My first thought is of the cars in the parking lot, maybe I’ll get lucky and find the keys in one of them, drive off to safety, wherever that is. Fuck, I don’t even know where I really am.
I reach into my pocket to grab my phone to see if I have enough reception to call the police—no bars—and hear the hotel door slam shut behind me and suddenly Rasmus is at my side, grabbing my arm and pulling me along into the knee-high snow, away from the parking lot.
“This way,” he says, his legs moving preternaturally fast.
I look over my shoulder at the hotel, expecting Eero and Noora to come running out after us, but there’s no one there.
“What happened in there?” I cry out.
“I stopped them,” he says gruffly.
How? I want to ask. Did he kill them? I try to pull back and slow down, pointing at the parking lot. “Where are we going, shouldn’t we try and steal a car?”
He shakes his head firmly and continues to pull me along. I’m nearly stumbling as I go, the snow getting higher and higher, filling my boots. “We wouldn’t get very far,” he says. “I have to take you to see your father.”
“I don’t understand!” I’d tear my hair out if the adrenaline wasn’t propelling me forward. “Where is he? Why were you in the casket? What were they trying to do to me?”
“Plenty of time to answer those questions later,” he says. He glances over his shoulder and frowns. “They’ll be out any minute now.”
I guess he didn’t kill them. I look behind me again but immediately eat shit, falling right into a snowbank, snow sinking into my sweater and jeans. Rasmus hooks his arms under me and pulls me up like I weigh nothing at all.
“Almost there,” he says. “You can do it.”
My mind seems to empty out, the cold finally getting to me. I have this vague sensation that I’ll die soon if I don’t get inside somewhere, if I don’t get warm, and that death wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Fight it!” Rasmus barks at me. “Don’t let them in your head!”
Don’t let who in my head? I don’t even know who we’re running from. I don’t even know where I am. Who I am.
My sight starts to turn gray at the edges.
“Fuck,” Rasmus says. “Hold on.”
The lights from the hotel fade away, like they’re being snuffed out, and everything is turning black. I’m falling for a moment and then I’m being lifted up in the air. Carried. I hear the rasp of Rasmus’ breath in the cold air, his legs as they plow through the snow.
Then, somewhere in the distance I hear. “Rasmus! Hanna!”
The voice doesn’t even sound human. It’s sinister and macabre and strikes fear in the deepest part of my soul.
Hanna. That’s my name. I’m Hanna.
I’m…trying to survive.
I gasp, as if just being pulled from drowning, and open my eyes to find myself being placed on a low, two-person sleigh, blankets piled high around me.
A sleigh attached to a fucking reindeer.
I stare at the animal for a moment and it turns its head, staring right back at me with brown liquid eyes, as if wondering who I am.
Holy shit.
“Sulo!” Rasmus says to the reindeer as he pulls up several blankets and animal hides from behind me and starts draping them over me. “Go!”
The reindeer starts running, the sleigh tugged through the snow until it finds the tracks left from before. Rasmus tries to steady himself while keeping me as warm as possible, but no matter how many blankets he puts on me, I don’t feel any warmer. I’m iced to the bone.
“Where are we going?” I ask, teeth chattering. I want to point out how nuts it is that a reindeer-pulled sleigh was his preferred escape vehicle over a car, but Sulo is really picking up the pace and we’re gliding along deeper into the pine forest. I look over my shoulder at the hotel and I barely make out the lights at all. I certainly don’t hear or see either of them.
I’m just heading off into the darkness with a stranger and a reindeer.
Once again I’m hit with a wave of fatigue, but this time I don’t think it’s anyone in my head. The adrenaline is starting to wear off.
“We’re going somewhere safe,” Rasmus says. “Your father’s house.”
Chapter 3
The Cottage
I wake up to the smell of fresh cedar, cardamom, and baker’s yeast. For a moment I’m back at my father’s cottage on the lake, when I used to wake up in my tiny room with the heavy wool quilts at the foot of the bed, simple watercolor paintings of flowers on the walls, and smell the tinctures he was preparing for the day, along with the pulla bread he’d make me for breakfast. It’s a nostalgic smell, one that makes me want to curl up under the covers and go back to sleep again, content.
But when my fingers pull on the covers, I realize I have no idea where I really am, and all the strange and horrific images from last night come crashing into me.
I gasp and sit straight up, nearly hitting myself on a low log beam from a slanted ceiling. I’m in an attic of sorts, weak gray light coming in through the small windows at either side of the house, ice and snow at the corners of the frames.
“Are you awake?” I hear a voice from downstairs and it takes me a moment to place it. Names flip through my head until I find one that makes sense.
Rasmus. That voice belongs to Rasmus.
But who the fuck is Rasmus and the what the hell happened to me?
I start to pull off the covers but something makes me stop and stare. There’s such a familiar feeling to them in my hands, such a sentimental weight. I stare at them in the dim light, taking in the blue and red pattern of snowflakes and squares, then look at the rest of the blankets that are all folded at the foot of the bed, and fuck…I’m not imaging things. These are the same blankets I had as a child, growing up in the house in Savonlinna, and then later at my father’s cottage. These are his blankets.
I throw them back and am relieved that I’m still wearing my jeans and sweater, then get out of bed, careful not to hit my head on the low ceiling, go over to the ladder and poke my head over the open space. The soothing smell of butter, sugar and cardamom comes floating up, along with cozying warmth.
I go down the wood ladder and find myself in a small living area with an even smaller kitchen just beyond it. Everything about this place is both familiar and strange, making me uneasy and yet comforted. The knotted walls house many rough-hewn shelves made from birch bark. On them are an assortment of books, both leather-bound and hardcovers, as well as worn booklets with tattered covers, held together with loops of golden twine. Crystals of all sizes and colors are peppered between the books alongside tiny glass jars stuffed with herbs, and wooden cups with feathers, twigs and paintbrushes sticking out. Above is an impressive reindeer-antler chandelier that dwarfs the place, and across from me is a roaring crackling fire. I spy the mantle above it with framed photos, and am about to walk over to it to get a closer look when Rasmus says, “Good morning.”
I whirl around to see him in the kitchen, which I swear was empty a moment ago. He’s pulling a tray of buns out of the oven, the warm smell of spices filling the room. I stand there and stare at him for a moment, trying to wrap my head around the weirdly domestic scene.