” he said finally. “But you can’t take any risks.”

“There it is.”

Sune glanced at the lamppost that Anna pointed out. A mass of rust, it still stood, though leaning as if pulled down by the vines that entwined it, last year’s leaves rattling in the chill wind.

Between dire warnings and attempts to back out of letting them help him, Onni had described half a dozen landmarks to watch for. The lamppost was the last; from here, they were to go three blocks east. From there, they would see from a distance the mouth of the underground parking garage where the bear-beasts and the Kade hid.

The two hesitated by the lamppost. Up to this point, they’d felt almost safe. Onni had scouted this route, and Artemis had led them, ears pricked and turning to every creak and rustle. Syksy and Fru Gull circled high overhead, swooping off northwards at times. Onni and Håkan would be out there, working their way southwards to meet Anna and Sune as they worked their way north.

Sune took a deep breath, as if to plunge into cold water, patted the pistol on his hip, raised the short bit of rusty rebar he carried, and strode away to the east. Artemis dashed ahead, and Anna hurried to catch up, her own rebar at the ready. Three blocks, turn …

There it was: a dark rectangular shadow under a half-collapsed building, about a quarter kilometer away. The children looked at each other , patted their sacks of acorn-strings, and pressed on. North.

Sune gave the sky a nervous look as they picked their way along the ruined street. A cloud drifted overhead, its shade cooling him for a moment before it swept on. Artemis turned to the left, bushing out and standing stiffly with one paw lifted and her tail straight out. Knowing the gesture, the children veered to the right, hurrying to pass the wreckage that alarmed her. When they were three meters down the street, she raced past them and led them forward.

A block from that dark maw, they stopped to block off the street. Anna tied an acorn-string to a bent piece of rebar, while Sune knotted the other end around the stump of a signpost. Not daring to approach the entrance, they circled the block to their west, so they could set a string between that block and the ruin under which the enemy lurked. Artemis stayed between them and the entrance a block south, her fur so bushed out she looked almost round.

With the street west of the entrance blocked, the beasts would have to escape to the east, so they backtracked to their original string. From there, they blocked the next intersection to the east so the beasts must go north. They didn’t block off the heaps of debris that had once been buildings, for Onni believed the bear-beasts would rather run along a street than clamber over the unstable rubble. They didn’t have enough strings to block off every building, anyway.

Their task went well, hour after hour, as they worked their way north, blocking the east and west streets at every intersection. Artemis guided them away from some intersections, forcing them to set up detours where the enemy would go east or west before going north again. Even with the stiff breeze and gathering clouds, they were soon so hot they had to open their coats. Though they grew thirsty, they allowed themselves to drink only half the water from their canteens with their meager early lunch of crispbread and hard cheese.

Near midday, Anna and Sune picked their way over rubble that stretched across the street. Artemis walked stiff-legged between them and the wreckage west of them. They were halfway across the block-long heap when the scratching started to the east. At first, Sune thought it was the freshening wind in the few bare trees, but then Artemis’s head snapped around, and Anna drew a sharp breath. The noise came from the heap of broken brick and splintered timber to the east, louder by the second.

“Run!” Sune cried, and they fled, arms flailing to keep their balance on the shifting debris, their sacks of strings and rebar weapons waving. The scratching grew into scrabbling as Artemis’s snarl ripped the air. Though gulls dived to help, the foe moved through tunnels under the rubble, and the birds beat back into the sky, their beaks unbloodied.

The children were meters from the intersection ahead when Sune’s foot slipped on an unsteady board. As it slid into a break in the rubble, something seized it, sending shooting pain through his foot. With a shout, he yanked it out, bringing up a beast with its fangs sunk through his heavy boot and into the side of his foot.

Once, the beast had been a rat. Now, its body was cat-sized and scaly, its earless head elongated and befanged. Sune swung at it with his rebar stick, and Anna turned back to do the same, barely missing his shin as she struck. Artemis snarled behind him, and unearthly shrieks told him she was hurting the beasts. But there were many shrieks moving towards the humans. The monster gnawing at his foot was only the fastest.

