42

Siiri

Standing in the middle of V?in?moinen’s hut in my itse form, I peer down at where my body lays sprawled out by the fire, drum on my chest, mallet still in hand. “Is this really necessary?”

“This is your last lesson, Siiri. You need to know this before you go to Tuonela,” the shaman replies. “How do you feel?”

“I feel fine,” I reply. “It’s just a little odd. I look dead.” I nudge my body with my toe.

“Can you feel any consciousness here?” he asks, gesturing to the Siiri on the floor.

I close my eyes, willing myself to feel my body the way I did with my luonto. No matter how good it felt to be the bird, I was always aware that I was also Siiri. I focus on my tattoos, flexing my hands. Perhaps the prickling, itching pain of them might spark some familiarity. With a huff, I open my eyes. “I can’t feel a thing.”

“So, you see the danger,” he says solemnly. “You are utterly cut off from your body, Siiri. The only sensation you can feel through the tether is mortal peril. Your unconscious self at least affords you that protection.”

“Mortal peril?”

V?in?moinen drops to his knees at my body’s side. Reaching out with both hands, he chokes me, his hands squeezing tight around my neck.

“Hey—what do you think you’re doing?”

“Stay back,” he commands. “Tell me when you feel it.”

To my horror, the old shaman chokes the life out of my unconscious body. In moments, it begins to squirm. My arms flutter as my legs spasm. The first sensation I feel is a sharp pain in my tattoos. I rub the rune of the bear-riding girl. Then my own throat constricts, and I gasp. I clutch my throat as the shaman continues to squeeze. “Stop,” I pant. “Gods— enough —”

I aim a kick his way. He grunts, but he doesn’t let go. I feel dizzy. Black spots dance in my vision. Is he trying to kill me? Unable to do anything else, I fold myself inwards, chasing my tether back into my body. I wake to find myself lying on the floor of the hut, gazing up at the slanting ceiling. I groan, sitting up, my hand rubbing at my neck. V?in?moinen crouches at my side, gazing down at me with those deep blue eyes. It takes me a minute to remember how I got here. My gaze drops to his weathered hands, and I glare. “That’s a morbid little trick.”

“Where did you feel it first?”

“In my tattoos.” I rub my hands together, soothing the aching marks. “Down the tether.”

“And that is all the warning you may get.”

I nod.

“If someone really wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” he warns. “That’s why it’s always safest to use your itse when there is someone you trust to watch over you as you sleep.”

“Is that what happened to you? You used your itse alone—but wait.” I chew on the problem a moment. “If your itse got up and walked away... how were you awake all these years? Don’t we stay asleep if our itse fails to return?”

He shakes his head. “It is precisely because my itse chose to stay away that I was able to wake. In choosing not to return, it severed its connection with me. I woke in excruciating pain. I’ve lived with the pain of that loss every day, unable to die from it because Tuonetar’s curse kept me tethered to life.”

It really is a fate worse than death. “If I meet the witch, I’ll give her a kick in the teeth for you, shall I?”

“Pray you don’t. If you’re close enough to the Witch Queen to kick her teeth, you’re already as good as dead.” He sits at the table with his pipe. He’s been smoking it nonstop all day. “I’m giving you six hours to find Aina. If you don’t bring her out—”

“I know.” I pick up my discarded drum. “You’ll come down there and drag me out. I’m more concerned about you. If Lumi comes while I’m gone—”

“Forget the witch,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I won’t have you distracted. Lumi will come when she comes, and I’ll deal with her when she does. Your only concern is getting to Aina and getting out safely.”

That’s easy for him to say. We’ve both heard the howling of the wolves closing in. They’re rallying, drawn by Lumi’s magic. She knows where we are, and she doesn’t mean to let the old man slip her nets again. I meant what I said; I’ll die before I let her hurt him. He’s suffered this curse for long enough.

He folds up the map and hands it to me. “Here, take off your vest,” he adds. “You’ll need to put this on.” He rifles around in one of the larger baskets in the back corner of the hut. When he turns, he’s cradling an old, worn coat in his hands.

I glance from my fox-fur vest to the heavy winter coat. “I’m not cold. My itse will dress itself—”

“Just put it on,” he growls, foisting the coat at me.

