I go down the wood ladder and find myself in a small living area with an even smaller kitchen just beyond it. Everything about this place is both familiar and strange, making me uneasy and yet comforted. The knotted walls house many rough-hewn shelves made from birch bark. On them are an assortment of books, both leather-bound and hardcovers, as well as worn booklets with tattered covers, held together with loops of golden twine. Crystals of all sizes and colors are peppered between the books alongside tiny glass jars stuffed with herbs, and wooden cups with feathers, twigs and paintbrushes sticking out. Above is an impressive reindeer-antler chandelier that dwarfs the place, and across from me is a roaring crackling fire. I spy the mantle above it with framed photos, and am about to walk over to it to get a closer look when Rasmus says, “Good morning.”
I whirl around to see him in the kitchen, which I swear was empty a moment ago. He’s pulling a tray of buns out of the oven, the warm smell of spices filling the room. I stand there and stare at him for a moment, trying to wrap my head around the weirdly domestic scene.
“Where am I?” I ask.
He nods at the mantle. “As I said last night…”
I turn and go over to the pictures. There, in tarnished gold and silver frames, are pictures of my father. One of them he’s with Rasmus beneath the northern lights with a bottle of vodka in hand, in another he’s standing in front of the hotel, looking proud. But all the rest of the photos are of me. Some are of the two of us, like the self-timer he took of us when he was dressed as Santa Claus, but the rest are just of me. There’s me at a dance recital when I was eight, there’s me in Swan Lake when I was sixteen—the last recital I would do—an elaborate headdress of swan feathers on my head. There’s me at Venice Beach with Jenny, another one of me joking around at work. I have no idea where he got all these, then I realize they’re all on paper. He must have printed them out from my Instagram account.
“Papa,” I whisper, a lump forming in my throat. I pick up the photo of the two of us on the dock. “You did all this?”
“I told you he talked about you all the time,” Rasmus says from behind me. “I know you don’t know me from Adam, but that’s why it feels like I know you. Here.”
I twist around and he’s handing me a ceramic plate with a chip out of it, a warm bun on top. “You need to eat. It’s pulla. I’m sure you’ve had it before,” he says before he walks back to the kitchen. “Your father’s recipe, by the way.”
I eye the bun stuffed with cinnamon and cardamom, sprinkled with big shiny hunks of pearl sugar. My stomach growls ravenously. There’s a slight chance that Rasmus is trying to poison me, but if he wanted to kill me he could have just left me behind with Noora and Eero.
At the thought of them I shudder. It’s enough to squash my appetite. I take the plate over to the couch and sit down, watching as Rasmus tidies the kitchen.
“So,” I begin, trying to form my thoughts and keep the panic at bay. “I hate to be blunt, but now that I’m awake and apparently in one piece, you need to tell me just what the fuck is going on here. Because I can’t tell if last night was a jet-lag infused nightmare or not, but either way you have a lot of explaining to do.”
Rasmus sighs and then comes over to me, holding two mugs of something hot and places them on the tree-trunk coffee table in front of me.
“What’s that?” I ask, nodding at the mug.
He raises a brow. “I’m not poisoning you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He sits down on a leather armchair. “It’s pine needle tea.”
I peer down in the mug to see a few pine needles floating as well as a couple of tiny flower buds. They’re dusky pink in color, yet when I move the mug and the water jostles, the flowers look gold, like they’ve been painted with a metallic sheen.
“And the flowers?”
He takes a sip of his tea and then smiles. “Frost flowers.”
“What are frost flowers?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
I stare at him for a moment. “Can you fucking blame me?”
“You swear a lot too. Your father didn’t mention that.”
I ignore that. “Tell me where he is. Then tell me why we’re in his house. Tell me how you’re his apprentice. Then tell me what the fuck Eero and Noora wanted. In that order.”
He lets out another low sigh, tapping his fingers on the leather armrests. “I’ll tell you everything. And it will be the truth. But I need you to drink your tea first.”