Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

HANNA

Tuonen was laid to rest amid the waves and under a stone grey sky.

It’s ironic that funerals aren’t common in the land of the dead, but a ceremony was given for Tapio, and words and tears were shed for Rasmus, and so for Tuonen, the beloved Son of Death, we gave him a beautiful sendoff.

In the end, Tuoni chose to bury him at sea. We set out on boats from Shadow’s End, the few that Louhi and her cronies didn’t inadvertently destroy when they stormed the castle, and went out not far from shore.

Tuonen was wrapped in a shroud and his father’s cloak, with burlap sacks full of crystals tied around his ankles and neck. The crystals themselves were giant chunks of lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, and jade, enough to weigh his body down in an eternal watery grave, the crystals themselves acting as conduits for good passage. It didn’t matter that Tuonen is floating in the eternal hell that is Oblivion. We all pretended that his soul was still around, and would finally be at peace.

Vellamo called her mermaids forth to help guide the body to a coral grove at the bottom of the sea, all of them except Bell, that is. I cried for her loss, in addition to Tuonen’s, in addition to Tapio, and even Rasmus.

Rasmus. Even though part of me still hated him, right up until the end, I mourn the fact that I never gave him a second chance. He proved himself worthy of being called an ally, maybe even a brother. He risked his own life to save Lovia and he lost for it. I remember how it was when he first saved me from Noora and Eero at my father’s viewing, how he accompanied me into Tuonela to get him back, and I like to think that at that time Rasmus wasn’t compromised. He truly wanted to save my dad, someone he loved and looked up to, never knowing the truth, and for that I kind of owe him everything.

But wishing things were different doesn’t change anything.

As we sat on the boats, bobbing up and down in the glassy waves, watching Tuoni’s beloved son sink into the depths, tears streaming from our eyes, we were all wishing for so many different things.

One thing I wish for is that my Goddess powers would help lessen the blow of grief, but it hasn’t. Which is funny, considering that’s all I originally wanted. I wanted to be human, I wanted to feel—well, I fucking got it.

“Still not hungry?” I ask Tuoni, coming around the back of his chair at the head of the table. I drape my arms around him and kiss the back of his head. We’re in the dining hall, or what’s left of it. After the funeral Vellamo, Tellervo and Torben had their meal here, but nobody else seemed hungry, especially not my husband.

The troops have been busy, their duties now going from fighting a war to making everyone food. Thankfully there’s still enough in the pantries to feed us for a while. I don’t think Louhi ever ate, which would explain why the stockpiles weren’t touched.

Tuoni moves his head to kiss my arm. “No. They don’t know how to cook.” I glance down at his plate of spaghetti and bite back a smile. I think the troops have been cooking the pasta just fine, it’s Tuoni that doesn’t know what good Italian food tastes like. He thinks spaghetti should be hard as sticks.

“Perhaps you should think about sending the troops back then,” I tell him. “They’ve proved their worth. It’s not really fair to have them hang around Shadow’s End.”

He grumbles and leans back against me. “I need them to help clean up this place.”

“You have enough of us to clean it up. It’s my home, Lovia’s home too. We’ll get it spic and span. Besides, if you get my father to open up a portal to send the troops through, maybe he can go with them and sneak you back more chocolate and coffee.”

He twists his head to glance up at me. “You think Torben would go and come back?”

I nod. “I already talked to him. He says there’s nothing left for him in Finland. We tied up as many loose ends as we could over there. He wants to stay here, with me, with us.” I give him a firm look, letting him know that this isn’t negotiable.

He sighs. “Alright. I suppose this was going to happen no matter what I would say.”

I pull back and punch him on the shoulder. “You love my father. I know you do. You guys have had one hell of a bonding experience this last while.” He mutters something unintelligible. “Besides,” I go on, “he can go back and forth between our worlds with ease. Think of the movies he can smuggle in.”

That does seem to lighten his disposition. “I suppose I’ll allow my father-in-law to move in with us. Thank the Creator it’s a big enough castle. He can have the furthest wing.”

“Deal,” I tell him, letting him think he won. It’s the little things in this marriage.

I straighten up and smile. “I’m heading up to bed. Are you coming?”

He gives his head a shake. “No, I think I’ll stay up a little while longer. I need time to be alone.”

Sadness tugs at my heart. His voice sounds hollow now. The loss of Tuonen will be a mark on his soul until the end of time.

I swallow back the tears that threaten to flow and make my way out of the dining room and up the many stairs to our chambers. It isn’t fair that Gods can die. If you’re supposed to be immortal, then you should be immortal. To have one live forever with the absence of another is cruel. This must be what all the vampires go through, assuming there are such things. Nothing surprises me anymore.

But once I’m in my chambers and getting ready for bed, my heart is too heavy for sleep. I keep seeing Tuonen sinking into the deep, keep hearing the sob that escaped Tuoni’s lips and broke my heart right in two. This is a castle of grief from which there is no escape.

