“So now you’re drugging me,” I say.
“Drugging us both,” he says. “Unlike you, I didn’t sleep last night. I watched over you instead.”
I have to admit, I’m rather touched. “And if danger comes for us in the night?”
“We’ll spring into action, feeling better than before,” he says.
While the tea steeps he takes a stick and starts poking at the fire and my mind finally has a chance to slow down and wander, going over everything that’s happened. There’s been so much I feel like I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath.
“Vellamo seemed pretty forgiving,” I tell him, holding my hands out in front of the fire. “You know, considering you’ve dicked her around before.”
He raises a shoulder and pokes the stick in the fire. “Gods and shamans have a complicated relationship. On one hand, we’re always getting under their skin in our quest to gain power. On the other hand…we believe in them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when humans first began to walk the earth, the Gods made themselves known. It didn’t take a lot of faith to know that the Goddess of the Sea was real when you saw her rise from the deep. People believed in them and worshipped them and you didn’t have to be a priest or a shaman to do that. But in time, more and more people were born, scattered around the globe, and most of the Gods stayed the same. Outnumbered. So some people saw the Gods, others didn’t, and those that didn’t found it hard to believe in them. Over time, they lost their faith, their belief, and the Gods lost their power in the Upper World, in our world. They stayed here in the Underworld. The shamans, which includes witches and wizards, never lost that belief and remain the one true link between the worlds.” He pauses. “Except for Death.”
“No?”
He gives me a tight smile. “No one has ever lost their belief in Death.”
I wrap my arms around my knees, hugging them tight. “Have you ever met him?”
He shakes his head. “No. I’ve heard stories, of course. That he always has to wear gloves because if he touches you, you’ll die. And that his face is a skull and he wears a cloak and he eats babies for breakfast.”
“Let me guess, rides a skeleton horse?”
“Skeleton unicorn,” he corrects me with a smile, my eyes going wide. “And it’s an ugly, nasty, bloodsucking beast. Those horns are dangerous.”
“A unicorn? Seriously? What about dragons?”
He laughs. “No dragons. But there are a few species of dinosaurs wandering about.”
“Dinosaurs!” I exclaim. “You got to be kidding me.”
“What, so dragons and unicorns you’ll totally believe but dinosaurs, creatures that literally did exist on our planet, are far-fetched?”
He’s got a point. “Well, since dinosaurs are real, what are mermaids and unicorns doing here?”
“This is the Underworld for all the worlds. Not just our own. There are other worlds out there with creatures you can’t even imagine. This place is your best bet for seeing them. Eero once told me he saw an alien.”
I frown. “You talked to Eero?”
“Well, yeah. We all live or work at the resort.”
“I don’t understand. If Eero was my father’s business partner, then why did he want to prevent me from rescuing my father, and, dare I say, try to kill me?”
“Jealousy,” Rasmus says. “He didn’t want your father to become more powerful than him.”
“So how powerful is Eero?”
A dark look comes over his eyes. “Enough that he’s been reincarnated his whole life. The closest a shaman has gotten to eternal life, but not close enough. Not for him, anyway. Rumor has it that he’s actually the legendary shaman Väinämöinen, who is the hero of Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala.”
Shit. That’s pretty big.
“You know, I wanted to become Eero’s apprentice,” Rasmus admits quietly, voice hushed with shame. He picks up the tea pot and pours the hot, fragrant liquid into the wood cups. “But I’m glad he turned me away. Your father is a good man, Hanna. One of the best. If it had been Eero teaching me…”
I study him in the firelight and for the first time I feel like I’m really seeing Rasmus. A contradiction. A boy on one hand, a man on the other. Someone who wants to be good, someone who craves the ability to be bad. Someone happy with something as simple as flame ferns, someone who wants all the power in the universe.
He looks at me as he passes me my tea. “What are you thinking about?” he asks warily.
“You mean you don’t know?” I ask as I take a sip. The tea smells invigorating, like a cedar forest on a crisp snowy day, and tastes just as good.
His brows come together. “No. I can’t pick up on your thoughts anymore.”
Good, I think, though I hide my smile behind the cup.