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He shakes his head and speaks in a low voice. “Perhaps we’re not too far from Shadow’s End, near the Iron Mountains. We’ll have to get to a more open vantage point for a better look. The last thing I want is for us to be ambushed by Louhi when we least suspect it.”
He turns around and sighs.
I follow his gaze. The tunnel we just stepped out of is now a solid rock face, like there was never anything there at all. I kick at the rock with my boot for good measure, but it doesn’t budge.
“Looks like we’re stuck here no matter what,” I say.
“It won’t take long for me to find some allies,” he assures me, pushing his mask up on his head. “There are many spies for the Forest Gods. The next bird I see, I’ll be able to pass a message off to Tapio and tell him what’s happened. Hopefully, I’ll get my bearings soon and figure out where we are and where we need to go next.”
I nod and follow him as he starts trudging through the snow. We walk a while through the strands of trees, but we don’t come across any animals at all, no tracks in the snow either. It’s just us in the trees. Normally, I feel like there’s a million eyes watching me here, but that’s not the case now. I feel like we truly might be alone, and there’s a strange comfort in that.
Finally, we come to a bit of a clearing, where a rock juts out over a gentle drop. Death climbs up on the rock and then pulls me up alongside him.
Below us is a valley of pine trees, a glimpse of a rushing river before it rises into a hill on the other side. Not quite the Iron Mountains, though. More like iron hills.
“Smoke,” he says, and I look to see a puff of smoke coming up from the tree line below. “Someone has lit a fire.”
I squint at where it’s coming from. A metal pipe. From a roof. “Is that a…house? Whose house is that?” I ask him. “It looks so normal.”
I hear him audibly swallow. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “This doesn’t make sense. None of this is familiar.”
And that’s when I notice the thin gray line between the river and the rising hill on the other side. At first, I thought it was a crack in the rocky face of the hill, a place where snow hasn’t gathered.
But then, I realize what I’m actually looking at.
A road.
And not just any road.
A paved road with a blue SUV driving down the middle of it, exhaust rising from it and hanging in the air.
Oh. My. God.
“Tuoni,” I say slowly, watching as the car drives off into the distance. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
Chapter 8
Death
The Volvo
“Kansas?” I repeat absently, staring down at a kingdom that’s not mine. It sure looks the same in some ways: the tall pine trees, the thick snow. But the air has a different smell, not as pure, and the cold feels, well, cold. Even the faint sounds of birds and animals are muffled, as if they are hiding themselves from us, and no animal of the dead has ever hidden themselves from their king.
“I’d joke about you not getting a Wizard of Oz reference,” Hanna says breathlessly, her voice filled with awe, “but I don’t think we’d find it funny.”
I make a noise of agreement because for once, she’s right. Not about theWizard of Oz—I’ve seen that film—but because there’s nothing funny about any of this, the fact that I am a stranger in a strange land, that I am watching a blue automobile drive along a road before disappearing around the corner of a hill.
I am in the Upper World.
Weare in the Upper World.
A place I’ve always secretly yearned to go, a place that has fascinated me since I was a young lad. A place where I’ve sentmy servants in my stead, and I’ve sat back in jealously as they recounted their tales of where they’d been and what they saw. A place I could only visit through the grainy screens of the movies I’ve played or in the fresh cups of roasted coffee.
I should be thrilled that I am finally here.
But instead, all I feel is fear.
Because I am no king here.
