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“I broke it,” it said simply. Gerta’s jaw dropped. “You talk…” she said. “So do you,” said the raven. “Kudos all around. We are talking beings. Auurk.”
“You haven’t a drop in you. There’s magic coating you like frost on a tree branch, that’s all.”
“Being able to talk to ravens is a sensible magic.
“I am the Sound of Mouse Bones Crunching Under the Hooves of God.”
“Hugin and Munin,” she said, looking straight ahead at the road, “the ravens who sit on Odin’s shoulders, have names five letters long. Same as Gerta. They manage.”
“Are you a he-raven or a she-raven?” “I am a raven,” said Mousebones, “and the rest is none of your business, as we’ll not be having eggs together.”
“Well, obviously. You’d want a friend to do it, wouldn’t you?” Mousebones groomed a snowflake off her hair. “And it’s not like you’d be using them.”
Kay is alive. I just saw him. If I am a wretched, filthy creature, so be it. I don’t have be anything else. I just have to get to Kay. Kay deserves better than me, but I’m all there is.
“Compared to her, I’m a raven. And ravens do not bow to gods or men or giants.”
“Humans! Aurk! No pleasing you. Grow feathers, why don’t you?”
Or at least very long winters. When you don’t have much else to
do, you might as well carve things…
The old woman cackled, a really good cackle, the sort that you can only get if you are over the age of eighty and know how to drink.
“I’m the storyteller,” said the old woman. “Gran Aischa.
“Ebba!
Your advisor, the raven, has told you all the wisdom in the world.”
“People will believe anything if you add enough details they like,” said Gran Aischa. “It’s a good story. Thank you for bringing it to me.” She reached out with her mug and clinked it against Gerta’s. “Although,” she added, taking a long slug of her drink, “I won’t swear that I won’t add to it, if it’s early in the evening. A comic case of mistaken identity, say, or three tasks, or a riddle game.” She glanced up at Mousebones. “Ravens and riddle games go well together, I always thought.” “It’s true,” said Mousebones, wiping his beak on Gerta’s hair. “I know lots of riddles, and not just the
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“Let him go.
“She doesn’t take the unwilling. He had to climb into her sledge himself.” “I’m sure she enchanted him somehow—he wouldn’t have—”
“Oh, eventually. She’ll give him kisses—and more than kisses—and all that ice will work its way to his heart. But he’ll never feel a thing.”
“Your sweetheart’s gone, same as if he’d died of a fever. Running after him won’t help.”
“That one lives farther north than north, and you won’t get there on a human road. You’ll need to find another way.”
I think she was a spirit born of ice and she steals away human children. Cut from the same cloth as the Fair Folk, anyway.”
tonttu, the spirits of the house and the sauna,
If you walk all the way to Sápmi on this road, look for a woman named Livli.
large man stepped out from behind a tree and grabbed Gerta around the waist.
“She was nosin’ around. Looked to walk right in here.” “So you decided to make absolutely sure she found us. How useful.”
slightly, suddenly wary. “Do we know each other?” “From my dream,”
“Wood-pigeons,” said the girl slowly. “Yes. I keep wood-pigeons.”
“Come with me. My name is Janna, and I suppose you’re my prisoner now.”
I didn’t
think that a human could be kind to a raven and cruel to another human.”
Someone very old, thought Gerta. A woman, I think, but very old. Older than Grandmother. Maybe older than Gran Aischa, too.
“We’re bandits, not cannibals.”
“The pigeon coop,” said Janna. “You go up the hatch and it’s right there.
In the end, she told the bandit-girl everything.
She’ll suck the marrow out of your bones and fill the holes with frost.”
She controls the frost, or the frost controls her, or they’re the same thing. They
“The devil took her heart and turned it cold.
She keeps them in her palace in the farthest north, they say, all the pretty boys like frozen flowers.”
Cold, cannibals, witches…it’s all the same…
reindeer.
“Frozen,” said the other girl grimly. “Right on the perches. Oh, damn. I thought it would be warm enough.
The Snow Queen passed over, and froze them.
Janna kissed her. Gerta’s eyes went very wide. But girls don’t—not with other girls—
They broke apart and Gerta gasped for air. Janna chuckled.
She’s the one who did it! I don’t know why I’m the one who’s embarrassed! Because you enjoyed it, and you weren’t thinking about Kay at all, said a traitorous part of her mind.
A kiss like Janna’s could have brought back the dead. Corpses three days old would hop off the pyre if someone kissed them like that.
Janna propped herself up on one elbow and kissed her again.
“you could get into a great deal more trouble with me.”
