“Don't go wandering off and forget you have food coming, Godmother!” the Brownie replied, insistently. She did her best to repress a laugh. Whoever he had been talking to had evidently impressed him with the need to keep an eye on her, which was rather funny. She might not be the kind of rounded and odalisque-like creature often depicted as a fertility goddess, but she was not going to pine away in half a day.
In fact, he lingered, books piled in his arms, until he was sure she had settled herself next to the fire in her sitting room.
Once safely there, she picked up her hand-mirror and waited for Godmother Elena to answer her call — which was almost instantly.
“If you must know, I am keeping track of you,” Elena told her with a wry smile. “You worry me right now.”
Aleksia felt her eyes widening. “Why?” she asked, astonished.
Elena sighed. “Because you have never personally had an adventure,” the other Godmother said reluctantly.
“Excuse me?” That didn't precisely make sense. “I think I have had an adventurous enough life! After all, how many girls become Godmothers?”
“But you, personally, have never had an adventure,” Elena repeated. “Think about this. Yes, you and your sister had adventures happen around you before you became a Godmother, and, yes, you almost became a jealous sister, and, yes, you were whisked off by Veroushka to become a Godmother, but you, personally, have never done anything that would risk your own life. You go out and make other peoples' lives adventurous, but what do you do? You rarely leave your Palace, and then it is generally to go only to a gathering of other Godmothers rather than to thwart someone evil. Now, well, I sense that you are about to leave your shelter and go and do things that will put you in personal danger.”
Aleksia felt a surge of resentment. “You had adventures!”
Elena nodded vigorously. “Yes, I did, and I think I am all the better for it! But the one thing I did that was very, very stupid was that I did not keep the other Godmothers apprised of what I was doing. Of course, I was not aware that I could do that at the time, but you are. And I was just a little worried that in the excitement of being able to go and do things, you might forget — ”
After listening to that astonishing speech, all Aleksia could do was laugh. Elena looked relieved.
“Prickly, I might be, Elena, but I also prize honesty. And I am very touched that you are worried about me. However — ” she wiggled an admonishing finger at the the mirror “ — you, of all people, should know me better than that. I am going nowhere without a mirror. And I am not too proud to ask for help if I need it. Now, this is what I have found out, and this is what I plan to do….”
She slowly outlined her ideas to Elena, who agreed that it seemed to be the best course of action. “And you can leave from your own Palace?”
“So it seems. Tuonela can be reached from anywhere. As they say ,Death is universal'. There seems no great difficulty in getting in.” The Brownie bustled up at that moment with a tray with a bowl of thick soup and a small loaf of bread, broken open and buttered already, still steaming from the oven. Aleksia's stomach growled, and she hoped Elena had not heard it.
“No indeed,” Elena replied. “Traditionally, there never is. It is always leaving that is the difficult part. But you do have a sound strategy. Good luck, Aleksia.”
“Thank you, Godmother Elena,” Aleksia replied. She had, very carefully, avoided the undeniable fact that if she did get in over her head, it was unlikely that anyone could reach her in time to be of any use.
Then again, so had Elena, who probably was just as aware of that as Aleksia was.
The way to almost every Underworld was through a cave, and there was a cave in the cellars of the Palace of Ever-Winter for just that purpose, at least, according to the notes of Godmother Riga, who had been the fourth back from Aleksia. All one had to do to enter a particular Underworld was to set up a spell that invoked that culture.
As familiar as Aleksia was with the Sammi, it was the work of no more than a half an hour to establish the cave-mouth in her cellar as sacred to the Sammi, to invoke a variant of the All Paths Are One Path spell, and to add the twist that linked this cave with the actual entrance to Tuonela, wherever that was.
She took a very deep breath before she entered the final fragments of the spell that would open the way. Carefully, she took inventory of herself. Her shroudlike, enveloping white gown should pass muster. She had spent hours whitening her skin and hair in a way that would not obviously be due to magic. Her hair was encircled with a wreath of dead flowers, and if anyone was to touch her, her skin would feel icy.
She was as ready as she was ever likely to be.
She stood before the cave, and sighed the last words of her carefully fashioned spell.
The ground trembled, and the cave-mouth glowed with blue light. She stepped into it.
She paused for a moment to take stock of her surroundings on the other side. This was a strange land, in perpetual shadow, with no discernable horizon. The air smelled of chill and damp, with a faint hint of mildew. The land was flat and unremarkable, covered with brittle, dead grass and leafless bushes. A pall of gray covered the sky, and there was neither sun nor moon.
Ahead of her was the river of Tuoni, and in the distance, something shimmering and white approached her. She took slow, very hesitant steps down toward the water, then stood on the shore with the cold water lapping at her bare feet. She pretended that she did not feel it, did not even notice it. This was the first test of her disguise, for this was one of the guardians of Tuonela, and on that river, in fact, heading toward her, was the most beautiful Swan that she had ever seen.
The Swan was taller than a man, and as it came closer, she could hear it singing. To the dead, this was but the background of their existence here, but it could be deadly to the living. A living person that listened too long to that beautiful, mournful dirge would be lost in it, forgetting everything else, forgetting all about life on Earth,
