Introduction
River of Shadows is the first book in the Underworld Gods series and is based on Finnish Mythology. I have dual citizenship with Canada and Finland and have always been fascinated with the lesser-known mythology of my mother’s side (my father was Norwegian, and while I love Norse mythology, it’s certainly not obscure). Finnish mythology is dark, gruesome, and disturbing, all things that call to my deviant little soul, but there’s also an undercurrent of heart built into the myths and folklore, especially when it comes to Tuoni (Death) and his family. Usually underworld rulers in mythology do their job alone, but Tuoni does it alongside his family members, with each of them having their own role. I liked the fact that ruling the dead is a family affair.
All that said, I have taken various liberties with the mythology and the Kalevala, the famous epic of Finland, so for some more astute Finns you may find that some names have been changed to avoid confusion, or characters have been added. Any mistakes in the Finnish language are mine (I ran them past my mother, but I won’t throw her under the bus if they aren’t correct because I am sure she was tired of me).
CONTENT WARNING: this is a dark fantasy adult romance that ends on a cliffhanger. It contains mature themes such as graphic sex, language, captive situations, violence, and dub con. While this book belongs in the dark fantasy sub-genre—and sensitive readers should heed the warnings—it is not dark enough to be considered a dark romance.
Chapter 1
The Arrival
“We come from the land of the ice and snow, where the midnight sun and the hot springs flow,” Robert Plant sings through my noise-canceling headphones as the plane begins its descent. My music choice was certainly apt since there’s nothing but ice and snow for miles. I don’t even see the town of Ivalo, let alone the airport where we’re supposed to be landing shortly. There’re just low rolling hills of white until they blend in with the monotone sky, like we’re flying into nothingness.
A flutter of panic forms in my chest and I immediately grip my armrest, my eyes pinching shut. I’m lucky no one’s seated next to me on this Finnair flight from Helsinki up to Lapland because I’ve been riding the Hot Mess Express the whole time. One minute, tears are streaming down my face, lost in grief and regret over my father, the next I’m having a full-on panic attack, wondering what the hell I’m doing, flying to not only Finland, but the remote north of the country, all by myself. I’m no stranger to taking flights alone—it’s a part of my job—but this time it’s different. My mother refused to come to my father’s funeral, and I’m an only child, which means I have to carry the burden without any support. I’ve never even been to a funeral before.
At least I’ve been to Finland, though this is my first time in Lapland. I was actually born in the town of Savonlinna, but my mother left my father when I was only six years old, ushering me off to California. I don’t remember much of my childhood in Finland, and my only other visits were every other summer when growing up. My father fought long and hard to see me when he could, and I later learned that it was only when he threatened my mother with a custody battle that she relented and let me visit.
Suddenly a memory floods my mind, making my heart feel waterlogged. I had been staying with my father at his lakeside cottage where he lived, having just come in from a refreshing near midnight swim. Despite the hour, the sun was still shining, as it does in the summer months, and the air was thick with dragonflies that buzzed about on kaleidoscope wings, nipping at the mosquitos.
I walked along the dock, a towel draped around me, wet footprints in my wake, wondering where my father had gone, when suddenly he appeared in the doorway to the cottage.
Only he was pretending to be someone else. Santa Claus.
My father is…was one of those people, like Leslie Neilson or Christopher Lloyd, who always looked old with his prematurely white hair and beard, so he suited the role perfectly. He stood there in the waning golden light of the summer sun, dressed in the red velvet Santa suit, a sack full of toys beside him.
I was about eight or nine years old, old enough to not believe in Santa Claus anymore. And even if I had, it would have given me a major pause to have Santa come visit during the summer. But I know from the letters my father would write me (my mother didn’t let us talk on the phone very often), that he missed having me around at Christmas, especially since Finland is Santa’s home, and so I played along happily, reveling in his attention, and the toys and treats of course.
My chest grows warm at the memory, and yet there’s a sharp pinch between my ribs. That’s how it’s been ever since I got the phone call that my father had died. Every moment I feel like I’m torn between two worlds: the world where my father is still alive and my life can carry on as usual, and the world where my father is dead and my life has changed irrevocably, never to be the same.
It was my father’s colleague, Noora, who had made the call a week ago. She told me that my father had gone for a walk in the woods and somehow became disoriented. A search party found him the next day, coated in ice and snow. Dead.
The news didn’t seem real at the time. To be honest, it still doesn’t. It feels like those two worlds are still intermingling with each other, and I keep being bounced around and I never know where I’ll land. Sometimes I just wish that the grief would set like cement, because the moments where the reality crashes upon me can be too difficult to bear. I’d rather be stuck in the thick of it, all the time, as real and raw as possible, as if I could get the pain over with.
People assumed that because I rarely saw or spoke to my father that we didn’t have a close relationship, but the strange thing is that, despite the distance, I felt closer to him than my mother. It’s like we had our own silent language, or some kind of magnetic tie between us that kept us connected throughout my life. I always felt him with me, felt his love, even when we were technically estranged.
That’s the part that hurts the most, though. After high school, when my mother moved to Seattle with her now-husband George, and I was still in LA, I thought about going to Finland. I thought about asking if my father would come to LA. I thought these things, but along with the thoughts of I should stop eating so many donuts and I don’t need to watch Howl’s Moving Castle again, and I certainly don’t need another succulent for the patio, they never came to fruition. I just thought them and moved on, making the mistake of thinking there was plenty of time. I decided that a year from now, when I turned twenty-five, that’s when I’d finally take a vacation from work and go and see my father. I thought that’s when I’d start making him—my family—a priority.
I never thought he’d die. Not now, frankly not ever. He didn’t seem the type, and if you’d met him you’d know. My father was like an unstoppable force. He was the life of the party, popular to the bone, full of life and zest. People loved him and he loved people. My father had this way of making you believe in magic, in that anything in the world was possible, and that you could be anything you wanted to be.
And now he’s…gone.
There has to be a mistake, I think to myself as the plane slams down onto the runway. I grip the armrests tighter, warily glancing out the window at the snow that’s blowing across the slice of bare pavement on the runway.