Page 143 of North Is the Night
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. Väinämöinen 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 itsechoseto 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. “Väinämöinen... 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—”
“Justlisten.” 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. Väinämöinen—”
“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?”
