Onni smiled his way through breakfast, but it was only the cheerful tune he whistled as he left the table that tore Sigrun’s attention away from her morning meat.
“Will you listen to that!” she said. “The grump actually sounds happy. What’s gotten into him, I wonder?”
“My guess would be Reynir,” replied Mikkel.
“Yes?” asked Reynir eagerly at the mention of his name.
“No,” said Lalli at the same time, sending Mikkel a dark look.
Mikkel weighed up his two potential victims and chose to start with the one much more likely to disappear unless addressed immediately. “Why are you so quick to jump to denial, Lalli?”
Lalli just stared at him. Oh, right.
“I mean, why do you say ‘no’ so quickly? You must be aware that your cousin has needs. Ones which he has, probably, suppressed for years. I am talking,” Mikkel continued, growing slightly vexed by Lalli’s unchanging blank expression, “about sex.”
“No. Onni is not happy because of sex.”
“I know it is very hard to imagine someone who raised you indulging in–”
“I don’t have to imagine. I know why Onni is… like that.”
“You do?” Emil finally joined the conversation. “Why?”
“Because he told me.”
Well, that was definitely worth pursuing. “What did he tell you?” Mikkel asked.
“Here. See for yourself.”
Mikkel accepted the crumpled leaflet, unfolded it, then immediately passed it to Emil. “Translation, please.”
“Er.” Emil stared at the paper for quite a while. Everyone else stared at Emil: Lalli with fond curiosity, Reynir with confusion, and Sigrun with impatience.
“Well, spit it out!’ she said. “It’s a party invite, isn’t it? That lone wolf got himself invited to a party and did not tell us about it, and now we’ve missed it! Just wait until I–”
“It’s an invite, yes,” said Emil. “But we haven’t missed anything: it’s for tomorrow. And,” he continued over Sigrun’s attempt to interrupt, “ it’s not an invite to a party. It’s for a… show? Display? Of… carvings?” He looked to Lalli for confirmation.
“Not carvings. Bones and plants, tied together. Into weird big things.”
“Like the structures he kept leaving behind when we were tracking him?” Mikkel asked. “I did wonder: why does he keep making and displaying those? For…magic reasons?”
“No.” Lalli frowned. “Not now. The ones he made earlier were magic. But these new ones, they’re just stupid. He gives them names like ‘a sad dawn over Saimaa’ and says they contain his feelings.”
“See!” Sigrun elbowed Mikkel, rather painfully. “I told you he was an artist! He has all the signs! Well, the one sign: extreme moodiness.”
“But he’s not moody anymore,” Emil pointed out. “He smiled! At me, even.”
“Happiness is a mood! He’s happy because he is making sad art. Trust me, we have artists in Dalsnes. Later, he might start making happy art, and then he’ll be crying into his porridge. I have seen it happen many times.”
Mikkel really wanted to provide some sort of rebuttal, but Reynir’s confused, pleading puppy eyes were getting difficult to ignore. So, he switched to Icelandic, saying, “Sorry, Reynir, we’re just discussing art theory.”
“Really? I thought I heard you mention Onni.”
“We did. Onni’s an artist now.”
“He is?” Reynir’s eyes opened very wide. “Do you think… Would he be interested in a model?”
This was too tempting to ignore. “Why, yes! He’s currently looking for a muse. A nude one. And look, Sigrun’s already very interested.”
She certainly looked it, as she snatched the leaflet from Emil’s grasp and asked, “Where is this display, exactly? No question about it, we’re all going!”
Reynir narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, and left the table.
The others stared at his disappearing back in surprise.
“He… doesn’t care for art,” Mikkel explained.
