River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)

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.

Lucky guess. It has to be a lucky guess.

“Hmmm, unfortunately I don’t think we have anything much more to look at for a bit,” Lovia says, oblivious to the weird mental games we’re playing. “The Frozen Void is pretty much as the name says, though I briefly lived with my mother in an ice castle nearby, back when my parents first separated. But that would be a few days walk and I have to get you to the City on time. Why don’t you two just sit back and relax?”

Relax? Oh, there’s no relaxing to be had here. Instead I keep playing the numbers game in my head with Rasmus, asking him again and again to keep guessing what numbers I’m thinking of.

And again and again, he keeps getting them right.

I keep making excuses as I go, but by the time he’s gotten twenty-five right in a row, I have to give up.

I concede.

Rasmus can apparently read my mind.

I take that fact and put it in the mental file folder that contains the information that my father was a shaman, that I saw my father in the casket who then transformed into Rasmus, that Noora and Eero tried to attack me, that my father painted a frozen waterfall with a message to not come after him, that I ended up going behind that waterfall and ended up in a tunnel that led to a land of mist, that I’ve seen my share of living dead animals, that there’s a young deer woman with a giant sword at her hip and dressed in nothing but a gold dress wielding this iron boat down an ink black river who is pointing out the local wildlife like she’s Steve Irwin’s apprentice.

And that the point of all of this, is that we’re supposed to go to the City of Death and find my father.

I’m starting to get the very disturbing feeling that this might be fucking real.

Suddenly the boat slows and I look behind me to see Lovia holding her oar straight in the water, bringing us to a stop.

“Don’t worry,” she says, catching my gaze. “Routine stop. It’s just the gatekeepers. The swans of Tuonela. We have to pass through them and then we’re onto the Great Inland Sea.”

“Oh fuck,” Rasmus mutters under his breath.

My eyes go wide. Oh fuck? Rasmus is saying oh fuck?

Lovia walks along the deck past us to the bow. “Well hello there,” she says to someone, her attention focused on the river. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. Checking up on me?” There’s a bitter tone to her voice.

Rasmus! I yell at him in my head. Why did you say oh fuck? What are the gatekeepers? Are they actually swans?

Suddenly there’s a flapping sound and even Lovia shrieks as two swans fly onto the boat, one black, one white, coming up each side of the ship.

They aren’t your average swans, I know that much. They’re about the size of a small pony and they’re focused on the two of us with beady dark eyes. I immediately know they’re sentient and it’s the most disconcerting feeling in the world.

“What do they want?” Rasmus asks Lovia as the swans start walking toward us, their webbed feet shaking the deck as they come. Despite playing the lead in Swan Lake, I’ve had a healthy fear of these birds all my life. They’re nasty, and these ones have beaks that could bite my hand clean off.

“They’re just checking to see if you’re really dead,” Lovia says in an irritated voice. “They’ve been around since the Old Gods, back when this place was Kaaos. Or in your words, Hell.”