1001 Tales of the Norwegian Nights

The world ended not with a bang, nor yet with a whimper. The world ended with a rash.

The Rash began as a discoloration of the skin, an itch, a mere blemish, and ended in agonizing pain, limbs maimed and twisted and deformed, madness, coma, and merciful death … for the lucky ones. For the unlucky ones, it ended in transformation to a ravening monster, so hideously deformed as to be unrecognizable as human, whether mentally or physically. It was contagious not just to human beings, but to every mammal with the strange exception of cats.

And no mammal that contracted the Rash ever recovered.

The Rash was contracted from the breath of the infected for a week or more before any symptoms showed, from any bite, even from a scratch inflicted by the appendages of the infected, no longer even identifiable as hands or feet.

There were those, both human and animal, that were immune to the Rash. And there were those who, though not immune, survived by chance or by swift action, escaping to islands or mountain fastnesses which could be defended against the infected. Iceland closed its borders very early and survived almost without infection; the Danish island of Bornholm closed its borders later and suffered great losses before the infected were destroyed, and even then small pockets of infection remained. In the other Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, villages survived here and there where they could be defended. Several brutally cold winters ravaged these survivors but at the same time the bitter cold kept the infected at bay while more defenses were built.

The world was lost to the Rash. Humanity was reduced from its teeming billions to little more than a hundred thousand in the Known World.

---

In the Year 90 of the Rash, a small group of adventurers — Sigrun Eide, Mikkel Madsen, Tuuri Hotakainen, Lalli Hotakainen, and Emil Västerström — set off on an underfunded expedition to the main islands of Denmark, long ago lost to the Rash. In their little tank, they crossed the bridge and tunnel to the island of Amager, which the Danish Army, including Mikkel, had tried and failed to reconquer a decade earlier. What they found was both triumph and tragedy.

Seven years later, the children of Sigrun and Mikkel want the story.

“Papa, why do you talk different from Mama and, and, everyone?” Morten looked up — way up — into his father's face as Mikkel tasted the chicken stew he intended for dinner.

“Well, your Mama and her family speak Norwegian and I speak Danish,” Mikkel answered, adding a little more salt. “Strictly speaking, I'm not even speaking the same language as they are, or as you are, for that matter. However, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish are closely related languages and so —”

Even at five years old, the twins, Morten and Asbjørn, knew from experience that their father could expound on a topic for hours if not diverted. “Why do you speak Danish, then?” Asbjørn asked.

“Because Danish is my native language. I'm a Dane. I'm from Denmark.” Mikkel ladled out a bowlful of stew for each child and set the dishes on the table, standing with his arms folded until they seated themselves and began to eat. He returned to the stove to stir the stew.

“But if you're from Denmark,” Asbjørn said, “then you're from Bornholm! The most southern place in the whole world! Where the palm trees are!”

“I am indeed from Bornholm,” Mikkel replied, turning to give the boys a slight smile. “I perceive that you listened to Uncle Reynir last time he was here. Bornholm is the southernmost place in the Known World, but there are whole continents — that is, lands much, much bigger than Bornholm, much bigger than Iceland, even — that are far south of Bornholm. Also, we have no palm trees. That's Reynir's little joke.”

Morten was frowning over his stew. “Denmark is far away. Why are you here?”

“Because I'm married to your mother, dear child. Where else would I be?”

“But you —” Asbjørn began, and “How did you meet her?” Morten interrupted.

“Ah. That's a long story, and very sad and very scary in some parts.” Turning back to the stove, Mikkel stirred the stew. At length, sighing, he continued, “I will tell it if you wish, but I mean what I say. It is very sad and very scary.”

When the boys did not answer, he looked around to find them gazing into each other's eyes, communicating wordlessly just as he and his twin brother, Michael, had so many years ago. “Tell us,” Morten said after a moment.

Mikkel nodded, moved the stew pot to the back of the stove, and began, “I grew up on my family's farm on the island of Bornholm —”

“Wait,” Asbjørn interrupted, “if they're your family, then they're our family too.”

“So they are. You've met them, in fact, though you don't remember because you were babes in arms. We took you there so my parents, your grandparents, could see you. They didn't believe I'd actually found a woman willing to marry me. Never mind that. We'll all go back, one day, when you're a little older. In any case, I was there, on the farm, when I received a letter from General Trond Andersen.”

“General Trond?” Morten asked, “Is that Uncle Trond?”

“Your Mama calls him 'Uncle Trond'. I would not be so bold. To me he is 'General Trond', a retired general in the Norwegian Army. To repeat, I received a letter from the General, offering me an opportunity which he believed had the potential to be most lucrative.” Seeing the children's looks of confusion, he rephrased. “He offered me a job which would make me rich, if I was very lucky.”

“Are you rich?” Morten asked, looking around at their trim cottage and the heavy old-time furniture which Mikkel had refinished with his own hands.

“We are well-off.”

“Then why does Mama have to hunt trolls?” Asbjørn demanded. Much more than his brother, he missed his mother whenever she was gone.

“Your mother wants to hunt trolls. If I tried to stop her from hunting, she would undoubtedly hurt me.” The boys stared at him, clearly considering whether he was serious. “The General offered me — us — a chance to go to the Silent World and look for books.” The children's eyes went wide at the thought of going to the Silent World, the lands long since lost to the Rash. “Of course, I didn't know Sigrun — your Mama — then; I had never met her, nor any of the others: Uncle Emil, Uncle Lalli … and Tuuri.” Even after seven years, it pained him to say her name.

“Tuuri?” Morten frowned, obviously trying to place her in the family's circle of friends and courtesy relations.

“She was Lalli's cousin, Onni's sister. She wasn't immune to the Rash, and she died in the Silent World. I told you this story is very sad. Do you still want me to tell it?”

“Yes,” Morten answered unhesitatingly, and Asbjørn nodded.

“Very well. I met the General and the other members of the team on the Öresund base. That’s between Sweden and the main islands of Denmark. At that time, a bridge from the base descended into a tunnel which gave access to the islands, to Silent Denmark. Our sponsors gave us a small tank for transportation and shelter while we surveyed a city called Copenhagen. The plan was for us to explore for two weeks then spend up to a week getting back to the base. I said there was a bridge 'at that time' because the bridge is gone now; it collapsed as we were driving across it. We barely made it to the safety of the tunnel with pieces of the bridge crashing down all around us.” The twins were leaning forward in fascination. “Finish your stew before it gets cold.” They hastened to obey.

“With the bridge gone, we couldn't go back. We did have a radio, but it wasn't working. Radios don't work well in the Silent World.

“Wait, I should explain what we were all doing. Sigrun was the captain, and I was her second in command. She was a very experienced captain of troll-hunters already, and I … had served in the Danish Army, so I had some experience in fighting. Not hunting. I was the team's medic and I saw to the health of the team and cared for the tank, cooking, cleaning, that sort of thing. Tuuri was our driver and engineer, and she was also a skald. She was quite brilliant. She was Finnish, but she had learned to speak Icelandic and Swedish out of books and she spoke them very well. She'd learned English and German too; those are dead languages. Perhaps she could speak them, if there'd been anyone to speak them to. She and I were to examine the books we found and decide which ones were worth salvaging. Worth bringing back, that means. Emil had been a Cleanser in Sweden, not a troll-hunter, but he became Sigrun's right-hand man. Lalli was our scout. He spoke only Finnish then, so Tuuri had to translate everything for him.

“There was nothing we could do about the bridge, so we just went on with the mission. We went to a place; it was 'Site number 24' on our list, and there were supposed to be a lot of books in there. Sigrun, Emil, and Lalli went in to get them while Tuuri waited in the tank and I stood guard outside. It went well at first until they realized that they weren't alone in there.”

The front door rattled as Sigrun came in, glowing from the sauna where she had unwound after her troll-hunt. The children leapt to their feet and Asbjørn ran to hug his mother. Morten followed but hesitated, looking back at Mikkel. “And then what happened?”

Mikkel stood to smile just a little at his beloved wife. She knew his ways and smiled back. They had no need of words.

“Then what happened? Well, we'll finish that story tomorrow. Kiss your mother and get ready for bed.”

The Eide clan, of which Sigrun was a member, was a clan of troll-hunters, and they kept their family medics busy with lesser wounds, those that didn't require the services of the one surgeon in the village of Dalsnes. This particular Spring, however, they had been surprisingly careful and so, after checking on a few lacerations and removing one cast, Mikkel was at liberty. As always, he used his free time to educate his sons.

Neither Sigrun nor Mikkel had ever attended a school, having received their educations (limited though Sigrun's was) from older family members. Though Dalsnes had a school, they saw no reason their children should have to sit through lessons with strangers. Mikkel had, over the years, absorbed a large and eclectic pool of information, most of which was even true, and all of which he was happy to share. Thus, he had already taught the children to read and was working on arithmetic in between lessons on biology, geology, and whatever else struck his fancy.

On this day, he took the boys on a nature hike to a small and peaceful pond where they caught, examined, and released tadpoles and small frogs. As he explained the reproduction and growth of frogs, he bemoaned his sons' lack of sisters, whose responses to frogs in their beds were always entertaining. When Morten suggested that they could put frogs in Sigrun's bed, Mikkel's and Asbjørn's identical expressions of terror successfully dissuaded him.

Mikkel and the children finished the chicken stew for supper, and Mikkel was just putting away the dishes when Sigrun bounced in, cheerful at the end of a successful hunt. Her husband turned, the last bowl still in his hand, and froze, caught by her beauty with the setting sun behind her. She closed the door, dropped comfortably in her usual chair, and gave Mikkel her special smile as the children ran to welcome her. Released, he finished his chores and joined her by the fire in his own chair. The twins climbed onto his knees and Morten, feeling that they had been admirably patient so far, said, “You promised to tell us about the site number, uh …”

“Twenty-four,” Asbjørn supplied. He'd always had a better memory for numbers.

“Yeah, that one. You promised.”

“I promised? Did I promise?”

“You did,” Morten said stoutly. “You promised and we trusted you.”

“Well, actually, I was never inside the site, so you should ask your Mama — politely, mind you! — if she'll tell you the story.”

The twins turned to Sigrun with identical expressions of appeal. “Please, Mama, will you tell us the story of site number, uh …”

“Twenty-four,” Mikkel and Asbjørn said together.

“Hmm.” Sigrun tapped her chin with a considering expression. “Did the recruits study hard today, Corporal?”

“They did, Captain.”

“Then I suppose they may have the story,” Sigrun said with a gracious nod. “That was the first time I'd ever worked with my little Viking pal and the forest mage guy,” she began, and Mikkel added sotto voce, “That's Uncle Emil and Uncle Lalli.”

“And it was the first time I'd ever gone looking for books. I'm a troll-hunter, not a book-hunter. Anyway, whatever you're looking for, the first thing you do is to check around very, very carefully. And this building was clean! I checked, and I don't make mistakes about that. It was clean!”

Asbjørn looked around at the cottage which Mikkel kept immaculate through obsessive cleaning despite the two rambunctious boys. “She means there were no signs of grosslings,” his father explained, seeing his confusion.

“Right, no grossling tracks, no signs of entry. It looked clean, and we went in, me, the little Viking, and the mage. We left your Papa outside to stand guard and little fuzzyhead, poor kid, had to stay in the tank.”

“Fuzzyhead is Tuuri. She had a short haircut.” Sigrun looked over at him and grinned.

“The first books we found were just piles of rot, like most stuff you find in old buildings. Most places, you just let the Cleansers burn it down because who'd want any of that junk anyway? But this place! Well, a lot of the front had collapsed, and we had to climb over pieces of walls and things. And there were dead people, too. You get that a lot. Poor fools, they thought they could cure the Rash. Brought sick people together in clinics all over the place and then they died. Well, you get used to that kind of thing.

