15

Aina

Jaako came to me in the night. He let me hold him while I cried, my fear of Tuonela and the Witch Queen stealing all thoughts of sleep. But sleep must have come at some point, for I wake with the comforting warmth of the raven nestled against me. My peace shatters when I realize it was a loud knock at my door that woke me. Jaako hops up, ruffling his feathers.

“Go,” I whisper, fearful of him being found. I don’t want them to take him from me, my only friend in this dark place. The bolt on the door rattles, and I slip off the bed, still wearing my fine gold dress and the fox-fur stole. “Go now,” I hiss at the raven. “Fly.”

Jaako gives me a last longing look before he swoops past my shoulder and out the window, clearing the sill just as my door swings open. I brace myself to face my menacing dead guard, but a young woman stands in the doorway instead. I catch the whiff of decay from her flesh. She’s dressed plainly, in a homespun dress much like what I would wear. She has glassy eyes, and her hair is falling out in patches. She looks young, perhaps the same age as me. My heart breaks for her, and I wonder how she died. Slowly, the dead woman raises a bony hand and curls her finger. Come.

I glance around, unsure of what to do. Can I refuse to follow her? What happens if I do? Taking a shaky breath, I put on my slippers and follow the dead girl out of the room. We walk silently down the hallway. My guide directs me left instead of right at the waiting chamber. We step through an open doorway, and I gasp, the fine hairs on my arms rising. I loosen the fur at my shoulders. For the first time in days, I’m outside... at least I think I’m outside. I can feel the crisp autumn air against the skin of my neck and arms.

The sky above is nothing but impenetrable darkness. It’s a void so deep I almost fear looking up, lest I float away into it. I focus on my feet instead. I’m standing on large flagstones set in a path through a courtyard. We’re in a walled garden lit from all sides by torches casting golden light.

In the corner, standing before a large weeping willow tree, a witch waits. She watches me approach, smiling the same cruel smile as the Witch Queen. Where her mother is haunting in her ugliness, this witch is beautiful, her walnut-brown hair flowing down her back in waves. Several braids wrapped like a crown around her head keep the tendrils away from her face. This death goddess has decorated her crown of braids with bits of bone. Human or animal, I can’t be sure. A necklace made from human teeth encircles her slender neck. The teeth look dipped in silver, so they glitter in the torchlight.

I don’t notice that the witch isn’t alone at first. Quiet Inari stands at her side like a ghost. The women say nothing at my approach, and I take their cue to remain silent. I wait by Inari as the rest of the girls arrive. The other girls look as poorly rested as I feel. Poor Satu looks like she spent the night weeping. Lilja looks determined. Tuonetar promised to kill us. I wonder if this is the day.

As soon as we all stand before her, the witch speaks, her voice high and melodic. “The time has come for you to be of some use to us. You’ve taken advantage of our hospitality for far too long.” She scowls at each of us, as if it were our choice to be locked away for days and fed cursed bread.

“What will you do?” Helmi whimpers. “Will you kill us?”

The witch glares at her. “Kill you? What use would you be then?”

“They mean to work us to death,” says Lilja. “How is that any different from our lives among the living?”

“The loud, foolish one is correct,” the witch replies. “From today, you will all be assigned a task. No one in Tuonela may be idle. You will work... or suffer the consequences.”

Lilja scoffs. “The Witch Queen promised to kill me anyway, so why not just be done with it—” She shrieks, dropping to her knees as blood gushes from the side of her head. She clasps a hand over the wound, crying out in pain. We all back away as the blood seeps between her fingers, down her neck, staining the fur of her stole. The witch holds out a hand, revealing Lilja’s severed ear. My stomach twists as the witch laughs.

“I didn’t think you had much need of this, since you never listen.” The witch tosses the ear to the ground, utterly indifferent to Lilja’s pain. “Your tongue is next if you don’t learn to bide it. Speak again, foolish one, and it will be your teeth I wear around my neck.”

Lilja whimpers, but says nothing, her hand clasped over her bleeding ear.

The witch turns to face us. “You two,” she barks, pointing at Satu and Inari. Satu nearly jumps out of her skin at being addressed directly. “Can either of you cook?”

“Y-yes,” Satu stammers.

Next to her, Inari nods.

“Take them to the kitchens,” the witch says with a wave of her hand.

From behind us our dead guides appear, ready to lead them away. Satu and Inari have no choice but to turn and go. I watch them leave, unsure if I’ll ever see them alive again.

