Page 110 of Goddess of Light

“I am ready to evolve,” he says to her. “I have done what I’ve needed to do.”

“Uh, and what is that exactly?” I question. Because if you ask me, he seems to have done a whole lot of nothing.

His head swivels toward me, galaxies swirling across his façade, faster and faster. “I have done more than you know.”

“Oh,” I say. “So you read minds too? Not invasive or inappropriate at all.” I jerk my chin at my mother. “I see why the two of you are friends.”

“You wonder why I have let some people die while saving others,” he says, his voice almost robotic. “You wonder why I saved Rasmus initially when he died later. You don’t see the things that are put in motion. If I hadn’t saved Rasmus, he wouldn’t have been able to save Lovia. And he needed to save Lovia, because she’s been instrumental to my evolution. She still is. Right to the end.”

“Okay…” I say, getting a little freaked out about how ominous he sounds. “So then what is your evolution? Why is it more important than people’s lives?”

“For the very reason we have just discussed,” my mother says in a patient voice. “Both of you are willing to be sacrifices for the greater good.”

“Yeah but…” I begin. “My sacrifice is stupid. I give up my powers, sure, Uno Reverse Oblivion, and then we’ll have everyone back but then all the shitty people will be back too and round and round we go. We can’t coexist here with Louhi and Rangaista.”

“Oblivion was never necessary,” the Magician says. “Not when I stood at the gates to the city and drew the cards. The bad went to Inmost. The mediocre went to the Golden Mean. And the very good went to Amaranthus. Oblivion was something put in place as punishment beyond punishment long ago and it should have never been for everyone.”

I do a slow blink at him, trying to get him to catch me up to speed quicker.

He continues, “But if Oblivion is reversed, something has to take its place. Or someone, as it were.”

I frown. “What are you talking about?”

“He is ready to become the void,” my mother says. “He will replace Oblivion in order to hold the evil souls in. So the good souls can come back.”

“I still have final judgement in the end,” he adds.

I’m having a hard time getting my head around this. In some ways I wish my Goddess self was coming through because she seemed to have the mind of computer.

“You become…I don’t understand. How do you just become something like that?”

He places his hands together and I notice how they look like a velvet black sky pin pricked with stars. “The same way Ibecame what you’re looking at. I am a portion of the universe, as are you in some ways. But my form is ever changing. I exist in nothing. I am everywhere. I can reach out and touch you because I manipulate matter that way. I can also stop manipulating and just exist as stardust. If I become the void, I will cease to exist as you know it, but I will still exist.”

“You would really do that?” I ask, touched by his dedication. “What about the city? Don’t you need to draw cards and decide people’s fate? Eventually Tuoni will get that back up and running.”

“All of Tuonela needs an overhaul,” my mother says. “It has been a long time coming. It is why Kaaos had to happen in the first place.” She pauses, tilting her head at me. “This is what occupies Tuoni’s thoughts, as well as the loss of his son. But if you reverse Oblivion and the Universe becomes the void, letting only the good ones out, and keeping the bad ones in, then Tuoni will have more time to think about what this realm really needs. He’ll have his son back.”

“When I tell Tuoni of the news, he will be relieved,” the Magician says. “Of course, because it means Tuonen is back, and Tapio, Ahto, Kalma, and the others that have been lost over the years. But also because there will be a new system. The newly dead won’t be sorted into three layers of the afterlife. They will either be here, in Tuonela, or in the void where I hold them prisoner.”

I think about that for a moment. If there’s no city, then everyone would just populate Tuonela like normal people would populate a land. They would live in the Frozen Void, or the Hiisi Forest. Build a houseboat community in the Great Inland Sea. Old people could turn the Liekkiö Plains into the next Palm Springs, complete with subdivisions and a golf course. Just give them all fire extinguishers for the occasional attack from flaming demon children.

It would take care of the problem that Lovia, and Tuonen, had before everything went to shit. They didn’t want to spend their lives ferrying the dead. But if now all they have to do is cross the River of Shadows to the other side and drop them off to start a new life…they could even build a bridge. Tuonen would be so happy, if he were alive.

“Tuonen will come back,” the Magician says, reading me. “If you use up the rest of your power to turn the tide, then I will become the eternal judgement of the void.”

“I’m sorry it has to come to this, Hanna,” my mother says. She sounds about as sorry as she ever will, but that’s not saying a lot. “It is a loss.”

“I don’t mind giving up my power,” I tell her honestly. “It’s not a sacrifice. I’m not a warrior princess like Lovia. I don’t see the need to have the ability to blast people and set them on fire in my day to day life.”

Knock on wood.

“You might not lose all of it, either,” she adds. “You might always have a touch of it embedded in you.”

So I might end up being a glorified night light after all.

“Okay,” I say, a wave of anxiety rushing over me. “So how do we do this? Is this going to hurt?”

“It won’t hurt,” she says.

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