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“Who are they?” I ask as a skeleton drops from the ceiling and nearly takes me out. I scurry out of the way, using the slope of the walls to propel off of so I go leaping through the air on top of the skeleton’s back, knocking him to the ground. I run the sword across his torso, severing him in two.

My relatives, Raila says.

“What the fuck is that?” Death asks.

My heart stills, and I look around Death to see what Raila means by relatives.

Eight long, black, giant legs appear at the end of the tunnel.

Chapter 6

Lovia

The Magician

“Are you alright?” the newly deceased Ethel Bagley asks me.

I’m staring at the snowy banks of the shore ahead and the lonely dock that juts out into the river. This is usually where I would leave Ethel and tell her to follow the guided path up through the hills and across the desert until she comes to the City of Death, a journey the dead usually make on their own.

But right now, I don’t trust Ethel to make it there alone. Not just because she’s cold, so cold that I had to give her my reindeer skins I have lining the boat’s benches, and not just because I don’t trust her not to wander off alone, but because the path seems insurmountable in this snowstorm.

More than that, I feel that something has fundamentally changed in this realm. I can’t shake the feeling that my father is dead. It’s something I should never have to worry about, and yet, it feels true in the heart of me, like the connection I have to him and the connection he has to Tuonela have been severed at the same time.

You’re being ridiculous, I tell myself.He’s the God of Death. He can’t die.

And yet, we can.

“Deer girl,” Ethel says, waving her hand, “you’re going to crash your boat.”

I look up in time to stick my oar out and slow the boat’s collision with the dock. Normally, the boat sails itself without input from me, but with everything feeling off, I’m not taking my chances.

I dock the boat and give the woman a sheepish look. “Here we are. I don’t normally escort people to the City, but I think I will today.”

Ethel shrugs, which then turns into a shiver. “Suit yourself. As long as we don’t have to walk far.”

The two of us disembark, with her following me as we walk carefully down the slippery dock. I pause once we step on the shore. The snow has covered up any sign of a trail, and darkness has fallen, making it even harder to see. I know the way instinctively, and I believe the dead know the way too. In fact, I am sure their legs are compelled to walk, no matter how they feel about marching to their final resting place, but I don’t feel like taking any chances.

We walk on, trudging through the snow, hoping we’re on the iron path as we climb up the hills away from the river.

Eventually, the land levels out, and I know we’re close, close enough that I should be looking at the expanse of the City by now. I squint through the dark snowstorm.

The City of Death is barely visible from here. Even though the tower reaches up into the clouds and sprawls wide for miles, the falling snow obscures it, making it look like a giant, shadowy beast hiding in the distance.

“Just a little further,” I tell Ethel. She holds her fur close around her neck, and I feel terrible that she’s in this situation.Out of the countless people I have ushered to the afterlife, I fear her experience has been by far the worst. “Once you get inside the walls, this will all be but a dream.”

“More like a nightmare,” she says through chattering teeth.

I nod at that, unsure of what else I can say, and we continue our walk along the snowy path. Usually, the land here is just a dry, dusty wasteland, but in this weather, it’s a different kind of bleak and foreboding. Prettier, perhaps, like the snow is wiping some sort of slate clean with its purity, but I don’t trust it.

Eventually, we get up close enough that I can see the robed Magician standing outside the front gates.

“Who is that?” Ethel whispers to me. “He doesn’t seem to have a face.”

“He’s the all-seeing Magician,” I tell her. “It’s he who knows what level of the afterlife you end up in.”

“Ah,” she says. “No wonder he gives me the creeps.”

I suppose she’s not wrong. I’m so used to the Magician, I don’t really see him for what he is: a robed being holding a deck of cards, with no face at all but a look into the vast, dark void of the universe, complete with whirling galaxies, shooting stars, moons, and the occasional black hole.