With two blows to its head, the beast was dead. With more scaly bodies appearing through gaps in the rubble, the children turned and ran, the beast’s body dragging behind Sune, each step sending a jolt of agony through him. Only when they were across the intersection did they stop.

Anna knelt beside him to jerk the beast’s head up, rip its fangs out of his foot with the greatest pain he’d ever felt, and fling the body onto the rubble. As Sune sank to his knees with a strangled gasp, Artemis streaked across the intersection to join them. Her paws were bloody, but he doubted the blood was hers; she moved too fast and too easily. Whirling when she reached them, she gave the beasts hiding in the rubble one last hiss.

Onni had a first aid kit, but Onni was still far away. Even as Sune opened his mouth to say they had to get going, Anna pulled out the knife they’d used on the acorn-strings and cut a strip from her shirttail. Even in his pain, Sune cringed at the damage to her shirt. What their mother would say when she saw the shirt … his boot … but she never would. Shaking off the thought, Sune pulled off his boot and sock, wincing with each movement and watching over Anna’s shoulder for attackers. Behind her, crunching and slobbering noises told the fate of the dead beast.

Artemis prowled around them, ears up and twitching at every sound, but her tail was low. “Artemis, it’s not your fault,” Sune said. The cat stopped to look at him for a moment before returning to her pacing, her attention divided between the rubble full of rat-beasts and the wreckage west of the street. “The thing on the other side was closer. You didn’t know those rats had tunnels under us. It’s not your fault.” Inadequate though it was, it was all he could think of to say.

The heavy leather boot had protected Sune’s foot from the worst of the attack. He had two deep punctures, torn by the weight of the beast’s body, but no bones were broken and, once Anna had wrapped it up tight, the bleeding soon stopped. After pulling on his sock and boot, Sune got to his feet. His foot hurt, but he could walk.

“Onni can’t drive the bears over that,” Anna said, waving at the rubble, still seething with scaly bodies held back only by sunlight. The dead beast had already vanished, only a splash of blood remaining. “And there’s something else in that mess over there. Artemis is still watching it.”

“We’ll have to go back. Go around that way. Block off this street so the bears have to go west, and then …” Even standing on one foot with the other foot throbbing, Sune was planning.

While they continued their work, detouring around the rat-beasts, clouds built in the western sky. Sune gave them worried glances as Anna tied strings across streets and he and Artemis stood guard. The triplets had survived a rainstorm in the Silent World, but not in a city, where vermin beasts might lurk anywhere, ready to come out when the sky was overcast. As that worry occurred to him, he tapped his pistol, reminding himself that they did have a better defense than scavenged rebar. The thought that troubled him most, however, was what would have happened if Håkan had been there. He could only hope his brother was safe with Onni.

An hour later, the threatened rain had just begun when Sune saw movement to the north: Håkan waving before Onni nudged him to get back to work. Anna moved with renewed energy, closing off street after street as the other two did the same until the four humans, one cat, and two gulls reunited in a battered intersection where leafless bushes grew from every crack.

Sune tried not to limp as they met, but of course Onni noticed and questioned his injury, and of course Anna blurted out the truth before Sune could claim he’d sprained his ankle. At least she emphasized Artemis’s courage and Sune’s killing of the rat-beast.

“No!” Onni clutched his hair in his fists. “I knew I shouldn’t allow you to do this. But it ends here. Come, we’ve got to get back to the boat before everything wakes up.”

Sune looked at Håkan. He was the most vulnerable; it had to be his decision. With the near telepathic communication of triplets, Sune asked his question: do we help Onni finish his quest? Håkan nodded, and Sune turned to Anna. The same question brought the same answer.

“No,” Sune said to Onni.

“You’ll be safe on the lehto for the night, and we’ll go back —”

“No. We’re going to help you. Yeah, my foot got hurt, but not much, and you need us.” He waved at the acorn-strings forming a funnel from the bear-beasts’ hiding place to the forest. “You couldn’t have done this before the rain.”

“This isn’t your problem.” Onni threw his hands up in frustration. “You say the gods sent you to help me. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they sent you to stop me, before I make things even worse. Have you ever thought of that? Because I have.”

