Out of the Darkness

Shaking her head, Pekka pointed across the car, to the right. “It’s on the western edge of town. If we get a chance, I’ll take you over there. Having an illustrious Lagoan theoretical sorcerer along with me will make Professor Heikki unhappy, and I do what I can to keep her that way.”

“Aye, you’ve told me about some of your squabbles,” Fernao said. “What’s your chairman’s specialty? Veterinary magic? Is that what you said?”

“That’s right,” Pekka said. “And she’s nobody of any consequence there. She’d make a splendid clerk, though. That’s why she’s been chairman so long,

I suppose. But she inflicts herself on people who do real work, so nobody in the department can stand her.”

“Kajaani!” the conductor called as the caravan, nearing the depot, slowed. “Everybody out for Kajaani, on account of this is the end of the line.”

End of the world, Fernao thought. The ley-line caravan eased to a halt. The conductor opened the door at the front of the car. Pekka got to her feet. So did Fernao, leaning on his cane to help himself up. His leg and shoulder both complained. He’d known they would. I’m lucky to have both legs, he thought, and then, if this is luck.

Pekka got down ahead of him. She watched anxiously as he came down the little portable stairway. She was, he saw, ready to catch him if he stumbled. Being somewhere close to twice her size, he made sure he didn’t, and reached the ground safely.

Someone--a woman on the platform--called Pekka’s name. She turned. “Elimaki!” she exclaimed. A moment later, she added, “Uto!”

“Mother!” The boy swarmed toward her. He was, Fernao saw, nine or ten, with a good deal of Pekka in his face. When he sprang into her arms for a hug, the top of his head came past her shoulder. The woman who followed him also looked a good deal like Pekka. Of course she does, you idiot, Fernao thought. She’s her sister, by the powers above. Elimaki was a couple of years younger, and a little stockier. She too hugged Pekka, but even as she did it she was eyeing Fernao with curiosity both undisguised and, he thought, more than a little hostile.

“I’m so glad to see both of you again,” Pekka said, kissing first Uto and then Elimaki. She took a deep breath. “And I want you both to meet my . . . friend, Fernao of Lagoas.”

Uto held out his hand. “Hello, sir,” he said gravely. Sure enough, he added, “I didn’t think you would be so tall.” He was curiously studying Fernao, too.

Not a lot of Lagoans or other Algarvic folk got down here, Fernao suspected. He clasped Uto’s hand, not his wrist, as he would have with one of his own countrymen. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you from your mother.”

Pekka rolled her eyes. Even Elimaki had trouble holding her face straight. Uto looked more innocent than he had any hope of being. “I don’t do that so much anymore,” he said, leaving that carefully unspecified.

“You do too, you scamp,” Elimaki said. She nodded to Fernao. “And I have heard a lot about you.”

“I probably don’t do that so much anymore, either,” he answered, deadpan.

Pekka’s sister gave him a sharp look, then smiled. “You’ll have a carpetbag, won’t you?” she said, looking back toward the caravan’s baggage car.

“I do hope so,” Fernao said. “I’d better find out.”

“Why do you have that cane?” Uto asked as he limped toward the baggage car.

“Because I got hurt in the war, down in the land of the Ice People,” he said.

“The Algarvians?” Uto asked, and Fernao nodded. The boy’s face worked. “They killed my father, too, those--” He called the Algarvians a name nastier than any Fernao had known at the same age. Then he burst into tears.

While Pekka comforted him, Fernao reclaimed his carpetbag. It was there, which made him think kindly thoughts about the people who ran the Kuusaman ley-line caravans. He carried it back to Pekka and her son and her sister. Elimaki said to him, “I was thinking . . . The two of you might want to stay at my house tonight, not next door at Pekka’s.”

“I don’t know.” Fernao looked to Pekka. “What do you want to do? Either way is all right with me.”

“Aye, let’s do that,” Pekka said at once, and shot her sister a grateful glance. “I don’t want to go into my old house right now. It would tear me to pieces.” Once she said it, it made good sense--indeed, perfect sense--to Fernao. With all those memories of past times with her dead husband there, he would seem nothing but an interloper.

“Let’s go, then,” Elimaki said. They caught a local caravan going east through the city, then walked up a hill past pines and firs to the street where Elimaki’s house and Pekka’s stood side by side. Seeing Fernao labor on the way up the hill, Pekka whispered to Uto. He took Fernao’s carpetbag from him and carried it with pride.