“And you two.” The witch points beyond me to Riina and Helmi. “Go tend to the animals. My mother is particularly fond of pork. Pay special attention to the care of her pigs.”

In quick succession, the group goes from seven to three. I’m left with Salla at my side and Lilja on her knees. The witch casts a glance between us before pointing a rune-marked hand at Salla. “You, take this one who likes to talk so much, and bring her to Tuonen tytti. She’ll no doubt find some use for you both.”

I go still, thanking my stars that I’m not being taken to serve the ferrywoman of Tuonela. She transports all the dead across the river of death in a boat made from the bones of a giant pike. I don’t think I could bear watching scores of the newly dead massing on Tuonela’s shores, eager for entry, when I know I can never leave.

Salla does as she’s told, helping Lilja to her feet as their dead guides step forward to lead them away. I’m left alone before the willow and the witch.

“My sister usually abhors taking in any of our mother’s strays,” she says, “but apparently she finds herself in need of assistance. Can you weave, useless thing?”

I nod, heart in my throat. “Yes, goddess.”

“Good. Then go. And do try to be useful,” she warns. “It is not unheard of for my dear sister to snip the fingers off clumsy hands.” She turns to leave.

“Goddess, wait,” I call after her.

The witch stops and glances over her shoulder. “If you’re about to ask me to spare your miserable life, you’re wasting your breath.”

“No, I—I stand before a goddess, and I am ashamed to admit I don’t know her face,” I admit. “My mother would never forgive me if I didn’t ask your name.”

Her eyes narrow as she considers me. “You wish to know my name?”

I nod, praying I look sufficiently guileless. There is power in a name. I will need all the power I can gather if I’m to survive this place. Luckily, I’m an excellent forager. “All the gods deserve our devotion and admiration,” I say, echoing my mother’s words. “As a death goddess, your power is boundless, your reach is limitless, and your control over my life is as inevitable as the night all around us. I would know your name to offer you all due respect.”

After a moment, the witch smirks. “I am Vammatar.”

I blink, breath frozen in my chest. I stand before the goddess of evil.

“Now, go on,” she sneers, that necklace of human teeth glinting in the torchlight. “Show me the respect I’m due.”

I drop to my knees. Bending forward, I press my palms flat to the ground, bowing my head. “Goddess.”

She lifts the hem of her dark blue robes. “Kiss my boot, worm.”

Crawling forward, I let my lips brush the top of her boot.

The witch cackles, kicking me back like a dog. I swallow my whimper of pain and curl away from her. With that, she leaves. I wait on the ground, listening to her distant, mocking laughter. From somewhere beyond the walls, sharp moans and howling wails make the fine hairs on my arms stand on end.

My guide nudges me with a bony hand. I get shakily to my feet, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. With another curl of her broken fingers, she beckons for me to follow. I try to memorize our path across the walled courtyard, passing under a large archway into a smaller, spiritless courtyard. It is nothing but four stone walls and a stone floor, open to the black sky above. One wall contains a massive set of thick double doors. Is that the way out of the palace?

We pass through the smaller door set in the opposite wall from the garden. The view from the doorway of this third courtyard stops me in my tracks. Not only is it brighter than the other two, lit with twice as many torches, but it hums with activity. Busy people and wriggling dogs, cages of squawking chickens, the tantalizing smell of roasting meats, the metallic clang of hammer to anvil. All the animals are alive. How did they get here?

The strangeness of the scene becomes clear as I take it in. There is no laughter, no chatter, no shouted calls or hurried words. The people are all silent as the grave... because they’re all dead. They move silently, performing their tasks with all due diligence, exchanging not a word or a look with their fellow man. There’s something so deeply lonely about it.

On the far side of the courtyard, Helmi and Riina are already hard at work. Riina sits on a milking stool, tending to a cow. Helmi gives me a reassuring smile as I pass, tossing slop into a pen of grunting pigs. I follow my guide to a small building. She opens the door and gestures for me to go inside. Taking one last look at the bustling courtyard, I step through.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. The room is only lit by a small handful of tallow candles. It’s long and narrow, taking up half the length of the courtyard, and filled with two-beam looms. Some stand empty, but most carry cloth in some stage of progress. I pause to admire the work on the first loom I pass. The weaver has chosen light and dark threads for a lovely, contrasting geometric pattern.

