Page 31 of North Is the Night
I cast a furtive glance down the table. I can’t know if the other girls had Jaako visiting them and bringing them food too.
The queen pulls a disappointed face, tsking. “You don’t appreciate the feast I had prepared for you. This surprises me. Are you not all tired of barley bread?”
I go still, as do several of the other girls down the table. Yes, not all is as it seems. This is still a prison, and we are still trapped.
Don’t eat the food, comes Siiri’s voice in my mind.Starve first.
I don’t need her warning. I won’t touch a bite of this feast.
The queen slaps down her knife with a haughty sniff. “Well, I suppose I’ll have the servants clear all this away, and my guards will escort you back to your rooms. We’ll see how you feel about accepting my hospitality in a few days—”
“No,” cries Lilja, clearly in agony over being so close to such a feast after days of spoiled bread.
“We’ll eat it,” freckle-faced Salla adds. “Please, don’t send us back to our rooms.” Hers is a different fear then. I sense that, like me, she’s afraid to be alone.
Riina is the first to reach for a few select morsels, piling them on her golden plate. The other girls follow her lead. Riina and Salla each take a bite of fish. Their eyes close, savoring the delight of tasting something other than barley bread.
I reach tentatively forward and pluck the leg from a chicken, bringing it to my lips. But I watch first, waiting for Riina and Salla to take their second bite. As soon as they do, they sputter and gag. Up and down our side of the table, the girls squeal and choke. I shriek as the chicken leg in my hand begins to squirm. I drop it, watching as it transforms into a slimy, green frog, which hops across the table, scattering a plate of maggots in its mad dash to escape.
Then the whole illusion shatters.
I glance wildly around the hall, eyes blinking in the sudden darkness as the light from the antler chandeliers disappears, taking all their warmth too. Now the cold room is lit by only a few flickering lampstands. All else is lost to darkness and shadows. No more are the walls adorned with a hunter’s armory. Now they’re thick with skulls, human and animal alike. Some are twisted into screams of terror, their jaws unhinged, locked forever in the moment of their terrible deaths. The crowd of revelers is gone, leaving us alone with the queen and her daughters.
I spin back around, swallowing a groan of horror to see that our “feast” is creeping and crawling away. Frogs hop and spiders skitter over the plates. The platter I thought was a roasted leg of mutton is now the rotting head of a lamb, tongue lolling, eyes clouded and unblinking. By my left hand, maggots swarm over the carcass of a chicken. Next to me, Helmi makes a sound somewhere between a retch and a sob.
Across from us, the queen cackles, rising to her feet, her body framed by a massive throne of skulls. She holds aloft a slender willow wand in her hand. She gives it a flick, and I nearly topple off my bench in panic. At first, I don’t know what I’m seeing. Her hair transforms to beautiful grey locks that hang in cords around her face. And her dress of spun gold changes to robes of silver, pure and bright as woven starlight... but the rest of her beauty melts away. Where there was youth and warmth, there is now only withering decay. The face she reveals to us is that of a haggard old woman with blackened teeth. Her skin is thin and lined and grey, sagging around her eyes to show the sunken shape of her skull. Her eyes are like two glowing embers. The hand holding her wand is now little more than skin and bone.
She cackles again, and the sound rattles in my rib cage. “What’s wrong, my children? Is the feast not to your liking?” Her bony hand slaps the table with mirth as her daughters share in her laughter, cruel twisting sounds that steal my breath.
My gaze sweeps the table, stopping at the creature sitting across from me. What moments before was a sullen young woman is now a monster. She has a painted face, white around her coal-black eyes, while her neck is smeared with dried blood. Her dark hair is matted with debris and hangs lankly around her face like her tattered, stinking robes hang off her body. Black horns curl away from her skull. She looks at me with those lifeless eyes, her mouth tipping into a broken smile.
“You,” I cry, the word strangled by fear.
She lifts her jeweled goblet with her rune-marked hand in mocking salute. This time I really do fall off the bench. I land on the dais and scramble backwards, unable to look away from this terrifying creature. Instinctively, I slap my left hand over the bruises on my forearm. As if dragged underwater, I’m pulled into a sea of my own memories, Siiri’s voice filling my mind...
“Run! Aina, run!” Siiri screams.
I’m panting, lungs seizing, legs aching. “You’re faster than me, Siiri. Go!”
“The wolf is that way—”
It’s the wolf from my dreams, with his bloodred glowing eyes and swishing, serpent-like tail. All I taste is panic. Dread. Fear.
Death. The creature is death, and the wolf is her minion.
“Stay behind me,” Siiri commands, her strong hand on my arm, pulling me back.
The monster approaches us on silent feet.
“Aina, run!”
Too late. My heart constricts in my chest as I’m struck breathless. I can save Siiri. I can let it take me. I see the hurt in Siiri’s eyes when she knows my decision is made. The creature grabs my arm, her touch searing. Her stench envelops me. I’m choking, coughing, gasping for air. She reeks like a thousand rotting corpses. I feel nothing but loss as the darkness closes in, and I watch Siiri’s face as I lose her. Forever.
Darkness takes me to the deepest depths.
I open my eyes and stare down the creature still seated across the table. All at once, the pieces of this nightmare fit together in my mind—the creature and her wolf hunting us in the woods, six young women gone missing, my magic room, this strange world of endless night, a cackling witch with monstrous daughters who reek of death. I scramble to my feet and point with a shaking finger. “Tuonetar,” I cry out, tears thick in my throat.
The witch turns, manic eyes locked on me. I’m trapped in the underworld, standing before Tuonetar, the goddess of violent death.
