Page 177 of North Is the Night
Siiri’s face is a riot of expressions as she feels it all, lost in a sea of memories. “Everything,” she whispers after a moment. “Everything.”
“Oh, Siiri.” I run my hand down her arm, avoiding the deep cut that still bleeds.
Siiri drops to her knees at the shaman’s side, letting her heavy sword fall away. She lifts his tattooed hands and folds them over his chest. Her fingers brush over one of the runes on his hand, and she sobs.
I place a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”
She touches the mark again. “It’s me. I’m the girl who rides the bear north in search of a lost shaman.”
“We should close his eyes.”
Leaning over his body, Siiri closes the shaman’s lifeless blue eyes. “I killed him,” she whispers. “I killed Väinämöinen.”
“Why did you do it?”
“To take his magic. To keep it safe from Lumifrom anyone who sought to break Tuonetar’s curse. He wanted me to have it. He was planning it all along. Crazy old man,” she mutters. “Tuonela was a test. If I returned with you, he was going to give it to me.”
“But why would he want so badly to die? He was immortal.”
Siiri glances over her shoulder at me, giving me a soft smile. “The goddess of righteous death should understand his reasoning better than anyone. Tuonetar took away his choice to die. He wanted to choose who would kill him and claim his magic. He chose me. I am Väinämöinen now.”
I hug myself tight inside his large coat. “What are we going to do?”
Siiri looks around the clearing, dotted with the corpses of Lumi’s wolves and Väinämöinen’s dogs. The hut and the barn are little more than embers at this point. The snow runs red with spilled blood. “First, I’ll build a pyre for Väinämöinen,” she replies. “We’ll return him to his mother in the sky.”
“And then?”
Slowly, she gets to her feet, wincing with pain and fatigue. Reaching out, she cups my cheek and smiles. “And then we return south, my queen.” I roll my eyes at her, and she grins. “You are a queen, are you not?”
I raise a hand to touch the crown still balanced on my head. “Can I call myself the queen of a realm I no longer inhabit?”
She grows thoughtful, her eyes flickering with the light of the shaman’s magic. “Perhapsthisrealm could use a queen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I certainly can’t do it,” she says with a shrug. “I’ll be far too busy returning the wisdom of the ages to our people. But it will be no easy task, uniting the Finns and pushing back the Swedish invaders. A queen might be useful for the people to rally behind.”
“I’ve had enough of crowns at the moment.”
“We don’t have to decide anything right now. Tonight, we return the shaman to his mother. Tomorrow, we’ll make our plans.”
I nod.
“All that matters in the end is that we’re together, yes? Come kings and queens, shamans and gods, witches and wolves, Siiri and Aina will always find their way back to each other.”
I smile, nodding again. “Yes. Always.”
We work together to prepare a pyre for Väinämöinen. I’m tired and cold, heartsick and hungry, but still, I don’t stop. With her axe, Siiri fells a tree and cuts off the branches. We put Lumi’s body beneath the pyre, along with her magical staff. Siiri slips a pair of silver bracelets off the witch’s wrists and puts them on her own wrists.
“What are you doing?”
“These were my mummi’s,” she replies, showing them to me. I recognize the woven-braid pattern. “Lumi stole them. I intend to see them safely returned.”
The last thing Siiri does is place the shaman’s drum atop his chest and put his mallet in his cold hand. She’d explained that the drum would never work properly for another shaman. It deserved to return with him to the All-Mother.
Siiri lights the pyre and steps back, returning to my side. Taking my hand, she begins to hum. The song is low and deep in her chest. It has no words, but she pours all she’s feeling into each sound—her pain, her loss, her love for the man she burns, her tender hope for a brighter future. I wait at her side as Siiri sings out her grief, a last song for Väinämöinen, greatest hero of the ages.
We stand in the clearing until his body is gone and all that remains of the pyre are embers. Siiri drops my hand and turns away, but motion in the darkness has me grabbing her arm. “Siirilook.”