“Mrrr.” Everyone glanced at the cat, but her fur lay flat and her ears were up. No grosslings, then. They turned back to the argument.

Anna stepped forward. “We didn’t just come to you because of that seer. We’d already decided; that’s why we asked her about you. No, we came to you because Tuuri and Lalli are still alive.” Onni started at those words. “Yeah, we figured that out. And if they’re alive, then so is Emil, and when you go find Tuuri and Lalli, we’ll go with you to find Emil.”

“Mrrr!”

They turned again to Artemis, who stood foursquare on an upturned slab. Mage and cat stared at each other for several long seconds, as the rain fell and the triplets watched in confusion. At last, Onni’s shoulders slumped, and he nodded. “All right.”

As Artemis leapt down and streaked away to the south, Onni turned to the others. “Move. We’ve got to hide before the bear-beasts come. If they see us, the acorns may not stop them.”

“Wait, what?” Anna asked as they all scrambled over wreckage to a hidden position. “The bear-beasts — did you just send her to lure them out? As bait? She’s just a cat!” Anna’s voice rose, and Sune patted the air, warning her to keep it down. “You can’t send —”

“I didn’t send her!” Onni snapped, turning to glare at her. As she cringed away, shoulders up, he took a hard breath and continued in a milder tone. “You saw. I didn’t send her. And Artemis isn’t ‘just a cat’. She’s Tapsa’s own cat, and Tapsa gave his cats a bit of his … spirit, his self. Artemis makes her own decisions. And she knows I need those bear-beasts out of the city so I can take on the Kade that killed Tapsa.”

Onni closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the beam behind him. “You’re right, Tuuri and Lalli are alive, still in the Silent World.” Anna licked her finger and mimicked marking a point for herself in the air. “But it’s important that no one know this. I don’t want you to lie, but just keep quiet about them. No one will ask you, after all. And Emil … I don’t know if he’s alive. Tuuri left a note saying he and Madsen were dead, but … I don’t know. There are wheels within wheels, and I don’t understand them at all.”

The triplets looked at each other in dismay. Anna’s argument had been so convincing; they’d been so sure for the past two months. But if Emil was really dead, where did that leave them? They had no one left except Mormor, back in Sweden where they dared not return … and Onni.

Sune swallowed. “All the same, we’ll help you against the Kade.”

Through the splash of rain, they heard a squeal from the south, and a stream of hissing and spitting that could only be Artemis. Sune looked back at Onni, opened his mouth, and closed it again, for an eerie blue light played around the man’s closed eyes. Sune nudged the others and pointed. This, he realized, was Onni doing magic right in front of them.

Splashes in the street beyond the wreckage. The children scrambled to peek over the top, and finally saw the bear-beasts they’d feared for so long.

The first looked almost normal, larger than a natural bear, with a coat of green fur, as if overgrown with moss. But what they noticed most were the three spears poking out of its body. Someone had tried to kill it, Sune thought, and failed. Behind it were the other two, both small, but otherwise entirely unalike. One had green fur like the large one, but the body under that fur was so thin as to be almost invisible. The other had no fur at all; the Rash seemed to have eaten away its coat and even the flesh of its legs. It run on bare bones, and it flinched and squealed as the rain lashed at it.

Alongside these mismatched creatures was … something. Sune squinted, trying to make it out. It was a distortion in the air, a blur … That’s the Kade. That’s the thing itself, still staying with the bear-beasts. It’s afraid of Onni.

Behind these four came Artemis, fully bushed out, hissing, spitting, and snarling as she chased the beasts northwards up the street. Sune wanted to cheer for her. Of course she wasn’t bait! Artemis was a huntress, and the bear-beasts were her prey.

“The rain is hurting one of them,” Onni said, his voice remote and his eyes still closed with that eldritch light playing over them. “It cries with pain. They must find shelter outside the city. There are few grosslings out there.”

The enemies and Artemis had rushed away as he spoke, the squeals of pain fading with distance. Onni straightened, looked at the triplets. “This is my chance. I must take it. And you — you must come with me. I can’t leave you in the city.”

Since that was exactly what they wanted, they followed without hesitation as Onni sprinted after the Kade.

