River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)

I stare at him to go on, my patience already threadbare.

He stares right back until I relent. I pick up the tea and have a tepid sip. It’s hot, but not scalding, and the fragrant scent of the pines seems to wake me up. The tea itself tastes like sugared lemons, and before I know it I’ve finished the whole thing.

He clears his throat. “Good.” Then he looks into my eyes, so deep that I feel like I’m being pushed back into the couch cushions, my body melting. “Hanna, your father was dying of cancer.”

I didn’t expect him to say that. The words are sharp and cold and they seem to puncture the air.

“What?”

He grimaces. “He didn’t want to tell you. He didn’t want to tell anyone. Only I knew. Eventually Eero and Noora figured it out, but he didn’t want them to know either.”

It feels like I have a vice placed over my heart, the pressure coming slow and painful. “What kind of cancer?” God, why didn’t he at least tell me?

“I don’t know, he never said. He did go to a doctor in town. They gave him six months.”

“And how long ago was that?” my voice shakes as I speak.

“Six months ago.”

I try to take in the information but it’s not sinking in. Not sure if this tea is working since it just doesn’t seem real. How could my dad have had cancer?

“So he wasn’t found frozen in the woods?” I ask absently.

“He wasn’t found at all,” Rasmus says.

I look at him sharply. “The body in the casket.”

“There was no body. You know that. Noora and Eero, they made you see it afterward. They put me in there as a base, and built your hallucination on top of it. I tried to stop them but sometimes, when they work together…”

I press my fingers into my temple, as if to keep my brain from unraveling. “Built my hallucination?”

He gives me a steady look before taking a sip of his tea, swallowing with deliberation. “Okay. Here we go.” He clears his throat. “Eero and Noora are powerful shamans. Eero most of all. I’m a shaman as well, as was your father. That’s why I was his apprentice. He was teaching me. The entire resort was founded in the hopes that one day the Sami people, and other indigenous peoples around the world, could come visit and practice their beliefs in private, in a learning environment. There was a time where the shaman here had to travel to Brazil, into rainforest communities, or to the Southwest of the United States, to the Navajo tribes, in order to practice without judgment or persecution. Your father’s idea was that there would be no need for running away. That we could find peace here.”

My father was a shaman? Somehow that isn’t surprising. Maybe the tea is working after all. Still, I say, “I can’t believe he kept all of that from me.” I hate how fragile that makes me feel. He didn’t trust me enough with the news of his diagnosis, nor did he let me in on the whole shaman thing.

“How long was he…practicing?” I ask awkwardly.

“Since long before you were born.”

Now I’m surprised. “He’s been a shaman my whole life!?” I exclaim.

Rasmus nods firmly. “A very powerful one. I was lucky he agreed to take me on. I’ve been training with him since I was ten.”

“And how old are you?”

“Thirty,” he says. “Don’t let my boyish good looks deceive you.”

Now I understand Rasmus’ involvement. He’s been with my father for twenty years, a couple of years before my mother moved me to California.

“I must have seen you when I was younger,” I tell him, trying to think of any older boys who might have been hanging around our cottage.

He shakes his head. “Your father was very discreet. He did everything he could to keep it a secret.”

“So my mom never knew?”

Rasmus gives another tight smile. Oh, of course she knew. That’s why she left him. That’s why she did all she could to stop me from having contact with him, even though it didn’t work in the end.

“Look, we will have plenty of time to talk about this,” Rasmus says. “But I believe time is of the essence. Eero and Noora will be here soon.”

Their names bring me back to the present. “So if my father’s body was never found, why did they tell me he died of exposure after getting lost in the woods? Why not tell me he had cancer? Why put on an elaborate fake funeral?”

And why the hell did they seem to want to kill me last night?

“Because they don’t want you to discover where he really went.”

I blink, growing more confused by the second. “Well? Where did he really go?”

“Tuonela,” he says after a beat, a darkness coming over his eyes.

“And where is that?”

“It’s the Land of the Dead.”

Another slow blink from me. I almost laugh. “I hate to tell you this, but that tea isn’t working. It almost sounded like you said the Land of the Dead.”

Rasmus’ eyes remain stone-cold serious. “Tuonela is the place where the dead go after they die. It’s accessible only through a few shamanic portals within the Arctic Circle, and one of those happens to be close to here. Your father went there, hoping to either barter with Death in order to have more life, or to break into the Library of the Veils at Shadow’s End and find a specific spell.”

I can only stare. Learning that my father was a powerful secret shaman his whole life is one thing, but this, whatever the hell this is, is on a whole other level entirely.

I clear my throat and start picking at the pulla on the coffee table. “Let’s just pretend for a second that everything you said has made perfect sense, and that you didn’t just talk about something tantamount to Frodo strolling into Mordor.”

“Tolkien was very inspired by Finnish folklore,” he points out.

“Yes, I know,” I say impatiently. “So again, let’s say this is all real. That my father traveled to another realm to go barter with…Death? Like, the Grim Reaper?”

He nods.

“And how exactly does one barter with Death? Does my father have something he could trade him?”

“Trades happen all the time between the mortals and the Gods.”

Wow. I didn’t think he’d have an answer to that. Especially not that answer.

“Fine,” I say slowly. “So he’s gone there to do that, go to a library, get a spell to live longer. What the hell does any of that have to do with Eero and Noora?”

“They’re afraid you’ll go into Tuonela in search of your father. That you’ll gain power and wisdom yourself, and that you’ll bring him back, possibly with immortality.”

“And you?”

“And I’m hoping that’s exactly what you will do.”

I take a bite of the pulla and try to think, the delicious taste distracting me for a moment. Rasmus must be in shock. I do believe my father was a shaman and that the two were very close, that perhaps Rasmus looked to him as a father figure. If that’s the case, that could explain why he’s not handling his death very well. And I don’t think I am either, considering I’m sitting here in this remote cabin and entertaining all this nonsense with such calmness.

“You realize you sound crazy,” I tell him after a moment.

“I know,” he says softly. “And I know that there’s nothing I can really do to make you believe me…unless you see it for yourself.”

I swallow down the pulla and get to my feet, walking over to the window which nearly vibrates with the sub-zero temperatures. Outside is a fresh blanket of snow covering the boughs of the pine tree. In the distance is a small shelter with two reindeer outside munching on hay that’s been scattered about. One of them must have been our transportation last night.

“Those your reindeer?” I ask without turning around.

“Your father’s,” he says.

Another secret my father kept from me. I would have loved to know he had reindeer.

I absently run my fingers over the frozen glass. “So what happened to Eero and Noora last night? How did you stop them? Why didn’t they come after us?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says.

He’s right about that.

“What were they planning on doing to me?” I ask.