“Anyway, in the back there really was a private library, all closed up and looking good! We could've filled the tank with those books!”

“You mean you didn't?” Morten asked, puzzled.

“Nah, we had a little trouble later on. I'll get to that. So we start hauling out books and giving them to the big guy to stash in the tank.” Mikkel smiled to himself. She was getting into the story, for now he was “the big guy” and not “your Papa”. “We're talking about getting the big guy in to help us, 'cause you know he could haul out half the library! But then things start going wrong.

“Back then, see, our little scout didn't speak any proper languages, just Finnish, and my pal didn't speak anything but Swedish. So the scout couldn't just tell us he'd spotted something. We saw he was looking scared, so I looked around and … well, the library wasn't as closed up as I'd thought. Something was crawling around in an air-vent-thing.”

“Ventilation duct.”

“Yeah, that. I figured it was something little, to fit in that duct thing, and I didn't want to lose that whole library just because of some mouse beast or something. So I told the other two to stay together and check out the rooms this way while I go looking that way. Well, the place was pretty bad. I mean, they'd really set up a big clinic and there were a lot of dead dudes in there. No threat, though, when they're dead like that.

“But then I find where someone pushed a heavy desk against a door. I move it to check and … that's where the really bad ones are. The ones that started to change, but they died or someone killed them first. And the one that did change. Its nest was in the back. A really big nest. But the troll isn't there. It's somewhere else in the building! So I go looking for the others. We had to get out of there!

“And then I hear my pal screaming! I don't know where the little mage was. I never did find that out. But the kid's alone, and he's all tangled up with this little troll. He's got his dagger out and he's slashing at it, but you can't kill a troll that way. You've got to get the head or they just keep fighting. So I stab the troll and we start to retreat, and there's a really big one behind us. Well, now we know where the thing from the nest went!

“Now, my little Swedish pal was a Cleanser. I said that, right? Or did I? Anyway, he was. And he had these little bombs. So he throws a few back towards the troll and we run for it. The troll blows up, but then other stuff starts exploding and catching fire too. We got out just as the whole place went up.

“But remember, we didn't know where the little mage guy was. He went off by himself in there. So my little pal's ready to run back into that burning building to look for him. And just before he could, that scout jumps out of a window and falls right into the big guy's arms!” She gave Mikkel a fond smile that melted his heart. “And then we all ran into the tank and drove away as fast as we could, because that explosion would wake up every grossling for blocks around. It was a great explosion, though!”

“Wow!” Morten said. “But … all the books burned?”

“Yeah, all but the ones we'd hauled out. And that was the best library we found, the whole trip.” She sighed. “Well, we got all cleaned up and tried to call back to base, but the radio wasn't working. The next morning, the big guy tried to fix us porridge, but he knocked over the pot and it all went all over the ground. You get to tell the rest of this,” she told Mikkel.

“Very well. I knocked over the pot and spoiled the porridge.”

“Because you're clumsy!” Asbjørn said, wanting to be part of the story.

“Because I'm clumsy,” Mikkel agreed. “You are fortunate in that you both inherited your mother's grace. Getting back to what happened, I told you yesterday that we had planned to explore for two weeks and then to return to the Öresund base. According to our manifest, we had three weeks' supply of food, and I thought that, if we tightened our belts and Lalli and Sigrun did some hunting, we could stretch that to four weeks without getting too hungry. By then, I thought, we'd be rescued or at least resupplied. Losing the porridge was bad, but it wasn't a disaster.

“Or so I thought.

“I went to the back of the tank and opened the two crates of food. The two crates that were supposed to contain food. They did not. Through some mix-up at the base, we had no food at all, but only two crates of … candles.”

“We did have the moldy emergency rations, though,” Sigrun said.

“They weren't moldy.”

“Only because no self-respecting mold would grow on them.”

“We had ten-year-old emergency rations, but only enough for a single day. The radio wasn't working, so we couldn't call for help. And we couldn't stay where we were, because we were too close to … to … inhabited areas. Grosslings can hear you, or smell you, or see you, so if you stay too long near them, the swarms come, bigger and bigger, attracted by the sound of the guns —”

Sigrun was by his side, her hand on his shoulder. “And you'll have to wait for the rest of the story. Go to bed now.” With a few worried backward glances, the children went off to their beds.

The morning dawned cloudy and threatening rain, so Sigrun announced, “I'm not going hunting today. I'll take the children to watch the recruits training. It's time these little Eides got started learning to hunt.”

“They're Madsens too,” Mikkel objected.

Sigrun knelt down to scrutinize her slender, red-headed children. “Nope, Eides all the way.”

“Hmph,” Mikkel said with pretended offense, “then they're your problem. You deal with them.” This was a mock argument they had held many times, and Sigrun always won. Their sons did take after the Eides much more than the Madsens.

“We'll be back for supper,” Sigrun said, shooing the children out the door.

Mikkel waved goodbye to the children and shot his wife a look of gratitude. She understood without words that sometimes he had to be alone, that sometimes he had to wash and scrub and scour. He could not make the world right — it would never be right again — but he could make it a little, just a little, less wrong. As his family trotted away to the village, he turned with relief to his chores.

Sigrun brought the children back for supper. Mikkel had prepared beef stew.

“Eww. What is this green stuff?” Sigrun held out her spoon to her husband.

Without rising from his seat, Mikkel leaned forward to examine it. “That is broccoli. It's a very nutritious plant related to a surprising number of other food plants such as cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels —”

“This is what you feed my children when I'm not here?” The children in question were keeping their heads down, doing their best to hide their grins. They had heard versions of this conversation on many occasions.

“This is what my mother fed me, and look how I turned out!” Mikkel stood up to display his near two-meter height, broad shoulders, and powerful build.

“Hmph,” Sigrun said, looking him over. “I suppose rabbit food's okay when they're little. But when they're big, I'll expect you to feed them properly.”

“When they're big,” Mikkel agreed mendaciously, sitting back down to finish his stew.

After the family had finished eating and Mikkel had washed and put away the dishes, the adults sat down for a well-deserved rest by the fire.

“What happened next?” Morten asked.

His parents looked at each other and then back at him with feigned confusion. “Next?” Mikkel echoed.

“You didn't have any food.” Asbjørn prompted.

“And the bridge collapsed and the radio was broken,” Morten said.

“The radio wasn't broken,” Mikkel corrected. “It wasn't working.”

“That's the same thing.” Asbjørn had firm ideas about how devices should behave.

“Not in this case,” Mikkel said. “Radios don't work well in the Silent World — or really anywhere outside of inhabited areas — because of the static. The static is better or, or worse, some days, but it's always there. And it was always bad there, in Silent Denmark.” He was getting too close to memories he needed to avoid.

“Now, you heard your mother call Uncle Lalli a mage. At that time, I didn't believe that he was a mage, or that mages or magic existed. Neither did Uncle Emil. Danes and Swedes tend to be skeptics. Not all of us, but most of us. We don't believe in things when there's no evidence for them, when it's just people claiming they saw something or did something that no one else can see or do. Especially so when there's another explanation for what happened.

“So when Tuuri said that Lalli was going to fix the radio problem, and when we heard a loud bang and the radio started working, I thought that Tuuri, who was a skald and an engineer, you remember, had fixed it and was just giving Lalli credit. Or that maybe he had helped somehow, by giving her confidence or even advice. I didn't believe that he had blocked the static by magic.

“Anyway, at least we had the radio working again. We called back to the base, and it turned out they didn't know the bridge had collapsed. It was only the last section, the part just before the tunnel. That didn't matter, though. Whether it was one section or the whole bridge, end to end, we couldn't get back over it. We had to wait for a rescue ship.”

“Or for the sea to freeze over so we could walk to Sweden,” Sigrun said. “You told me that could happen.”

“It could happen, and has, occasionally. But we'd still be down there if we'd waited for that. Nobody could send us any food over the bridge, and it would take four weeks to get the bureaucrats of the Nordic Council to authorize sending us food by ship. And it would take even longer for a rescue ship.”

“No food for four weeks?” Morten said in dismay.

“Ah, well, we didn't have to rely on the Nordic Council. General Trond was one of our sponsors, and the General can make things happen that you wouldn't expect.”

“How?” Morten asked.

“He has lots of friends,” Mikkel said with a straight face. “In just hours he arranged for a trading ship that was on its way from Iceland to Bornholm to drop off two crates of food. That was to replace the two that we should have had. We went to an outpost pier that was, was built ten years earlier, and the ship delivered the crates by shooting harpoons into the pier and winching the crates over. They weren't equipped to land in the Silent World, you see.

“We had the crates and the ship was sailing away. They'd done their favor for the General, and they didn't want to stay near the Silent World any longer than they had to. Things sometimes swim out if ships get too close.

“We waved goodbye and thank you, and we thought we were saved. We started to open the crates. And there was something alive in one of them.”

“Something alive,” Asbjørn echoed in a horrified whisper.

“Very much alive. Emil slammed the lid back on the crate and yelled for us to help him.”

“We were opening the crate full of rabbit food,” Sigrun said with disgust.

“What was in the crate? The thing that was alive?” Morten asked.

“Well, Emil opened the crate again, and we were all set to shoot a grossling and …”

“And? And?” Both children tugged at their father's collar.

“And up popped Uncle Reynir!”

“Uncle Reynir!” Morten recovered first. “They sent him to you in a crate?”

“No one sent him to us. He wanted to go to Bornholm. Palm trees, remember? But he didn't have enough money for the fare, so he'd joined the crew on the ship, thinking he'd leave when they reached the island. But then he learned that the crew, all the crew, would have to remain on the ship and go back to Iceland with it. He had the bright idea that he could sneak ashore in a crate of supplies. Of course, he knew they'd catch him, and he thought they'd put him in quarantine and then let him stay. It wouldn't have worked that way even if he had hidden in a crate destined for Bornholm. Since he knew little about geography, he didn't know the ship was nowhere near there when they packed up the crates for us. And he just jumped into one.

“So there we were with this second non-immune, this civilian, that we had to keep because, just like us, he couldn't leave the Silent World until a quarantine ship came to collect us. And we still didn't have enough food.”

“All we had was one crate of rabbit food,” Sigrun put in.

“The crate Reynir was in should have contained cans of tuna, and he hadn't thrown them all out. So we had a few of those. And we had the candles. Tallow candles.”

Mikkel could see the children puzzling over the significance of the candles. “Tallow is rendered fat from cattle or sheep. It's edible. It's not pleasant, but it will keep you from starving.”

“Barely,” Sigrun said.

“That was almost all I had to cook with for the rest of the journey. Lalli and Sigrun hunted and trapped when they could, but it was winter. Most birds had gone south and what healthy mammals there were, were hiding or hibernating.”

“And so he fed us candle soup for weeks.”

“That is what I did.”

“Wow,” Asbjørn said, “You ate candles.” The children looked back and forth between their parents with a certain respect.

“Never want to do it again,” Sigrun muttered.

“Getting back to what happened, there was no way we'd get another supply ship any time soon, so we went on exploring for more books. It was raining the next day, icy rain. Sigrun left Lalli behind because he wasn't as helpful as she'd hoped, being unable to talk to them. She and Emil left together, Lalli went to sleep because he'd been scouting all night, Tuuri and I did chores, and Reynir wandered around getting in everyone's way.

“And then we heard gunshots.”

“What happened? What were they shooting at?” Morten tugged on his father's collar again.

“Your mother will have to tell that tale. Tomorrow.”

“Nooo!” But the children knew the rules and went to bed with minimal whining.