The late afternoon sunlight filtering through the ongoing rain made the world gray and dreary. A fresh stream burbled and splashed a short way downhill, and the scents of wet earth filled the air. The children stood with their hoods up, surrounding Onni, who sat slumped against a sturdy birch tree. Artemis’s purr sounded from under his hood, for she had draped herself across his neck, and Syksy and Fru Gull perched on a fallen tree nearby. A third gull circled overhead; he had joined them as the humans pursued the enemy.

Minutes earlier, Onni had stopped, checked their surroundings while the mage-light played over his eyes, and told them the bear-beasts had found shelter almost half a kilometer away. As there were no other grosslings in his range, it was time for him to take the battle to the Kade. And he had seated himself against the tree and gone limp.

“I don’t like this,” Sune said after a while. Håkan muttered something inaudible, and Anna shrugged. Sune squinted at the forest to the north. The bear-beasts and the Kade were out there somewhere. “He thinks the Kade can’t make the bear-beasts go out in the rain again. But what if it can? What if he’s off fighting the Kade and they come roaring up?”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Anna said.

Sune rolled his eyes. He tried hard not to tease her for having a crush on the man. After all, her hair ring had let the seer point them to Joensuu. But she still thought Onni would never make a mistake, while Sune had come to believe that Onni had made a lot of mistakes. Coming here alone, for one. If they hadn’t followed him …

“I’m going to go check,” Sune said after a long silence broken only by the spatter of raindrops.

Håkan shook his head, spraying water from his hood. “And what are you going to do about it if they are coming? Run back and tell us?” He cocked a thumb up at the circling gull. “He’ll warn us before you ever could.”

His brother’s doubt only made Sune more determined. “If they’re coming, I’ll stop them.”

“Ha!”

Sune glared at him. “Or at least I’ll slow them down until Onni kills the Kade, and then he can kill them too.” He slapped the tree beside them. “I can climb one of these. I don’t think they can climb up after me, especially that big one, but if they do, I can jump to another tree. It’s a lot better than sitting here waiting for them to come eat us.”

“He’s got a point,” Anna said, though she didn’t look happy. “The two of us can guard Onni as well as all of us, and probably he’ll just come back when Onni wakes up.”

“Yeah, but —”

Not waiting for further argument, Sune trotted away into the forest, hardly even limping, since the pain in his wounded foot had subsided to a dull throbbing. Even without Onni’s strange senses, he had no difficulty following the bear-beasts, for the large one’s feet had pressed deep into the sodden soil. Before Sune had gone ten meters, to his surprise, Syksy flashed past him, sweeping through the trees ahead. For a moment, he thought Syksy would try to turn him back, but the gull landed on a fallen branch and watched as he passed. Soon, Syksy passed him to check the forest ahead. They proceeded in that manner for perhaps three hundred meters.

Syksy streaked back from his latest foray, flared his wings before Sune, and veered up into a tree. Sune didn’t hesitate, snatched up what rocks he saw nearby, and climbed up the same tree until the trunk creaked under his weight. Wiping rain from his face, he watched as Syksy flapped back to the north.

Gull shrieks and a bass rumble preceded the bear-beasts through the rain. Sune flexed his right hand, pulled out a rock, and waited. Moments later, the bear-beasts appeared with Syksy shrieking and diving at them. The largest beast — Onni had muttered that it must be the mother of the other two — reared to swipe at him, growling, but Syksy zoomed over her, just out of reach. Giving up, the beast moved forward, only for Syksy to plunge at the small, naked beast. The monster squealed, the mother monster turned back, and the gull circled mockingly above.

Sune shook his head in amazement. Could Syksy stop the bear-beasts by himself? But it was not to be. With another rumbling growl, the mother beast turned south again, the other two following. Sune raised his rock, watching for the right moment. When the naked beast came within range, he hurled it, striking the creature on its back and raising a squall of pain. All three stopped again, and he readied another rock, grinning. These beasts would have no idea where the rocks were coming from!

