Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 110034 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110034 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
“You’re a good dog, aren’t you Rauta?” I say to it, crouching beside the hound and petting it.
The dog’s black tongue rolls happily out of its mouth and then licks my hand.
“Such a good dog,” I say again and then straighten up. The Book of Runes is floating right in front of me. I pluck the book out of the air. It’s deceptively heavy and I turn it over in my hands, immediately feeling the words as they leak off the pages and make their way up my arms, nestling into the pulsing silver lines. All Gods are predisposed for magic, but we are not shamans. We must learn the magic, but we can’t always ask for it. The Book of Runes feeds us what we need to know.
In this case, I need to relearn the spell of the Shadow Self. If the book doesn’t think I’m worthy of relearning this, then I won’t be granted access. It’s a dicey move. I last brought out my Shadow Self when I was still with Louhi, centuries ago. We were on the verge of the breakdown that would splinter us for good. I conjured him as a last-ditch effort to save us because I thought that she could be happy with him, that I could live in Shadow’s End and she could live in her ice palace in the Frozen Void with my double. With the way the magic is done, it’s still me. But it didn’t turn out like that.
Since then, my Shadow Self has been contained inside a glass bottle in the eastern wing, waiting for my return, if I were to ever return. Opening the bottle won’t be enough to let the shadow out, not if I want to use it as I have before. I have to perform the right ritual to fully infiltrate it, otherwise the shadow will be loose and won’t be bonded to me anymore. A shadow without a host is one of the most dangerous things. A being that can be harnessed by anyone who knows the right magic. Especially dark magic. It may even be able to kill a God.
But, before I even take the book to the bottle in the east wing, I’m tempted to pay a visit to the Book of Souls, the volumes that take up the majority of the library, stacked in huge hardcovers from floor to ceiling, forty feet high.
I want to look at Hanna’s entry.
I’ve perused it before. I’ve done my research on my little bird, the moment that she infiltrated my world. I know her life, have seen it unfold in the pages. I probably recall more of what she’s seen and gone through than she does. That’s the funny thing about mortals, they don’t retain as much as they think they do, and as they age the memories slip away like sand. Half the time they don’t realize why they’re acting or feeling the way they are because they don’t remember the moment that burned them, that scarred their subconscious and shaped them.
But I do. I can see it all on the pages, films that play just for me. It is perhaps the most important and sacred privilege I have as a God, this insight into every soul.
I find the stack which has her birth year and open the volume Hanna is in, and flip to her entry—which I’ve already marked with a white swan feather.
I start at the very beginning, a part I normally skip over because I don’t care much to see a baby being born. I am the God of Death, not the God of Life—whoever that is. I am used to being there for all ends, not for many beginnings.
Frankly, they make me uncomfortable.
At the start of Hanna’s life, I see Torben handing her to her mother. It looks like it’s in a bedroom, which means she had a home birth. Her mother is lying in bed, dazed. She has dark hair, similar to Hanna’s, and pale skin, freckles. Her eyes are closed and she shifts uncomfortably.
Torben holds Hanna. She is wrapped in a blanket, sleeping, just as her mother is sleeping. Torben, looking like an old man with his gray hair and beard even back then, brings Hanna over to the foot of the bed and he stares at Hanna’s mother.
He stares at her for a long time.
Then down at Hanna.
I focus in on Torben’s face.
It is not the face of a man with a newborn daughter. There is no joy, but there is pride and there is worry.
There is fear. Fear above all else, and not the usual fear of “oh fuck I’m a father now” because I know what that fear feels like.
It’s the fear laced with guilt, like he’s doing something he shouldn’t.
Curious, I think. I watch as he eventually taps his wife on the shoulder. She wakes up. I’ve never really looked at her before, but aside from her dark hair and general prettiness, she doesn’t look much like Hanna, her features too bulky. Hanna’s features are all soft lines and ethereal beauty, like the rare times I’ve woken in the night to glimpse pure moonlight on the ocean, before my mood would cause a tempest to roll in.