The next morning dawned cloudless and cool, so Sigrun set out with her team to clear a reported infestation. Mikkel decided it was a day for arithmetic, so the children pulled out their slates and chalk, Asbjørn with enthusiasm and Morten with a groan. After a couple of hours, Mikkel released the boys from their studies. Asbjørn remained, carefully writing sums and asking his father to check them, while Morten abandoned his slate and went to play with the kittens. The family cat, Kisu, had presented them with two kittens two weeks before, and tolerated the human children's interest in her children.

Lunch was leftover beef stew, and was interrupted by an older child, one of the many Eide children, who reported to Mikkel that there was a ship in the offing. “Finish up, boys,” Mikkel instructed. “We need to meet the ship. We're going to meet Aino. She's a girl about your age, a distant cousin of Onni and Lalli, who'll be staying with us for a year. It will be almost like having a sister.” Mikkel gave his children his slight, fond smile. “No frogs in her bed, though. Not for a few weeks, at least. Hurry now.”

“A sister?” Asbjørn echoed. The twins looked at each other. “Do we want a sister?”

Mikkel's impassive expression concealed a flash of regret. He had wanted a daughter or two, but it was not to be. Sigrun's near death bearing the twins had frightened both parents, and Sigrun had reluctantly agreed with her husband that they could never take that risk again. “Sisters can be friends as well. And Aino doesn't speak Norwegian, only Finnish and a bit of Icelandic. So you will help teach her Norwegian, and she will teach you Finnish.”

“Oh, no,” Morten moaned. “More lessons.”

“It won't be lessons. You two and Aino are of an age where you easily pick up languages. Not like me or your mother. We would have to take lessons, lots of lessons, to learn Finnish, and even then we would never be very good at it. But you can learn just by talking to her and playing with her and showing her around. She will likewise learn from you. Uncle Reynir plans to visit in a couple of months,” he added, “because all three of you need practice with Icelandic.”

“Uncle Reynir!” Morten cheered at the prospect. He was fond of Reynir and spent many hours with him on those occasions when the Icelander visited. A mere unexpected sister was of little import compared to his favorite “uncle”.

The boys ran ahead of their father to the port, eager to meet a new child even if she was to be “almost like a sister”. Aino Hollola was six, a year older than the twins, shorter than they and just as slender, with a mass of ash-blond hair in a braid that fell to her waist. She carried a duffel bag and wore a small knapsack. Mikkel smiled a little at the sight. Onni and Lalli had always travelled light as well.

Mikkel took the duffel bag and knapsack, allowing the children to run ahead, already chattering in their limited Icelandic. His sons took after their mother, outgoing and outspoken. They would do well with young Aino, he thought. By the time they reached the cottage, the boys were eager to show Aino their treehouse, the frog pond, and the town of Dalsnes. Mikkel gave permission and watched them go before turning to his chores.

Sigrun returned from her hunt, and the children from their explorations, just in time for a supper of mutton and vegetables. Mikkel served his wife more meat and less “green stuff”, and she ate it all with hardly a grumble. They had agreed that the Finnish girl should not hear their mock quarrels until she could understand them. After supper, the adults took their customary seats by the fire, the children sat together between them, and the boys looked expectantly at their father for their bedtime story.

“Your mother will tell the story tonight,” Mikkel said, “and I will translate for Aino.” He turned to the Finn and explained briefly in Icelandic that they were recounting their adventures in Silent Denmark.

“So,” Sigrun said, “like your Papa said last night, me and Emil went looking for books in the rain. The first couple of places we checked were all burned down. Lots of stuff out there burned down even before our little Cleanser ever got there.” She grinned at Mikkel and waited for him to translate. “Then we got to this school. It was a crap building, just flimsy walls, so there wouldn't be any trolls inside. See, if anything tries to build a nest in a place like that, the whole disgusting mess will freeze solid once it gets really cold.” The boys nodded. One day they too would be troll-hunters, and this kind of knowledge might save their lives. “There were some books in the place that were all wrapped up in plastic, so they were good, and there were these other things that the kid said were gramophones.”

“They weren't. They're called 'CDs', for some reason, and no one can read what's on them. No one will ever be able to read them.” Mikkel sighed. “According to the histories, all the knowledge of the world might have been on those shiny disks, and there was nothing we could do with them.”

“Yeah, you threw them away.”

“There was no point bringing them. And we had limited space.”

“Right, so that's the loot we found. We saw a whole herd of deer! Good, healthy deer!” She paused for a moment, eyes bright with the memory. “We could have shot one for food, but that didn't seem right.” She shook her head. “In the middle of the Silent World, those deer were still going strong.

“Anyway, the kid heard something and went off to check it out while I checked for more loot. Pretty soon, I hear him shooting at something. I go to see what's the problem, and there's nothing there but this cat up on a pole, all bloody. Emil shoots again, and I was going to check on him when he stopped. He's not screaming or anything, so I figure he's okay. And there was the cat.”

“A cat!” Asbjørn looked at her in astonishment. “There was a cat just living out there in the Silent World?”

“Sure was. She was hurt pretty bad, though. She'd been in a fight with this dog beast, the one the kid was shooting at, and she's so scared she won't come down when I called her. So I climb up after her, and I'm trying to get this stupid cat down while she's clawing at my face. See this here?” She ran a finger over some faint thin scars on the right side of her jaw. “That's what she did to me before she passed out. So I get her down and I figure I'll take her to the medic and get her patched up. Then I see the little Viking is sitting in the rain by this little hole in the side of the building. That was her den, see, where she'd left her kittens. It was flooding and the poor things had drowned. All but one.”

“There were five kittens,” Mikkel put in. Even as young as they were, the children knew that post-Rash cats didn't — simply didn't — produce large litters. Five was unheard of.

“Right, there were five, and four of them drowned. Emil pulls out that last one and we take her and the cat to our medic.”

“There was nothing I could do for the cat,” Mikkel said somberly, “but to give her a better way to go. Sometimes there is nothing else you can do. But the kitten was fine, just cold and wet, and we took good care of her. We brought her back with us, in the end.”

“You brought a cat back from the Silent World?” Morten looked up at his father, followed his gaze to Kisu, purring by the fire with her kittens. “Our cat? Kisu?”

“Kisu,” Mikkel agreed. “We all hoped that she could produce litters like her mother, that we could breed that ability back into cats, but it didn't happen. Still, two kittens every two years, all fertile, is unusual.” The boys nodded, as did Aino once Mikkel translated for her.

“It was snowing the next day,” Sigrun went on, “in fact it turned into a blizzard pretty soon, and we ran into this huge snowdrift.”

Frowning, Mikkel said, “It shouldn't have been there. There was no reason for a drift that size to form in the middle of the street.”

“Yeah, yeah. That's what you always say. But it was there, and we had to turn back. Our little scout found us a way to a camping spot in the middle of this big plaza. We weren't too far from one of the book sites, and we had a clear field of fire in all directions. It looked really safe.”

“But it wasn't.”

“Why not?” the twins asked together.

“That is a story for tomorrow. Off to bed with you now!” Grumbling, the boys betook themselves to their beds, Aino following uncertainly until Sigrun led her to the third bed in the boys' room.

“We have a long hunt planned today,” Sigrun said, “so I won't be home until late. Can you handle the recruits alone?”

“I can, Captain. That is …” He looked over at the three children, who were watching the adults impatiently. “I feel constrained to note that two of them are Eides.”

Sigrun turned to study the children as well. “Why, so they are. Is that a problem, Corporal?”

“No, no, Captain.” Mikkel drew himself up to his full height. “There are no problems, only opportunities.”

“Good. Then I'll get to my team and leave you to handle the Eide opportunities.”

Mikkel came to attention and saluted. The boys came to their best approximation of attention and offered their own salutes. Aino looked from one family member to another, shrugged, and did likewise. Suppressing a grin, Sigrun saluted the four, turned on her heel, and marched out.

“Today we will go on a nature walk,” Mikkel announced. “The boys will tell Aino in Norwegian about the birds and trees and flowers, and whatever else we find, and Aino will tell the boys about such things in Finnish. If you must, you may explain in Icelandic, but only if you must. Okay?”

The children nodded and set forth, excitedly chattering and pointing out interesting objects as soon as they left the house. Mikkel followed, listening to Aino's comments. He had no hopes of learning to speak Finnish well, but he believed he might pick up some working knowledge alongside his sons.

The frog pond was, as Mikkel had expected, a favorite with the children. Splashing around and catching tadpoles and frogs kept them busy for almost an hour before Mikkel called them to go back to the house for lunch. When Asbjørn found a frog had made its way down the back of his shirt, he directed his accusing looks first to Morten, then to his father, and only after both had denied culpability did he turn to Aino. For the first time since she'd arrived in Dalsnes, Aino grinned at them, highly pleased with her sneakiness.

“Sisters can play with frogs too?” Asbjørn demanded, outraged.

“They can. My baby sister used to go with me to collect frogs. We'd put them in my other sisters' beds. And dressers. And —” Mikkel stopped himself. There was no need to give the twins any ideas.

“I want to meet your baby sister,” Morten said.

“You must understand that she is old and gray, just like me.” Now forty-two, Mikkel had begun to find silver hairs shining in his thick, dark blond hair. “In fact, she has children of her own.”

Morten frowned, visibly trying to reconcile “baby sister” with “old and gray”.

“Come along now, we need to get home for lunch.”

Lunch was leftover mutton and vegetables, and afterwards Mikkel set the children to work on arithmetic while he chopped chicken and vegetables for chicken stew, his culinary repertoire being quite limited.

Aino had already begun to learn her multiplication tables, a fascinating concept for Asbjørn, who insisted that his father explain it right now. Morten, the older by a good hour, joined in, unwilling to allow his younger brother to get ahead of him. Pleased at the opportunity, Mikkel explained multiplication in rather more detail than his sons wanted before writing out the tables on the large slate in the main room of the cottage. By the time the children grew bored with practicing, it was suppertime and they abandoned their slates with relief.

With help from the children, Mikkel quickly cleared the table, washed the dishes and put them away, and built up the fire which warmed the main room. Turning back from the last task, he found the children sitting on the rug beside his chair, watching him with expectant expressions. He seated himself and looked them over with a raised eyebrow. “Do you want something, children?” He spoke Icelandic for Aino's benefit.

“You're going to tell us why the plaza wasn't safe,” Morten said.

“What plaza?” Mikkel said in feigned confusion.

“The plaza that looked safe because it had clear fields of fire, but it wasn't,” Asbjørn prompted.

“Oh, that plaza! Well, now. We'd had a blizzard, as we told you yesterday, but it had blown itself out. The day was clear and bright and chilly, a little below freezing. That sort of weather will keep most grosslings under cover but …”

“Most isn't all!” the twins chorused.

“Just so. Because the day was so fair and the plaza appeared so safe, we all got out of the tank to stretch our legs. All, that is, except Lalli. He had exhausted himself doing some sort of magic — I never found out what, exactly. At any rate, he fell asleep as soon as he got back from scouting our route to the plaza.

“We were all outside in the snow, which was about knee-deep, looking around. Reynir grabbed my arm and pointed at one building, saying he saw something moving! Lalli had checked the place; we could see his tracks in the snow. Still, the noise of the tank might have awakened something, or Lalli himself might have, without realizing it. And those were good sturdy buildings. If a troll had made a nest in one of them, it would be well protected from the weather. We had to check on it, so Sigrun and I went together.”

He glanced at the children, who were breathless with anticipation, expecting to hear of a valiant battle against trolls. “We went inside and found a lobby which had been a makeshift clinic for sufferers of the Rash. The pre-Rash people were good and compassionate; they did their best to care for the afflicted, even when they knew their patients would inevitably die. These patients were all dead, but … well, I'll get to that.

“The only tracks in the dust inside were Lalli's. We checked the walls and the ceiling — always check the ceiling — but there was nothing there that Reynir could have seen moving. When we came out, Reynir pointed again, very alarmed. We checked again, but there really was nothing there, and Sigrun called Reynir over to see for himself.”

