by Karina Halle
“Yes,” I say automatically. My heart’s fucking breaking. “My father is a good man. A really good man. And I love him beyond measure. He does not deserve to be locked up in your castle for your amusement, to appease a God’s boredom.”
“And that’s what you deserve?”
“Maybe.” I swallow hard, the iron pressing against my throat. “I never gave much thought to what I deserve. I was just living without appreciating it, without recognizing it. Maybe this is what I deserve, for twenty-four years of just floating along the surface, not grabbing onto life while I had it.”
“Mmhmmph,” he says after a moment. “That’s very dramatic. I can’t tell if it’s amusing or annoying.”
I want to glare at him, but I’m still stuck on something from earlier. “Are you really going to cure my father’s cancer? Torben Heikkinen? Make sure that he can live out his full life?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” he says. “I regret it already, but I don’t like going back on my word. I said it, so it’s done.”
My heart nearly bursts, even though the feeling is bittersweet.
My father’s life will be extended.
I just won’t be part of his life anymore.
“You could thank me,” Death says. “No one ever thanks me.”
“Because no one wants to die!” I tell him.
“Why not?” he asks. “If they knew what was in the City of Death, they wouldn’t fear it. They might even welcome it. Even those who are damned to Inmost aren’t damned forever. We have Bone Matches where the winner can live in the Golden Mean.”
I stare at the black void of his face. “Don’t you want to be feared? Isn’t that the whole point of you?”
Another waft of dead air passes between us, sending an icy chill down my spine. In the distance, thunder crashes and the clouds grow dark.
I’ve made him angry again.
Death stops and takes a step toward me, leaning down, leaning in close, and all I can do is stare into the dark abyss as the abyss stares back. “Do you not fear me, little bird?” he rasps, his voice a black hand reaching into my soul. “Because I spared you on the spider’s web? You don’t even know what fear is, you impetuous mortal. Not yet. I will break you into a thousand little worthless pieces, I will suck your heart through the marrow of your bones, I will take your body, your memories, every ounce that defines you, and grind you into my morning coffee, so that your suffering will give me energy for the day. I will make you beg for death, and even then I won’t grant it to you, all for my own fucking amusement. So go ahead and squander your fear. You’ll need it later. Your life will depend on it.”
He keeps walking but I feel like I’m rooted into the ground, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, the fear making a home in every corner of my body.
“Come along,” he growls, yanking at the chain and I’m pulled toward him, the iron collar nearly snapping my neck. I stumble along, lost in the fear, in the loss of hope, my thoughts and emotions caught in a whirlpool of despair, until the Hiisi forest ends and we come to the desert with the weird orange haze. To my surprise, it’s completely empty.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“They went after the redhead,” Death says gruffly.
“So we’re walking?”
He starts across the desert, yanking at my collar again, making me cry out in pain. “Now we’re walking.” He casts me a sidelong glance I can’t see. “The nerve you have to complain about your mode of transportation.”
“I’m not complaining,” I manage to eke out, pulling the collar away from my throat so I can swallow. “I’m just surprised that we’re walking to your shadow castle or whatever. Shouldn’t you be riding your unicorn? Shouldn’t you have a chariot made of bones, pulled by five black stallions that breathe fire?”
“You have quite the imagination. Sarvi will be back soon I imagine. The others will head to the castle. Either they find the redhead or they don’t. Sometimes I think there are ways out of this land that even I don’t know about.”
“Who is Sarvi?”
“My unicorn.”
“Do you know how silly that sounds?”
Death lets out a low growl, like a cornered wolverine. “Unicorn as a word makes perfect sense for the creatures. It’s fucking fairy tales that made them into some blessed angel horse. They are anything but. Violent, bloodsucking, voracious equines with a bad attitude. I’m just lucky that they were leftovers from when the Old Gods ruled, and that they decided to serve us. They didn’t have to.”
“How long is the walk?”
“It will take days. Many days. Maybe even weeks because of how aggravatingly slow you are.”
Great.
“Tell me about the Old Gods,” I say, pulling at my collar again.
“I will tell you nothing,” he says.
“Tell me how you tortured Rasmus. What did you do to him?”
“Torture? Trying to bait me with topics I enjoy?” I feel his eyes on me for a moment. “How well do you trust him?”
I balk, glancing up at his shadowed face. “Rasmus? A hell of a lot more than I trust you.”
“That’s a given,” he says simply. “Do you know him well?”
I lick my lips, the dry air sucking the moisture from them. I’m not sure how to play this. I could lie, but that might not make a difference. Fuck, I don’t think anything I do or say going forward is going to make a difference. “I barely know him at all.”
“I have three sayings in life,” Death says, ticking off three fingers, their intricate metal coverings glinting orange in the desert light. “Never trust the living. Never trust a God. And never trust a redhead.” He glances at me. “I’m afraid you’ve already done all three.”
I feel like he’s baiting me now. We continue to walk, and I’m ever so conscious of the rising dust and heat and Death’s commanding presence beside me, his metal and weaponry chiming with each step. Despite his size though, his movements are fluid and graceful, even if the ground shakes a little under his footfall.
