Emil was sweating and trembling with exhaustion after the DDR tournament, for he’d just danced as he’d never had to dance before. He’d won, of course, but only just barely—who was that grey-haired boy who went through the moves like he’d been doing them forever?
Some of the onlookers were still hanging around, muttering weird things like “…the best match-up since Hector and Achilles, man!” Emil tried to analyze their weird jargon, but his foggy mind could only latch onto one thing: they kept repeating “Lalli” over and over again.
*
Lalli was sweating and trembling with exhaustion as he searched the convention for Tuuri. What had possessed him to go from his usual haunt in the Call of Duty crowd to the DDR tournament? What had possessed him to enter the tournament?
What had possessed that blond Swede to dance well enough to beat him?
Well, for one thing, wiping the floor with all the other Call of Duty players had palled over the last few months. Lalli had actually been interested in seeing how his skill at figure-skating would translate to dancing; in fact, he’d been pretty confident that it would translate well enough for him to win. Never in his wildest imaginings had Lalli thought a sparkly-haired, slightly chubby Swede would best him but one had.
*
Never in his wildest imaginings had Emil thought that a grey-haired, rail thin Finn would almost best him, but one very nearly had, and Emil just couldn’t get him out of his head. This was far from usual, as Emil tended to avoid rather than engage people in the long term; this was a holdover from his semi-disastrous school days, reinforced by his relations with his co-workers.
There were certain semi-official “rules” regarding eating and sleeping when at a convention; Emil tended to do what he usually did with all other facets of the conventions that he attended to which he was indifferent: ignore them. Today, however, Emil alternated between haunting the food court and wandering the hallways in the interstitial period between panels when all the other fanatics were seeking to rush to feed their obsessions, for he was doing the same, in his own way: Emil was desperately straining to catch another glimpse, however momentary, of that thin, graceful figure.
Just as Emil was about to head back to the food court, an elf and some kind of soldier brushed past him. They were chattering away about something; Emil didn’t know anything about the subject of their discussion, so he more or less tuned it out, until one word among the chatter caught his ears: Lalli. That one word was enough to send Emil after them, but they had seemingly vanished without trace.
*
Sigrun Eide, Norse cinema’s reigning Queen of the Troll Hunters, just loved doing the convention circuit; the only things she liked better were action scenes and stunts. She’d started as a medieval martial arts re-enactor at one of those “dinner and a tourney” places, and after a while she’d been contacted by a small indie film outfit, Most Best Productions, run by Trond Andersen, Taru Hollala, and a couple of silent partners.
“Uncle” Trond was actually an old friend of her parents, who were also re-enactors, but volunteer ones at fairs and such: they and he were all “generals” in some fighters’ association or other that Sigrun could never remember the right name of, even though she herself was a captain in that organization. Her parents had never quite gotten over their distaste that Sigrun did what she did for money rather than for love of the martial art; they were slightly more approving of her career change, since she got to join them at the fairs once more.
Sigrun was always ready for a good brawl, and she loved all the little fanlings at the cons she appeared in, so when the terrorists barged in on the Most Boring Panel Ever (which she had only signed on for at Uncle Trond’s behest), a smile broke over her face that should have sent the terrorists running right then and there.
The man chairing the panel, a giant of a Dane named Madsen, made the mistake of trying to reason with the terrorists, who shot him in the leg. Ten seconds later, Sigrun had cleaned the clocks of the other terrorists in the room and was ready to find some more to take down.
When Sigrun charged into the hallway, she almost got her face melted off by a blonde Swede wielding a flamethrower improvised from a gas lighter and a can of hair spray. Sigrun’s grin grew wider, but rather than taking the kid down, she decided to recruit him.
Within an hour, the two of them had cleared the convention of the terrorists; Sigrun either never heard or didn’t care to remember why they’d tried to take the con. She did care to remember her Little Viking’s right name: Emil Västerström.
*
The con had been over for maybe a month when Emil got A Missive from his uncle, Torbjörn Västerström, commanding his appearance at the next performance of “The Nutcracker on Ice”, where he and Sigrun were to be properly introduced. Emil knew he was probably also expected to render his thanks to Sigrun for saving his life and an apology for daring to assist her in her heroism. According to Torbjörn, Västerströms never undertook to engage in heroics themselves: they paid others to do that, as with all else that was beneath them to do.
Emil resigned himself to a boring night, as he knew that even Sigrun couldn’t liven up an “art form” that always bored him to tears, unless more terrorists struck. Emil knew he couldn’t be so lucky for that to occur.
What Emil didn’t know was that he would espy a very familiar figure out on the ice…
