I don’t even have to look. I pick up the sword, heavy as hell, and turn with it swinging out. With a long low arc, the sword cuts through the air, chopping off the head of the white swan, which goes flying off the boat and into the water. The rest of the body falls to the deck in a heavy thunk before it disintegrates into a pile of bloody snow.
Rasmus is bleeding from the hands and head, but the black swan stops attacking him enough to turn its attention to me. It sees the decapitated white swan and starts screaming, a pitiful sound.
I almost feel bad for it, enough that I lower the sword.
“Hanna!” Rasmus yells. “It will kill us both and we can’t die here. Believe me, there would be no coming back.”
I swallow hard, making a split-second decision, and before the swan can launch itself at me, I take the sword and stab it right in the heart.
It screams again, a sound that I think will haunt my dreams for years to come.
I stare at it, then at the sword in my hands, then kick the dead swan overboard. I look over my shoulder to see if Lovia is still in the water, or swimming after the boat, but I don’t see anything but the ink black river. We’re picking up speed now, the current moving fast, and the white frozen hills are speeding past even without anyone paddling. The water shouldn’t even be flowing this way, but obviously nothing here makes sense.
“Well,” Rasmus says slowly, getting to his feet with a groan. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone kill the swans of Tuonela before. So that’s something.”
“A good thing, right?” I ask him, taking off my knit cap, feeling unbearably hot all of a sudden. I don’t know how I did any of those moves, let alone while wearing a mound of clothing.
“We’re alive,” Rasmus says with a sigh. “So that’s a good thing.” He gives me a stiff smile. “But if we were hoping to get to your father without anyone knowing, well that opportunity went away with Death’s daughter when you kicked her off the boat.”
I blink. “Death’s daughter? You mean Loviatar’s father…”
“Is Death,” Rasmus finishes. “You bested his daughter and you killed his swans. He’s going to be pissed.”
Chapter 6
The Great Inland Sea
“So what do we do now?” I ask Rasmus, who is standing at the bow of the iron boat. We’ve been stewing in silence for the last few minutes while the enormity of his words began to sink in, the black river taking us along at a clip while the riverbanks get further and further apart. “I just kicked Death’s daughter off her own boat, then slaughtered his two swans, and now Death is going to know we’re here…somehow.”
Rasmus gives me a dirty look over his shoulder. “Do you hear yourself? Even after all you’ve seen, you’re still acting like this is a joke.”
“A joke!” I exclaim. “I may be struggling to understand what’s happening but none of this is a fucking joke.”
He grumbles and fishes out a handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabs it at the clotting wounds the swan left on his forehead, wincing. “You could have believed me from the start. I told you about Tuonela. I told you all of this was real. It took you almost dying before you started to take any of this seriously.”
“Can you blame me?! What kind of person would I be if I just believed what you were saying about my father going off to the Land of the Dead?”
“An open-minded one,” he says tiredly, sounding disappointed. “Your father assured me you were open-minded.”
“Yeah! I am! I have crystals that give me good energy! I believe in my horoscope half the time, and I think the Ancient Egyptians were in cahoots with aliens. But even the most open-minded person has their limits, and this was my limit.”
“Even after seeing your father in the casket morph into me?”
I shrug, trying to get my thoughts in order. So much has changed and so fast. “I don’t know. I was hallucinating! I was grieving and jet-lagged! For all I know I still might be hallucinating, or at the very least in some awful, fantastical dream.”
Rasmus turns around and storms over to me, reaching for my hair and giving it a sharp yank.
“Ow!” I cry out, trying to move back. I like a good-hair pulling in the bedroom, but not this. “What the fuck is your problem, pulling my hair like a schoolyard bully?”
“That hurt, right?” he says, narrowing his eyes. “That’s your proof right now that you’re not dreaming.”
“Jesus,” I swear. “There are other ways to make a point.”