Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
He had a point. I have my limits, as much as I hate to admit it. Even coercing the soldiers here is draining my energy, fast. I’ll feel better once I get back to Tuonela and I’m back in my own realm.
Of course, that can’t happen until Torben does his job.
We’re all waiting on him.
“Well?” I ask him. “Have you figured it out yet?”
The old man glances up at me from the stack of books he has been pouring over, a gray brow raised. “The answers won’t appear out of your impatience,” he says.
We’re sitting in the command room of the barracks. The generals in charge of the troops loiter near us in a perpetually half-dazed state, ready to do our bidding, except we don’t know yet what that is, other than getting them to tend to my every whim.
Torben and I are by the wood stove, the sound of the crackling flames filling the room while the generals exist in silence. I’ve tried a few times to read the spellbooks Torben has procured from his cabin, but the magic seems foreign to me. Even his Book of Spells that he depends on the most doesn’t strike a chord.
Then again, it’s not really striking a chord with him either. None of his books have a list of portals to the Underworld. All they have, as he has told me ad nauseum, are spells to conjure up the portals, and none of them seem to be working. We’ve been here for days now, and every second that ticks by, I fear I’m losing my connection to Tuonela, that I’m losing precious time. The only thing that calms me is the fact that time here passes so much quicker.
I sigh loudly, voicing my displeasure, and then snap my fingers at the general closest to me. “You there. What’s your name?”
“General Anton Pekka,” he says, snapping to attention.
“General Anton Pekka,” I tell him, “bring me more cardamon buns and coffee. Black. None of that oat milk shit.”
The general salutes me and scurries out the door and down the hall.
“You really shouldn’t boss them around like that,” Torben says in a tired voice as he licks his thumb and flicks to the next page.
“Why not? They won’t remember any of this.” At least, I assume they won’t. I never did put this to the test.
“Because it’s not right,” he says. “Morally speaking.”
I scoff. “And suddenly you’re a better judge of morality? No one is a better judge of morals than the God of Death.”
He gives me a pointed look. “You may be able to judge the morals of others, but have you ever taken that gaze inward and judged yourself?”
I wave my hand at him. “Bah. You should speak, Torben Heikkinen. I know what you did. I know what everyone has done. Humans are fallible.”
“And so are the Gods.”
Well, I suppose he’s not wrong about that. Right now, the entire Underworld is crumbling because of some fallible gods who should have stayed buried eons ago. I’ve been trying not to think about it, lest I lose my temper, or worse, my hope. I know Hanna has made her way back over—I have to believe that—but I have no way of keeping tabs on her from here. Even our connection was severed the moment that cave collapsed and we became stranded in the Upper World. She remains as unreachable to me as the rest of my family.
I have no idea what I’ll be heading back to once we find the portal. I don’t know if having an army of a thousand soldiers will make any difference if there is no Underworld to fight for. And if there are still vestiges of the Tuonela I know and love, I don’t know if these mortals can actually make a dent against Louhi’s army.
But this sort of thinking does me no good. I must coerce my own thoughts into something positive. If I took to heart all the possibilities of what might be happening over there, of what might be lost, there’s a chance I could give up.
“The longer I stay here, the less I become,” I whisper to myself.
Torben pauses and looks at me. “Not that you need any compliments,” he says gruffly, “but you are not becoming less of anything.” He looks me up and down. “If anything, I say you’re taking up more and more space.”
I have to admit, that makes me sit up straighter.
Soon, General Pekka comes back with the sweet cardamom buns and coffee, which I quickly polish off. It distracts me and alleviates a bit of my impatience.
The general hovers in the background, clearly waiting to take my dishes away, but I don’t want his servitude at the moment. I want his intel.
“General,” I say to him, “you understand what I’m trying to do with your troops, don’t you?”