The Raven and the Reindeer

by T. Kingfisher

Kay. Right. Him. Right.

“He says…You must walk the reindeer road, if you are going to the farthest North.

“But to cut off his skin and wear it?” Gerta felt ill. She could imagine how the inside of the skin would feel. Raw and bloody and squishy. I’d be inside a horrible bloody tent.

“He wants his skin to lie somewhere cold, where a reindeer can be comfortable for more than one season a year. He will be a spirit, but even a spirit likes to know that his old home is well-cared for.”

Taggen?”

“A boorish young bastard that my father left in charge. I might possibly have killed him.

“It’s surprisingly hard to fool very stupid people.”

“It will be well,” translated Mousebones. “Strike, human, and cut the frost from my heart at last.”

helped Janna skin the reindeer who had been her friend.

She was still cold, but the hide was warm. It wrapped around her like love, like her grandmother hugging her, and then she was warm and everything was warm and something happened to her spine and her legs and she gasped in surprise and it came out as Hwufff!

Gerta stood still while the other girl draped the harness over her shoulders. It didn’t hurt. It felt normal.

Gerta, human, would have panicked. Gerta, reindeer, knew that she had to run, that running was the only way, but the human bit of her mind fought—I can’t run, if I run I’ll leave Janna, what do I do?

Janna flung her arms around Gerta’s neck and put a leg over her back. She was heavy but the great reindeer heart in Gerta’s chest beat and the muscles in her hindquarters pushed and then it was easy, ridiculously easy, and she lowered her head and ran, as fast as her legs would carry her.

She has to ride, thought Gerta, or else it will take years to get where we are going.

Underneath it, the threads wove together, until Gerta was running on a long white braid of light.

strangely effortless, as if the road was pulling her along

Sight was the last sense to waken, but when it did she turned her head and saw them: the sea of antlers, the white backs, the ones who walked the reindeer road.

Parts of her that were born lonely, as all humans are born lonely, were suddenly gathered up and loved and made one with the herd.

There was a fine glowing thread that was slightly different from the others. She had been following it for some time without quite realizing it.

“A shortcut, maybe. Like a tunnel carved by the dreams of reindeer.”

this reindeer? This is actually a pretty little blond girl who turned up on my doorstep with a story about the Snow Queen.”

One of the houses was wrapped tightly with the threads, and there was a woman standing in front of it. “Well!” she said. “Took you long enough!”

“Are you a witch?” asked Janna. “No,” said the old woman, “I’m a Lutheran. But we’ll make do. My name’s Livli. Bring your friend inside.”

“A wood beetle told me, and an owl, and the track of snow geese against the sky. I knew something was coming.”

Gran Aischa said to find Livli. This is Livli. Coincidence? No, surely not. I must have been following some thread as a reindeer, looking…

“And here you are, and a ridiculous story the raven’s told me.

“Sápmi,”

Livli, the old woman, she’s Sámi.”

Stay in it too long, and you likely won’t want to come out again.

“The Snow Queen’s land is north of here. North and east and north again. If you can reach it in any fashion at all, it will be by the reindeer road.”

And people who really live in their own flesh and know it and love it make lousy shapechangers.”

“You’ll need a sled,” said Livli, passing over the awkwardness. “It will be much easier than riding. Gerta can pull it, but Janna, you’ll have to take her out every night. Both the harness and the hide.”

“You must not let her sleep as a reindeer,”

I don’t say that she can’t come back—there are stories of people who have come back from years in wolf skin, but they aren’t right afterwards, not by a long stretch.”

I’ll tell them I traded it to a smashing young man in return for

a night of passion. It’ll do my reputation no end of good.”

“What the raven said. Bury it,” Livli

Jábmiidáhkká lives under my feet.

Gerta, let’s get this harness on you and see if you can pull a sled.”

Gerta threw her shoulders into it and her haunches and the sled slid over the snow-slick ground and it was all so easy.

“Nothing is stronger than winter. I don’t know about clever, though.”

There was no paying for the aid they had gotten, but for the sled, one could at least give a good price.

The generosity of the reindeer to a human in their midst—and a human in their skin—should not have surprised her, and yet it did.

(Did she want to be tumbled? What would that involve, exactly? It seemed like a bad time to ask.)

I’m strapping you up in harnesses in the morning and cutting your throat at night.

“Humans,” said Mousebones, with deep disgust. “You can’t even figure out how to mate properly.”

Five days of walking on the reindeer road, surrounded by ghosts, and five nights of being cut alive from the hide. Five nights of lying next to Janna in the dark and dreaming of the plants that slept beneath the snow.

They had come, at last, to the fortress of the Snow Queen. And Gerta had not the slightest idea how they were going to get in.

“Sorry, Mousebones. I’m an idiot. Can you find us a way in?”

“Women who run bandit troops have to be twice as smart and three times as vicious.