From the back of the room comes the soft clack, clack of a loom at work. I peek around one of the looms and spy the weaver. I can tell by the set of her shoulders and the cleanliness of her hair and clothes that she’s alive. Her sleek black hair is so long, it nearly touches the floor. It’s braided in a single, thick plait. Vammatar said this was her sister. If the stories are true, Kiputytto and Kivutar, the twins of evil and suffering, live atop the Kipum?ki, the hill of pain. I have a feeling I know who this is...

The witch never stops the movement of her hands—back and forth, deft fingers constantly checking the tightness of the weave. I still as I notice the runes tattooed on the backs of her hands. Kalma and Vammatar have them too, but the Witch Queen doesn’t. I’ve only seen such tattoos once before, on a traveling bard who strummed a kantele. What do they mean? Do they serve some godly purpose?

“You know how to weave, mortal?” the goddess asks without turning her head. Her voice is low and melodic.

I clear my throat and step forward. “Yes, goddess. My mother taught me... though I’m afraid some of these projects may be beyond my skill,” I admit, glancing around at the looms.

Clack. Clack. Clack. The warp weights sway as the goddess weaves the wefts back and forth, moving her heddle rods as she goes. “You have nothing but time to learn and improve.”

She’s right... as long as they keep me alive. “Where shall I begin?”

“Begin at the beginning.”

I smile. This feels a bit like speaking to Siiri’s mummi. “Must I begin on a loom?”

“Begin wherever you begin,” she replies, apparently wholly indifferent.

Making my second bold move of the day, I step closer. A clever forager knows when to take. “Might I begin with your name, goddess? My name is Aina.”

The weaver’s hands pause on the heddle rod. I swallow the nerves in my throat, waiting to see if she might kick me as her sister did. “I am Loviatar,” she says at last.

Loviatar, goddess of illness and pestilence. The stories say that when she was a young woman, Loviatar was raped by the north wind, and from her womb—and her rage—sprang nine sons, the nine diseases of men. Some storytellers like to say Loviatar had a tenth child, a daughter. This child was Envy, who must go unnamed, lest the speaker be consumed by her.

There is another aspect to Loviatar’s stories. All mortals know the witch is—

“Yes, I’m blind.” The goddess turns to face me.

I blink, struck by the beauty of her face. While Kalma has black eyes, Loviatar’s eyes are cloudy white, like two pearls. I’m not sure what else I expected. Perhaps because Tuonetar and Kalma are so monstrous, I imagined the goddess of illness’s face would be riddled with boils and sores. But her skin is soft and smooth, with gentle lines framing her mouth and creasing her brow. There are streaks of grey at her temples. She looks austere... and sad. Those pearl eyes stare at me, unblinking.

My heart flutters. “How did you—”

“Because you are mortal,” she replies tonelessly. “And mortals are painfully predictable. Now, are you going to weave anything today? Or should I call my vapid sister back here to hammer nails through your thumbs or find some other such uninspired torture?”

I move quickly over to the rack in the corner of the room where a large collection of yarns wait ready for weaving. I pick up a ball of deep red yarn, the color of wine. The cord is thick. It would make quick work to knit a pair of socks. I fish through a basket and pull out a pair of needles. Returning to Loviatar’s side, I drag a stool closer to her loom and sit.

Loviatar’s head turns to follow my movements. As I sit next to her, she frowns. “What are you doing?”

“I’m knitting,” I reply. “The light is best here by your candles. I suppose they must be for warmth?”

Her frown deepens, creasing her forehead still further. “What are you knitting?”

“You said to begin at the beginning. Well, the first thing I ever learned to knit was a stout pair of socks. You see, the trick is—”

“I can’t see,” the witch corrects.

“The trick is to do this special row of stitches at the toe and again when you make the turn for the heel,” I say. “It saves hours of work later.”

We settle into silence as I begin. Once I have a good inch of knitting complete, I reach for Loviatar’s hand. The goddess jumps at the unexpected touch. “What are you doing, little mouse?”

I set Loviatar’s fingers on the knitted fabric. “See—I mean, can you feel the thickness of the sock here?” I smile as Loviatar moves her fingers over the stitches. “That will make a good pair of socks,” I say proudly.

Loviatar just huffs, returning to her work. I do the same. The cloth she’s weaving is a beautiful blue scroll pattern on a bed of white, like liverleaves peeking through the snow in spring. I watch in awe as the blind witch works, weaving her pattern without the need of sight.

I can’t explain why, but I feel comfortable with Loviatar, at least more comfortable than in the presence of Kalma or the Witch Queen. She’s certainly less menacing than Vammatar, who took an ear off Lilja’s head just for annoying her and kicked me for asking her name.