“I trusted Rasmus to keep me alive,” I eventually say.
“Yet you’re the one who fought my daughter and killed the swan,” he points out tersely. “It sounds like you kept him alive there.”
“He called upon Vellamo when The Devouress was going to eat us. He told me the truth about my father. He did that ice thing with Eero and Noora, these shamans back in Finland. Saved me from them too.”
“I see,” he says. “Did you know his mother was a Lapp Witch? Among other things…”
“No. But so what? That makes sense that he would have some power that way, right?” I mean I don’t know what a Lapp Witch is, but it sounds like a normal witch.
“Perhaps,” he says. “But even Rasmus doesn’t know that. He thinks his mother died when he was young, same goes for his father. He was raised by his grandmother, then in part by your father after she died. Did you know that part?”
Obviously I didn’t, but I hate that Death knew of the secrets my father was keeping from him, so I don’t say anything.
“Did you not wonder what happened to him in the night?” he goes on, his tone light now, as if we’re having a casual chat.
I shrug. I had wondered that, of course. “Figured he went to take a piss and you accosted him?”
“He ran off and left you behind. We found him at the mouth of the Gorge of Despair,” he says. “Somehow he crossed these plains and survived.”
“What’s so dangerous about them?”
“You don’t hear that?”
I listen. There’s nothing but the sound of us walking, of sand blowing in the wind.
“You’ll see them soon enough,” Death says. “Regardless, it’s impressive. But by the time he got to the Gorge, he was stuck. We were up early doing surveillance of the area, looking for you, when we saw him. When we grabbed him, he told us he was here to do a trade. We assumed he would trade himself for your father, but to our surprise he said he was going to trade you for him. Must be
the witch in him.”
I swallow the dust in my throat. Death could be lying.
“He knew how badly I wanted my father back,” I tell him. “He assumes I would gladly make that trade, and I did.”
“You don’t think that was his plan all along?”
“His plan was to rescue my father, to save him. He said he needed my help. If my help meant me being traded in his place, then so be it. What difference does it make now?”
“You don’t feel betrayed?”
It’s like he’s trying to get a reaction from me, but the truth is I don’t care. Okay, I do a little. Rasmus could have been honest with me from the start, but then he didn’t know if I’d go through with it. It’s one thing to say you’ll do anything, it’s another to follow through. Just as Vellamo had said.
“What are you going to do when you find him?” I ask warily. Despite Rasmus having an ulterior motive, I don’t want anything bad to happen to the guy.
“Oh, I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Did you really torture him? He seemed fine to me.”
I swear I can tell Death is smiling. “There are different types of torture, little bird.”
Suddenly he stops and puts his arm out, the cloak flowing over me as I still. “Listen,” he says, voice lowered.
I concentrate, listening.
Then I hear it. A long wailing sound, the same sound I briefly heard when Tellervo and I first came to the desert. It rises in tone, totally eerie and inhuman, and feels like nails on a chalkboard, making my nerves shake and twist.
“Wh-what is that?” I manage to say, the sound making me stutter.
“The Liekkiö,” he says. “Spirits of murdered children.”
I stare at him aghast.
He glances at me. “I didn’t murder them, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says testily. “They are relics from the Old Gods. Like many relics here, they cling on through the ages, impossible to get rid of, like fleas on a bonerat.”
The wailing gets louder, enough that I have to put my hands over my ears, the sound tearing me apart from the inside. “Fucking hell. Make it stop!” I yell.
“Can’t do much about them,” Death says, or at least I think he says it. I can’t tell anymore, all I hear is the terrifying, persistent noise. “There they are now.” He raises his arm and points in a dramatic fashion.
In front of us, flames emerge from the mist, giving off a black smoke that mixes with the orange, creating a sort of smog that fills the air. The flames come lurching forward and it’s only then that I notice the bodies. The walking bones of children, mouths open in that punishing scream.
“This all used to be forest at one point,” Death says, somehow his voice getting through to me. “But the Liekkiö burned it down with their rage. The Hiisi managed to put a ward up to protect this side of the forest, as Tapio the Forest God wasn’t able to stop them. That’s why the Gods let the Hiisi share the forest.”
I can’t keep my eyes off the horrific sight, both terribly sad because these are clearly children, or were once, and terribly frightening because they won’t stop screaming, won’t stop staggering forward with their tiny, outstretched flaming hands and their snapping jaws.
Death steps in front of me, as if to be my shield. “They bite,” he warns. “Little vampires. They won’t get through my armor, but you’re made of the softest flesh and bone.”
I’m aware I’m his prisoner and he has an iron collar around my damn neck, but even so, I’m momentarily grateful for his presence. I move my head around the breadth of him to see the flaming murdered children come closer and closer, an awful stench filling the air.
Suddenly the flames are fanned as a burst of cold wind flows through us and a shadow is cast from above. I look up in time to see Sarvi in flight, huge black leathery wings, like a bat, blotting out the sun.
