“Emil,” said Mikkel. “I am worried about you.”
Emil looked up from his bowl of soup, his eyes questioning. Only his eyes, though, which was, of course, the issue.
“I am worried,” Mikkel continued, “because you haven’t complained about anything today. Not even about the extra gristle I made sure to place in your bowl.”
Emil’s eyes widened. He poked at the soup with his spoon, then sent Mikkel a look of betrayal before setting both spoon and bowl down, and pointing at his throat.
“You… have a sore throat? Well, you should tell me these things! That could be very serious, it could be–”
But Emil was already shaking his head. When he stopped, he pointed to his throat again, then drew his hand across it as if… cutting it?
“I think he’s saying that he lost his voice!” suggested Reynir excitedly. In Icelandic. Which, of course, meant that Mikkel was forced to translate.
“Emil. Reynir believes that you have you lost your voi–”
“He probably has,” cut in Sigrun, “but that’s not what he’s saying. I know that gesture well. It means he wants to murder someone. Probably you, Mikkel, in retaliation for the extra gristle. And who can blame him?”
Mikkel turned to Onni, to see if he, too, had a contribution, but Onni merely grunted, so he turned to Lalli, instead.
Lalli sighed. “You’re all wrong. Emil is fine. He’s just training.”
“Training?” Sigrun asked. “To do what?”
“To be silent.”
“Ah!” Mikkel looked from Emil to Lalli, grinning. “That’s clever. Did you suggest it? Finally got tired of all his complaining, did you?”
While Emil made a series of dramatic facial expressions, Lalli merely narrowed his eyes. “That’s not why. It’s because training to be silent is the first step of training to be a scout.”
“Why is he training to– Oh, he wants to go with you, doesn’t he?”
Lalli nodded.
Poor Emil. Well, at least the whole endeavor promised minutes, if not hours, of amusement. “If this is just the first step, what will the next step be? Learning to run for hours on end?”
“That is important too, yes. But before Emil can learn running, he has to learn something else.”
“And what might that be?”
“Not tripping on things every five minutes.”
“What?”
Emil’s voice was unmistakable. It wasn’t just the timbre or the Swedish accent, but also the amount of indignation he could squeeze into a single syllable. Everyone turned to him, but, unusually, Lalli spoke first.
“Emil,” he said. “That is not being silent.”
“I know! But, really, Lalli, there are limits!” Emil stood up. “I thought you were serious! I have been trying so hard! Is this your idea of a joke?”
Lalli blinked at him. “I do not understand. A joke?”
“You know perfectly well…” Emil paused to wave his arms around. “You know that I do not trip on things on purpose! I have tried to stop! It is impossible! Ah, I give up. This is all hopeless.”
With that, he stalked off.
Lalli watched the dramatic departure, wide-eyed, until Emil tripped on a root. Then, he leapt to his feet. “No joke! I have a plan!” He caught up easily, and started to explain something, unfortunately in Finnish.
As Reynir asked for an explanation of the scene, and then for an elaboration of Onni’s first response of “Emil is complaining about something”, Mikkel felt a light punch to his shoulder. As far as requests for his attention went, this was one of Sigrun’s most subtle.
“I like it!” she declared once he had turned towards her. “It’s a nice demonstration of initiative, and, also, I didn’t want to say anything, but explosives specialists who trip a lot tend to have shorter careers. Come to think of it…” She put on her thinking face. “That could be one way to train him, couldn’t it? Making him carry an unstable explosive around all day? He’d have to learn to watch his feet, then.”
“That does sound promising,” Mikkel agreed. “You should suggest it to the two of them. When I am around, preferably.”