As the monsters started south again, Sune threw his rock, hitting the naked creature so hard it turned and fled northwards. After a few meters, it stumbled and fell, wailing. The mother ran to it, but the smaller furred beast stood its ground, raising its ragged green muzzle to point at Sune. He froze, swallowing hard. The thing had seen him. If the big one noticed …

The big one noticed. She turned from the naked beast to the furred one, then raised her head to stare at him. Staring back, Sune realized how big she truly was. His mouth went suddenly dry, and his bright idea seemed much less bright.

The beast stalked forward. Syksy dived at her, shrieking, but she ignored him. Sune edged onto his chosen branch, holding onto the branch above. When the mother beast flung herself at the tree, the impact knocked his feet loose. Sune’s scream of terror joined Syksy’s cries. For a moment, he dangled by his hands before swinging himself up and wrapping arms and legs around the branch.

Syksy sounded frantic. He swooped at the other two beasts, screeching, and even streaked across the mother’s muzzle to peck at her eye. But she dug her claws into the tree and climbed.

Gasping with fear, Sune pulled himself along the branch. It was the wrong branch, but it was close enough. Even as the branch creaked under his weight and the mother’s roaring grew closer, he launched himself to a branch on the next tree. He hit hard, knocking the breath out of himself, but his arms caught a grip and his wounded left foot slammed into a side branch. Though his vision blurred with pain, he scrambled to the trunk and looked around.

The mother beast half-slid, half-climbed down and lumbered towards him. He had no choice. He drew the pistol and shot the monster in the face.

She kept coming, roaring.

Sune didn’t know what had happened. Perhaps the bullet had bounced off her skull, or perhaps it had even penetrated, and she’d ignored it like the spears jutting from her sides. But if he couldn’t shoot her … he fired two shots into each cub beast.

It was all very loud. The cub beasts squalled in pain, and the mother’s growls seemed to shake the ground as she turned back to lick them. Syksy was still shrieking, flying high up and swooping down to terrorize the furred cub while the mother beast comforted the other. Sune looked around for a route to a sturdier tree, one he could reach before the mother beast came after him again. As he crept down the trunk to a branch that would serve as a bridge, the noise level decreased. He looked back to see that the naked cub was only whimpering. To his horror, he realized that mother’s kisses made it better, even among grosslings.

As the mother beast turned to the furred cub, and Sune crawled along the branch leading to the next tree, Syksy soared high and … fled to the northeast, his shrieks trailing after him. The boy watched his only ally abandon him.

The end was near.

After watching Sune trot away and Syksy follow him, Håkan looked from the gull circling above to Fru Gull on the ground, to Onni by his feet. I can’t help Sune stop the bear-beasts. I have to be left behind with my sister and the animals to protect me. Why am I not immune when they are? Three babies at once, and I had to miss out on immunity.

“You could say, you have to be immune, and he has to be a mage.”
“Being a mage means going up against things like the Kade.”

Håkan narrowed his eyes as he stared down at Onni. The man hadn’t moved since he sat down. Is he fighting? Is he winning? Could he be losing? I’m a mage too; it’s my duty to fight things like the Kade. But I can’t do anything in mage-space, except walk on the water, and I can’t even do that because of the dragon.

As he looked up at the circling gull again, remembering his haven, his fylgja, and the circling dragon, the thought came to him. Or can I? He scanned the dripping forest, then turned to Anna. “There are no grosslings within half a kilometer.”

“Yeah?”

“And we’ve got two gulls and Artemis to guard us. And the pistol.” He unbuckled his belt, removed the holster, and handed it to her.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to help Onni. I’m going to mage-space —”

“You can’t fight. You don’t even know how to do magic!”

“I know who does. And I’m going to go get them.”

“But — but —”

Håkan sat against the tree, closed his eyes, and willed himself into mage-space.

---

“I made it!”

Håkan jumped up, eagerly scanning the flower-filled clearing and the path leading to the sea. “Fylgja? Are you here?”

The goshawk soared across the clearing and dropped onto the granite block at Håkan’s side.

“Okay, listen.” The hawk cocked his head to the left. “Onni really needs help. Do you know Lalli and the Icelander — Reynir?”

“No.”

