Page 66 of The Kingdom of Eternal Ice
He grimaces. Despite all his bravado and pretending he doesn’t care for her, he hates it when someone hits on Kilah. “Let’s continue with our research,” he tries to shift the topic.
A smile curls my lips, and I’m inclined to tease him more, but research is more important, especially now that Flinn has finally stopped playing around and wants to help. We have a whole stack of books to go through. Gillean and Aylin told us that the woman in white is probably a deity, so we mostly go through books about mythology.
“How come she isn’t mentioned anywhere?” Flinn asks.
“I don’t know… maybe the woman in white isn’t her true name. I mean-” I frown “the two sides of a coin is a pseudonym, too.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Say, where would you read up on the Moon Goddess?”
Flinn looks at me. “Mythology books, but also history books. It’s sometimes hard to tell these two apart, but some things, like the mate bond or the wolf spirits she blesses us with, are facts; many other things we can only guess.”
I rummage through the shelves of the library, keeping Flinn’s words in mind, until I find a children’s book with the goddess on it. There are pages upon pages about the Moon Goddess, but also some about other deities that are said to be connected to her, and…
I frown. “The veiled woman,” I mutter.
“What did you say?” Flinn looks up.
“The veiled woman.”
“The Cailleach,” Flinn explains. “She is a major deity, said to have created our lands, and she is said to have blessed us with this landscape of snow and ice.”
“Could the woman in white be related to her?”
Flinn shrugs. “I don’t know, but I think you have a good approach now. Where else could we look aside from mystery and myth books? Where else are mythological creatures mentioned?”
I let my eyes glide over the shelves until one row of books catches my attention. “Eibhlin said she likes horror stories,” I say. “Aren’t at least some of them based on myths?”
“They are.” Flinn gets up and hurries to my side. “Let’s grab a few and see what we’ll find.”
The hours fly by while we skim through one horror book after another. I’m almost losing hope of ever finding anything about that darn woman in white, even worse, because I haven’t met Favian in my dreams recently. But then I grab a book with an older leather cover. Opening it, I immediately see an image of a white-haired woman, dressed in a flowy white dress and a veil covering her head. She looks like the veiled woman, the major deity Flinn talked about. I assume maybe over the centuries, her appearance made its way to myths, because this here… is clearly the woman in white.
“Flinn,” I say breathlessly. “I found something.”
“No way!” Flinn blurts out. “What does it say?”
My heart thrums like mad against my chest while I read through the text. “The woman in white is said to be a ghost. She can’t leave this world because she is bound to it by sorrow.” I look up at him. “That’s not much, but I have an idea. There is someone who knows a lot about horror stories.”
Flinn raises his brows. “Eibhlin,” he concludes, his eyes glossing over before I can even ask him to mind link someone to find her.
It doesn’t even take Eibhlin ten minutes to come running into the library. “One of the guards told me to come. Something about horror books. I can’t believe it,” she squeals. She is carrying a new doll in her arms with creepy black eyes. “Oh, that’s Stella. I collect dolls, you know?”
I didn’t know, and I decide not to ask more about the doll and instead, come right to the point. “Eibhlin, we need your knowledge.”
“Anytime.” She eyes us curiously. “How can I help?”
“What do you know about a figure called the woman in white or the veiled woman?”
Eibhlin takes a deep breath before sitting down. “The veiled woman! She is so popular,” she exclaims.
“She is?” Flinn blinks.
“Yes, her stories are tragic every time. It’s mostly the loss of her lover or his betrayal that binds her to our world or a cruel death, and then she stays here and haunts the living.”
“Is she evil?” I want to know.
“In some stories, she is. Then, she is driven by revenge. In some, she is just desperate.”
