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“I told you that time moves differently on the other side. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s only been a year and not more. Does that affect anything with your father?” I pause, weighing my next words. “Or does it more affect your life here?”
The one you could go back to. The one I would be powerless to keep you from returning to.
She doesn’t answer me, just keeps reading something with a slowly growing look of horror on her face. Finally, she puts the phone in her coat pocket and cradles the big bag in her lap. “People think I’ve gone missing,” she whispers, and I notice her eyes growing wet. “People say I was last seen getting off the plane in Ivalo. There was a search party for me, for my father. He hasn’t been seen either.” She looks at me. “Tuoni, everyone thinks I’m dead. They think my father is dead too. How can I find him if we’re both ghosts?”
This is affecting her greatly; I can see that. I want to ask her why it matters if everyone thinks she’s dead—after all, is there not a great honor in death?—but I don’t think she’d like that question.
“As you know, your father isnotdead,” I tell her. “We would know if he had entered Tuonela again, so that means he is alive somewhere.”
“But he hasn’t come forward. He hasn’t been seen.”
“Then he must be in hiding.”
“Which makes him harder to find.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. We haven’t tried yet. Don’t let your mind get away from you before we’ve even started.”
“Ugh, my poor mother,” she says, putting her head in her hands, her long, messy hair spilling over her. “She thinks I’m dead. She thinks she lost her only child.”
“She is not your real mother, though.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she cries, her voice muffled.
I think about that for a moment. “But if there is no body to be found, then how can they say you are dead? I know enough that your body stays behind in this world while your second self, your soul, steps into my Underworld.”
“People give up hope after a year. They lose interest when they become a cold case. Well, except for the people who watch the cold case shows.”
“Perhaps you will be on a cold case show then.”
“I don’t want to be on The Cold Case Files!”
My queen is so hard to please. I thought everyone wanted to be on TV.
“Then perhaps you should send your mother a message, let her know that you’re alive and well but currently…indisposed.”
“Indisposed doing what? That I ran away to join a cult?”
She lifts her head, her hair sticking to the trails of tears on her cheeks. My heart sinks at the sight of such sorrow and torment inside her. I reach over and brush her hair out of her eyes, wishing I wasn’t wearing my gauntlets so I could feel her.
“Is joining a cult considered a good thing in this world?” I ask, keeping my voice soft.
She shakes her head, her lower lip quivering.
“Then no,” I say. “Don’t tell her that. You’ll think of something.”
I lean in and kiss her, trying to be gentle. But the feel of her lips, the rush of energy that seems to surge from her and through to me, straight to the marrow of my bones and the depths of all that is dark and unknown inside me, makes me want to take her away from this, from here. I want her beneath my body, gasping at my fingertips. I want to take away the uncertainty and pain that this world is already bringing her. I want her to see the goddess that she is.
But then, the ground starts to shake, and I think it’s more than just my heart. I pull away in time to see a train pulling into the station. It’s the only thing that could have distracted me at this moment: my first time getting on a train.
Hanna gets up and grabs her bag, but I take it from her and pick up mine, watching her for cues on how to deal with the train ride. She waits until it comes to a stop, and after people leave the train, we follow the crowd onboard.
I have to admit, the train is not what I would have thought. In the black-and-white movies I’ve watched, the train has always seemed grand and opulent inside, with wood furnishings and fine linens, and the outside was always black metal, something loud and menacing, something that would easily fit in the land of Tuonela.
However, as Hanna takes me to our narrow seats and I’m once again squished up against a window, I’m disappointed at how clean, boring, and sterile this train is. The chairs are upholstered with thin, scratchy fabric, and the walls are plastic.
“Well, what do you think?” Hanna asks as the train pulls away from the station.
“I don’t like it,” I admit. “It’s so cheap looking, and it moves silently. Where is all the noise and the shaking and the steam?”
