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The Hiisi opens its mouth and big, thick black flies come crawling out, taking flight and coming right for us.
Before I can both scream and run, Telly puts her palm out flat and the flies land in it. Then she makes a fist over them and opens her palm and tiny little glowing pink dragonflies fly off into the sky, having been transformed.
“Well?” Telly asks, impatiently.
The Hiisi snarls something else, saliva going everywhere, then eventually nods its gruesome head in the direction we were walking.
“I see,” Telly says gravely. She eyes me with trepidation. “The Hiisi says that Rasmus went that way.”
“Was he alone?” I ask.
Telly looks back to the Hiisi but it just shakes its head before turning its back to us and scampering away into the forest.
“Come on, we better hurry if we want to save your friend.”
We keep walking. Along the way there are groves of roses where metallic gold bees swarm, sweet-water marshes where silver loons dive for sparkling fish, white deer with their fawns resting in meadows of roses, and large black owls swooping above the willows, but for all the fantastical, beautiful sights, all I can think about is getting Rasmus back. I can’t rescue my father without him. I don’t know the way to Shadow’s End, I don’t know what will kill you here and what won’t. I like Telly a lot, but I don’t know how loyal she is, or if she can even leave the forest.
I’m pondering all of this in a flurry of agonizing thoughts, the grip on my sword growing tighter and tighter, when suddenly the forest begins to open up. The green fades to brown, the leaves are dying on the branches and in front of us appears a long flat desert beneath an oppressively low cloud-covered sky. All is silent except for a chilling wail that sounds from the distance. It’s both human and not, and I’m pretty sure it’s not Rasmus.
Telly and I come to a stop by a few fallen willows, their leaves dead, the water gone long ago. Beyond this point there is nothing.
“Where are we now?” I ask her.
“The Liekkiö Plains,” she says. “And as far as I will go.”
I knew this was coming. “You can’t leave the forest?”
“I can,” she says slowly. “But I don’t think it’s wise. I would be no use in this situation. You’re the one that they want, the one they’ve been waiting for.”
I blink at her. “The one that who’s been waiting for?”
She points out at the desert. “Death.”
I stare again. It’s so dry and desolate out there that I can’t imagine a single living thing ever setting foot on it, and the way that the sun glows through the mist, creating a land of orange haze, is strangely disturbing. Seems a place that death would lurk at every corner, literally and figuratively.
But then the mist starts to clear a little, as if helping with a dramatic entrance, and I can see shadowy figures emerging from the orange haze, three men on horseback and one man on foot.
The closer they get, the faster my heart races, until they come to a stop about fifty feet away. When Rasmus told me that Death rode a unicorn, for some reason I was expecting a gorgeous, serene, magical-looking creature, even though Rasmus had told me otherwise. But now that I see it in person, the sight of it makes my skin crawl. Their versions of unicorns are big, moose-sized, and like so many of the animals in this world, mostly skin and bones. Their horns look made of metal, three or four feet long, protruding from a boney skull, and spooky, watchful eyes that vary in shades of black, white, or pale blue.
The unicorn in the middle is the largest, black as a moonless night, and sitting atop him is Death. While the other two men are equally scary, they don’t hold a candle to this guy. He makes the unicorn look small beneath him, which is no easy feat, and everything he’s wearing is both luxurious and sinister, from the elaborate spikes on his armored shoulders, to his metal gloves, to his iron boots. Underneath the dark velvet hood of his cape his face is in shadows.
But despite all that he looks like, it’s what he feels like, even from way over there. I know it’s Death because I know it’s Death. I think if anyone, human or not, were to be in his presence, they would react with fear, with panic, with a deep primal urge to run far, far away. Even now, even though I knew I might have to face him, let alone see him, I’m terrified to the bone with the unwavering sensation that I’m going to die.
I don’t think many get to look Death in the face and live to talk about it.