For the first time since waking in this dark realm, I feel almost at peace.

When I can stand the silence no longer, I lean forward on my stool. “Andwhat are you working on?”

“Cloth for the servants,” Loviatar replies, never stopping the movement of her hands.

This surprises me. I never expected the death gods to care what a dead servant has to wear. All the dead I’ve seen so far seem barely able to hold themselves together. They wear soiled clothes, their bodies bent and broken. “Why would the gods of Tuonela care about clothing for dead servants?”

Loviatar stills, her head turned away. “This is not Tuonela. Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

The goddess keeps working her wefts through the warps. “All is not as it seems, little mouse. You come to Tuonela in its darkest hour. Only chaos reigns here now.”

Some answers at last. The forager in me leans forward eagerly, ready to collect more kernels of information. I have to find a way to keep her talking. “Who made my dress?” I ask, keeping my knitting needles clicking.

The goddess slow-turns to glare at me. “How easy it is for you to forget that I’m blind.”

I wince. “I’m sorry, goddess. The clothes appeared in my room as if by magic—”

“It was magic, you fool. You are in Tuonela.”

“This dress is like spun gold,” I explain. “I’ve never seen its like. It’s beautiful beyond words. Did you weave it?”

“No,” comes her soft reply.

“Will you teach me how to work the loom to weave cloth like gold?”

She huffs. “Prove you have any skill first. Then we’ll discuss plans for your improvement.”

I throw in a few more rows of stitches, working the needles like my mother taught me. The question I’ve wondered about every hour of my waking sits on the tip of my tongue. Finally, I ask it. “Why am I here?”

“You’re here to weave, foolish girl,” Loviatar replies.

“No, why am I here ?” I repeat. “Why was I brought to Tuonela? I know we’re not the first group of girls brought down here. There have been many. At first, we thought the girls were going missing, or simply running away from home. But you took them... didn’t you?”

“I did nothing,” she hisses. “I take no part in any of this madness.”

I lean forward on my stool. “What does Tuonetar want with us?”

Slowly, Loviatar faces me, her milky white eyes unblinking. “My mother wants you to die. She only ever wants mortals to die.”

“Why?” I whisper, fighting to keep my voice from breaking.

“Because she is death.”

I think of the great hall last night. I picture the larger of the two skull chairs, empty and forlorn. The arms of the chair were dusted with cobwebs. “And Lord Tuoni?” I ask. “The King of Death? Where is he? Does she not share power with him? Does he want us all dead too?”

Loviatar scowls, her rune-marked hands unmoving on her loom. “Do not speak of my father, little mouse. Not in this place. Not if you value your miserable life.”

I glance around. “I cannot speak of him in his own home?”

“This is not his home anymore.”

My knitting needles go still, silence filling the space between us. “Where is he?”

“Gone.”

“Meaning Tuonetar rules alone,” I murmur. “She is wholly unchecked by his influence. Is that why the magic of this place feels so... off?”

She says nothing.

“We feel it in life, too, you know. Her chaos spreads like a plague. Why has Lord Tuoni abandoned his realm to the whims of a madwoman?”

“You speak too much, silly girl,” Loviatar hisses. “You want to stay alive? Keep your mind on your work and your mouth shut. Do not draw the attention of my mother and sisters. Do not draw my attention either. You are a mouse now, little mouse. You are neither seen nor heard. That is how you survive.”

“I understand.”

She narrows her eyes at me. Then she huffs, turning away. “You understand nothing. How could you?” Her hands go back to her weft.

We work in silence for several hours, and I ask no more questions. I have them, to be sure. My mind is full of nothing but questions, but I worry about pressing my luck too far. A good forager knows when to harvest, but she must also know when to wait, leaving treasures to ripen and grow. By the time my guide returns, I’ve knitted a pair or thick woolen socks.

“Here,” I say, reaching forward to set them on Loviatar’s knee.

The goddess stops her work to feel the socks. “What is this?”

“I made them for you,” I reply. “Everyone should have a good pair of socks, even a goddess.”

Loviatar’s hand stills on the socks. Her face is turned away, so I can’t read her expression. The goddess says nothing, returning to her weaving with the socks balanced on her knee.

“May I make a pair for myself tomorrow?” I ask, rising to join my dead maid at the door. “My room is quite cold...”

Loviatar is silent for so long, I think she will not speak. But as I turn to leave, she says, “You may keep making socks.”

“Thank you.”

The witch turns to face me, reading me with those unblinking eyes. “At least your feet will be warm when you die.”