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Oh, fuck no.
“Papa, who’s there? What’s happening?” I glance back at Tuoni, but his attention seems elsewhere.
Silence follows. My heart thuds loudly in my head. Then, my father coughs. “I don’t know, I thought I saw…” He trails off. “Hello?” he calls out again. “Who is there, please? Oh God, Hanna, I’m coming back up, I?—”
Everything goes silent.
I go closer to the fissure, trying to see inside. “Papa, what?—?”
“Hanna, duck!” Tuoni yells, and I look up just in time to see a man launching himself off the rocks above me, about to land on my head.
I dive to the ground just as Tuoni leaps forward and the tackles the man to the snow.
At the same time, I hear my father yell, “Hanna! Hanna, they’re here! Run! I’m?—”
My father breaks off into a scream that sounds like it’s swallowed by the cave.
“Papa!” I scream, trying to get to my feet again.
I don’t know what to do. I watch as Tuoni fights this man bundled in reindeer skins, and I figure it’s no contest, except that the man has a knife that seems to operate without being held.
As if by magic.
And I realize who this man with the long grey beard is.
Whotheyare.
Eero.
I’m betting inside that cave, it’s Noora who has my father.
Eero throws his knife around, nearly cutting into Tuoni several times, and I know I have to figure out who to help. Tuoni is the God of Death and can handle himself, but after what Salainen did to him, I know he’s not invincible. My father has handled Noora before, but in a cave like this? Was it luck the first time?
But before I have a chance to squeeze between the rocks and go after my father, I watch as Eero slips up and gets too close, and Tuoni grabs the old Shaman by the throat. He lifts Eero in the air, much like I’ve seen him do before, but this time, he spares the man no mercy.
I watch as Tuoni snaps Eero’s neck right in half with a sickening crack. Eero’s head hangs off his body like a flower from a broken dandelion stem.
I don’t have time to react.
I swallow the scream building inside me and manage to yell at Tuoni. “Throw me his knife!”
But Tuoni throws Eero several feet away instead, as if he were a shot-putter, and then picks up the knife and runs over to me, motioning for me to get out of the way. I do, my body moving automatically while my brain tries to deal with what it just saw—an actual human being killed in front of me—and what needs to be done.
Tuoni brushes past me and manages to squeeze through the cracks into the cavern. From the darkness, I hear my father yelling, Tuoni’s grunts, and a woman’s scream, all of them echoing into one awful crescendo.
“Do you need help?” I yell, wishing there was something I could do. I look around for a weapon of some sort. Damn it, we should have held on to one of the swords!
I go to the duffel bags and wonder if Tuoni’s mask, which he still has with him, can be weaponized somehow.
But out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving.
I suck in my breath and look over at the field where Tuoni threw Eero, wondering if the northern lights are manipulating me into seeing things, but they aren’t.
Eero’s body is moving.
His leg is twitching.
Is it possible for the body to be in death’s throes right after having its neck snapped in half?