Håkan had thought fylgjas knew everything. “I guess it doesn’t matter. So, Onni said Icelandic mages walk on water and can find people. I can walk on water, so I’m an Icelandic mage and I can find people out there too, right?”

“Dragons. Danger.”

“I–I know. But you’re littler than a dragon, and you can dodge better, can’t you?” He couldn’t help crossing his fingers at that question.

The hawk tilted his head the other way. “Yes. More agile. Faster.” He looked up, then at Håkan. “I dodge, you run.” He leapt into the air, flying towards the path.

“Wait, one more thing.” The hawk circled back, landing on the block and ruffling his feathers. “How do I find people?” Onni had said Icelandic mages found people, but not exactly how they did it.

The hawk cocked his head to the left, then to the right. “Want them. Want them real bad.”

“Oh yeah, I want them real real bad.” Håkan ran to the path, and the fylgja soared after him.

Håkan ran out onto the headland and down the path to the cove without allowing himself to hesitate. “I want Lalli. I want Reynir. Lalli. Reynir.” Over and over again, he repeated the words for the ears of whatever powers controlled this strange world. As he set foot on the sea, the hawk screamed defiance at the sky and shot up and away, growing larger with each wingbeat.

Onni had said the fog covering the sea would open to allow Reynir to find people. Håkan peered around … there! A tunnel in the fog stretched away from him, and he ran for it. He hoped the fog would shield him from the dragon (or was it dragons?) above, but he carried clear air with him, and no fog hung over him.

Grimly ignoring hisses and screams behind and sometimes above him, Håkan ran as he had never run before. He tripped over waves, picked himself up, and ran on, repeating the names in desperation while shadows swept over the fog all too near him.

An island! Håkan’s feet gained new strength as he raced from the sea up the black sand of the beach and into a pasture between rocky hillsides. Sheep scattered as he stumbled to a halt among them, and the sheepdog lying on a boulder got to his feet and stared at the intruder. Håkan raised his empty hands in an appeasing gesture, and the dog settled on his haunches and watched.

The hawk dropped onto his shoulder. “Slow dragon.”

As Håkan babbled thanks, the hawk preened himself. Over the gentle breeze and his own voice, Håkan heard music from far up the pasture. “Listen. Someone’s playing panpipes. I’ve got to find him!” And he broke into another run, the hawk raising his wings to keep his balance.

At the end of the pasture, leaning against a boulder and playing the pipes, was a very tall, very thin young man with an extraordinarily long, thick, red braid. No one could look less like short, stocky Onni with his ash-blond hair, therefore …

“Reynir?”

The man dropped the pipes and jumped to his feet. “Oh, wow, yes, I’m Reynir Árnason. Wow, no one’s ever come to my haven before. Are you an Icelander? Are the flying things gone now?”

Håkan waved his hands to stop the flow of words. “I’m Håkan Västerström, Emil’s cousin. I need —”

“Håkan! Emil’s told us all about you, you and the other two. I’m so —”

There was something about the way he said it. No grief, no condolences. “Is Emil … all right?”

“Sure, sure. He’ll be so excited —”

Joy at knowing Emil was alive couldn’t override Håkan’s fears. “Listen, Onni’s in trouble. He’s going after the Kade.” Reynir looked blank. “It’s a spirit monster-thing. He needs help. You and Lalli. The hawk will distract the dragon like he did before, and I’ll take you to Onni.” Håkan crossed his fingers behind his back. He hoped he could take them to Onni. But he’d found Reynir, hadn’t he?

“Lucky I have the night watch, or I’d be awake now. The gods must’ve prompted me to take a nap —”

Håkan clenched his fists and pressed them against his chest in frustration at the man’s babbling. “What about Lalli?”

“He’s awake, but he’s really good at sleeping. Wait. I’ll get him.” And the man was gone.

Every passing moment made Håkan more anxious. What if Reynir didn’t come back? What if the hawk couldn’t distract the dragon? What if he couldn’t find Onni? Or if Onni was already — but he wouldn’t think that. He paced, quick steps towards the sheep in the pasture and back again.

