River of Shadows Read online

  My father doesn’t want me to save him.

  And so I will.

  I take in a deep breath and go behind the waterfall.

  Chapter 5

  The River of Shadows

  It’s dark in the cave.

  Silent.

  I stop walking and listen, trying to pick up on the sound of Rasmus’ footsteps or his breathing, but there’s nothing. The air is horribly cold and still, though it smells faintly of mint.

  “Rasmus?” I say, and my voice bounces off the walls of the cave, almost making me jump. “I’m not going to walk blindly into a dark cave alone. Where are you?”

  There’s no reply. Not at first. Then, as I’m turning around, ready to head back the way I came in, the iced wall of the frozen waterfall glowing faintly from the outside light, I hear a whisper.

  “Don’t talk,” Rasmus says, voice so low that I nearly miss it.

  I open my mouth to say something, to do the opposite of what he just told me, when he quickly adds, “Just walk forward.” He pauses, and I hear him take a shaking breath in the darkness. “Don’t. Make. A. Sound.”

  Considering I don’t know where I am and he does, I press my lips together firmly and slowly start walking toward where his voice came from, holding out my hands as I go in case I run into something.

  “I can see you,” he whispers. “A few more feet. I’m reaching for you.”

  Suddenly I feel his hand against mine, warmth amidst the cold, and he’s grasping it tight. I nearly gasp but manage to keep quiet as he pulls me along gently.

  Beneath our feet, the snow and ice has faded away to what feels like a floor of hard-packed dirt, and the further forward into the cave we walk, the warmer it gets. Eventually the sound of our footfalls disappears and I can tell the walls are coming in around us, as if we’re now in a tunnel.

  I’m lucky as hell that I’m not even slightly claustrophobic because I think I’d be losing my mind about now. Even so, I’m doing everything I can not to think about the fact that I’m walking blindly through a black tunnel to who knows where.

  The Land of the Dead? No. I still don’t believe in it, still don’t believe that’s where Rasmus is taking me. Maybe it’s a clever moniker, perhaps when we pop out at the end of this tunnel (that so far, has no light at the end of it), we’ll end up in Russia. But we aren’t going to be stumbling around some underworld looking for my father.

  Rasmus squeezes my hand and slows his pace so that I’m pressed up against his back. With his other hand he reaches back and pushes against my hip, moving me over so that I’m directly behind him and from the change in the air, I know that the walls of the tunnel are close now. Really close. I keep closing my eyes and opening them hoping that they’ll adjust to the darkness better, but no matter what I do I only see a black void.

  I think I’ve been doing pretty good about keeping my cool so far, but my heart is thundering in my chest so hard and so fast I’m afraid that maybe I could die from fright.

  There’s a faint rustling sound right in front of me, I think of Rasmus’ coat rubbing against the tunnel walls, his shoulders are broader than mine, and we slow down even further.

  Suddenly my ears pop and it feels like we’re walking through something, like the air has thickened and we have to really push to keep going forward. It’s like walking through glue.

  Then, just as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone, and we’re nearly falling forward. In the black, I’m beginning to make out the outline of Rasmus in front of me and when I look around him I see a faint gray light at the end of the tunnel.

  My heart leaps. Thank god.

  Rasmus starts walking faster now, his grip on my hand even tighter than before, and I have a feeling I still have to be quiet.

  The opening to the tunnel gets wider and wider but no matter how hard I stare, I can’t decipher what I’m looking at. It’s like all that’s outside is this gray mist, no shapes or structures.

  It isn’t until we’re standing at the mouth of it that I finally see where we’ve ended up. In front of us is a pebbled beach that’s coated with a light dusting of snow, the stones pitch-black, shiny and smooth. Beyond that, a line of dark water laps at the shore before being obscured by thick fog.

  I step out onto the beach and look around in awe. The cave is set into tall slick cliffs that reach up into the sky until the mist swallows them. The beach itself is only a few yards long, just a patch of pebbles protruding out into the water. Everything else fades away into the fog and it feels like we’re standing on the edge of the world.

