Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“I’ll go in first, since I know where I’m going,” my father says. “Tuoni, bring up the rear.”
“Are you sure?” Tuoni asks as my father starts to lower himself through the crack. “I can’t imagine getting lost down there.”
“You’d be surprised,” he says, wincing as he squeezes through. “Don’t want to make the wrong turn.”
“Wait a minute,” I say just as my father’s head nearly disappears. “Have you actually gone through the portal this way? You said not breathing underwater was, you know, an issue for you.”
He gives me a sheepish look. “I’ll tell you the truth, daughter: I’ve walked to the end of the tunnel. I saw through the Veil and the sea beyond. That, plus the little ankle biters in there, was enough for me. I decided to stick to the other portal after that.”
Then, his grey head slips away into the darkness.
“Papa?” I cry out softly. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice echoing slightly. “The rocks down here act like steps. I’ll get down to the next one to make room, and then I’ll tell you to follow.”
“Okay,” I say uncertainly, looking over at Tuoni. Not going to lie, I’m a little apprehensive. The portal at the waterfall was one thing but slipping through rocks in the ground was never my idea of fun.
“You’ll be fine,” Tuoni says. Yet he’s frowning, his eyes focused elsewhere. He breathes in deeply through his nose, his nostrils flaring.
“What is it?” I whisper to him.
“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “Torben?”
“Yes?” comes his voice, further away and more muffled now. “Just made it to the second rock. You can come down now, Hanna. Plenty of room and…what’s that?”
“What?” I ask him, my heart starting to race.
“Hello?” my father calls out from below. “Is there someone there?”
Oh, fuck no.
“Papa, who’s there? What’s happening?” I glance back at Tuoni, but his attention seems elsewhere.
Silence follows. My heart thuds loudly in my head. Then, my father coughs. “I don’t know, I thought I saw…” He trails off. “Hello?” he calls out again. “Who is there, please? Oh God, Hanna, I’m coming back up, I—”
Everything goes silent.
I go closer to the fissure, trying to see inside. “Papa, what—?”
“Hanna, duck!” Tuoni yells, and I look up just in time to see a man launching himself off the rocks above me, about to land on my head.
I dive to the ground just as Tuoni leaps forward and the tackles the man to the snow.
At the same time, I hear my father yell, “Hanna! Hanna, they’re here! Run! I’m—”
My father breaks off into a scream that sounds like it’s swallowed by the cave.
“Papa!” I scream, trying to get to my feet again.
I don’t know what to do. I watch as Tuoni fights this man bundled in reindeer skins, and I figure it’s no contest, except that the man has a knife that seems to operate without being held.
As if by magic.
And I realize who this man with the long grey beard is.
Who they are.
Eero.
I’m betting inside that cave, it’s Noora who has my father.
Eero throws his knife around, nearly cutting into Tuoni several times, and I know I have to figure out who to help. Tuoni is the God of Death and can handle himself, but after what Salainen did to him, I know he’s not invincible. My father has handled Noora before, but in a cave like this? Was it luck the first time?
But before I have a chance to squeeze between the rocks and go after my father, I watch as Eero slips up and gets too close, and Tuoni grabs the old Shaman by the throat. He lifts Eero in the air, much like I’ve seen him do before, but this time, he spares the man no mercy.
I watch as Tuoni snaps Eero’s neck right in half with a sickening crack. Eero’s head hangs off his body like a flower from a broken dandelion stem.
I don’t have time to react.
I swallow the scream building inside me and manage to yell at Tuoni. “Throw me his knife!”
But Tuoni throws Eero several feet away instead, as if he were a shot-putter, and then picks up the knife and runs over to me, motioning for me to get out of the way. I do, my body moving automatically while my brain tries to deal with what it just saw—an actual human being killed in front of me—and what needs to be done.
Tuoni brushes past me and manages to squeeze through the cracks into the cavern. From the darkness, I hear my father yelling, Tuoni’s grunts, and a woman’s scream, all of them echoing into one awful crescendo.
“Do you need help?” I yell, wishing there was something I could do. I look around for a weapon of some sort. Damn it, we should have held on to one of the swords!