After an endless wait, Reynir reappeared before him. “Okay, come on, Lalli’s waiting.” Seizing Håkan’s hand, he raced down the pasture and out over the sea, as the boy struggled to keep up with the man’s long legs. Reynir’s dog followed, and the hawk launched off Håkan’s shoulder to streak towards the winged shadow turning towards them.

Lalli’s haven was not what Håkan had expected. There was no island, just a grove of birch trees growing out of the water. Though the trees had lush green leaves, the water around them was littered with burned and broken branches. Within the grove there was a raft, and on the raft there was a man, shorter even than Onni, slender, but with the same ash-blond hair. Håkan’s knees felt weak at the sight.

“Lead us,” Lalli ordered, as he held out a hand with a grimace of distaste and Reynir took it.

Håkan glared at the fog. “I want to find Onni. I want to find him real bad.”

The fog parted, and they ran into it with the hawk screaming overhead.

Alone.

The triplets had always supported each other. Against their parents, against teachers and bullies, against the world. But now Anna was alone, the heavy rain hiding what might move in the forest. She wanted to call after Sune, to tell him to come back … but he was right. If the Kade did drive the beasts from their shelter, better he should distract them far from the helpless mages. Surely he could dodge them in the trees just as he used to dodge bullies. Still, she wished he were with her.

And Håkan. She looked down at him and at Onni. They had left her too, gone to wherever mages went, that strange realm with the sea and the dragons. At least Artemis was still there, though her purrs were lost in the rattle of rain on Anna’s hood. Even Fru Gull had left to circle overhead with the third gull. That was Talvi; Anna had recognized his markings when he joined them. Though she'd only known him for a few days, he felt like an old friend returning to help them. Pulling her hood a little tighter, she paced around the tree and the unconscious mages, listening, watching, wary.

Anna slid a finger under her collar, running it along the string hidden below. Though she still wore Onni's hair ring around her neck, her brothers had mercifully refrained from pointing this out to Onni himself.

What if I hadn't made this ring? Then that seer couldn't have found Onni in Joensuu. We’d still have run away, but Jimi would have taken us to Onni's home village. He said it’s dead, not that it’s dangerous. It has to be better than this! If we’d gone there, Sune wouldn't be out there in the rain watching for bear-beasts, and Håkan wouldn't have gone to that strange mage space.

She stopped to look down at the stream, gurgling and splashing on its course. If any grosslings came at her from the west, they’d have to cross it, giving the gulls time to attack or her time to shoot them. Not that any would, of course; there weren’t any grosslings within half a kilometer. She patted the pistol on her hip and returned to pacing.

But then, if we hadn't come out here, Artemis wouldn't be here either. She came with us. And the gulls, too; Väinö sent them because we asked why he wasn't helping. Onni didn't ask. So if we hadn't found Onni, he'd be here all alone. Or, well, he'd still be setting up acorn-strings in the pouring rain. And then he'd have to drive the Kade and the bear-beasts out of the city. How was he going to drive the Kade out of the city without Artemis?

She looked down at Onni again. He didn’t seem to have planned this very well. Was he really the wise and powerful mage she’d so looked up to? Or was he just as fallible as all the other grownups in her life?

How could he do all this without us and Artemis? It would have taken him so long … He’d be fighting the Kade tonight. Tonight. The dark of the moon. Surely the Kade is most powerful then. And if the rain stops and the beasts come out …

Her thoughts stumbled for a moment.

If we hadn't come, Onni would be doomed.

The rain came down, and Anna paced around the tree, rubbing her arms as the cold seeped through her clothes.

Bang!

Distant and muffled by the storm, but the sound was unmistakable: a gunshot. Anna ran a few paces to the north, her pistol already in her hand, but stopped herself, glancing back at Håkan and Onni, dreaming under the tree.

More shots.

What’s happening? Why is Sune shooting? We’re not supposed to shoot … except in emergencies.

Anna retreated to the tree. If the bear-beasts got past Sune, her pistol was the only protection for the others. Artemis had chased the bear-beasts away once, but Anna had a horrible feeling that they wouldn't run from her again, not with helpless prey right in front of them.

Rumble

Anna jerked around to stare northwest. What was that? More beasts over there?

