Now I’m surprised. “He’s been a shaman my whole life!?” I exclaim.
Rasmus nods firmly. “A very powerful one. I was lucky he agreed to take me on. I’ve been training with him since I was ten.”
“And how old are you?”
“Thirty,” he says. “Don’t let my boyish good looks deceive you.”
Now I understand Rasmus’ involvement. He’s been with my father for twenty years, a couple of years before my mother moved me to California.
“I must have seen you when I was younger,” I tell him, trying to think of any older boys who might have been hanging around our cottage.
He shakes his head. “Your father was very discreet. He did everything he could to keep it a secret.”
“So my mom never knew?”
Rasmus gives another tight smile. Oh, of course she knew. That’s why she left him. That’s why she did all she could to stop me from having contact with him, even though it didn’t work in the end.
“Look, we will have plenty of time to talk about this,” Rasmus says. “But I believe time is of the essence. Eero and Noora will be here soon.”
Their names bring me back to the present. “So if my father’s body was never found, why did they tell me he died of exposure after getting lost in the woods? Why not tell me he had cancer? Why put on an elaborate fake funeral?”
And why the hell did they seem to want to kill me last night?
“Because they don’t want you to discover where he really went.”
I blink, growing more confused by the second. “Well? Where did he really go?”
“Tuonela,” he says after a beat, a darkness coming over his eyes.
“And where is that?”
“It’s the Land of the Dead.”
Another slow blink from me. I almost laugh. “I hate to tell you this, but that tea isn’t working. It almost sounded like you said the Land of the Dead.”
Rasmus’ eyes remain stone-cold serious. “Tuonela is the place where the dead go after they die. It’s accessible only through a few shamanic portals within the Arctic Circle, and one of those happens to be close to here. Your father went there, hoping to either barter with Death in order to have more life, or to break into the Library of the Veils at Shadow’s End and find a specific spell.”
I can only stare. Learning that my father was a powerful secret shaman his whole life is one thing, but this, whatever the hell this is, is on a whole other level entirely.
I clear my throat and start picking at the pulla on the coffee table. “Let’s just pretend for a second that everything you said has made perfect sense, and that you didn’t just talk about something tantamount to Frodo strolling into Mordor.”
“Tolkien was very inspired by Finnish folklore,” he points out.
“Yes, I know,” I say impatiently. “So again, let’s say this is all real. That my father traveled to another realm to go barter with…Death? Like, the Grim Reaper?”
He nods.
“And how exactly does one barter with Death? Does my father have something he could trade him?”
“Trades happen all the time between the mortals and the Gods.”
Wow. I didn’t think he’d have an answer to that. Especially not that answer.
“Fine,” I say slowly. “So he’s gone there to do that, go to a library, get a spell to live longer. What the hell does any of that have to do with Eero and Noora?”
“They’re afraid you’ll go into Tuonela in search of your father. That you’ll gain power and wisdom yourself, and that you’ll bring him back, possibly with immortality.”
“And you?”
“And I’m hoping that’s exactly what you will do.”
I take a bite of the pulla and try to think, the delicious taste distracting me for a moment. Rasmus must be in shock. I do believe my father was a shaman and that the two were very close, that perhaps Rasmus looked to him as a father figure. If that’s the case, that could explain why he’s not handling his death very well. And I don’t think I am either, considering I’m sitting here in this remote cabin and entertaining all this nonsense with such calmness.
“You realize you sound crazy,” I tell him after a moment.
“I know,” he says softly. “And I know that there’s nothing I can really do to make you believe me…unless you see it for yourself.”
I swallow down the pulla and get to my feet, walking over to the window which nearly vibrates with the sub-zero temperatures. Outside is a fresh blanket of snow covering the boughs of the pine tree. In the distance is a small shelter with two reindeer outside munching on hay that’s been scattered about. One of them must have been our transportation last night.
“Those your reindeer?” I ask without turning around.
“Your father’s,” he says.
Another secret my father kept from me. I would have loved to know he had reindeer.
I absently run my fingers over the frozen glass. “So what happened to Eero and Noora last night? How did you stop them? Why didn’t they come after us?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says.
He’s right about that.
“What were they planning on doing to me?” I ask.
“They were going to kill you. Probably sacrifice you.”
My heart thumps in my chest. I slowly turn around to look at him. He’s bringing a big pot out of the fridge, seeming unbothered by what he just said.
“I’m sorry…they were going to sacrifice me? Why?” I mean, Jesus.
“Shaman won’t take lives for no reason at all. They’d make use out of your death. Even the bad shamans operate around this code, and they are bad shamans. Please don’t think we’re all like this. Almost all of us operate on peaceful magic and coexisting in nature.”
I don’t fucking believe this. “I need to call the cops,” I say, bringing my phone out of my pocket. The battery is running low, and like before, there’s no reception. I quickly scroll through to the wi-fi, but nothing is showing up. I know I should have a million notifications from Jenny, Michelle, from the store’s Instagram account, from work itself even though they promised I was on bereavement leave. But nothing has come through.
“And say what to them exactly?”
I growl in frustration and shove the phone back in my jeans before throwing my arms out. “I don’t fucking know! Two crazy shaman people faked my father’s death and then tried to attack me and make me into a human sacrifice for who knows what. I can’t stay here.” I march on over to him. “You have to bring me to town.”
He lights the stove with a long match before placing the pot over it and gives me a curious look. “Is that really what you want?”
I look at him like he has two heads. “What do you think?”
He shrugs. “I would have thought you’d do anything to save your father.”
Well that felt like a slap to the face. “No. That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. You know I would do anything for him. But not…nothing you told me is real.”
“But if you could pretend it was,” he says, “like how you were humoring me earlier. Pretend it was. Would you still do anything for Torben? Would you go to the Realm of the Dead, as Eero and Noora fear you will?”