It’s made of bronze and comes in two parts: the mask and a halo-type crown, because apparently I want to be a little extra. Both the mask and the halo crown are covered in intricately carved deadhead moths, wings splayed, and appliqued with shimmering red jewels. It’s macabre and gorgeous and I know it needs to be mine.
“Great choice,” Lovia says. “I would have said you’d go for that one or this one with the little agate mushrooms.”
I shudder. No freaking mushrooms ever again.
“Alright, now what?” I ask, feeling nervous now that the fun part is over.
“This is where I leave you,” she says.
“What?” I exclaim. She’s leaving me now?
“Mmmhmm,” she says. She takes the crown from my hand and puts it on me, the headband part first, followed by the blind mask, until my whole world goes dark. Then she reaches down and presses my hand into the sword. “Don’t let go of this whatever you do. I’m going to put you in the right direction and you’re going to walk straight ahead. You’ll know when you have to stop.”
Oh my god!
“I can’t just walk into a cave blind, I’m going to collide with the wall!”
“You won’t,” she says adamantly. A heavy pause as if she remembers I’m a bumbling mortal. “Well, if you do, just don’t drop the sword cuz you’ll probably never find it again. And keep walking.”
“But then what?”
I don’t like this at all.
“You’ll know when you come across Vipunen. I’ll come back in a few hours with the horses to pick you up, assuming he doesn’t send you back way of the Crystal Caves. If he does, don’t drink the water. You’ll never get out.”
I blink, too much information being thrown at me at once. “What?”
“Okay time to go,” she says, grabbing hold of my shoulders and then turning me around. “Walk forward. I’ll see you in a bit.”
I don’t move but I hear her walk away.
“Oh!” she says, sounding far off. “And don’t remove your mask or you’ll die! Okay, bye!”
“Lovia!” I yell at her. My voice bounces off the walls of the cave and I hear the bats begin to stir, but she doesn’t respond.
Something tells me she’s gone.
Chapter 14
Hanna
“The Training Session”
“Well, fuck,” I swear. I’m standing here in the cave like a total idiot, completely in the dark, shaking in a stupid cat suit, wearing a mask and crown and holding a sword and I’m supposed to just walk forward without knowing where I’m going.
This sucks.
I take in a deep breath. I wanted to meet Vipunen. The training I could take or leave either way—on one hand, I love to fight, love bettering myself, feeling powerful and pushing my body. On the other hand, all of this shit terrifies me.
Yet the thing I cling to the most is the fact that I can finally meet the giant and ask him questions. I’m not sure he’ll answer anything, but this is as close to an omniscient God that I’m ever going to get. I mean, that’s pretty cool.
I exhale, my breath shaking as I do.
Okay, woman up, I tell myself. Queen up. Goddess up. You can do this.
I start walking forward, gripping the sword tight, my steps unsteady as I do. The stone ground beneath my feet is uneven and I don’t know if I’m going to walk right into a cave wall. At least the mask should protect my face if I do.
I wince as I go, then after a few steps, stop. Try to hear beyond my thundering heart and raspy breath. I need to rely on all my senses now and I have to trust that my body knows what to do. Throughout my years of dance and martial arts, I let my body take the lead. I think I need to do the same now.
So, even though I only see darkness, I see in my head that I’m on stage. I’m walking, dancing, I don’t see the audience, I don’t see anything and I just let my body do what it wants to do, what it was born to do.
In this half-dancing, half-walking way I keep going forward into the darkness. I can feel the cave walls are close, that the echoes of my feet are duller, it’s getting colder, and I’m going faster, the ground sloping downward.
Down and down I go until I feel the space around me open up and I’m met with a sudden burst of energy that stops me in my tracks. I know my eyes are open because the edges of the mask glow a green color and then turn to a white light. Oh, man, please tell me I didn’t just die.
“Hanna Heikkinen,” a voice booms. It is a voice unlike any I have ever heard. It’s multi-layered, deeper than this cave, older than the dawn of time. “Queen of Tuonela, Goddess of the Dead.”