She jumped back, raising the pistol by reflex, as the two gulls dived out of the sky in front of her. “What — what —”

The gulls couldn’t answer in words. Talvi seized Onni’s collar and Fru Gull Håkan’s, and they pulled as if their feeble strength could move the humans. Artemis leapt from Onni’s shoulders and darted uphill. Anna stared for a moment, glanced back to the northwest as the rumble grew … and she understood.

Without conscious thought, Anna turned to her brother, her trained reflexes holstering the pistol as she moved. With her arms under his shoulders, she backed up the hillside as fast as she could. From her right, the rumble grew to a roar as the wall of muddy water rushed down the stream.

And swept Onni away.

Anna’s scream was lost in the turmoil. After that moment of despair, she focused on dragging Håkan uphill as the water raced past just meters beyond his trailing feet. With every effortful step, she whispered an apology to Onni. The gulls shot away downstream, leaving her alone with Artemis.

Are we high enough? Panting with effort, she wiped water from her eyes and squinted into the rain. They were on a hill; the ground fell away before her and on either side. Even if the stream rose farther, it would flow around them.

But what about the Kade? Did Onni get it before … before he died? What about Håkan? Can he come back now? And Sune! For a moment she’d forgotten her other brother. Now she raised her head to listen for shots, screams, anything over the hammering rain and the rumbling flood.

Nothing.

Anna stood frozen, lost. What should she, what could she do next? Beside her, Artemis leaped on Håkan’s chest and peered about as if to state her determination to protect him. And the rain continued to hammer on them all.

Screech!

Anna flinched at the sound. The pistol was back in her hand as if by magic, but she lowered it as she recognized Fru Gull. The bird flew toward her, circled her so close Anna felt the touch of her wings, then arrowed downstream. When she landed on a fallen log and stared back, Anna’s paralysis broke.

“Artemis? Can you guard him?”

“Mrrr!”

That sounded like “Yes”. Fru Gull shrieked again, and with one agonized glance at her brother, Anna stumbled over wet leaves and tree roots to follow her.

Perhaps two hundred meters downstream, something white showed through the rain. With renewed energy, Anna slid and scrambled downhill to a flooded backwater, almost still despite the stream rushing past just meters away. And within — Anna’s breath caught — within, Onni floated on his back, unmoving, while Talvi leaned from a branch above him, a lock of Onni’s hair in his beak, pulling up to keep his head above water. Even the pouring rain could not wash away all the blood flowing from Onni’s forehead and down his right cheek.

Anna plunged into the stream, the muddy water rising to her waist as she waded out to tuck her arms under Onni’s shoulders and tow him to the shore. She backed up the slope, Onni’s limp body growing heavier with each step. Talvi landed on the shore beside her, watching as if he wished he could help; Fru Gull had vanished and Anna, sobbing with fear and grief and effort, didn’t look for her.

Once Onni’s feet were out of the water, Anna pushed him over on his left side. He was breathing with a painful rattling sound, and murky water ran from his mouth once he was on his side. When a coughing spasm racked his body, he didn’t awaken. She cut another strip from her shirt with only a passing thought of her mother’s anger and bandaged his head as best she could. Other than the cut on his forehead and a large lump above it, his head seemed uninjured. At least, she could find no other cuts or lumps. His clothes were battered, but she saw no blood on them, so she supposed he wasn’t cut anywhere else.

With her primitive first aid done, Anna looked around in desperation. Håkan was far away, unconscious and guarded only by a cat and presumably a gull. She couldn’t guess what had happened to Sune. If the bear-beasts had gotten past him — if they had killed him — then the animals couldn’t protect Håkan. She could go back and at least try to protect him, but that meant leaving Onni here, unguarded and just above the water. He was far too heavy for her to drag farther up the rough slope, much less back to Håkan.

If only she knew whether he’d defeated the Kade. Or not. If he was still fighting, if he still had a chance … how could she abandon him to death again? He’d survived the flood by some miracle, but if she left him, and the water rose again, he would die. Then everything they’d done, even the possible deaths of her brothers, would be for naught.

There was no way out. Anna clutched Onni’s shoulder and sobbed.