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I don’t have any makeup on, and yet I look like I do. My brown eyes are richer in tone, my lashes black and long, my lips look full and flush, stained ruby, my skin glowing (thanks to the sparkling honey powder that Raila put everywhere). My dark chocolate colored hair spills over my shoulders in shiny waves, my breasts pushed up high in the dress.
“You look like a fairy-tale princess,” Lovia says. “But like a dark one. Like from a Grimm fairy-tale. Those are more up my alley anyway.” She peers at our reflections, lifting the hair off my shoulders and pulling it back. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a very otherworldly face?”
I laugh. “Coming from you, that would mean I have a mortal face. But yes. I’m a bit odd looking.”
“Odd looking?” Lovia says in surprise as she gathers my hair on the top of my head, and motions for Raila to hand her something. “You say that in a negative way. Odd is another word for different, that’s all. You’re beautiful and you look like you belong here. Well, maybe not Tuonela. But somewhere full of sun and starlight, maybe among the Sun and Moon Goddesses.”
I appreciate Lovia’s compliment. My mother was adopted so I don’t know my family on her side, but I definitely have the high cheekbones of the Finns. Kids used to tease me and call me an “alien” growing up, because of how big and far apart my eyes are, but my face helped me be expressive during dance.
Raila hands Lovia hair pins and she starts pinning my hair up, adding in some large black feathers. I have a sneaking suspicion that those are from the swan I killed.
“There,” Lovia says, placing her hands on my shoulders. “You’re ready to go. And just in time, too.”
I look around. There are no clocks in my room, so I’ve had no idea of the time, especially when the world outside the window seems to be permanent twilight. “What time is it?” I ask. “Is time even a thing here?”
She gives me a small, patient smile. “Time is a thing. Clocks are not. We have timekeeper stones, like quartz, but there’s really no point when it doesn’t behave in a linear fashion. Sometimes time is fast, other times it’s slow. The entire world of Tuonela adjusts itself in time with the number of the dead. It’s the only way we can manage it. So you’ll notice when it gets lighter, well, that’s morning. When it gets darker, that’s evening. When the moon and stars are out, that’s night. But the Goddesses will hold back the sun and moon depending on what needs to be done. Sometimes it’s mid-day for far longer than normal.” She pats my shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. Time as you know it is only an idea. You mortals put far too much control and thought over it.”
Everything she said just blew my mind. “That’s easy for you to say,” I tell her. “Time probably has no meaning when you’re immortal.”
“It’ll mean less for you soon,” she says, pulling me to my feet, the dress weighing a ton. “You’re immortal while you’re here. Ilmarinen, my mother’s consort, is a mortal and he hasn’t aged a day since he got here.”
“I thought you weren’t able to see your mother?” I ask.
Lovia’s face falls for a moment but she buries it with a breezy smile. “I’ve seen Ilmarinen. During my job. You see a lot when you’re ferrying the dead on the River of Shadows.”
You mustn’t be late, Goddess, Raila says to Lovia.
How can you be late if there’s no time? I’m about to ask, but I think I know the answer. It all comes down to Death and you can’t keep him waiting. Even I feel a strange thread of urgency inside me, like Death is driving my internal clock, though that could be my nerves.
We head to dinner.
Chapter 14
The Dinner
Raila opens the door for us and we step out into the hall. Even though I’d apparently been conscious when I was first brought to my room, everything looks new to me. Not in a surprising way, though. The décor of the hall matches my room: decadent and gloomy, like a palace for goths.
Raila and Lovia lead me down the hall, the candles flickering on the walls, oozing black wax that drips to the floor in sculptural mounds. Each wax sculpture seems to move the more I stare at it, the shape continuously shifting, and I don’t know if it’s a trick of the eyes or that everything in this creepy world is sentient.
The hall twists around and comes to an open area with a grand staircase that curves from level to level like a giant granite snake. I peer over the edge, counting two levels below us and two above us. A gargantuan chandelier of bones hangs just below us, lighting up the lower levels, making the shadows on the walls come alive with the flickering candlelight. I see both human and animal skulls in the macabre structure. Now that he definitely didn’t get at Ikea.