He hesitated, not wanting to criticize his wife, his Captain, his children's mother. “It appeared safe enough. There was no sign of grosslings in the building, no tracks in the snow outside, and it was a cold, sunny day. And he had the kitten. So it seemed safe for him to enter the building.”

“But it wasn't?” Aino asked.

“The risk for Reynir was that he is not immune. Neither was Tuuri.” Aino, who had not heard the beginning of the story, gave him a shocked look. “They had masks, so they could only be infected by a bite … or a scratch.” Mikkel looked away, took a breath, continued. “But there were no grosslings in the building and he was safe. Or as safe as we were. He came in and looked around, and he told me that there were ghosts around us.”

“Ghosts!” Morten echoed.

“Are ghosts magic?” Asbjørn asked. “You said you don't believe in magic.”

“You don't believe in magic?” Aino asked, astonished.

“I didn't believe in magic. I didn't then, though I do now. I'm a Dane, Aino. We Danes don't seem to have our own magic, not like you Finns, or the Icelanders, or Norwegians. So we don't see magic around us and, well, it sounds unlikely when we're told about it. We're skeptics, but we'll believe what we see. And I have seen magic with my own eyes.”

Aino sat back, satisfied, while the boys leaned forward, eager to hear the rest.

“Reynir had never been inside a place like that, a makeshift clinic. Since the ghosts seemed harmless, we stayed to look around. I was hoping for medical supplies: scalpels, even bandages if they'd been properly wrapped. The sort of thing I might need as the team's medic, or the sort of thing I might take back with me if we ever got out of the Silent World. There was nothing like that. The medics in that place were just caring for the infected until they died. They weren't patching up the injured or anything like that. If we'd left then, if we'd just walked away, none of the rest would have happened. But I looked. And I found the note.”

Mikkel fell silent, staring into the fire, remembering a wall of flame surrounding the tank, dead and dying grosslings around him, the choking stench of rot and death, grosslings screaming as they burned, and one last shot … too late. The twins glanced at each other, worried, knowing their father's moods. After a moment, Morten put a small hand on Mikkel's knee. “What was the note?”

Mikkel could see the note behind his eyes as clearly as when he had held it in his hand. “It read, 'If any of you wake up, don't be alarmed, we didn't leave you for dead! But the food has run scarce and we've received word that the troops at Kastellet have decided to abandon their cause and move on. We need to venture further out to find supplies, but we're not giving up on you, not now.' ”

He glanced at the children, who did not understand the significance of the note, no more than Sigrun had. “The note was written late in the epidemic, when they knew the infected would not recover, yet the writer believed they might. And the dead around us, though they had clearly been infected, had not died of the Rash. I was sure that was significant, though I hadn't reached a conclusion, not then. I took a box of vials that was next to the note, and we left the building.”

The children looked puzzled and a bit disappointed. He had said the plaza was not safe, and so far he had told only of harmless ghosts and a mysterious note.

“Once we got outside, Reynir noticed the kitten alerting to grosslings. Something had followed us, slith— crawling under the snow where it was protected from the sunlight. Tuuri retreated into the tank immediately, so she was safe, but we had to get Reynir to the tank as well.

“We almost made it.”

“And then?” Morten prompted breathlessly.

“And then the troll lunged at Reynir, leaping right out of the snow. It was a wide flat thing with a lot of legs. It had a small mouth, as trolls go. That was fortunate, because Sigrun threw her arm between it and Reynir, and it bit her.”

“Ooh!”

“Sigrun saved Reynir's life in that moment. She was bitten, but she'd been bitten before. And since. Here in Norway, though, when she's wounded, she has a chance to rest and heal in safety. There was no safety for us in Silent Denmark.

“Sigrun and I, and Emil, went after the troll. We couldn't leave it alive, for it had followed us once and would follow us again until it was killed. Emil shot it, but it was hard to hit because it kept diving under the snow. It fled into that same building, the one with the ghosts, and we followed. But when we looked for it, we found it was already dead, and we had no idea, at that time, what had killed it.”

“What had killed it?” Asbjørn asked. “The ghosts?”

“Yes, I believe it was the ghosts. They seemed harmless, but we found out the hard way just how dangerous they could be. However, that is a longer story that will have to wait for another night. You must be in bed before the Captain comes home, or we will all be on kitchen duty!”

The children whined, but Mikkel was implacable, bundling them off to bed. They were just falling asleep when Sigrun returned from her hunt.

The next day was wash-day, and after bidding farewell to Sigrun, Mikkel set to work washing all the bedding and all the clothing from the past week. The boys pitched in, as did Aino. While they worked, Mikkel recounted some of the Just So Stories, which his sons had heard before but the Finnish girl had not. The boys chimed in on some of their favorite phrases, such as “the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees”.

“Where is the Limpopo River?” Aino asked, when Mikkel had finished the tale of the Elephant's Child. “Is it in Iceland?” That was the largest country in the Known World, and the least known to the Finns.

“No, it's in Africa. That's a continent far, far to the south. A continent is like a very, very large island, hundreds of times as large as Iceland. In fact, we live on a continent. All the little nations are part of the European continent.” The little nations were Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland: all the Known World but Iceland.

“Are there people there, in Africa?” Asbjørn asked.

“No one knows.” Mikkel shrugged. “It's far away, and the static gets worse and worse the farther you travel from the Known World, so even if they're down there, and even if they have radios just like ours, we can't hear them. We'll never know unless someone sails down there or someone from there sails up here. That would be very difficult and dangerous, so no one has tried. No one from here, at least, and if anyone from there has tried, they didn't make it.”

“But there might be?” Asbjørn persisted.

“Certainly there might be. There were people in Africa before the Rash, millions of people, many times the population of the Known World. And there are mountains and islands to which they could have retreated, just as our people did. So someday, someday, maybe someone will go down there and find them.” He looked off into space, thinking of his experiences exploring the Silent World. It had been terrible, and yet he had felt alive as never before or since. Perhaps when the children were grown …

After a moment, Mikkel sighed and began collecting laundry. “All right, let's hang this stuff up to dry.”

The children had leftover chicken stew for lunch while Mikkel chopped ingredients for beef stew and set his soup pot to simmering. With supper arranged, he pulled out an Icelandic book about geology and gathered the children to listen while he read aloud.

Sigrun came home early, frustrated at an unsuccessful hunt. “We were told that village was heavily infested. All we found was three dog beasts and a little troll. Waste of time. We could have sent the recruits out to clear it for practice.” She looked over at her sons, who shifted uneasily at the thought that she might mean that they could have cleared a village. “So, anyway, what's for supper?”

After supper, the adults settled in their chairs and the children pushed at each other, making space for themselves on the rug before the fire.

“Well, now,” Mikkel began, speaking slowly and clearly in Icelandic, which all three children and Sigrun understood to varying degrees, “last night we were talking about the plaza. Sigrun was bitten protecting Reynir from the troll, and the troll turned up dead. I picked up a box of vials because there was something strange about it. It was next to the note from the medics, and also it had a handwritten label. Today, that would not be surprising, but pre-Rash, there were many devices for printing labels and other documents. They were so common that my own family had several of them. They all stopped working soon after the Rash, though, since they required supplies we can no longer produce. Anyway, back then, I would expect anything related to medicine to be printed, not handwritten.”

The children stirred impatiently. They weren't there for a history lesson.

“Reynir was spared infection and I stitched up Sigrun's wound —”

“Badly,” Sigrun said with a fond smile.

Mikkel smiled faintly and continued. “It would have kept the wound closed and clean if you had rested. But there was no rest and no safety in Silent Denmark. The next morning, Sigrun and Emil set out again to collect more books. Did anything noteworthy happen that day?”

“As I recall, there was a mutiny.” Sigrun's smile widened as she answered in strongly accented Icelandic.

“I meant, while you were collecting books.”

“Oh. No. Just the usual. Most of the books had rotted. We found some in good shape. The ancients were so rich! They had some books all wrapped up in plastic! Like they'd never read them!”

“Perhaps they hadn't. They had so many.” Mikkel loved to read, but even with two printing presses running in Iceland, the supply of books was still very limited. He was overcome with jealousy at the thought of having more books than he had time to read.

“Yeah. So, anyway, it went fine. There were some trolls, and my little Cleanser pal threw an incendiary on them, and the whole place went up. It was okay. There weren't any more books in there worth keeping. And then we came back and found out about the mutiny.”

“Mutiny?” Morten was appalled. He had only a vague idea of the meaning of the word, but he knew it was a terrible thing.

“Don't worry. That's your Mama's little joke, though she was furious at the time. How that happened, is that while I was cleaning the tank and doing the laundry, I had plenty of time to think about the note. I concluded that the only logical explanation was that the medics had had a cure, or at least they had thought they did, and that the cure was in that box with the handwritten label.”

“You found a cure? A cure for the Rash?” Aino leaned forward eagerly, and Mikkel remembered that, though she herself was immune, like him she came from a family of both immunes and non-immunes.

“Alas, no. But I believed at the time that we might have. Or at least that we needed to investigate the possibility. Sigrun was off looking for books, and when I finished my chores, I decided to make a brief trip to a place called Kastellet Fortress because that was written on the label. Lalli was still asleep, so Tuuri and Reynir and the kitten came with me.” He didn't say that he had ordered the non-immunes to remain in the tank and that they had followed against his wishes, bringing the kitten with them.

“Kastellet is a fort and was closed up and secure, with a population of immune animals. It appeared very safe. As in many other places, there was a clinic and, again as in many other places, there were many dead. That was a blow, for if they'd had a cure, why were there so many dead both at Kastellet and back at the plaza?” The children and Sigrun all nodded at that.

“And yet, I found evidence there that something was distributed to the medics at Kastellet and the plaza, and what would the authorities have distributed so late in the epidemic, if not a cure? That was my reasoning, anyway.” He shrugged.

“Now, I said Tuuri and Reynir were with me. The kitten wasn't alerting to anything, but Reynir was highly alarmed. He said that there were ghosts in the clinic, and that they were hostile, unlike the passive ghosts at the plaza. He was near panic by the time we left. Again, I didn't believe in ghosts or magic, not then, so I dismissed his fears as superstition and foolishness.” The look Aino gave him implied that he was the one guilty of foolishness. He replied with a slight, brief smile.

“I took a box from the clinic, this one bearing the address of a hospital in Odense, another city in Denmark. On the way back to the tank, we ran into Sigrun and Emil and, as she's said, she was angry and called me a mutineer for failing to stay with the tank. We have seldom quarrelled, your mother and I, and even that time was really a misunderstanding. Knowing what we did, we would have investigated the clinic at Kastellet anyway. And maybe it would have gone even worse.” He stopped, looking into the fire.

After watching him for a moment, Sigrun picked up the tale in Norwegian, prompting Mikkel to rouse himself and translate. “Yes, I was angry. I thought he'd disobeyed an order, but our roles weren't entirely clear. Could I give him an order that he was bound to obey? I thought so and he didn't agree. The team was just thrown together by our sponsors, not a proper military operation at all, and they hadn't worked that out up front. Still, that evening he agreed to be under my command, which was better for everyone.”

Mikkel finished the translation, nodded, and continued. “We talked to the sponsors about the potential cure. They didn't all agree that we should pursue it, but we were the ones on the spot, and we were willing. We were stuck in the Silent World anyway —”

“Eating inedible sludge.”