  Goosebumps erupt over my skin, even beneath the layers of clothing. But we’re not at the edge of the world, right?

  I look over at Rasmus who walks toward the water, the tips of his boots getting wet. He reaches out into nothing and then the mist clears just enough to reveal an iron pole sticking out from the water with a large iron bell at the end. Rasmus reaches into the water and pulls out a shining rock, then whacks the stone against the bell, the note ringing out loud and eerily low, and I watch in confusion as the water starts rippling outward into the mist, as if the bell is sending soundwaves.

  So much for not being able to make a sound. “Why did you do that?” I ask Rasmus. “Where are we? Russia?”

  He throws the stone back into the mist where I hear it land with a splash, then turns to me with the most intense look in his eyes. He reaches out and grabs my shoulders with his gloved hands, squeezing them. “You did a good job in there by not making a noise, but I’m going to need you to humor me for a bit longer. This next part is especially important.”

  I frown. “Why, what’s happening?”

  “There will be a boat coming through that mist any minute now—”

  “A boat!?”

  “Yes. We will be getting on that boat and I want you to play along with everything I tell Loviatar.”

  “Who the hell is Loviatar?”

  “She’s the ferryman,” he says in a low voice. “She’ll be taking us across, but only if she thinks we’re dead. If she can’t be fooled, then we’ll be lucky if we can find our way back without her killing us.”

  I stare at him, my mouth dropping open. “I’m sorry, what!?”

  “Only shamans are able to trick her, and I’ll do what I can to make her see us as dead, but you have to go along with it or the spell won’t work and the magic will be ruined.”

  This isn’t happening. I can’t even form the words, let alone wrap my head around the nonsense he’s spouting. There’s something seriously wrong with this man-child.

  “You want me to…pretend I’m dead? So that you can put a spell on a ferrywoman, so she’ll give us a ride to…?”

  “Just keep your mouth shut for a little longer is all I’m asking,” he says. “I’ve tricked her before but I was alone. Got as far as the Gorge of Despair before my luck ran out. Don’t want to go through that again.”

  “You’ve done this before?” I ask in surprise, but then I raise my mitted hand and shake my head to shut myself up. No. I can’t entertain any of this right now. For every question I ask, I’m not getting any reasonable answers in return.

  Suddenly Rasmus stiffens. His hands drop from my shoulders and he turns around in time to see the shape of a boat appearing in the mist, someone standing at the bow with what looks to be a paddle.

  “She’s here,” he whispers. Then he stands beside me, back straight, chin up.

  Meanwhile I’m holding my breath as the boat becomes clearer. It’s shaped like a small Viking ship, long and narrow and low to the waterline, the name Norfinn etched on the side. At the bow stands a slim, tall woman with incredibly long pale blonde hair that billows behind her like a cape. She’s wearing a flimsy dress that looks like it’s made of gold silk and tulle and I absently wonder if she’s frozen.

  But that’s not what has my attention, what has my blood running cold.

  It’s the massive deer skull she’s wearing as a mask.

  God. It is a mask…isn’t it?
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br />   The boat glides forward until it runs aground on the pebbles, the sound of them scraping the iron hull sounds like nails on a chalkboard and I want to cover my ears, but something tells me that wouldn’t be a good idea.

  The ferrywoman puts down the paddle and then reaches down and picks up a thick silver sword, at least four feet long with a blade bigger than my forearm. She raises it in front of her like it weighs nothing at all.

  “Who goes there?” she asks, her voice light and almost…bored.

  Fuck, please let this be some epic LARPing gone wrong. That would explain a lot.

  “My name is Seppo,” Rasmus says. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “This is my girlfriend Ephemera. We followed the light.”

  Seppo? Girlfriend? Ephemera?

