“They were going to kill you. Probably sacrifice you.”
My heart thumps in my chest. I slowly turn around to look at him. He’s bringing a big pot out of the fridge, seeming unbothered by what he just said.
“I’m sorry…they were going to sacrifice me? Why?” I mean, Jesus.
“Shaman won’t take lives for no reason at all. They’d make use out of your death. Even the bad shamans operate around this code, and they are bad shamans. Please don’t think we’re all like this. Almost all of us operate on peaceful magic and coexisting in nature.”
I don’t fucking believe this. “I need to call the cops,” I say, bringing my phone out of my pocket. The battery is running low, and like before, there’s no reception. I quickly scroll through to the wi-fi, but nothing is showing up. I know I should have a million notifications from Jenny, Michelle, from the store’s Instagram account, from work itself even though they promised I was on bereavement leave. But nothing has come through.
“And say what to them exactly?”
I growl in frustration and shove the phone back in my jeans before throwing my arms out. “I don’t fucking know! Two crazy shaman people faked my father’s death and then tried to attack me and make me into a human sacrifice for who knows what. I can’t stay here.” I march on over to him. “You have to bring me to town.”
He lights the stove with a long match before placing the pot over it and gives me a curious look. “Is that really what you want?”
I look at him like he has two heads. “What do you think?”
He shrugs. “I would have thought you’d do anything to save your father.”
Well that felt like a slap to the face. “No. That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. You know I would do anything for him. But not…nothing you told me is real.”
“But if you could pretend it was,” he says, “like how you were humoring me earlier. Pretend it was. Would you still do anything for Torben? Would you go to the Realm of the Dead, as Eero and Noora fear you will?”
“And do what?”
“Find him. Save your father.”
“But if he’s…” I don’t know how to reason with nonsense. “Can I save him? Is he still alive? Can I bring him back?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Rasmus suddenly reaches out for my ears and I take a step back, putting my hands over them.
“What are you doing?” I whisper. “Don’t touch me.”
“Your earrings,” he says, looking mildly rebuked. “Your father gave you those. When you were eighteen, right?”
I run my fingers over the small stud earrings. They feel frozen to touch, though they’ve always felt cold.
“Yeah,” I say uneasily. My father sent them to me in the mail as a birthday present. I haven’t taken them off since.
“Do you know what stone that is?” he asks, and then walks off into the living room.
“I don’t know,” I say. Actually, I collect stones and crystals, and it’s always bothered me that I could never figure out what the earrings were made from. In the end I just assumed green-colored cubic zirconia and called it a day.
He pulls a large crystal off a shelf and comes over to me, holding it out. At first glance it resembles a fist-sized chunk of quartz, a translucent glowing green in color, the same color as my earrings. Then the green starts to shift, turning purple, then blue, while tiny sparkles form and disappear. The crystal seems alive.
“Your earrings are from this,” he says. “The aurora stone. Very, very rare. Your father brought it back from his travels once. It is said that if you give the stone to someone else, the aurora will always be inside, as long as you are both alive. He took the other piece of this stone with him. This is what tells me he’s still alive.”
He places it in my hand. It’s shockingly heavy, cold, and almost feels sentient, like there’s a universe inside of it. My ears start to grow warm, a strange buzzing sensation running through my lobes and down my neck.
“So now that we know he’s alive, for now,” Rasmus continues, his voice deepening, “are you still willing to do anything for him?” He takes a step closer to me. “Hanna, are you willing to go to the Land of the Dead?”
Chapter 4
The Waterfall
I turn the stone over in my hands, mesmerized by the changing light. It really is like holding the northern lights in your hands.
“Yes,” I say, transfixed by the stone. Then some sense comes into my head. “And by the Land of the Dead, you mean the police, because that’s exactly what my father would expect me to do. And he’d want me to go now.”