“Janey Mack, are those what I think they are?” Aoife points to the weird teardrop-shaped fruit dangling from the branches.

They appear to be seedpods or some sort of insect nests, cocoons even—until they move. That’s when I realize a dozen eyeballs are hanging from the frozen trees, and they’re all looking right at me.

22

The eyes are blue and brown, gray, green, black, and even red. Some have ordinary round pupils, others have vertical slits like a reptile’s, while several have shapes I can’t name—shapes no creature in the real world have, that’s for sure.

“Why are they looking at me?” I whisper.

“Because you don’t belong here,” Toivo says, a jerk in any world it seems. “You’re the only one without magic. I guess this place can sense it.”

Morgan bumps his shoulder against mine and shakes his head. “Ignore it. He’s just scared.”

“I’m fine.” I am most definitely not fine. Scared is an understatement. The eyes keep blinking at me in a weirdly synchronized pattern, as if opening and closing according to a metronome only they can hear. Eyes, hearing? I am losing my mind.

“Why does this feel so different?” I ask out loud, not really expecting an answer. “At the other tonttukivi, the woodland seemed friendly. It didn’t feel this—”

“Hostile?” Morgan raises a middle finger at a particularly glaring pair of eyeballs.

“Each tonttukivi is connected to a different hiisi.” Toivo comes up beside me. “They’re not all friendly, you know.” He takes the lead from Aoife, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.

“So, the mage uses the kids to open the stones, why not just leave them then?” Aoife asks as we continue our trudge.

“They’re collecting the shards of the Sampo,” I say. “It’s a powerful artifact—”

“I know what it is,” Aoife says. “I just don’t understand why it’s in pieces or why the mage needs my sister.”

Toivo starts answering before I can. “The Sampo was too dangerous to keep in the vault on Svalbard. After Mervi, our ancestor, broke it, she hid the pieces at several magical locations around Finland.”

“Why not just destroy it?” Aoife asks.

“She tried.” Toivo sighs. “It couldn’t be done. The shards were kept locked away by forest creatures, protected by numerous layers of powerful spells. Spells not even a chaos mage could break, unless…”

“Unless what?” Aoife grips Toivo’s sleeve, spinning him around to face her.

All the eyes open wide, and an army of chills stomp down my spine.

“Unless, the chaos mage absorbed enough raw elemental energy, then they might be able to break the spells. Once they have all the shards, they could put the Sampo back together,” Toivo says.