“— and we might as well do something more useful than just collecting books. Even if the cure wasn't perfect, it would help our researchers to know what paths had been followed. After all, there were far more pre-Rash scientists looking at the problem than we could ever produce. It was too late to travel by the time we agreed on that, so we planned to stay the night in the plaza, the most defensible place we knew of. We couldn't send Lalli out to scout for another place because he was still asleep. He'd slept a night and a day, which was worrisome, but I had no idea what to do for him. Tuuri said he'd exhausted himself doing something magical, and we shouldn't worry about him.”

Aino nodded. “His luonto probably left him.”

“Your grandmother Taru explained that to me much later, after we got back to Iceland. At the time, though, I had no idea. Anyway, we were eating supper as the sun was setting, when Reynir suddenly insisted that we had to move right now because ghosts were coming to attack us. Tuuri refused to drive away, and he tried to take the wheel. Sigrun and I were going to put a stop to that, when Lalli, who was still asleep, started screaming. We were going to put a stop to that, when we, Sigrun, Emil, and I, all collapsed unconscious.”

The children gasped as one. “Why? Was it the ghosts?” Asbjørn asked, and “How did you get out of there?” Morten asked at the same time.

“Ah, that will have to wait for tomorrow,” Mikkel answered, getting to his feet and shooing the children towards their beds.

Sigrun set out hunting the next day while Mikkel did the week's shopping, accompanied by a group of chattering children, who pointed out goods and named them in three languages. The people of Dalsnes were well acquainted with the Eide family, and with Mikkel and the children, but Aino was new and drew some interested glances, though no one was so rude as to approach and question her.

Back at the cottage, Mikkel and the children set to work cleaning, Mikkel doing the bulk of the work, of course, and Morten slacking off whenever he escaped his father's gaze. By the time Sigrun returned, the cottage was spotless and a supper of fried fish and potatoes was waiting for her.

After supper, the children settled, with only minimal pushing and shoving, in their accustomed places on the rug before the fire, while the adults took their own chairs. Mikkel proceeded with the bedtime story, using Icelandic for Aino's benefit. Sigrun leaned back, half-asleep, listening to her husband's voice.

“When we left the story last night, Sigrun, Emil, and I were all unconscious on the floor after Reynir panicked and tried to get Tuuri to drive away from the ghosts. Now, my knowledge of what happened with the ghosts is all secondhand as I am not a mage. But according to Reynir and Tuuri, and much later Lalli and Onni, here's what happened. Wait — I should tell you more about Reynir, first, or you won't understand the story.”

He frowned, gathering his thoughts. “When Reynir arrived in his crate, he did not know that he was a mage although, being an Icelander, he did believe in magic and mages. He even told me he didn't dream at all, and I told him he did but just didn't remember it. Everyone dreams, you see, and especially everyone dreams, or rather has nightmares, in the Silent World. And there Reynir dreamed. In his dreams, he met Lalli and Onni, and later he saw ghosts come to the tank to attack. He dreamed other things too, but I'll get to that later.”

Mikkel looked into the fire, thinking with some shame of how he had treated Reynir. “He told Tuuri and me that he had seen Lalli and Onni in a dream, and that he thought he was a mage, but we didn't believe him. I didn't believe because I didn't believe in magic in the first place, and Tuuri didn't believe because mages are generally recognized early in non-skeptical countries, especially strong mages, which Reynir is. But Reynir was an adult when we met him and had never been recognized as a mage. However, Reynir was twenty-one, and that age is itself magic, in a way. The number seven is magic, as are two and three, so in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, a child becomes an adult at fourteen and is considered mature at twenty-one.”

Mikkel stopped, remembering the terrible thing he had done at fourteen, and his decision to join the Danish Army at twenty-one. Two of the major turning points of his life had occurred at those times. At his prolonged silence, the children stirred impatiently and Sigrun looked over with some concern.

“Yes, well, perhaps it was because he had just reached the age of maturity, or because he was in the Silent World, or even because the gods had chosen him for their own purposes, but Reynir's abilities as a mage manifested only once he was with us. Anyway, it was because of his dreams that Reynir knew the approaching ghosts, which only he could see, were going to attack us. After we three passed out, he tried to defend us, but it was rather as if one of you tried to fight off a troll. He had no chance and he knew it, so he — somehow, magically — screamed for help to the only mage he knew: Onni.

“And Onni came.”

“All the way from Finland?” Asbjørn asked in disbelief.

“No, by then he was in Sweden. And he did not cross the seas of this world in his own flesh, but came across the sea of dreams in the form of a great owl. With his talons and his magic, he tore at the attacking ghosts and flung them away from us, and from Lalli, who had screamed because the ghosts were attacking him in the world of magic. Once the ghosts were gone, we all woke up, except for Lalli because he was still suffering the effects of his magic use.

“Now, Tuuri and Reynir were in the front of the tank, where the setting sun shone on them through the windshield, while the rest of us were in the back. That's why Tuuri wasn't attacked as the rest of us were. She did perceive Onni's presence, to some extent, because Tuuri was herself a weak mage, having a mage's touch with machinery. Not surprising, really, since she was the sister of one powerful mage, Onni, and the cousin of another, Lalli. In fact, genetically, she and Lalli were half-siblings since their fathers were identical twins. Likewise, the children of my twin brother, Michael, are genetically your half-siblings.”

“Wait, we have half-siblings? Do we have half-sisters?” Asbjørn asked with suspicion.

“Genetically they're your half-siblings. They're my brother's children, not mine. I wouldn't do that to your mother.” He decided it was best not to explain about the duty of an immune man to “contribute to the species”, nor to disclose that they likely had genetic half-siblings in every nation but Finland, for in his travels over the years, he had dutifully visited the sperm banks everywhere he went. “And, yes, my brother has three daughters. And two sons.”

The children considered that for a moment before Aino, not interested in Madsen family genetics, asked, “And then what happened? You woke up and …?”

“Tuuri had found herself the only person really conscious in the tank. Lalli was out; we three were unconscious on the floor; and Reynir was half in the realm of dreams. She had to get us away from the ghosts — she couldn't see them, but Reynir had said they were there — and she thought the sunlight was protecting her, so she drove west, into the setting sun. After Onni defended us and we woke up, we went forward to figure out what to do next. I didn't exactly believe that we had been attacked by ghosts — the unquiet dead — but we'd been attacked by something. We had to get away.

“The snow had mostly melted or blown away, and the sun hadn't yet set, so we could see the street fairly well. Still, we weren't following a scouted route and were in danger of falling into a pit where the street was undercut, or being trapped against fallen debris, or some other disaster. We had to keep moving, because we didn't know what might be pursuing us from the plaza, and in any case the noise of the tank might awaken … anything. Soon we happened upon some train tracks and followed them, assuming they would lead us out of the city.”

He looked over at Sigrun, who had followed the story so far, as she had picked up some Icelandic over the years, but whose speech in the language was quite poor. “Do you want to tell this part, and I'll translate for Aino?”

She smiled, always happy to tell the tale. “Sure! So me and the big guy over there fell down when the ghosts attacked. That was a really weird feeling, like I was under a waterfall and it was roaring down and just hammering away at me. But then it stopped, just like that, when Onni drove off the ghosts. I didn't know about him then, though. Anyway, I wake up and our little driver's getting us out of range of the ghosts just as fast as the old tank could carry us. And pretty soon, we see this leg right in front of us. Tuuri runs right over the biped troll — crunch! — and just keeps going.”

“The biped trolls were tall things, almost giants,” Mikkel put in, “with two long legs ending in pads with a wicked spike. Their bodies were just transparent globes full of gel, enclosing the brains and eyes of the things.” He waved to Sigrun to continue.

“We're following these railroad tracks, and they lead us right to where this big water troll's got its tentacles all over the road, and if that isn't enough, some more of those biped trolls are back there somewhere, following us. Along with anything that might have woke up as we went by, so we're not going back, we're going through! I send Emil back there to play rear guard with his flamethrower, and me and Mikkel start chopping through the tentacles. It's dead, right? Not a twitch out of it. We're almost through when it's suddenly not so dead as we believed. The big guy chops into this tentacle and everything that isn't dead jerks back into the canal, and takes me with it!”

She stopped. “Huh, look at the time! You recruits need to get to bed!”

“No!” all three children cried together. “What happened next? How did you get out of the canal? What did you do about the water troll?”

“If you're very good tomorrow,” Mikkel said, “we'll finish the story.”

Knowing that moaning wouldn't change the decision, the children took themselves reluctantly off to bed.

The next day was not a good day. The troll-hunters had run into a much larger swarm than they had expected or prepared for, and many were injured. Mikkel spent the day at the clinic, patching up those he could.

Jonas Eide was brought in unconscious, carried over the shoulder of a larger cousin. Had Mikkel been responsible for his care, he would have recommended the last injection, for the man’s head injury was far beyond his medical skills — or anyone’s medical skills — in this Year 98 of the Rash. However, Jonas’ injury was not beyond the magical skills of the Icelandic healer, Dagur Jóhannsson. Invited to Dalsnes several years before on Mikkel’s recommendation, Dagur was especially skilled with head injuries. Though the healing would be slow, the wounded man would eventually recover fully.

Aksel Eide, distinguished from the other Aksels as Aksel the Brown, for his hair was more brown than red, was another matter. Not even Icelandic magic could restore a severed leg, and the man would never hunt again. The best Mikkel could do was to clean up and bandage the wound, then send the patient to the surgeon in Dalsnes for better shaping of the stump. Aksel bore his fate stoically. Such things happened; the family would find a place for him, perhaps training young hunters. Though troll-hunters hunted because they wanted to, they were also paid well for their work, so Aksel would never be in want.

The other wounded hunters, including Sigrun, would stay home for a few days, sporting an assortment of bandages into which Dagur had woven special healing staves. Such bandages, prepared in advance for use on any wound, improved healing, though not so much as the bandage Dagur would weave expressly for Jonas.

After a long day at the clinic, Mikkel came home to find his kitchen, immaculate that morning, was a mess: spilled flour on the floor, dirty dishes and utensils in the sink, grease smeared on the oven and table. Sigrun and the children proudly presented him with fried fish and potatoes, which he ate with appropriate thanks, little appetite though he felt, before shooing them out so that he could clean up.

As he scrubbed, Mikkel heard Sigrun begin the evening story, Morten translating as best he could.

“I told you yesterday the water troll dragged me into the water. That water was cold! There was ice floating in it! And I was still wearing my boots. If you fall in the water, it's best to kick off your boots as soon as you can. They're heavy and they make it hard to swim. Can't kick them off with a troll trying to grab you, though, so I never did. The big guy got a rope from the tank and threw it to me. With him pulling and me climbing, I almost made it out.”

She paused dramatically and Morten interrupted his translation to say, “We can't go to bed now! It's too early!”

“Oh, well, I suppose you're right. I'll go on. I yelled at the driver to get the tank moving and get out of the city. No telling what might come out after us, and the non-immunes were alone in there. The tank wasn't armed, so if they got attacked, they'd die. The tank goes clanking off, and I'm almost out when the troll smacks me right off the rope and back into the water. Man, I hate fighting in water! And that water was really cold.

“The troll's flailing around, smacking the water to hit me. I get a good breath of air (and some water) and swim for a ladder on the side. Pulled myself up and saw your Papa over there about to jump in after me! He couldn't swim, back then. We taught him, later, same as we taught you kids. Hey, can Aino swim?”

A discussion in a mixture of halting Icelandic, Norwegian, and Finnish, brought out the information that she could not.

“We'll teach her, then. Never know when you might fall in. So, Mikkel's about to jump in. I'm so out of breath, I can't even shout. Throw a pebble at him to stop him. Now we're together and we just need Emil and we can all get out of there. The big guy yells for Emil, but then we hear the water troll climbing right up the ladder too!”

Morten's struggles with the translation were too much for Mikkel. The kitchen was clean, not quite to his standards, but adequate for now. Putting the broom in its proper place, he joined the others before the fire. As he dropped into his chair and closed his eyes, the twins climbed onto his knees. He hugged them close, telling Sigrun, “Go on. I'll translate now.”