I grumble my way out of my vest, tossing it aside, before shrugging into the overlarge trapper’s coat and tucking the map inside it. Once it’s on my shoulders, I grimace. “V?in?moinen... it stinks.”

“Well, it’s had a dead man in it,” he replies with a shrug.

“What?” I squawk, trying to shrug it off.

“Keep the damn coat, girl. You need it. It’s part of the crossing magic. That coat has been where you’re trying to go. Let it help guide you and grant you safe passage.”

I settle before the fire in the smelly coat, picking up my mallet and drum.

“Now, listen to me, girl. If you are caught—”

“I said I’ll be careful—”

“Just listen .” His piercing blue eyes silence my retort. “If you’re captured, you will request a prisoner exchange.”

“Prisoner exchange?”

“Yes, a life for your lives,” he goes on. “You are to offer the Witch Queen my life for your lives—”

“No. V?in?moinen—”

“You don’t get to tell me no, girl. I’m allowed to decide my own fate. If you’re caught, you will offer the exchange. And not just my itse. I will go to Tuonela, body and soul. I will submit myself to their justice in exchange for both your lives.”

“You’re mad,” I whisper, searching his face. “You cannot waste your life like that, not when we still have such great need of you.”

He smiles. “I think we both know my time has come and passed. They have no more need of me. How could they, when they have you?”

“I cannot possibly lead the Finns,” I cry. “I wear these tattoos, but I am not a shaman yet. There is still so much for me to learn, a lifetime’s worth of knowledge I don’t yet have. You are the shaman of the ages. Yours is the return that was promised. The people need you .”

“I do not wish for this end,” he says gently. “I am selfish and vain. I seek to live forever and a day. I merely offer this as an alternative to your painful demise at the hands of the Witch Queen. I offer my life for your lives.”

“She will stretch your death to last a hundred years,” I warn.

“I’d bet it lasts a thousand years, knowing how much she dislikes me.” He shuffles around under the table, placing a small wooden box between us. He doesn’t need to open it for me to know it contains the personal effects of the goddess of hope. “Take this with you. The witches will require an assurance from me.”

“All of this is unnecessary, because I will return with Aina,” I reply. “No one is dying, old man. And when I get back, we’re dealing with Lumi. Once that witch is in the ground, you’re coming south with us.” I tuck the box in the front of the dead man’s coat with the map. “Now that I’ve found you, I’ll not leave you again. Well... except now,” I add with a smile.

I move over by the fire’s edge and begin my smoke ablutions. I turn my attention to my drum, placing it on the edge of my knee. I take a deep breath, letting it out, seeking out that place of calm at the center of me. “I’m going now—”

“Wait,” the old man barks. “Siiri, wait.” He gets to his feet, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His mouth moves like a fish out of water. All the words he wants to say remain silent and unspoken.

I smile up at him. “Don’t worry. You gave me everything I need. I’m ready.”

“Gah, you’re worse than a woodpecker,” he barks, pacing around to his side of the fire. “You’ve pecked, pecked, pecked inside my head.” He emphasizes each word by jabbing his finger at his temple. “I can’t get you out.”

“You know you love me.”

“You’re bloody insufferable!”

My smile falls as he paces. All V?in?moinen’s stories contain adventure and heroics, but they tell of something else too: surviving unimaginable loneliness. This old shaman has searched all his life for a place to belong, a people to call his family. Thwarted at every turn, he has never had his love returned. He is alone in the world—utterly alone.

Until he pulled me from the ice.

“V?in?moinen,” I say, my voice gentle.

The shaman stops his pacing with a huff.

“You know you love me,” I say again.

He sighs, shoulders sagging in defeat. “To know you is to love you, Siiri Jarintytt?r.”

I smile. “I love you, too, old man.”

He goes still, my words swallowed by the silence of the hut, broken only by the soft crackle of the fire. He glares at me. “I’ll never forgive you if you die.”

“Then we are agreed. No one is dying tonight.”

“And nothing too heroic,” he warns. “Get your girl and get back here. Understand?”

I nod, his face the last thing I see as I close my eyes and begin to drum. The runes for Tuonela call to me: the raven, the wolf, the moon, the river. It’s time to cross over. It’s time to rescue my friend.

Hold on, Aina. I’m coming.