Page 65 of North Is the Night
I wait with bated breath, glancing between the witches. Vammatar still holds my arm. “Come,” she mutters at me, giving my arm another tug.
“Return to me when my sister is finished with you,” Loviatar calls. “You still have much work to do.”
Vammatar drags me from the weaving room, pulling me through the busy kitchens full of laboring dead. We weave between the back rooms before we enter the grand receiving hall through a side door.
I look at it with new eyes, remembering what Loviatar said about the walls reflecting Tuonetar’s inner nature. The room is dark, cold, and uninviting. Only one antler chandelier is lit, barely casting any light, let alone warmth. The walls of twisted skulls are lost to the deep shadow.
“Aina?”
Helmi and Riina stand in the middle of the room beneath the chandelier. Vammatar flings me forward, all but knocking me into Helmi, who embraces me with both arms. She’s trembling, little cuts marring her cheeks and hands. Her dress is muddy at the knees, dusted with dirt and pine needles as if she was rolling around on the ground.
“Oh, I’m so happy to see you alive,” she whispers, squeezing my hand.
“And I you,” I reply.
“I had the strangest dream,” she goes on. “Aina, I don’t know what’s happening. I woke alone in the woods. Where are the others? Inari and Satu?”
Riina and I exchange a glance. “Inari is dead,” she replies for me.
Helmi gasps. “What? How?”
“She was hunted,” Riina replies.
The doors at the far end of the hall open, and a pair of dead guards drag a whimpering Satu forward. She’s shoved towards us, and the guards make their retreat. “Oh, thank the gods,” she says to Helmi. “We were worried you’d be a deer forever.”
Helmi’s eyes go wide. “That was real?”
Riina peers around the room. “Where are Salla and Lilja?”
Another door by the dais slams open, and the Witch Queen sweeps in, golden robes billowing. This time she wears a crown of antlers on her head, their jagged tips casting long shadows. I take in her hideousness, noting the way her face rots off her skull. Her eyes are bloodshot, the right one somewhat foggy. There’s no muscle on her bones. Her fingers are like that of a corpse, gnarled and stiff.
Rotten fruit,Loviatar called her.
Vanity explains her beautiful clothes. She can’t wrap her body in magic, but she can hide it beneath regal gowns that twinkle like starlight. I now think her beautiful silver tresses must be a wig. If this is her only curse, it’s not nearly enough. She has brought so much strife to the world. I want her to rot to dust, and I want it to take a thousand years.
The other girls bunch around me under the circle of light, Helmi and Satu each taking one of my hands. Tuonetar’s aura is so ominous that it takes me a moment to realize she’s dragging something on the ground behind her.
I go still. “Oh—Ilmatar protect them,” I say, breathless with horror. For it’s not something... it’s someone. Two someones. The Witch Queen drags a squirming Lilja and Salla by their long braids, one in each hand.
“No,” Riina cries.
Satu and I work quickly to restrain her.
Tuonetar drags the girls right up to the edge of the ring of light, her bony chest heaving as she drops their braids and steps back. Why are they soaking wet?
“Oh gods, no,” Riina whispers, all the fight leaving her.
I piece it together too. Fools! What were they thinking?
Salla recovers first, scrambling forward on hands and knees like a frightened dog, as if she means to cower behind us.
“They cannot save you now, measly worm,” the Witch Queen shrieks. “Back. All of you, getback!” She brandishes her wand at us. We have no choice but to step away, leaving Lilja and Salla exposed on the floor. Vammatar is still in the room, standing by the dais with her arms crossed. I can see the faint red lines on her cheek where Loviatar struck her.
“Howdareyou try to leave my realm,” the Witch Queen bellows, drawing my attention and confirming what I already knew. The girls are wet from the river. They tried to cross. They tried to flee Tuonela. Magic magnifies the witch’s voice tenfold. She shouts loudly enough to shake the dust from the rafters. “No one leaves Tuonela.No one!” Her wand transforms into a whip. It falls with a heavy hand, and the poor girls cower as each strike slices their tender flesh.
I can’t bear it; I have to look away. Satu’s face is already buried in my shoulder. Next to me, Helmi silently weeps.
“Mother,enough.”