She continued with a smile for her husband. “Mikkel yells for Emil, but he's already running for us! One of the trolls tried to stab him with that spike-thing they had, so he gave it a shot from the flame thrower. I told him not to use the rifle, see. Then that troll ran into the other trolls, and they caught fire and stumbled into the others, and now he's running back with about twenty of them chasing after him, all on fire and all screaming! There we are, the water troll behind us, flaming trolls in front, the freezing-cold canal to one side and a brick wall to the other. We're doomed!

“Say, isn't it bedtime?”

“No!” all three children cried in Norwegian. “Not yet,” Morten added.

“No? Well, if you all say that … What do you think, Mikkel?”

“Not quite yet, I believe.”

“Okay then. Emil ran to us, and the trolls closed in, and then …” She smiled down at Aino, who was leaning forward, open-mouthed. “And then the water troll starts smacking the other trolls! Fire and water, what do you think? When it reached for them, we got through between it and the wall. Mikkel wouldn't let us stay and watch the fight, because he's a spoilsport! Wasn't much of a fight though; those things were dying on their feet. Better for them that the other one killed them first.”

The children and Mikkel all nodded their agreement. Trolls were to be killed; that was unquestionable, but they had once been human, and no one knew if they still had minds enough to suffer. The faster they died, the less painfully they died, the better.

“After it smashed all the others, the water troll came after us. Now, you don't want to fight water trolls in the water. They'll just pull you under and drown you. And you can't shoot them because bullets don't work very well in water. You want to lure them onto land. Dance around just out of reach, yell at them, until they climb out after you. Sometimes you have to bring in a non-immune animal; that almost always works.”

The children stared at her in shock at the horrifying idea of using anything non-immune as bait for grosslings.

“Hey, you know, we eat animals. We were eating a cow a couple of days ago, right? So, yeah, we might take a dog out as bait. Dogs are pretty good at dodging; they hardly ever get hit. And they have little muzzle-masks so they don't breathe anything bad. They're okay! Anyway, if you can't lure the thing out, all you can do is send for the big guns. Never had to do that, myself, but then I don't fight water trolls much.

“Once you get them on land, like this one was on land, you just lead them inland until they get stuck somewhere, and then you leave them to dry to death. Land trolls drown if you trap them in water — most of them, anyway — and water trolls dry out if you trap them on land. Kind of cool, that.”

“There is a pleasing symmetry about it,” Mikkel agreed.

“So we started walking with the water troll following us. We weren't real fast, but it wasn't either. After a while it got stuck and that was that. No telling what the tank had stirred up, going through there, so we had to keep going, as fast as we could.”

Mikkel remembered that walk, with Sigrun wrapped in his own coat and stumbling with weariness and cold. They hadn't gone fast, and he'd soon found himself considering picking her up and carrying her over her objections.

“But little Tuuri didn't obey orders very well. She'd gone a couple of kilometers and stopped. Lucky they weren't both dead by the time we caught up! They weren't, though, so once we were aboard, she went on and found us a good camping spot away from the city.”

Sigrun paused, quirked an eyebrow at Mikkel. “Not quite bedtime yet,” Mikkel said, answering her unspoken question.

“Well, then, the next part of the story is kind of dull. It took us weeks to get to Odense.”

“Odense is where the hospital was, where we thought a cure might have been developed,” Mikkel said, suspecting that the children might have forgotten the name. “It wasn't on the main island but on another one on the other side of a big bridge.”

“Wait,” Asbjørn said. “That was another island? Then, Copenhagen is on an island? Why did they let it be overrun? Why didn't they protect it, like Iceland and Bornholm?”

“The islands where Copenhagen and Odense are, are much bigger than Bornholm. There were a lot more people, and those islands are very close to the mainland of Europe. Also, they closed the borders later than Iceland. By then the Rash was all over, unstoppable.”

“But you said Norway and Sweden, and Finland, too, they're all on the Europe continent,” Asbjørn objected. “They don't have the Rash. Well, not all over.”

“Finland has that enormous lake, Saimaa, with a lot of little islands that small groups could live on and defend. There's nothing like that in Denmark. Norway and Sweden have mountains where people could fort up and survive. The main islands of Denmark have no mountains; they're very flat. A few immunes did survive on small islands, away from the main ones, and were rescued later and brought to Bornholm by the Navy, but even that was rare. No, those islands were just indefensible. They were lost, and we couldn't reconquer them.” His voice was quite steady.

“As I was saying,” Sigrun said hurriedly, “we went really slowly. The big roads were all full of old cars, trolls too, sometimes. We kept having to detour, got snowed in for a few days in a blizzard … yeah, this part's kind of dull. There weren't even that many trolls. Not like you see near cities around here, anyway. We didn't understand it, not then, but we were real happy about it. We found some books, my little pal blew up a few buildings. Oh, and we found that antique shop. Really the scout found it. It was really in good shape, so many books, paintings, all kinds of stuff. We took what we could carry, and another expedition went back later to clear it out. We got a share of that, because we found it.”

Mikkel gave a slight headshake and Sigrun replied with an equally slight nod. There was no need to go into detail about the family fortune. It was best if the children didn't know they were quite rich.

“Odense was full of trolls. We didn't see them, not right off, but the kitten was alerting in all directions, and our forest mage was about ready to jump out of his skin. We parked in front of the hospital, and me and Mikkel and Lalli, we went in to look for records. The place is full of mold and rot and dead guys. Don't really expect a lot of dead guys if they had a cure, but on we go. Pretty soon I'm standing guard, the scout's poking around, and Mikkel's pawing through all these dusty files. Phew! At last he finds some stuff so we can get out of there. That's when the trolls attacked.”

“It's time for bed.” Mikkel tried not to let grimness leak into his voice. If they stopped now, they could get through the worst of it in one evening.

“Nooo,” the children moaned, but they went to bed. They knew the story would continue the next day.

Since half her team was on “house arrest” with their wounds, Sigrun took the children to watch the recruits train and to give Aino her first swimming lesson. Mikkel took the opportunity to clean the house, with particular attention to the kitchen, and to wash the children's bedding. With nothing else to work on in the house, he shopped for food, bringing back a rabbit to stew for dinner.

The family returned to a house full of the welcoming smell of rabbit stew. Hurrying to the table, the children talked over each other in telling Mikkel of their day. Aino even offered a few sentences in Norwegian; she was learning it faster than the boys were learning Finnish. That made sense, Mikkel thought, remembering that Tuuri had once told him that, from the point of view of a Finn, Icelandic and Swedish (and therefore Norwegian) were very similar languages. Aino already spoke Icelandic fairly well if not fluently, making Norwegian simpler for her than Finnish was for the boys, who knew no language remotely resembling Finnish.

After supper, the children took their places by the fire, but Sigrun stopped Mikkel as he finished the dishes and turned to join them. “You don't have to tell the story,” she said. “I can tell it tonight.”

“No, it's all right. I would have to translate anyway. I'm afraid your Icelandic isn't quite up to telling this story.”

She clapped him on the back. “Then into the fray, Corporal!”

“Aye, Captain.” They took their seats.

“I warned you,” Mikkel began. “I warned you that this was a tale very sad and very scary. Tonight I will tell you the worst part of the story. If you want. Do you want?”

“Yes,” the twins said together and, after a moment, Aino agreed, clasping her hands together and twisting them nervously.

“Very well. Last night, we were in the hospital at Odense and the trolls were about to attack. Lalli killed the first one, but the second one took the opportunity to sneak up on us. We turned just in time to see it coming up behind Sigrun. Its mouth was big enough to bite her in half. She raised her dagger to strike, but its brain was out of her reach. My hands were full with a box of papers, so I shoved the box in its mouth.”

“When you face a troll with a huge mouth like that,” Sigrun said, “it's best to shove something into it. Whatever's handy. I once shoved an old-time computer thing in one's mouth. It's just too bad that all Mikkel had was the box of papers, because we needed those papers.”

“Trolls aren't very smart, really,” Mikkel said, “If one goes to bite, and it gets something in its mouth, it often will think it's got something to eat. Even if not, it's hard for the thing to bite with its mouth full. One troll alone, or maybe two, might run away with something to eat. Or when it's wounded. Swarms never run away; they never retreat and you just have to, to kill all of them. Or run away yourself.” His voice was very steady. He was just imparting information to future troll-hunters, not remembering battles.

“Right, and this one ran away with the box,” Sigrun prompted him.

“Yes.” Her words put him back on track. “It ran away with the box, dribbling papers as it went. We had to chase it, all of us, for those papers were priceless. Lalli was the fastest, far ahead of us, then Sigrun, and me last of all, collecting papers. It ran up a flight of stairs and along hallways, and we lost it. While we were looking around for a trail, it came back, trying to get past us, and Sigrun killed it. So we had the box and most of the papers when Lalli ran back with more papers. He had learned a little Swedish from Emil, not much, but enough to tell us, 'Ghosts!' ”

“Ooh!” the children chorused. They had expected a desperate battle with trolls, not more ghosts.

“As I've said, I was a skeptic then and didn't believe in ghosts. It may sound foolish to you; it seems foolish to me now, since we'd nearly been killed by ghosts back in the plaza, but I didn't quite believe even then. You must understand that I was a skeptic from a nation of skeptics. We pride ourselves on being practical, sensible people who remember the science from the time before the Rash. And practical, sensible, scientific people do not believe in something so nebulous, so incomprehensible, as ghosts. It was hard for me to shake off the beliefs of a lifetime. So I didn't quite believe there were ghosts in the hospital, but certainly we had what we'd come for and there was no reason to risk staying longer. We returned to the tank and Tuuri drove us away while I sorted out the papers.”

Mikkel closed his eyes, steeled himself for the rest. “The papers were useful. Our scientists are studying them even today. But there was no cure.” He heard a rustle of movement from the children. “They were certainly trying for a cure, and they did cure the Rash. But the medicine had a side-effect: complete and irreversible brain-death.”

“Brain … death,” Aino repeated, clearly wondering if she'd misunderstood his Icelandic. “Death?”

“The Rash was cured and the body would live for as long as someone fed it and cared for it, and then it would die. But the brain — the mind, the person — was dead. And worse than dead, but we didn't realize that until later.”

“Worse than dead?” Morten echoed, and “Hush,” Sigrun told him.

“There'd been hints all along that there was no cure. There were so many bodies, and no cured person had ever turned up in Bornholm or in other nations. The cure didn't work, yet they distributed it anyway. That was the point that had confused me. Why distribute something that wasn't a cure? And now we knew. They were trying to allow the infected to pass without pain, trying to reduce the number of trolls, trying to protect the surviving immunes as best they could. Only they'd made things worse, though they didn't know that.

“Well, we were all disappointed, but a rescue ship had been found, and we needed to head north to meet it. We found a campsite in the forest where we would be hidden from grosslings, and we had supper. Lalli went scouting early, saying he'd missed something, and then came running back reporting there was a swarm coming and we were about to be overrun!”

He heard the children edge closer to him.

“Tuuri drove. We couldn't fight them in the forest so we found a field that had burned. Emil set up incendiaries triggered by tripwires and Reynir drew runes on the ground that he thought would catch fire if a ghost touched them. I thought that was nonsense, of course. When all was ready, the non-immunes retreated to the most secure — what we thought was the most secure — part of the tank, and the rest of us climbed on top of the tank, ready to fight.

“And the swarm came.”

“Perhaps it's bedtime,” Sigrun offered.

“Oh, no, not yet,” the children begged.

