Page 103 of North Is the Night
I search his face. “How long did you live without yours?”
“Too long.”
“But Tuonetar’s curse tied you to life... you couldn’t die.”
He nods again.
I give his hand a squeeze. “And now?”
“Now I’m whole,” he replies. “As whole as I’ll ever be. But Siiri, death has taken root in me. The withering of my other souls has eaten at me like a cancer. My luonto is weak, my henki even weaker. I cannot risk separating from my itse again, do you understand? Whether I want to or not, Icannotgo with you to Tuonela. I cannot survive another rending.”
“I understand,” I say. “So, it is my itse we will send to retrieve Aina?”
“Yes.”
I brush my thumb over the marks on the back of his hand. “What do the tattoos mean? Kalma has them too. And the goddess in the woods, the one who gave me supplies and told me to follow the bear.”
He glances at his hands, flexing his fingers. “They’re meant to be a safeguard against losing your itse. You mark your hands with the same patterns that are on your drum. They are a tether as you wander between the realms, guiding the pieces of your soul back to where your body waits.”
I look down at our hands. Mine are pale and unblemished. “So, if I am to cross over into Tuonela, I must anchor the pieces of my soul?” My heart sinks a little in my chest. “I must wear the marks of Kalma?”
“Do not think of them as Kalma’s marks,” he says gently. “Think of them as the marks of a shaman. That’s all the tattoos are meant to indicate: a shaman or deity capable of soul-rending and crossing the realms. Some gods don’t even bother with such tethering. They believe their souls are powerful enough not to get lost.”
I gasp, squeezing his hand. “That’s why I couldn’t kill her.”
“What?”
“I stabbed Kalma in the heart, and it did nothing. In her itse form, I may as well have been stabbing at the rain to kill a storm.”
He nods. “Yes, you cannot kill someone in their itse form. But you can untether their itse. An untethered itse may struggle to return to its body, which can lead to the long dying.”
“How do you untether it?”
He frowns. “You’re clever, Siiri. Be clever.”
I furrow my brow as I piece it together. “Oh gods...” I whisper, meeting his gaze. “Sever the itse’s hands. Break the bond between the shaman and their drum.”
He gives me a solemn nod. “So, do you understand the risk? When you let your itse roam free, you must do all you can to protect your hands. If you become untethered, it’s possible you may never return to your body again. And you mustn’t separate the pieces of your soul for long. A soul too long out of its body will lose itself.”
“Lumi was using your itse to find your body, wasn’t she? She wanted to make you whole again.” I sit back on my heels, cursing under my breath. “She was never going to kill him so long as your itse was trapped inside. She wants you whole so she can kill you herself and take your magic.”
“Now you understand.”
“I’m sorry I helped her. I gave her a path to follow that led her straight to you. This is my fault—”
“No,” he says, voice firm. “Lumi has been on this path for too long to stray from it now. If she hadn’t used you, she would have found another way.”
“Then she has to die,” I say grimly. “I’ll not let her harm you, Väinämöinen. And I’ll certainly not let her take your magic.”
He smiles, his mustache twitching.
I raise a brow at him. “What? Why do you smile?”
“I am once again struck by the curiosity of life. The threads of fate weave an interesting tapestry.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought my story was coming to an end,” he replies. “But then a fierce girl leaned over the edge of a pit, calling down to me.”