  I can’t see the girl’s eyes beneath the deer skull, but I can feel them just the same as she stares at us, not moving, not saying anything. Beside me Rasmus practically radiates with energy, a strange sort of warmth that I can feel, like standing next to a heater, and for a moment I really do believe he’s conjuring something.

  Finally, she lowers the sword and gestures to the boat with it. “All right. You may come aboard.”

  I exhale softly. Well that was easy.

  Rasmus nods and walks through the ankle-deep water, hoisting himself up over the side of the boat and onto the deck. He stands up and offers me his hand, beckoning me to do the same.

  I can’t take my eyes away from the deer skull woman, even though I know I should.

  “Ephemera,” Rasmus says to me firmly. “Come on. You have to accept it.”

  Accept what? Oh right. Death.

  I swallow uneasily and then slosh through the water, grateful that I used waterproofing spray on my boots before the trip, then give Rasmus my hands as he hauls me up onto the boat. Like the rest of the ship, the deck is made of iron.

  “You can sit there,” the girl says, nodding at a low iron bench in the middle of the boat as she slides her sword into the thin leather belt she has around her tiny waist. It looks comically large there, but she’s picking up the paddle and wielding it like she’s got nothing larger than a butter knife at her side.

  She walks with the paddle down to the back of the boat and starts to steer, turning us away from the shore and back into the mist.

  With our backs to her, I sneak a glance at Rasmus. I have a million questions, but the warning look in his eyes tells me I need to stay quiet.

  “How old are you two?” the girl asks. “Not that it matters, but I don’t receive many young people. How did you die? You look fine to me.”

  “Alcohol poisoning,” Rasmus answers without missing a beat.

  “Both of you at the same time? Must have been a hell of a party.”

  A hell of a party. The fact that she used that phrase is a clear sign that this is some sort of LARPing costume game. Maybe Rasmus created all of this himself in order to cope with my father’s death, I have no idea. If he wanted it more believable, he should have had this woman talk in more stilted, old-timey English. And why is she speaking English anyway, shouldn’t she be speaking in Finnish?

  Part of me wants to call him out on his bluff. Say something. He said we could die if she found out this was all a ruse, but I mean we wouldn’t really die, would we? Maybe I’d be stabbed with that sword that’s probably from a movie props department and is made of foil paper or something.

  But the other part of me wants to play along and see just how far this will go. I’m not sure why, but that part is winning.

  “The journey isn’t too long,” she says, as if we’d just asked. “A few days, give or take.”

  I’m glad she can’t see my eyes widening. A few days of this?

  Rasmus clears his throat. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To the City of Death,” she says nonchalantly. “Where you will spend eternity. But, you know, my father likes people to really earn their place in the City. So I can’t promise I’ll get you there in one piece, though I’ll try my best. It’s just things have been a bit, uh, volatile lately, with the Stragglers having a bit of an uprising and talk of the Old Gods waking up. But you don’t have to worry about that once you’re in the City. You’ll be untouchable.”

  That was quite the speech. I gently kick Rasmus with my boot, wanting him to ask more questions.

  “The City of Death…” he says carefully.

  “Yes,” she says. “You know I’ve never actually been? Only my father and his right-hand men can go. Even my fucking brother can go, and he’s useless. Anyway, jokes on them, they don’t know that I sneak out to the Upper World every now and then. Once I spent a whole summer in Paris and they never even knew. Winters in Copenhagen. New York in autumn. I absolutely adore where all you mortals live.” She pauses and I can feel her energy at my back. “Hey. Girlie. What was your name again?”

  Oh fuck. I turn my head and look at her over my shoulder. “Ephemera.”

  “Neat name,” she says. “Doesn’t that mean like scrapbooking junk?” Then she lets go of the paddle and places her hands on either side of the skull. “Can I ask you something? Am I intimidating at all?”

  I swallow hard. “Yes.”

  “Is that why you’re scared?”

  Am I scared? I must be. I nod.

