Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
And I can’t help but wrestle with my own connection to her.
She’s my mother.
I’m her daughter.
How could I come from such a wretched being?
How did she not, I don’t know, eat me the moment I was born, like a viper in a den?
Did she ever love my father?
Did she ever love me or Tuonen?
What was our purpose?
What is my purpose?
The Magician reaches out and grabs my hand, giving it a squeeze. It instantly grounds me, pulling me out of my thoughts and lessening the weight in my chest.
I glance over at him, finding the stars and planets in his infinite face are still, exuding a certain calmness.
“The past is a prison, Loviatar,” he says quietly. “The future is an illusion. Be here now, even if it hurts. It hurts less than the hurricanes you’re creating in your mind. They can blow you off course.”
I give him a fleeting smile. “I can’t help it. I just don’t understand how…”
I glance ahead of us. Rasmus is walking slowly, but his movements are freer now since the Magician changed the mycelia so they’re only binding his hands at his back. I can tell he’s listening, but I don’t mind. Out of everyone here, he understands what I’m going through—or at least he should.
Ahead of him, Tapio and Tellervo lead the way out of the forest, broken, defeated, lost to their grief. Once we’re out of here, I will step up and take the lead. They shouldn’t have to shoulder this burden when they’re barely holding it together. I will lead all of us across the frozen void to the Star Swamp and Castle Synti. I will keep them safe.
I have to.
I don’t notice how hard I’m gripping the Magician’s hand until he gives mine a squeeze back.
“Sorry,” I mumble, trying to take my hand away.
He holds on tighter. “Nothing to be sorry about. I’m in awe of your strength, you know. Not just in a bone-crushing way, but your inner strength. You’re so much stronger than you know.”
I swallow hard as I step over a twisted root. “I don’t feel strong, but I will be, for them.” I nod up ahead at the rest of them.
“You already are,” he says. He looks ahead to Rasmus. “And I’m starting to see how he might play a part in all of this. You don’t have to go through what you’re feeling alone. He understands you. He is weighed down by the same thing. You are both products of a disrupter.”
“A disrupter?” I snort. “That’s what you’re calling Louhi? She’s a monster.”
A shooting star flits across his face. “From a different angle, monsters are just agitators of peace. To view something as a monster, as evil, is looking at it from a place of emotion. A very mortal, human emotion. A deity looks at things from a distance. It sees this chaos as the natural order of things.”
I can’t help but glare at him. “You know what she’s like. You saw what she did. You know what she will do. How can you view any of that from such distance?”
“Because I do. Because that is what I am,” he says matter-of-factly. “And you are looking at things from the heart because you have a heart, Lovia. A very big one. It’s time to embrace that, time to realize you’re a Goddess with love to give, one who grapples with morality. You’re utterly human in ways you can’t even imagine, and that is a blessing. It’s time to stop thinking of it as a curse.”
I shake my head. “It feels like a curse. Gods are supposed to be above that all.”
“And yet, all you need to do is look around and see that the Gods here are fallible. It’s their tie to humanity that makes this realm work the way it should. You cannot care for the souls of the dead without relating to them at the same time. Even Louhi has more humanity than you think. She may not carry the capacity for love or kindness, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist at one time. Her soul became corrupted. If you looked at the demon she came from, you’d see it was always inevitable.” He pauses. “Her human-like predisposition to ego and vanity and power will be her downfall. You’ll see—and you’ll only see it because of your own humanity.”
I’m so engrossed with what the Magician is saying, I nearly bump into Rasmus, who has stopped ahead of us. We’ve all stopped.
“This is the end of our realm,” Tapio says in a deep, broken voice. He and Tellervo stand at the edge of the forest, staring forward at the landscape unfurling in front of us. The towering trees abruptly give way to thin birch and aspen, to low shrubs of thorns and berries. Frost blankets the hard ground, lacing the grass like icing sugar until it turns white with snow in the distance. The air is colder here, our breath rising in the air. Without the protection of the forest, I already feel painfully exposed.