River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)(15)

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“We have to walk the rest,” Rasmus says to me. He reaches into the sleigh and grabs his backpack, shrugging it on over his coat, then reaches for my hand.

“What? Why? Where are we?”

“A place where Sula won’t go any further.”

“How far from the police station are we?” I ask.

“We only have to walk a bit,” he says, gesturing impatiently with his hand again.

I sigh and let him help me out of the sleigh.

Once on my feet, I gasp at the sight ahead of us.

I’m standing in my father’s painting. While I don’t see a sign, I see an ice-blue river that’s frosted over, coming from a frozen waterfall in the distance. It’s at least fifty feet high, caught in mid-cascade over a cliff dotted with dead trees.

“My father painted this,” I whisper in awe.

“Yes, I know.”

“He called this…Tyt?r, ?l? tule luokseni.”

A tight look comes across his face and he nods, then turns his attention back to the reindeer. He says something in a quick, hushed tone while stroking its nose and the reindeer snorts again, before backing up with the sleigh. Like on a dime, it turns and runs away, snow flying in the sleigh’s wake.

“What the hell!” I yell. “Where is he going?!”

“She,” he corrects me again, adjusting the backpack on his shoulder. “And she is going home.”

“She’s not going to wait for us?”

He stares at me for a moment as light snowflakes begin to fall. “You’re not coming back this way, you said so yourself.”

“Okay, so how are you going to get back home?”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter now. Come on.”

He starts to walk off, skirting along the edge of the frozen river. The snow is falling faster and sticking to his shoulders.

I look behind me, but the reindeer is long gone and the tracks it left in the snow have already disappeared. I truly am in the middle of fucking nowhere and I have no choice but to follow Rasmus.

I grumble and then start after him. “I’m starting to believe this isn’t the way to town,” I tell him. “I mean, we’re heading toward a frozen waterfall and a cliff. I’m starting to think this isn’t the way to anywhere.”

Rasmus doesn’t say anything.

“So, what did the painting say?” I ask, trudging through the snow behind him. “What did my father write at the bottom? When was he here?”

“All the questions again.”

I run a few feet and grab his arm, pulling him to a stop. It’s harder than it looks. He may be tall and skinny, but he’s built solidly, like a tree with roots.

“What did it say?” I repeat.

He rubs his lips together and then looks off to the waterfall. “It says…Daughter, don’t come for me.”

Then he pulls out of my grasp and keeps walking.

Daughter, don’t come for me?

“What does that mean?” I ask, jogging after him again. “That was directed to me. How did he know I’d be reading his journal, his diaries? How did he know?”

“I’m sure he wrote it in a lot of places, knowing someday you’d find out he was gone, knowing someday you would be right here, in this very place, about to go after him.”

“In this very place?” I repeat.

Rasmus stops and nods at the frozen waterfall. We’re right next to it now and I can see the darkness behind it, feel all that empty space. There’s a cave or a passage back there behind the solid ice curtain, and the wind that’s blowing out of it smells like mint and I swear I hear a low murmur, like a crowd of people.

And then I hear it.

I hear him.

I hear my father’s voice, airy and breathless, like a forgotten whisper. “Hanna, don’t come for me. Please. Just let me go.”

My heart sinks, my eyes going wide. I try to swallow but can’t.

“Papa!” I cry out softly at the cave, tears freezing on my lashes.

But there’s nothing in return. Just this mint-scented wind, that’s sometimes ice cold and sometimes furnace hot and sounds like another world, another life is hidden in the depths.

“Was that you?” I ask Rasmus. “Was that some trick you did with your voice?”

He gives his head a firm shake. “No. I wouldn’t have told you to stay behind. I need you to do this, Hanna. I can’t go and get Torben alone. You have to be with me.”

No. No, this is still all crazy talk, still all nonsense, still all a fairy tale and make-believe.

“I just…I want to go home,” I say faintly.

Rasmus stares at me.

“And I want my father back.” My voice is louder now.

He sighs and looks at me with melancholy eyes. “You can’t have both. Which one do you want more?”

Of course there’s only one answer. “I want my father back.”

Oh god, Papa, I want you back.

He gives me a quick smile. “Okay. Then we keep walking.”

He starts again, heading to the cliff face and walking alongside it until he disappears behind the iced veil of the waterfall.

“Rasmus?” I call out after him. No response. Even the wind seems to have stopped. All is eerily calm. I look behind me, but there’s just the frozen river and the snow and the trees and there’s nothing but silence. Rasmus had lied to me, told me he was taking me to town, when he was really taking me here. He’s unreliable and untrustworthy, but there’s shit-all I can do about that now.