I go to the glass doors of the balcony and look outside. It’s snowing lightly, gathering on the stone railing and in the corners of the panes. It’s beautiful in its own way—the great dark sea below, the jagged mountains in the distance. Somewhere there’s Kuutar’s moon behind all those heavy clouds but I don’t expect to see fair weather for a long time. When I imagined us finally back at Shadow’s End, I thought there would be sunshine and reason to celebrate. For some reason I never imagined we would lose Tuonen in the process.

Was that na?ve or just hopeful?

Is there even a difference?

I exhale heavily and stare at the flakes as they gather on the window pane. At least the snow is pretty. Though the more I stare at it, the lighter it becomes. I look up and suddenly I’m blinded, like a supernova is going off in front of me.

Instinctively I block my eyes, though it takes me a moment to realize I’m part of the fucking sun and I don’t need to do that. So I lower my arms and watch as a bright ball of sunlight lands on the balcony.

I step back, out of the way just as the doors blow open. Snow fills the room, followed by the glowing figure of my mother, P?iv?t?r, Goddess of the Sun.

“Mother?” I ask, immediately humbled by her blinding presence. “Why are you here?” I can’t help but get a little nervous, like I’m in trouble for something.

She stares at me for a second, the solar flares around her body dimming, before she says, “Do mothers not visit their children sometimes?” As if I dared to question her. Then she says, “I have come to bear you a gift.”

“Oh?” The last gift she gave me was the whole damn sun, so I’m a little wary about what this could be. “Wouldn’t Kuutar be mad if you gave me the moon?”

“I’m not giving you the moon,” she says in a huff, growing brighter, totally not understanding what sarcasm is.

“That’s fine,” I tell her quickly, not wanting to see her offended. She may be my true mother, but she scares the shit out of me. “So what is the gift?”

“The gift is sacrifice. Your sacrifice.”

Oh, yeah, that’s a great fucking present.

“Excuse me?” I exclaim. “A sacrifice?”

“You have the power of all life, Hanna. It is part of your bones, part of your blood. This power is stronger in you than it is in me, because your humanity is strong enough to control it.”

“And you think I should die because of that?”

What the fuck?

“Most of your power will die, yes, because you exhausted it first. But you are not dying, Hanna. You are saving the people you love. The people of the realm. The ones sent to Oblivion.”

I shake my head. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Your gift, Hanna, nurtured in sunlight, is that you can reverse Oblivion. Your gift of life can pull everyone out until Oblivion ceases to exist. The dead will return and walk again here.”

I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. Mostly because I don’t understand it. “You’re saying I can somehow, like, Uno Reverse Hell?”

She stares at me for a moment and I can almost hear her brain trying to compute what Uno means. “You are light. Oblivion is dark. Your eternal sun and power of life will destroy it completely.”

My heart starts to beat faster, hope rising in my chest. “So you’re saying I have the power to bring everyone back to life? Tuonen? Bell? Rasmus? Vipunen?”

“Vipunen is not dead,” she says to me, a hint of haughtiness in her tone. “He has been with me on the sun. Punishment for getting involved with Tuonen’s fate when he knows better than that. He has been watching you though. He is proud.”

Pick up the sword and try again.

I blink at that, my circuits overloading with too much information.

“I can bring back the dead. Like the dead dead?” I repeat.

“Every being that has been sent to Oblivion, yes,” she says, patience waning. “And I do mean, every being.”

“Wait. So that means like Louhi and Rangaista and Salainen?”

“Yes.”

My eyes widen in horror. “That’s not fair.”

“You are correct. It is not fair,” she says stiffly. “If you want it to be fair, you would only bring some back, but not others.”

“But…how?”

“Your power can only bring everyone back. But you do not possess the metaphysical ability to become a replacement for Oblivion and become the great judge of humanity, only letting worthy souls in while keeping others out. That is not in your markup.”

“If I may?” a voice says.

Startled, I whirl around to see the Magician standing in the doorway with his flowing robes.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

But his focus doesn’t seem to be on me. It’s hard to tell because he doesn’t have a proper face, he’s like the superhero Rorschach but with stars and planets instead of ink blots. Still, I can feel he’s staring at my mother.

I look back at her and she nods.

“Yes, I knew you would come,” she says. “Tell me your plans.”

“Wait, what?” I stammer, watching as he glides across the room. He gives me a nod and then stops right in front of her.

“I am ready to evolve,” he says to her. “I have done what I’ve needed to do.”

“Uh, and what is that exactly?” I question. Because if you ask me, he seems to have done a whole lot of nothing.

His head swivels toward me, galaxies swirling across his facade, faster and faster. “I have done more than you know.”

“Oh,” I say. “So you read minds too? Not invasive or inappropriate at all.” I jerk my chin at my mother. “I see why the two of you are friends.”

“You wonder why I have let some people die while saving others,” he says, his voice almost robotic. “You wonder why I saved Rasmus initially when he died later. You don’t see the things that are put in motion. If I hadn’t saved Rasmus, he wouldn’t have been able to save Lovia. And he needed to save Lovia, because she’s been instrumental to my evolution. She still is. Right to the end.”

