Chapter 12: Old and new family

How much smaller the map was compared to a few days ago was a testimony of what Emil had had to resort to have something to eat. Lalli's voice spoke in his head:
-Are we going to get there today?
Emil evaluated his own physical state, and gave an honest answer:
-I don't think so. My feet are about to fall off.
-I'm worried that my body will deteriorate if I'm like this for too long.
Emil knew this was a worry. He had done all he could to keep Lalli's body unharmed, but there was only so much he could do. His best hope for real care was to get Lalli to the pick-up spot and have Mikkel take care of anything that he hadn't been able to prevent. But time wasn't on their side, and they were probably at the point where mere hours could make a difference. The thought somehow gave him enough energy to get up and start dragging Lalli again. He heard something similar to the troll voice from a few days ago, except that it was actually a voice and not something in his head:
-FoOd?
Emil tried finding the source, only to have his eyes settle on a nearby house's open doorway, where something that was definitely a troll was lurking:
-HeLLo FooD.
Very funny. He didn't even have any food for himself. He promptly informed the troll he didn't have any food for it.
-hEllO, fOod.
Oh, now he understood.
-What? No, I'm not food.
Lalli's exasperated voice chimed in:
-Why are you talking to it?
Come to think of it, he had a point.
-Remember how we practiced focusing your mind? So this time, me and Tuuri went to the northern part of the island to look for blueberries.
This was the part where Emil was supposed to show he was listening:
-Blueberries, got it.
-And I didn't even want to go because I hate blueberries, so I…
-FoOd? wHy arE YoU leaving, fOOd? Yum, yUm, yuM, YUm, YuM!
Emil realized that the "yums" had actually been coming closer, and that the troll from the house was now coming after him:
-What? It's broad daylight, you're not supposed to come outside!
While the troll had been fine in the shaded space, it recoiled at the strip of direct sunlight between it and Emil. The closer look enabled Lalli to identify the troll as a type that can start roaming at dusk, and strongly suggest him to get as far away from the troll as possible, promising to tell Emil if it continued following via the nearby shaded strip of woods. Emil got a better idea, which consisted of getting a bullet inside the troll's head immediately. By the time Lalli started telling him to not do it, Emil had already pulled the trigger. He realized his mistake when a large number of similar trolls came out of the house. A quick consultation with Lalli revealed that there were now only two ways he could survive the night. One was running fast enough, something that he was unable to, even if he left Lalli's body behind. The other was to bunker up.

xxxx

They had found a house, and barricaded themselves in it. The trolls had found them, and had tried to make Emil open the door. Thanks to Lalli's solution to prevent this from happening, Emil was now unconscious in the real world, and back in his dream of the night of the fire:
-I hope you do realize that we're very deeply extremely vulnerable like this. If even one of them gets in, we're done for.

Emil was right. Lalli had to leave Emil's secure space for at least one of them to make it out alive. He did need something from Emil, however:
-Do nothing until I'm gone. You have to focus on that. Do. Not. Move.
He let Emil wake up again before he could protest, then started to look for a way out. He eventually found an exit in the form of a trap door to the ceiling. It looked like he could reach the mage layer of the dreamscape if he swam towards the surface. He did just that, all while hoping none of the rogue spirits roaming the waters would notice him. Unfortunately, a very big and powerful one did, just as he was about to reach the surface. Lalli wasn't powerful enough to keep it from crushing him with its huge snake-like body. So that was it. He was going to die here. Looking up to the surface of the water, he could see the Swan of Tuonela coming for him. Maybe it was best that way. What was left of his family was gone anyway, he might as well join them. The point where resisting was any use was long gone. He was feeling kind of sleepy. He really hoped Emil would be able to make it through the night. He let himself doze off.

Somehow, he woke up again, able to breathe properly. A voice that he never thought he'd hear again spoke to him:
-I was waiting for a moment where I could have the Swan take me instead of you. This won't happen a second time. You need to wake up in the real world, or that second time may come for too soon, for both you and your friend.
Lalli managed to crack his eyes open just in time to see the Swan of Tuonela fly away, a much smaller white bird in tow. A white bird that wasn't him. Onni's voice had told him what to do.

Lalli woke up to see that Emil had moved rooms and that they were now in the house's bathroom. He figured that their main barricade had fallen, and sound confirmed that the dusklings were right outside the locked bathroom door. As he tried standing up, Emil spoke to him:
-Well, I'm glad to see you one last time.
Lalli got a spell of dizziness and heaving, and half-listened to Emil's rambling about the situation, according to which they were completely surrounded, as he let it pass. Lalli knew this was true when it came to the door, but he couldn't help but check the bathroom window for himself. The coast turned out to be clearer than when Emil had checked a little earlier, due to all dusklings now being inside the house. He couldn't start trying to comprehend why they had thought this was a better idea than having some stay outside, but the important part was that they had a chance to run away. They took it. The dusklings noticed their escape much faster than Lalli would have liked. As he was overcome with a spell of dizziness and a reminder that Emil didn't have much endurance in short succession, he realized they needed a plan. As the reached a cluster of houses, Lalli spotted a plastic barrel just big enough to fit the two of them, sensed a giant under a nearby house, and noticed that Emil still carried a couple of explosive charges. He grabbed the explosives, tossed them inside the house containing the giant, and got himself and a reluctant Emil inside the plastic barrel. The giant he awoke stabbed the barrel, but they both managed to move their bodies in the right direction, at the right time. After that, it left them alone and focused on the dusklings. After a while, things calmed down enough for both of them to be able to fall asleep.

