The Lady of Snow and Sorrow - 13. The Choice of Hel
From one angle, the palace resembled an agglomeration of giant snow crystals. From another one, it looked like an intricate skeleton of some immense prehistoric radiolaria. No one could say how vast the palace was. It seemed to be have been carved for many centuries in the body of an ancient glacier. Carved not out of practical need, but out of the infinite search for perfection. In some places the ice formed a kind of finest lace: back at home one could only do a work like this with some cut-edge laser knife. To be more precise, many people would need many knives.
Jukka cautiously entered a high narrow gate, pulled off his right glove and touched the wall, the purest ice. Thousands, perhaps, millions of tons. A seemingly endless enfilade before him, lit up by white glowing cubes in the air with no living creatures around and no signs of their presence. At this moment, Wintersun's bass guitarist would even be happy to run into a Troll: the stillness of this place was hard to stand.
The deeper he penetrated the halls of Hell, the colder it was getting. No more did Jukka have his skiing jacket on, so, his teeth were incessantly clattering, and if he had touched a wall, he would have left the skin of his palm on it. He felt like his nose was going to fall off and break into dozens of tiny pieces. Gosh, Jukka had never experienced such bitter frost before! With this kind of security, monsters like Garm seemed unnecessary.
He still heard nothing but low droning sound coming from the gloomy depth of the palace, but as long as he strode between two rows of high slender columns, the noise was becoming louder and gradually was growing into a rattle.
“It's not buzzing in the ears after that bloody explosion,” he understood. “I really hear this!”
He felt a great urge to run towards the source of rattle, but the icy floor, flat and glassy like a mirror, was so slippery, that Jukka chose to slide on it the way he did in childhood. Falling down and rising again, he felt that the rattle was accompanied by vibration which ran through the air, the floor and the walls.
“Kai!” Jukka said aloud, recognizing the familiar sensation. “Kai! Where are you, old chap?” he called once again, his eyes watery and aching. Jari's blood on the snow and the greedy abyss that had taken Teemu flashed in his brain. Jukka had no right to lose one more of his bandmates. Not the last of them...
Jukka coughed hard: the cold was reminding of itself once again. And the sound was so fucking strange for this place, so imperfect! When the echo of his coughing faded at last and he could hear the drums clearly again, the bassist let his ears guide him through the gleaming labyrinth of empty halls, each of them decorated with a unique fractal pattern.
“Where are you, Kai?” he cried one more time. No reply followed – just drumming at a head-spinning speed, a pure rhythm for the melody Jukka could not hear, but Jari could have surely imagined, if he had survived. Besides, both the “guitar heroes”(as Jukka sometimes called them), would've been amazed by the pitch of these halls., for it was far much better than in any concert hall in the human world.
And here both of them were – at one of the numerous bas-reliefs cut in the translucent walls. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the stage, as usual, their guitars on their right knees, strands of long hair waved by the wind. One who created this thing precisely captured the broad smiles of excitement they always exchanged during concerts.
“Don't even think, or despair will crush you dead,” Jukka told himself, exhaling warm air on his freezing hands. The columns of the last hall seemed filled with concentrated starlight. There was nothing here but enormous drum kit any drummer would sell his soul for. Behind the numerous drums and Jukka saw Kai and rushed towards the older man with a cry of joy.
Kai was dressed in the clothes he had worn at that bloody rehearsal, and Jukka wondered how the drummer managed to survive here for such a long time. Another discovery that nearly killed the bassist was the fact that Kai would not recognize him. The drummer just stared through his bandmate, oblivious of his presence altogether, and would not stop playing. His face was still, his eyes were cold and empty.
“Man, will you wake the fuck up? Do you hear me in the first place?..” - Jukka yelled, shuddering at his own loud and strange echo. “You need to leave is goddamn place or you will die! And me as well!”
No reply followed.
“Kai, what on Earth has this monster woman done?..”
He could wait no more. He intended to go round the drum set and pull Kai from there by force. But at this very moment he heard a female voice, deep and chilly.
“You've come to take something from me, haven't you?”
Jukka turned around and fell on his knees, overwhelmed and panting from the tension that filled the spacious room within a second. There she stood – much taller now than any mortal man or woman, her face and hair white as if made of marble. The left side of her face and body was skeletal, the eye-socket empty. The dress that she was wearing seemed woven of moonlight.
“Queen Hel, Lady of Snow and Sorrow,” Jukka whispered. “You've taken my brother, and I beg you to grant him freedom.”
“I haven't seized him by force. And I'm not holding him prisoner either,” she replied calmly. “But he will not want to go with you, because now he belongs to this place.”
“What do you mean?..”
“His eyes and heart are lumps of ice. He won't be able to live among you. Like that, he's dangerous for you as well as for his wife and kids.”
“A punishment too cruel for that joke of his...” Jukka said.
“Silly human! Do you really think a petty joke may offend a goddess that much? Am I one of your crazy fangirls or what?.. I was aiming at this Jari of yours, but the bastard was moving around the stage too rapidly, leaning towards the second one every now and then...” now she looked furious and, consequently, more human.
“You missed?..”
“Exactly.”
Jukka gave a bitter dry laugh.
“You wanted Jari to write music for you. And when bored, you'd make him one of your snow phantoms, right?..” he asked through his clenched teeth.
“Right about my aim and wrong about the phantoms... I doubt he and his songs would ever bore me. Time is something different for us, my boy. But even if that happened he would definitely have a different fate... I would never do that kind of thing to someone so magnificent.”