“Okay…” I say, getting a little freaked out about how ominous he sounds. “So then what is your evolution? Why is it more important than people’s lives?”

“For the very reason we have just discussed,” my mother says in a patient voice. “Both of you are willing to be sacrifices for the greater good.”

“Yeah but…” I begin. “My sacrifice is stupid. I give up my powers, sure, Uno Reverse Oblivion, and then we’ll have everyone back but then all the shitty people will be back too and round and round we go. We can’t coexist here with Louhi and Rangaista.”

“Oblivion was never necessary,” the Magician says. “Not when I stood at the gates to the city and drew the cards. The bad went to Inmost. The mediocre went to the Golden Mean. And the very good went to Amaranthus. Oblivion was something put in place as punishment beyond punishment long ago and it should have never been for everyone.”

I do a slow blink at him, trying to get him to catch me up to speed quicker.

He continues, “But if Oblivion is reversed, something has to take its place. Or someone, as it were.”

I frown. “What are you talking about?”

“He is ready to become the void,” my mother says. “He will replace Oblivion in order to hold the evil souls in. So the good souls can come back.”

“I still have final judgement in the end,” he adds.

I’m having a hard time getting my head around this. In some ways I wish my Goddess self was coming through because she seemed to have the mind of computer.

“You become…I don’t understand. How do you just become something like that?”

He places his hands together and I notice how they look like a velvet black sky pin pricked with stars. “The same way I became what you’re looking at. I am a portion of the universe, as are you in some ways. But my form is ever changing. I exist in nothing. I am everywhere. I can reach out and touch you because I manipulate matter that way. I can also stop manipulating and just exist as stardust. If I become the void, I will cease to exist as you know it, but I will still exist.”

“You would really do that?” I ask, touched by his dedication. “What about the city? Don’t you need to draw cards and decide people’s fate? Eventually Tuoni will get that back up and running.”

“All of Tuonela needs an overhaul,” my mother says. “It has been a long time coming. It is why Kaaos had to happen in the first place.” She pauses, tilting her head at me. “This is what occupies Tuoni’s thoughts, as well as the loss of his son. But if you reverse Oblivion and the Universe becomes the void, letting only the good ones out, and keeping the bad ones in, then Tuoni will have more time to think about what this realm really needs. He’ll have his son back.”

“When I tell Tuoni of the news, he will be relieved,” the Magician says. “Of course, because it means Tuonen is back, and Tapio, Ahto, Kalma, and the others that have been lost over the years. But also because there will be a new system. The newly dead won’t be sorted into three layers of the afterlife. They will either be here, in Tuonela, or in the void where I hold them prisoner.”

I think about that for a moment. If there’s no city, then everyone would just populate Tuonela like normal people would populate a land. They would live in the Frozen Void, or the Hiisi Forest. Build a houseboat community in the Great Inland Sea. Old people could turn the Liekkio Plains into the next Palm Springs, complete with subdivisions and a golf course. Just give them all fire extinguishers for the occasional attack from flaming demon children.

It would take care of the problem that Lovia, and Tuonen, had before everything went to shit. They didn’t want to spend their lives ferrying the dead. But if now all they have to do is cross the River of Shadows to the other side and drop them off to start a new life…they could even build a bridge. Tuonen would be so happy, if he were alive.

“Tuonen will come back,” the Magician says, reading me. “If you use up the rest of your power to turn the tide, then I will become the eternal judgement of the void.”

“I’m sorry it has to come to this, Hanna,” my mother says. She sounds about as sorry as she ever will, but that’s not saying a lot. “It is a loss.”

“I don’t mind giving up my power,” I tell her honestly. “It’s not a sacrifice. I’m not a warrior princess like Lovia. I don’t see the need to have the ability to blast people and set them on fire in my day to day life.”

Knock on wood.

“You might not lose all of it, either,” she adds. “You might always have a touch of it embedded in you.”

So I might end up being a glorified night light after all.

“Okay,” I say, a wave of anxiety rushing over me. “So how do we do this? Is this going to hurt?”

“It won’t hurt,” she says.

I look at the Magician. “And it won’t hurt you?”

He shakes his head. “This is my evolution. I am progressing to the next level.”

And that’s when I think of Lovia. Fuck, it’s going to hurt the hell out of her, isn’t it? From the downward tilt of a shooting star on his face, I know he’s thinking that too.

“None of us start out perfect,” the Magician says. “We are all learning to become the things we need to become. This is our evolution, Hanna. This is the progression of the realm, of the afterlife. Sacrifice is often necessary when the change is for the best.”

“Are you ready to become something again for the greater good?” my mother asks me.

I take in a deep breath and square my shoulders. “Absolutely.” I pause. “Wait. What am I becoming?”

“You, Hanna,” she says with a gentle smile. “You are becoming you.”