“Not yet,” Mikkel said. “I'll finish it.” He rubbed a hand across his face, then continued. “Before I tell the story of the attack, I must back up a little. Sigrun had been bitten, you remember. I had stitched it up, and it would have healed well with proper rest. But there was no rest in the Silent World. Sigrun was dragged into the canal, then later she fought trolls and helped clear the roads for the tank. I thought the wound was healing since she hadn't complained. But it wasn't healing. It had gotten infected somehow, perhaps in the filthy waters of the canal. She didn't complain to me because, well, she viewed me as a non-combatant. And she was a troll-hunter.”

“We don't take medics on troll-hunts,” Sigrun said soberly. “They're non-combatants; too valuable, too vulnerable, to take out there. They're usually non-immune, too, not like Mikkel. On a hunt, if you get hurt, you deal with it until you get home. You don't complain. And I didn't. I still thought like a troll-hunter. And, being honest, I didn't trust Mikkel, not then.” She paused, and he thought she might have looked at him, though he didn't open his eyes.

“Just so. After all, I was — and am — only an army medic, not a doctor. She didn't think to complain to me, and she didn't recognize the signs of infection, for she'd never had one before. The family healers always handle that well. The signs are redness, heat, pain, and swelling. Remember that. Any wound that shows redness, heat, pain, and swelling is infected and needs to be treated immediately.”

“Redness, heat, pain, and swelling,” the children chanted obediently.

“So, Sigrun was suffering with an infected wound on her left arm, her dominant arm, and we were waiting for the swarm. Reynir's runes caught fire, then Emil's incendiaries. Tuuri turned on the tank's external lights so we could see. We shot the grosslings as they approached, but there were far too many. We had to jump down and fight. Emil had his flame-thrower; Sigrun and Lalli had their daggers; I had my crowbar. If you're strong enough to use it, a crowbar is an excellent weapon against grosslings.

“We survived only because there were so many grosslings that they got in each other's way. The ghosts were out there, though we didn't know it at the time, held back by Reynir's runes. One of the trolls began to slither under the tank, and Sigrun tried to strike it. Her arm, the wounded and infected arm, betrayed her. She dropped her dagger, and another troll knocked her aside. I gave her my dagger. She asked me if I'd got the 'slithering one', and I … didn't ask what she meant. If I'd asked …”

“We were in the middle of a pitched battle against a swarm,” Sigrun said. “It's very hard to think under those conditions. Normally you plan in advance, you know where to retreat if you have to, who'll cover what entrance, that sort of thing, but we'd had no time to plan. And anyway there was nowhere to retreat to, and not enough people to defend. It wasn't Mikkel's fault.”

“By the same token, it wasn't Sigrun's either. We're getting ahead of ourselves. We were still fighting, but we could see we were losing. The swarm was just too big. And then … Kokko, the bird of flame, came out of Emil's flame-thrower.”

“Kokko!” Aino breathed. “Kokko came to you in Denmark?”

“Reynir had called to Onni once again, with his magic, and Onni answered. He sent Kokko to us. It was a fire-bird, wings twenty meters across, and it flew in a circle around the tank.”

“Ooh,” the twins said, fascinated.

“The fire-bird drove off the ghosts and burned up the grosslings around us … all but one.”

“The slithering one,” Sigrun said grimly.

“The slithering one. The one that had gone under the tank. It burst up through the floorboards, the weakest point of the tank. Lalli yanked open the door, shot the thing in the head … but not fast enough. It scratched Tuuri on the shoulder.”

The children gasped in horror. Young as they were, they knew what a scratch from a troll meant.

“We didn't know Tuuri was infected. I did what I could to disinfect the wound, and I moved Reynir to the back compartment, separated from Tuuri. And we went on. We had to. The tank was badly damaged by the troll's attack, and it broke down repeatedly, though Tuuri fixed it each time.”

“It's late, Corporal. The recruits need their sleep.”

“No, Captain, I want to finish it. This part, when we were all together.”

Sigrun sighed. “Go on, then.”

“And so we went on. One morning the tank broke down beyond repair, and we prepared to walk the rest of the way. I moved Reynir into the main compartment and sent Tuuri to sort out the books we would keep. While I was packing and everyone else was eating, Tuuri … found that she was infected. She didn't come to me …” His voice trailed off. He had admitted to Sigrun years before that one of his recurrent nightmares was that Tuuri had come to him and that he had done his duty and killed her with his own hands.

“We were near the shore,” Sigrun said stonily. “She ran away from us to the shore. She gave herself to the sea.”

“She drowned,” Mikkel clarified, his voice steady once more. “Sigrun recovered the body. We built a pyre that night and a cairn in the morning. We prepared to go on. But Lalli refused to come. He couldn't tell us why — he spoke only Finnish, remember — but we correctly assumed that he needed to stay and perform some funeral rite. We left Emil with him because Emil knew where we were going, and Sigrun, Reynir, and I set out. They were supposed to catch up with us that evening.

“But they didn't.”

“And now it's time, past time, for bed,” Sigrun said. “Off you go, now.” The children went.

The next day, Sigrun went out to train recruits while Mikkel took the children on another nature walk. This time he spoke of a chain of great mountains that had reared far into the sky, snow-capped year-round. He told them of the rain and snow that had eroded those great mountains for hundreds of millions of years, tearing them down rock by rock, reducing them to the mountains which now formed the spine of Norway and Sweden. Then he spoke of the great glaciers which had flowed down the mountainsides to the sea, gouging out the fjords where the few Norwegian survivors had huddled when the Rash swept the world, and where they still lived.

The children listened quietly, looking about in awe to compare his word-pictures with the world they saw around them. His sons, just five years old, still believed that their father simply knew everything, but Aino was a little less trusting.

“How do you know this? Or is it just a story, like the Elephant Child?”

“Oh, no, not just a story at all. This is truth. Many, many scholars — skalds, that is — spent many, many years figuring out what happened here and around the world before ever we humans took our first steps. I learned this from one of the books we brought back from the Silent World. It was a book about geology, the study of the Earth. The original belongs to a collector now, but scholars transcribed it and translated it into Icelandic so that everyone can learn about the history of the world. We don't have a copy of our own, but when you are older, when you can read it —” He paused. Of course, by the time Aino was old enough to read and understand the geology book, she would not be living with his family. “Uh, well, then perhaps your family can get a copy for you. Or perhaps there will be a library where you can read it.”

Hastening to change the subject, Mikkel picked up a water-rounded rock and took his magnifying glass from his pocket. “Here, look at this rock. See the crystals?” He allowed each child to take the rock and the glass, but watched closely to see that they handled the glass with care. It was a pre-Rash glass which Reynir had brought to him from Iceland. It was not irreplaceable — the technologies of glass-making and lens-grinding were within the abilities of the small Known World population — but it was valuable. Once it was safely back in his hands, he settled into his teaching mode, explaining the formation of granite from molten rock.

This brought them back to the cottage, where he told the children to practice their arithmetic while he prepared a dinner of fried fish and potatoes. When Sigrun returned, the children put away their slates, ate their dinner quickly, and rushed to the rug by the fire, ready for the evening story.

“Well, now,” Mikkel began, leaning back comfortably in his chair, “you must understand that much of the rest of the story came to me, to me and Sigrun, from the others. We didn't experience it ourselves. But I will tell the story as it came to me.

“You remember that yesterday I said that Sigrun and Reynir and I left the tank together, leaving Emil behind to make sure Lalli followed us once he finished whatever he was doing about funeral rites.”

“Lalli's a scout,” Aino objected. “He could just follow your trail.”

“He could, certainly. Unless we had a heavy rain, or perhaps a blizzard. It was still winter, remember. If something like that had happened, he would not have known where we had gone or how quickly he needed to get there. So we left Emil with him to help him follow, if needed. Anyway, we had a wheelbarry with all the books and supplies I could pile onto it, and the three of us went north, with the cat. With Kisu.”

At the sound of her name, Kisu purred from her bed on the hearth.

“We camped that night, expecting Lalli and Emil to catch up with us before dark, or at least before dawn. But they didn't, so Sigrun went back to look for them while I stayed to protect Reynir.”

“I went back,” Sigrun said in her heavily accented Icelandic. “I found their trail. They followed us, but there was a building all torn up. We passed it and didn't see anything, but there was a giant inside that woke up when we passed. It didn't follow us. It was not awake in time, I guess. But it was awake when the boys came. They ran away to a … what is the word?”

“A small harbor,” Mikkel supplied.

“Their tracks ran out into the harbor, and the giant followed. There were no more tracks. They did not come back. There was broken ice in the harbor, but no bodies. I thought they were crushed, or drowned, or eaten.”

“Sigrun came back and told us the boys were gone. It was a terrible thought, that they had perished because we left them. But done is done, and we still had Reynir to protect and take to safety. And so we went on.”

This part of the story required some background, Mikkel realized. “Now, there are some things that we learned after the attack of the swarm. Reynir told me that there were ghosts with the swarm, the same ghosts that had attacked us in the plaza, the ghosts from Kastellet. We realized that the swarm was behaving oddly, like no other swarm we'd ever heard of, Sigrun and I. They'd followed us a long way from Odense … Anyway, it seemed clear that the ghosts had driven the swarm against us, that they had kept the grosslings together as they pursued us. Reynir also said that the ghosts had talked to him directly, had told him that they would follow him forever and kill everyone he cared about.”

The children hugged themselves in fear even though they knew the ghosts could not have succeeded.

“The strange thing, though, was that the ghosts were there at all. Reynir had talked to Onni about them, and Onni had told him that ghosts normally found their way to their afterlife within a few years. But these, the ones from Kastellet, had to have been there since the Rash struck ninety years before.”

Mikkel glanced down at the children, who were looking at him in puzzlement.

“The cure produced the ghosts,” Mikkel said. “There was no other explanation. The authorities released it, believing it would give the infected a peaceful death, and instead it somehow trapped them in the world, unable to go on.” He turned to look into the fire. “And they were angry about it. They wanted us to suffer as they had suffered.”

“But it wasn't your fault!” Morten exclaimed.

“Did it matter? When you found that wounded puppy, and he bit you in his pain, did it matter that you hadn't hurt him?”

The twins looked at each other, remembering the puppy. It wasn't clear how the animal had been wounded, but when they found him and brought him to their father for care, the puppy had bitten Morten rather hard with his sharp puppy-teeth. At least Mikkel had been able to save that furry patient, and the twins had returned him to his mother and puppy siblings.

“There was one more thing which Reynir told me. He had begun to dream, there in the Silent World. He had dreamt that the ghosts would attack us, and they had. But he had also dreamt of a woman, a priestess of the Christian religion, who said she could lead the ghosts to their long home. If he could find her. If we could find her.”

Mikkel shrugged. “He described her as being in a church, a Christian place of worship. But there were so many Christian churches, and she — through his dreams — gave no hint which church, or even which city, we should look in. So we had no choice but to go on, with the ghosts following us.”

Sigrun stirred, looking over at her husband. Mikkel gave her his slight smile and a nod. She had been very ill at the time he was describing, so ill that she had been unable to go on and he had draped her over his wheelbarrow and trundled her along with the rest of the baggage. But he would not tell that part of the tale.

“We hiked through the snow for a couple of days, and then we saw the tracks of a dog on the old road we were following. Sigrun and I thought it might have been a dog-beast, or a wolf, or even a wild dog.”

“A wild dog? A real dog, that wasn't a beast?” Aino asked.

“Yes, a real dog. There are immunes in every species of mammal, and if they are able to survive without human help, like dogs, and there are enough of them that the lower fertility of immunes isn't too much of a handicap, then they can establish healthy colonies. Some day, as the grosslings succumb —”

Sigrun cleared her throat, and Mikkel reminded himself that he was telling the story of their expedition, not expounding on his vision of the far future. “Well, yes. It might have been a real dog. That's what Sigrun and I thought, so we were watching for possible attackers.” Mikkel had been watching. Sigrun had been barely awake.