“I can't understand... You seem to have loved Jari so much, yet you allowed Garm get him...”
“Everyone who attempts to enter Helheim while not being dead should fight the Guardian first. That's the Rule. If you want to know, I determined neither the choice of Garm, nor the choice of Jari who stepped between you two.”
Jukka wiped away tears and looked straight into her one and only eye.
“Let's return to Kai. He does not play the guitar. He's not so gorgeous at singing. But I can play this thing,” Jukka took the guitar off his shoulder. “And people say they'd like to hear more of my voice.”
This was true. Jukka's voice was deep and beautiful, though not so strong as Jari's one. And the fans often asked the bassist to let them hear more than just back vocals.
“So, will you accept me and let Kai go?..”
A curious smile flickered on Hel's mouth. She obviously found self-sacrifice the most romantic and beautiful thing on the Earth. After snow and sorrow, of course.
“I'm unable to remove the ice, Jukka. He won't be the same even if he returns. But if you succeed somehow, I'll accept your proposal.”
Once more, Jukka gazed at the zombie-like shape raging by the drums. He hated to see his bandmate like this. If even Hel had no power to bring Kai back from the undead, it was up to the bassist to make the final step. He opened the guitar case and stepped towards his friend who carried on sending vibrations through the palace. He carefully touched the drummer's forehead, but the older man did not react.
Once again, Jukka breathed at his hands to warm them. They were shaking. His throat was sore, his lips dry and bitten to the blood. He only could count for his own resolution. Suddenly, he felt warmth by both his sides, as if the two Wintersun guitarists were here, alive and sending forth their heat. Perhaps, it was nothing but an illusion, but now the bass guitarist was feeling much more confident and regaining spirits. He caressed the strings with the thumb and then took some chords to check the sound.
Hel, obviously tired of Kai's incessant (though perfect) drumming and curious to hear Jukka sing, snapped her fingers, making the drumkit go to dust. For several seconds poor Kai was looking around for his precious drums and then froze peering into nothingness, as Jukka started playing the last part of his favorite song of Wintersun, guided by nothing but his own memory. More than once he had played the guitarists' parts at home, by himself, the same with the vocals. His voice, faint at first, was getting stronger with each second, though tears were streaming down his long-unshaven cheeks. The reason and the whole being of the bass guitarist were dissolving in Jari's melody.
We are the Sons of Winter and Stars
We ́ve come from a far beyond time
Forever the fire burns in our hearts
Our world shall never die
In the arms of the wind we ride till dawn
As the waves of the ocean grind so strong
We wander in the stars until we ́re gone
Our fate is sealed by eternal sun
Until we fade away - Fate will find it ́s way
Until we drift into the dark...
As Jukka sang, he didn't notice the Runes carved by Jari on the guitar regain their warm sunny glow which suddenly made Kai blink. And blink once more. When Jukka passed to “The Land of Snow and Sorrow”, the drummer's skin wasn't ashen any more, and his eyes were again alive, warm and curious.
When Jukka sang the first “Sorrow is all I feel,” he rose his eyes at Kai and met the drummers gaze, intense and surprised. The older man rose clumsily from his seat and walked to embrace his friend.
“So, the concert's over yet?.. Seems like I've fallen asleep by the drums... But there are no drums... How much did we drink, man?” he sounded like someone woken up in the night amidst a very absorbing dream.
“Kai?” Jukka could not believe his own ears. “Are you all right?”
“My head is swimming, if you wanna know” Kai complained. “But your singing, I love it. You should record something by yourself, man. I don't believe Jari will be that mad. By the way, where is he?”
“He and Teemu... They are gone,” Jukka exhaled.
“Of course, they are!” Kai laughed, thinking that the guitarists either got badly drunk or went to Jari's summer residence by the lake.
Jukka didn't dare to tell him the truth. Later. Later...
“Gosh! I don't remember the place! Are we still in St.Petersburg? And what on Earth have you done to this lady?” asked, nodding at Hel, who now looked like an ordinary Albino girl and wept bitterly, a grimace of pain on her dainty face.
“I don't need your help, boys! For Hell's sake – get off and never return again!.. Jukka, this concerns you too! I don't like your voice at all, man, so just leave me the guitar and move your ass out of here!”
She dropped her head into her hands and started crying aloud: this was the last thing one could expect from the goddess of winter and death, Snow Queen or Frau Holle, how the Germans used to call her in the past. Jukka carefully put the guitar on her knees in a gesture of consolation.
“You! To the left! Don't turn anywhere!” she commanded, and these were the last words Jukka had ever heard from her. He took the drummer by the sleeve and urged him to run. The floor under their feet suddenly became rough and not slippery at all. This was just on time: the walls of the palace were already shaking – perhaps, reacting to Hel's emotion, so the bandmates had to run as fast as they could.
“What about her?” Kai exclaimed, as the bassist was pulling him away from the hall.
“She's using another exit, man! She'll be all right, I promise!” Jukka replied. “Just go and never look back!”
They bolted through the gate surprisingly soon towards a fiery sunrise which cut into their eyes. Kai, who had spent so many days in the semi-darkness, hurried to hide his face. Jukka looked around but saw neither snow nor any traces of Jari's body. The remains of the faithful white wolf were not here either. The nature has never looked so sweet and peaceful to both bandmates, and it was summer again – a warm, glorious summer!