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He shakes his head. “No. The one at the waterfall would be easier to dig out than this one, though.”
“That could take weeks,” I point out gruffly, my impatience getting the best of me.
“But you yourself said that time behaves differently over there,” he says. “And we might have weeks. First things first, though, we’ll consult my Book of Spells and see if there’s anything there. Sometimes, you can make a portal appear through magic alone, though I’ve never tried that myself.”
“Where is your spellbook?” I ask him.
“Back at my cabin. At least now I know these two won’t be waiting there for me.”
“Do you have coffee there?”
He rolls his eyes. “Come on.”
He starts walking off across the field, and I follow. Even though I know we have time, I still want to get out of here as soon as possible. I need to get back to Hanna. She’s over there unprotected. I know her mother and Vellamo and the others will do what they can to help, but I feel no one has her best interests at heart like I do. No one cares about her like I do.
If anything should happen to her, it would be no different than having my heart and soul chopped up into pieces and scattered in a field. I would be in agony for all of eternity, with no death to provide relief.
Don’t even entertain the idea, I remind myself.Hanna will be fine. You have to believe that, or none of this is worth doing.
We walk through the trees, the journey seeming longer this time. The irony that I’m stuck here in the Upper World with my father-in-law is not lost on me.
“Say I do find a portal in the book,” Torben eventually says. “Then what?”
“Then, we go through the portal, find Hanna, and then we’ll be back in Tuonela.”
“Yes, but then what?”
“We take on Louhi and the Old Gods.”
“But how?”
“You are a man of many questions.”
“Of damn good questions,” he says, glaring at me over his shoulder. “How are you planning to take her on? How are you planning to defeat her and win back the throne?”
“Well, I suppose I’ll kill her—chop off her head and the rest of her into little bits, since I’m good at that now. You kill the queen, and the hive will die.”
“No, that’s not true,” Torben says. “If the queen dies, it’s every bee for themselves. The rest of the females will start reproducing. I’ve had hives before; it turns into chaos until you get a new queen, and not all hives will accept the new one. Either way, they lay eggs birth males and the whole colony dies, since the males don’t do anything.”
“So I was right. Kill the queen, and the hive will die.”
“Yes, eventually. Unless a new queen is introduced and they take to her.” There’s a weighty pause. “This Salainen.”
“The magic baby you created? Yes, I suppose she could become the new queen, but I’ll just kill her too.”
“But she killed you,” he reminds me. “It was Hanna who brought you back to life. What makes you think you can kill her?”
I grumble, not liking this scenario.
“And don’t say it’s because you’re the God of Death,” he quickly adds. “I’m tired of hearing it.”
“I’m tired of a lot of things. What ifyou’rethe only who can kill her?”
Torben goes silent, seeming to consider it. “I suppose that makes sense. Hopefully, it won’t be put to the test.”
Fuck. What if my father-in-law is the key to all of this? Wouldn’t that be something. Of course, I don’t tell him that. I wouldn’t want it to go to his head.
“But even if you were to take out Louhi and Salainen,” he goes on, “the hive will descend into chaos. The underlings will fight back. No Inmost Dweller wants to go back to Inmost. They’ll want to stay free, and they’ll fight you with everything they’ve got, even if the queens are gone. How are you going to deal with them? You’re outnumbered.”
