Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Unless…
I start pulling out all my items from my coat pockets—a protein bar, some Haribo gummy bears that have come loose, a couple of wet and wrinkled euros, a hair scrunchie, and my cell phone.
Vellamo has been staring at all of them with interest. I toss the cell phone to her.
“It’s wet and it doesn’t work, but if you wanted to just look at it,” I explain as she catches it.
“You think I’m some sort of magpie?” she says, tossing the phone back after giving it a cursory glance. “What are those colorful blobs?”
“Gummy bears,” I tell her. “Have some. They’re the best brand.”
She comes closer and peers at them. “They look like tiny sea slugs.”
“I’d say they probably taste better, but with you, I don’t know.”
She takes one from me and puts it in her mouth. Her face immediately looks shocked. “Oh,” she says. “They are sweet. And chewy. Like sugary sea slugs.”
Way to ruin gummy bears for me.
“Have the rest,” I say, handing them to her. “Sorry about any pocket lint. Don’t mistake it for seasoning.”
She eagerly takes them and starts eating. I look back at my meager findings—nothing to light a fire with. Unless I took apart my phone? But even if I did suddenly turn into MacGyver, I don’t think anything could produce a spark wet. I know physics aren’t really a consistent thing down here, but still.
Vellamo goes to the other side of the pile of wood and crouches down, taking out her knife and scraping it against a rock. “This goes against all my instincts, but I’m fairly certain this is how you make a fire like the dry folk do.”
I sit up closer, watching her, waiting for a spark to appear.
And then suddenly—surprisingly—the logs all catch fire at once.
“You did it!” I cry out happily, already feeling the warmth. “I didn’t even see a spark.”
Vellamo stares at the blade and the rock. “I didn’t create a spark. I didn’t do anything. The logs, they just—”
She looks up at me from across the fire, and then she looks above me, her mouth dropping wide open.
Her face starts to glow with an otherworldly light, just like the rest of the forest, the berries on the branches burning like little stars, as if the sun has just risen.
“Hanna,” Vellamo says in a low voice, slowly getting to her feet.
I look over my shoulder to see what she’s looking at in such astonishment, and my whole world turns to shining, blinding white light.
“Hanna, your mother is here.”
Chapter 25
Death
The Tunnel
For the second time in a very short period, I came close to dying.
Unlike the first time, though, I didn’t actually die, but it was pretty damn close. Well, as close as it can be when you’re stuck in a world where death has taken a vacation.
Worst vacation I’ve ever had.
The cave system collapsed on us. I had a feeling it might once I learned that Noora and Eero couldn’t be killed. I figured they would try their magic to bring it all down on us as a last resort, which is one of the many reasons why we needed to make it through the portal while we could.
Part of the cave struck my shoulder and then took out Torben, and the last thing I saw before it buried us was that Hanna had made it through the Veil, swimming in the sea.
I can only hope and pray that Vellamo or one of the mermaids down there find her and bring her up to the surface, or that her Goddess mother has been watching over her this whole time. It’s possible that Hanna really does possess the ability to breathe underwater like I do; it’s just never been put to the test before.
I refuse to think of any other scenario. If I do, I might never recover.
“Tuoni,” Torben says from beside me. “My daughter.”
I reach over and brush the dirt from his beard. Luckily for me, I can see just fine in the dark. “She’ll be fine,” I tell him. “She made it to the sea.”
“But she could drown.”
“She’ll be fine,” I tell him again adamantly. “We have to work on getting ourselves out of here first. Can you try to dig through the rubble behind you?”
I watch as he tries, but he immediately gives up. “There’s pure rock behind it. I can’t lift it up.”
The ground shakes again at that, more dirt falling from the ceiling.
“Come on,” I tell him. “We won’t be safe until we do something about the Shamans.”
“What the hell can we do about them if they won’t die?” he says.
“I’ll chop them up into many different pieces,” I tell him, “and scatter them in the woods. They aren’t zombies; they can’t come back together again. They’ll just be alive in different bits.”
“That’s diabolical,” he says with a gasp.