“Reynir believed that the dog was what the Icelanders call a fylgja — a companion spirit — which had appeared to him in his dreams to warn him against the ghosts. So, since he believed the dog had left tracks for him to follow, he ran off in the direction the tracks pointed. We ran after him, of course, since a non-immune has no business running around the Silent World without an immune guard. We caught up with him in a partially ruined church. There was a troll, almost a giant, in that church, which was the priestess. Anne, that was her name. She had been infected, and had transformed, but somehow she had retained most of her mind. Enough, at least, that the troll did not attack us.”

“You — and Reynir — were in a building with a live troll?” Aino asked in disbelief.

“We were. We spent the night there. And as we slept … this part I know from what Reynir told me. He saw it; we didn't.”

Mikkel looked over at the children, who nodded their understanding.

“The ghosts that had been following us caught up with us that night. They stormed into the church and threatened the priestess, Anne. They told her that they had been abandoned, and that they would make everyone suffer as they had suffered. She just asked if they were tired, because she was. She'd been waiting for them, all those years, all those decades. They admitted they were tired too, so she invited them to go “into the light”, which I guess is the path to their afterlife. They went into the light, all of them, all those ghosts that had been trapped in Silent Denmark for so long. Reynir says, and I believe him, that all the ghosts are gone now.”

He fell silent, thinking about Kastrup, wondering if he should explain what he believed had happened there.

“And then we went on to the outpost to wait for the rescue ship,” Sigrun finished for him. “Bedtime, now.”

“But, no, wait,” Asbjørn objected. “What about Uncle Emil and Uncle Lalli? Mama said they drowned or got eaten. But they didn't!”

“Ah, we'll tell that story tomorrow,” Mikkel told him, and the children went off to bed, still protesting.

The next day was another clinic day for Mikkel, and Sigrun took the recruits (the actual recruits, not the children) to clear a building for practice. The children were left with firm instructions not to hurt each other nor to burn down the cottage.

It was odd, Mikkel thought, that he worried more about Sigrun when she was out with the recruits than when she was out with her own team. Her team intentionally went into danger, into regions where bear beasts had been sighted, for instance, while the recruits went into safer areas. But the recruits were inexperienced, and if something went wrong and Sigrun had to deal with it alone …

He pushed those thoughts aside and focused on his work. There were healing wounds to check and bandages to rewrap (how did these troll-hunters manage to tangle up their bandages when they were supposed to be on bed-rest?), and there were the usual injuries that came from hard work and hard play in the Eide clan's compound. And so the day passed, and Mikkel stopped for a chicken on the way home.

Chicken stew was simmering on the stove and Mikkel was scrubbing floors when the children came home. They talked over each other in a mixture of Norwegian and Icelandic, and occasionally Finnish, quarreling about who got to tell him about the squirrel who'd been so fascinated by them that it had fallen out of a tree, or about the bird that had snatched a lock of hair from Morten's head, or about half a dozen other small but exciting events. Mikkel waited to serve supper until the children whined from hunger, and still Sigrun was not home.

“Where's Mama?” Asbjørn asked as his father cleared the table.

“She's hunting. She'll be home later.” Mikkel had decades of practice in keeping his voice even and casual, no matter how he felt.

“Oh, okay. Will you tell the story tonight?”

“Certainly. Help me clean up, and we'll get to it sooner.” The three children pitched in with a will, and the job was done almost as quickly as if Mikkel had done it alone. The task complete, the children settled themselves on the rug before the fire and watched Mikkel expectantly.

“Well, now. We three — Sigrun, Reynir, and I — made it safely to the outpost to await the rescue ship. It was … well, it was safe, and there was plenty of canned tuna fish for us to eat. We were all weary from the hike and we just wanted to rest and heal. We'd lost half the party, and that's a very hard thing to face. The next day, we meant to rest in our bunkhouse and grieve for our losses, but …”

He glanced at the children, whose faces showed expressions compounded of dismay and eagerness.

“I heard something, out there in the compound, and so I went out to check …” The children were now leaning forward and Aino was wringing her hands. “And it was Emil and Lalli!” The children cheered.

“So here is the story of what happened to them, as I got it from Emil and, much later, from Onni. Okay, we left, we three, and Emil waited for Lalli to finish. Lalli was afraid that Tuuri's spirit would be trapped in the Silent World, just like the ghosts that were following us. However, she made it safely to a, um, place called Tuonela, which is where Finns go when they die.”

Aino nodded. “Not Valhalla?” Morten asked in confusion.

“No, not Valhalla. The Finns have their own place, in Finland. You wouldn't want them to have to stay far away from their home forever, would you?” The children shook their heads and Mikkel thought, just for a moment, that he was very far from his home in Bornholm. But this was his home now, with his wife and his children. If only Sigrun would come home …

“At first they followed our footsteps. We had passed a warehouse and our passing awakened the giant within, though we were out of range before it was fully awake. It was still awake when the boys tried to pass it, and it pursued them.”

“In daylight?” Asbjørn asked in astonishment.

“In daylight. It was a giant, so large that it simply tore the roof off the warehouse to use as a screen against the sun. It pursued them, and they fled out onto the ice that covered the small harbor nearby. The ice away from the shore was too thin for Emil's weight — he was heavier than Lalli — and he could not escape. Lalli summoned his magic and flung it into the face of the giant. That tremendous spell killed the giant, but the backlash smashed the ice all around them … and knocked Lalli's … soul, I guess … completely out of his body.”

“Ooh!” The children's eyes were wide with fascination.

“Onni tried to explain this to me, but I think the right language doesn't really exist. Anyway, somehow Lalli's spirit was lost in what Onni called 'mage-space', but he saw a light and followed it into, well, into Emil's own mind.”

“His mind?” the twins chorused, and “I've never heard of that,” Aino said.

“Neither had Onni. Or Lalli. Reynir has suggested that there was a lot of 'wild magic' floating around there in Silent Denmark, maybe because of the ghosts, or maybe just because it had been empty for so long. And anyway, we don't really know yet what is possible with magic. We have myths and legends from before the Rash, when most people didn't believe in magic anymore, and we have had less than a century since the Rash. So maybe Lalli just discovered some new facet of magic.”

Aino frowned, but nodded.

“Lalli's spell had smashed the ice all around him and Emil, but the piece under them was intact, and they were carried away by the current. Emil grabbed a piece of debris and rowed them to shore, then carried Lalli, who appeared unconscious, to a ruined house for shelter. He meant to stay awake, to guard, but he was so exhausted that he fell asleep. And that's when he met Lalli in his dreams. At first he thought that was just a dream, but in the morning, Lalli began to talk to him in his head, mind to mind. So they set forth to find their way to us, with Emil dragging Lalli along on a travois.”

Then, of course, he had to explain, in Icelandic and Norwegian, and finally by drawing a picture, what a travois was.

“It was a terrible journey. The current had carried them far out of their way, and the snow was melting, making it hard for Emil to pull the travois. He had to sleep every night, leaving Lalli to stand guard, watching through Emil's eyes. Lalli couldn't use Emil's body, but he could look through Emil's eyes, even when Emil himself was asleep.” Mikkel paused. Tell them about Emil's ability to see trolls through walls, as Lalli did? No, perhaps not. Emil had almost been drawn in by the giant he saw, and Lalli had hurt them both badly in stopping him.

“They made it quite a long way without running into danger, until a voice spoke to Emil: 'Hello'.”

“A voice? Uh … in his head? Or what?” Morten screwed up his face in confusion.

“Oh, it was a real voice. It was a troll, a little one but all mouth. It happens, sometimes, rarely, that trolls remember how to talk. A little bit, anyway. It's quite … disturbing when it happens. They — the trolls — they're all almost a century old now. No one knows how conscious they are of their situation, but to just … continue for a century as monsters …” He stopped himself. No need for these children to share his worries about what trolls and other grosslings actually thought and felt.

“Anyway, sometimes they will speak a few words to you. When that happens, don't forget that they're trolls and the Rash is using them to try to get to you. Whatever is left of humanity in them is helpless against the Rash. The kindest thing you can do is to put them out of their misery.” Drop it. They're just children. We can talk about this more when they're older. When they become hunters in their turn. Where is she?

“The troll had a thick hide on its back — maybe its top is a better word — so it could endure some exposure to sunlight. Lalli calls such trolls 'dusklings'. And there were a lot of them. They followed the boys, too fast for Emil to run away from them dragging Lalli's travois. So he decided to fort up in a house that was still in pretty good shape and try to hold on during the night. The dusklings caught up and began pounding their way in through the doors, through the windows.”

The twins scooted forward to wrap their arms around his legs.

“Lalli had been trying to get back to his own body, but he didn't know how. That magic was new, unknown, and he had failed with every attempt. Now, with him and Emil trapped, he made one last effort. With some help from Onni, there in the mage-space (which I told you I don't really understand), he made it. Emil had retreated through the house as the dusklings broke through the doors, and by the time Lalli regained consciousness, they were trapped in a bathroom with the dusklings breaking through the only remaining door.”

The children shivered in delighted fear.

“But! All the dusklings were in the house. There were none left outside to see the boys climb out the bathroom window and escape. Unfortunately, once the dusklings broke into the bathroom and found it empty, they spread out through the house and, inevitably, one of them saw the boys running away. The creatures pursued them, much faster than they could run, what with Lalli sick from his long immobility. That means a long time lying around doing nothing,” Mikkel added, seeing the children's confusion at the word. “But Lalli can perceive grosslings even through walls.”

“Of course he can; he's a Finnish mage,” Aino said importantly.

“Right. And on this occasion, he saw a giant hiding under a barn. He took a couple of Emil's incendiaries and tossed them in on top of the giant, then the two boys hid themselves inside an old barrel. The dusklings caught up with them and started trying to pry open the barrel, just as the giant, hungry and furious at the burns Lalli had caused, charged out. The giant ate all the dusklings but didn't notice the boys inside the barrel. They slept there that night, and in the morning they finished the journey to the outpost where we already were. About a week later, the rescue ship came and took us away to Iceland.”

He gazed at his sons with love. “And that's how I met your Mama. We had other adventures, but those are stories for another day. Now you should —”

The door rattled. Someone was trying to open it. Normally slow-moving, Mikkel was across the room and pulling the door open almost before the children got to their feet.

Sigrun looked up at him with a wry smile. Her left arm was in a sling, a cast visible around her fingers, and her right hand was bandaged. She sported new bruises on her face, and the jacket she wore was not the one she'd left with that morning. His hand under her chin tipped her face up just a little so he could study her with worried eyes. “It's all right, Mikkel,” she told him immediately. “It will all heal.”

Asbjørn pushed past his father to hug his mother's legs. “It's all right,” Sigrun repeated. “Don't worry, Asbjørn. I'm fine. I'll be fine.”

An arm around her, Mikkel guided her to her seat despite the children clutching her legs. “The recruits?” he asked once she was seated and he thought her comfortable.

“They're all right too. I got the trolls in time. It's okay, Mikkel. Everyone's okay.” Mikkel stood beside her, eyes closed, feeling the warmth of her body where his hand rested on her shoulder. She was a troll-hunter; that was what she lived for. And, he had had to accept, that was what she would one day die for. If he asked, he thought, she might give it up for him and the children. But to ask that was, in effect, to ask her to give up her life for them. He would not do it. He would care for her as long as he could, and for the children as long as they needed him.

After a long moment, he returned to his own chair. The twins climbed into her lap and hugged her, careful not to hurt her wounded arms. Aino watched them, worry in her eyes, until Mikkel said “Aino” and patted his own knee. She climbed up and let him hug her, and two adults and three children sat wrapped in love beside the fire late into the night.