River of Shadows (Underworld Gods 1)

“Yes,” I say, the bitterness in the air now settling on my tongue. “Unfortunately, you have to be a delicate flower in dance and there was a point where I couldn’t do that anymore.” In other words, dance was everything to me, and especially to my mother. But the extremes I went to so I could remain lithe and airy and light eventually took their toll on my body and mind. “But then I discovered martial arts. Capoeira. It’s from Brazil. Combines dancing and fighting.”

Noora takes her eyes off the road to look at me. “He never mentioned that.”

I shrug. I’m not competitive. My heart can’t take anything competitive anymore, not after what I went through. It’s just a hobby. After high school I realized if I couldn’t be accepted in dance anymore, then I wanted to do something else to keep my body moving. I started building muscle, lifting weights, and it just came naturally to me. I used to do a little tae kwon do for a while, even arnis, but capoeira is what stuck.

Noora’s vibe shifts a little. Like this information concerns her. Perhaps she’s old-fashioned and doesn’t believe girls should fight. She’d get along with my mother with that view.

I flash her a placating smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to go beating up anyone at Papa’s funeral.” She gives me a stiff smile and I immediately feel awkward. I look around the car. “So what’s the smell?”

“Do you like it?” she asks.

Not really. “Smells like sage.” And like rotting corpses, I add in my head and the accurate thought makes me shiver. I pull my coat closer around me, my cold hands shoved in my pockets. I’ve always been morbid, but I don’t need these thoughts before my father’s funeral.

“Sage, palo santo, lavender, myrrh and sieni. Mushrooms.”

“Didn’t know dried mushrooms smell like that.”

“These ones are special.”

Aren’t all mushrooms special? I think. If I actually had a social life in high school maybe I’d know what dried mushrooms smell like.

I turn my attention to the scenery passing by the window. Like the view from the airplane, the land is made up of pine trees and snow, with a few low rolling hills thrown into the mix. I have a feeling we’re driving past lakes and rivers, but the thick snow covers them and makes everything look the same.

It’s such the opposite of Los Angeles that I’m suddenly hit with a pang of fear, like I’m on the edge of the earth, close to falling off into infinity, and I feel precariously placed. In my mind I’m looking at the globe and I can see the little dot where I am and there’s just nothing above me at all except ice and snow forever.

Not only that, but I’ve barely seen any cars on this highway and I realize I don’t know Noora at all. I’m about to pull out my phone and check for reception, maybe send Jenny a text even though I have no idea what time it is back home, when the skin on my spine starts to crawl. I have the most awful, unsettling feeling that if I look at Noora right now, that I won’t see Noora at all. That I’ll see some smiling demonic creature. In fact, out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see a pair of horns, no, antlers, growing from the top of her head.

I immediately close my eyes and take in a deep breath. Jet lag, I tell myself. Grief and jet lag. Hell of a combo.

“Are you alright?” Noora asks.

I nod, pressing my lips together, keeping my eyes closed. “Just really tired all of a sudden.”

“Why don’t you sleep? The resort is another forty-five minutes away.”

Hell no, I’m not sleeping now, I think, resting my head against the frozen window.

But then the car engine suddenly turns off and I hear Noora say, “We’re here.”

My eyes snap open and I sit upright in my seat. We’re parked in front of a low rustic building, the roof piled high with snow, a forest surrounding it, the branches glittering in the waning sun like icing sugar.

What the hell?

I blink and shake my head. “What happened? I literally just closed my eyes.”

“You fell asleep,” she says. “Come on, let’s get you to your room so you can go to bed.”

My brain feels like a train that’s slowly pulling out of the station as I try to make sense of how time has passed so quickly. “You’re not supposed to sleep the first day you arrive, not until night. Otherwise you’ll never get over your jet lag,” I tell her, my tongue feeling thick.

“It’ll be night in an hour,” she says in a no-nonsense voice. She gets out of the car and opens up the trunk, pulling out my suitcase. I stare at the log-building, at the intricately carved sign that says “Wilderness Hotel” over it, smoke rising from the chimney. I guess this is it. This is what my dad worked so hard for.