Suddenly the flames are fanned as a burst of cold wind flows through us and a shadow is cast from above. I look up in time to see Sarvi in flight, huge black leathery wings, like a bat, blotting out the sun.
The unicorn swoops down, my hair blown back by the wingbeats, then dives with its horn aimed at the flames. It spears its horn through the skull of one of the children, then whips its head back, its long black mane flowing majestically, as the skeleton child goes flying through the air, landing in a heap of broken bones. The unicorn quickly does the same to the other children, spearing them in the skull and tossing them, until the flaming pile of skeletons are far from us.
“Are they…dead…dead?” I ask Death.
“No, they’re immune,” he grumbles. “They’ll get up in a few minutes. You don’t want to be here when they do.” He strolls toward the unicorn, who is waving its head around, snorting hot air, one white eye on one side of its face, on the other an empty socket. “In the nick of time, Sarvi,” he says to it.
Then Death yanks the chain and I nearly fall to my knees again. “Ow!” I cry out.
“I’ll happily leave you behind if that’s what you want,” Death says, leaning against the unicorn’s shoulder. “You already talk too much.”
“We had a deal,” I say stiffly, trying to gain what dignity I can with an iron dog collar around my neck.
“That we do,” he says with a sigh. “So then, you better get yourself over here.”
I walk toward him, the chain clanking and then he’s grabbing me, his hands completely circling my waist, and throwing me up onto the unicorn’s back.
“Make a fist in the mane,” Death says as he swings himself up and I find myself lodged between the unicorn’s thick, partially skeletonized neck and Death’s armored body. “You’ll want to hold on for your pointless little life. Pull as much as you like. Sarvi can’t feel anything.”
Once again, sir, that’s not exactly true, a placid voice with a quasi-British accent says, seemingly from out of nowhere.
I look around for the source. “Who was that?”
“You heard that?” Death asks in quiet awe.
I nod.
Oh perfect, someone else to claim to hear me and then proceed to completely ignore me, the voice goes on.
“That’s Sarvi,” Death explains.
My eyes nearly fall out. “The unicorn can talk?”
“Unfortunately.” Death kicks at Sarvi’s sides. “Up we go.”
And we take flight.
Chapter 10
The Castle
The last birthday I had in Finland, about a year before my mother decided to move me to California, my father got me horseback riding lessons as a present. The best present of my childhood, really. The stable was just outside of town and every Wednesday afternoon my father would take me there in his red vintage truck. I rode this fluffy white pony named Porro, but I called it Porridge, and all we did was go around the ring at a walk and a trot. Eventually I got “good” enough to canter, but I immediately went tumbling off Porridge and onto the woodchips. My instructor told me to hold onto the pony’s mane next time, and I did just that. I managed to stay on that way until I had to leave Porridge, Finland, and my father behind. Once I got to California, my mother put me in dance, and riding was deemed too dangerous to continue.
Well, all those lessons are coming flooding back to me, nearly twenty years later, and maybe even saving my life. Sarvi’s jet-black mane is wrapped around my hands several times over, because taking a tumble here means falling two hundred feet to my death.
Because we’re flying.
We’re fucking flying.
I’m too damn scared to even appreciate what an incredible and surreal event this is, because I’ve got Death’s armored chest and crotch pressed against me, the front of his thighs bracketing mine, and Sarvi’s shoulders jammed between my legs. The air is chilled and thinner up here and Sarvi’s rhythmic wingbeats make it even colder.
If you could find something to be happy about, Sarvi says, even for a moment, sir, it would make our journey much quicker. The clouds are holding us back.
Death grumbles. “I would have been happy had you found that redheaded bastard.”
I told you, he was long gone, Sarvi says. From what I can tell, the unicorn’s voice isn’t coming from its mouth or vocal chords, but somehow slipping from its brain to ours. Kalma and Surma will double-check, but I doubt they’ll find anything. They never do.
“How can a mortal get through the Hiisi Forest that fast?” Death muses bitterly. “He’s hiding.”