The unicorn swoops down, my hair blown back by the wingbeats, then dives with its horn aimed at the flames. It spears its horn through the skull of one of the children, then whips its head back, its long black mane flowing majestically, as the skeleton child goes flying through the air, landing in a heap of broken bones. The unicorn quickly does the same to the other children, spearing them in the skull and tossing them, until the flaming pile of skeletons are far from us.
“Are they…dead…dead?” I ask Death.
“No, they’re immune,” he grumbles. “They’ll get up in a few minutes. You don’t want to be here when they do.” He strolls toward the unicorn, who is waving its head around, snorting hot air, one white eye on one side of its face, on the other an empty socket. “In the nick of time, Sarvi,” he says to it.
Then Death yanks the chain and I nearly fall to my knees again. “Ow!” I cry out.
“I’ll happily leave you behind if that’s what you want,” Death says, leaning against the unicorn’s shoulder. “You already talk too much.”
“We had a deal,” I say stiffly, trying to gain what dignity I can with an iron dog collar around my neck.
“That we do,” he says with a sigh. “So then, you better get yourself over here.”
I walk toward him, the chain clanking and then he’s grabbing me, his hands completely circling my waist, and throwing me up onto the unicorn’s back.
“Make a fist in the mane,” Death says as he swings himself up and I find myself lodged between the unicorn’s thick, partially skeletonized neck and Death’s armored body. “You’ll want to hold on for your pointless little life. Pull as much as you like. Sarvi can’t feel anything.”
Once again, sir, that’s not exactly true, a placid voice with a quasi-British accent says, seemingly from out of nowhere.
I look around for the source. “Who was that?”
“You heard that?” Death asks in quiet awe.
I nod.
Oh perfect, someone else to claim to hear me and then proceed to completely ignore me, the voice goes on.
“That’s Sarvi,” Death explains.
My eyes nearly fall out. “The unicorn can talk?”
“Unfortunately.” Death kicks at Sarvi’s sides. “Up we go.”
And we take flight.
Chapter 10
The Castle
The last birthday I had in Finland, about a year before my mother decided to move me to California, my father got me horseback riding lessons as a present. The best present of my childhood, really. The stable was just outside of town and every Wednesday afternoon my father would take me there in his red vintage truck. I rode this fluffy white pony named Porro, but I called it Porridge, and all we did was go around the ring at a walk and a trot. Eventually I got “good” enough to canter, but I immediately went tumbling off Porridge and onto the woodchips. My instructor told me to hold onto the pony’s mane next time, and I did just that. I managed to stay on that way until I had to leave Porridge, Finland, and my father behind. Once I got to California, my mother put me in dance, and riding was deemed too dangerous to continue.
Well, all those lessons are coming flooding back to me, nearly twenty years later, and maybe even saving my life. Sarvi’s jet-black mane is wrapped around my hands several times over, because taking a tumble here means falling two hundred feet to my death.
Because we’re flying.
We’re fucking flying.
I’m too damn scared to even appreciate what an incredible and surreal event this is, because I’ve got Death’s armored chest and crotch pressed against me, the front of his thighs bracketing mine, and Sarvi’s shoulders jammed between my legs. The air is chilled and thinner up here and Sarvi’s rhythmic wingbeats make it even colder.
If you could find something to be happy about, Sarvi says, even for a moment, sir, it would make our journey much quicker. The clouds are holding us back.
Death grumbles. “I would have been happy had you found that redheaded bastard.”
I told you, he was long gone, Sarvi says. From what I can tell, the unicorn’s voice isn’t coming from its mouth or vocal chords
, but somehow slipping from its brain to ours. Kalma and Surma will double-check, but I doubt they’ll find anything. They never do.
“How can a mortal get through the Hiisi Forest that fast?” Death muses bitterly. “He’s hiding.”
That may be. He wouldn’t have made it through the Star Swamp, I know that much, Sarvi says.
Death makes another low growling noise. With him right behind me, the guttural sound raises the hair on the back of my neck, even with the iron collar there.
“We know who his mother is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she helped him,” Death says.
I have questions. I have so many questions. But right now, I can’t say a word. I’m too terrified to speak, like the moment I do I’ll let go of Sarvi’s mane and tumble through the sky forever. I’ve never had a big fear of heights but that will change after this.
If there is an after this.
She’s a silent one, Sarvi says, meaning me. I must say I’m relieved. You’ll have to understand, Hanna, that so far only you and Death can understand me. The other unicorns do too, but they’re not as civilized as Gods and mortals can be.
Sarvi says this as if I should be flattered.
“I’m too scared to talk,” I admit.
Death makes another low, rumbling noise behind me, reverberating through my bones. “How freely she admits it now.”
We lapse into silence, though in my head I’m doing all I can not to freak out. We fly along, just under the cloud cover, the claw-like tips of Sarvi’s wings scraping the bottoms of the clouds, making foggy tendrils dance in our wake. Below us the scenery keeps changing. The dry and desolate plains end abruptly at cliffs that stretch up and up, the River of Shadows snaking below it. The cliffs keep getting higher, turning to mountains that are craggy and jagged, gleaming as if made of iron, a dusting of snow on the very peaks.