That night, they both dreamed that they were inside the plastic barrel, except that a bunch of small animals was in there with them. Emil suggested one of them wake up to make sure the barrel was closed in the real world, and Lalli had found himself unable to argue with the fact that Emil had more sleep to catch up on than he did. It was only a few minutes into his improvised night watch that Lalli found a reason for which Emil being the one to stay asleep was a problem: it was going to prevent Reynir from finding out that they were still both still alive and informing Sigrun of the fact. However, after extra thought, he realized that making sure both of them survived the night while letting Emil catch up on some sleep was more important than having the others know they were coming before they actually got there. He only hoped he had gauged the time correctly, and that there were indeed still at least couple of days left before the boat came.

xxxx

The next morning, Lalli opened the barrel to see that the giant had gone back to its dwelling, which was near enough that its tail was sticking out of the ruined house. He woke up Emil and both of them got away from the place as fast as possible. Only reaching a shoreline separated from the town by woods made them stop. Emil went into an extremely enthusiastic rambling, that went on for long enough for Lalli to start falling asleep standing up before getting woken up by a punch in the arm. He remembered that it was supposed to be a gesture of affection just in time to not violently retaliate, as Emil apologized for forgetting he wasn't particularly fond of friendly punches. Lalli realized that nothing actually kept him from giving Emil a friendly punch, and it would save him the trouble of choosing between the many things that he wanted to tell him, all which he could barely remember how to say in Swedish anyway. He went for punch much lighter than the one Emil had given him, then promptly had a spell of dizziness and heaving that was bad enough make him collapse right next to his mess. This was more than enough to remind them that they needed to get to where the others were as fast as possible.

It wasn't long before they saw smoke, and some kind of stone harbor separated from the mainland by a chain-link fence with a hole in it. Finding the building in which the others were staying wasn't hard, as Mikkel opened its door to greet them. Emil started asking him something, but didn't have time to finish before Mikkel wrapped both of them into a hug. Lalli had never liked hugs very much, but this one felt strangely good. Emil asking for a bath, Sigrun yelling something in Norwegian and Lalli having an extra heaving spell that resulted in Emil's clothes needing cleaning even more than they already did cumulatively resulted in the hug being broken so they could both have a bath and a medical check-up. After that, Mikkel gave them both a little food, explaining that they would need to start by eating very little at a time if they hadn't eaten much in the past few days. Lalli was about to have his last bite of food when he realized that he no longer sensed the presence of the ghosts that they had picked up a few days into the expedition. He was about to ask Reynir about it, when he realized that he seemed to have mostly "lost" his Icelandic, as well. Maybe there would be a way to get an explanation when they would be both asleep.

xxxx

Right when it looked like they were going to leave Reynir's house after having spent a few weeks there, it turned that his sister was going to get married a little earlier than initially planned, so her other siblings could attend before they had to go back to work. That had resulted in it happening the day before Lalli, Emil, Mikkel and Sigrun were to go back to the big town with the port to leave Iceland. Lalli somehow ended up losing track of all the faces that were familiar to him, to the point that finding a group of youths that included the sister of Reynir's who wasn't getting married had been an upgrade. He hoped that by sticking with them, he would eventually run into a slightly more familiar face. In the meantime, just copying whatever the group was doing seemed a good way to not draw too much unwanted attention. The tagging along continued as Lalli sat through the actual wedding ceremony. Soon after, for some reason, the sister who was getting married turned her back to the crowd and threw the bouquet of flowers she had been holding. The thing almost landed on Lalli's head, but he fortunately managed to catch it before that happened. He soon discovered that this also meant he was allowed to keep it for as long as it could be reasonably kept for. The scrawniest of Reynir's brothers, who had been spending time with a group of his own, came to speak to the sister to whom Lalli had attached himself. Emil turned out to have lost the others as well, and to have done exactly what Lalli had done, only with a different sibling of Reynir's. They found a place to go sit together, and Lalli tried to find a conversation topic:
-Are you still sad that Sigrun is taking the cat with her?
-A little, but less than a few days ago. But let's talk about this, rather. Do you have someone in mind, or did you just catch it because it was coming towards you?
Lalli noticed Emil was pointing at the bouquet.
-I should be having someone in mind for what?
-Some places believe that whoever gets the bride's bouquet will be the next to get married. Or at least will be doing it sooner rather than later.
Lalli was almost tempted to let go of the bouquet in shock. Before that expedition, things such as getting married had been non-existent in his horizon due to the social isolation that had been enforced by the Keuruu higher-ups and his own lack of desire to interact with people more than necessary. Those things were now an option again, but currently he wasn't sure whether he wanted them for himself or not. That would something to think of during the next Swedish cleansing season, during which he had promised to give working at Emil's side a try.