  “Good. I’m supposed to be scary. I’m supposed to intimidate everyone I give a ride to, something about how it makes them behave. But honestly, if they don’t behave, it’s their loss. I’m ferrying you to your afterlife and you don’t want to get in the way of that, believe me.”

  Rasmus clears his throat. “Has anyone tried to?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says with an exaggerated sigh. “The shamans are the worst. They’re always finding their way here through one of their portals, poking around for magic plants or buying spells from some of the less honorable Gods before heading back to the Upper World. And sometimes there’s a recently deceased person who decides they’d rather be running around the Hiisi Forest instead of having their allotted afterlife, but that’s not a fate I would choose for myself. I usually let them go.”

  “Usually?” Rasmus asks.

  “It depends on my mood.” I can almost hear her smiling beneath the mask, and once again I’m praying that it really is a mask and not her actual face. “Anyway, the name’s Loviatar but you can call me Lovia. Oh look, I can see land.”

  I turn my attention back around to see low white hills poking through the mist and the water narrowing until it becomes a river, the water black as ink and flowing quickly inland. The hills are barren, save for a few low bushes scattered about, bright red berries appearing on the branches like drops of blood.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, I like to pretend I’m a safari guide,” Lovia says to us before clearing her throat. “As you can see on the right we have frost berries just ripe for the picking. The crimson berries are found all over Tuonela, but proliferate in the Frozen Void because both the white reindeer and the ice deer have learned the berries are poisonous.”

  Her words are strangely familiar. The frost berries sound similar to the frost flowers I had in my tea, while the white reindeer remind me of the painting my father did. Then again, my father painted that waterfall and that ended up being real. What if the white reindeer are too?

  “Ah, we are in luck,” Lovia says from behind us. “There’s a snow fox just to your left.”

  I look in that direction and see a small white fox sitting on an icy riverbank watching us float past, its fluffy tail curled up around its body. At first it’s cute…until I get a closer look. Its eyes are completely black, with no whites showing, and when it flicks its tail, I see bones where its furry legs should be. It’s only then that I realize it doesn’t even have eyes at all, and what I’m looking at are empty sockets.

  Oh hell no.

  I gasp in horror, unable to help myself, my hand reaching over for Rasmus.

  “I know, he’s super cute isn’t he?” Lovia says. “I used to have names for them all, but I forget
things all the time. I think that one’s name was Socket, though.”

  Rasmus squeezes my hand back in an attempt to be comforting, but I’m starting to feel like we’ve graduated from elaborate cosplaying to a full-on bad acid trip. I mean, what I just saw can’t be real, can it?

  None of this is real, I tell myself, closing my eyes. None of this is real. There’re a million explanations to be had but you’re not in the Land of the Dead.

  And yet repeating that to myself is starting to lose its hold on me, like reality is slowly losing its grip.

  Oh god, I wish I had my Ativan.

  “Ah, there’s the herd I was looking for,” Lovia chatters on. “The one at the front, that’s Celes. You can ride her sometimes, if she’s feeling charitable.”

  I reluctantly open my eyes to see a herd of white reindeer standing by a few golden pink flowers, delicately plucking off the petals and chewing. The one that Lovia is talking about looks majestic with ice-blue eyes and a thick white coat. But her antlers are like twisted branches, like she has a tree growing out of her head, and the rest of the reindeer match the ones my father painted in his sketchbook—half skeleton, with a milky white gaze. On one of them I can see straight through her ribs and to the snow on the other side.

  Oh god. Okay. Okay. Now I’m really tripping.

  And the flowers that the reindeer are eating, they look exactly like the frost flowers in my tea.

  I glance at Rasmus, my eyes narrowed.

  You fucking drugged me, I think venomously.

  He glances at me and gives me a look like, no I didn’t.

  I stare at him for a moment, wondering how he knew what I was thinking.

  Okay, fine. What number am I thinking of? I ask in my head, knowing he can’t actually read my mind. For me, it’s thirty-seven, my lucky number.

  He smirks at me. Then moves his hand. I glance down to see him show me three fingers, then seven.