The Raven and the Reindeer

by T. Kingfisher

Once upon a time, there was a boy born with frost in his eyes and frost in his heart.

There are not many stories about this sort of thing. There ought to be more. Perhaps if there were, the Gertas of the world would learn to recognize it. Perhaps not. It is hard to see a story when you are standing in the middle of it.

On cold days, the stove would be on and there would usually be something delicious on it—lingonberry juice or mulled cider or a plate of gingerbread.

How perfect to read this during the holidays!

“I like the world better when it’s snowed. You can’t see all the ugly bits. It’s all pure white.”

She thought, I bet he doesn’t say things like that to the other boys. That’s the part of himself he only shows to me. That’s the important bit. Which only goes to show that you can be both right and completely wrong, all at the same time.

In the old days, Gerta knew, people used to write questions on reindeer bones and throw them into bonfires. The way the bones cracked told you the answers. I wish I had a bonfire. And a reindeer skeleton. Hard luck for the reindeer, though. I’d want it to be a very old reindeer who died peacefully.

“Who’s the Snow Queen?” asked Kay. “The queen of all this,” said Gerta’s grandmother. “The mistress of ice. She has a palace as far north as north. She rides in a sleigh made of ice and pulled by great white bears who used to be men.” (Gerta’s grandmother knew how a story ought to be told, even if she wasn’t always sure how much yarn went into a sock.)

“How did they turn into bears?” asked Gerta. “The Snow Queen enchanted them,” said her grandmother. “She’s Circe’s cold cousin, always turning men into other beasts. Not pigs, though. She likes bears and seals and wolves and all the creatures of ice.”

Because she was dreaming, she did not question that the sleigh was pulled by snow-white otters. They slipped and slithered down the slant of the roof, sliding over each other, a river of white fur and black eyes and arched white whiskers. Gerda kept expecting the traces to get tangled, but somehow the sled kept moving forward. At the edge of the roof, the sleigh stopped. The otters pulled up, chuckling and chirping to each other in liquid voices. They were larger than any otters that Gerda had ever seen. They had pale blue bridles with silver bells and their webbed feet moved across the snow like snowshoes. Gerta was so fascinated by the otters that she hadn’t looked at the sled at all. She tore her eyes away from them with reluctance.

Gerta, who had been highly delighted by the sleigh and the otters, felt the first chill. The woman was very tall and very slim. Her face was as angular as a fox and her hair was white, yet somehow she did not look old. She sat in the sled with her hands on the reins and looked around, and the world seemed to change as she gazed down at it. The buildings and the streets became small and shabby. The town looked old and grimy. Gerta, who loved her town, caught her breath at the injustice of it, because nothing about the town had changed, it was only that the woman in the sleigh was so far above it all.

Only the snow remained clean and white, still glowing in the moonlight. The woman in the sleigh did not look at the moon, and some small, wise part of Gerta thought, I bet she can’t. It doesn’t change if you look at it. No matter how pale and pure and perfect you are, the moon is even more perfect.

But this was a dream and dreams are the sisters of nightmares.

“Is the Snow Queen real?” asked Gerta. Her grandmother looked at her for a moment as if she could not understand the question. After a moment, she said “I suppose she’s real enough. Stranger things have walked the earth and left stories behind them.”

“In all the old stories, the only thing that ever won was love. And occasionally a good sharp knife.”

It’s for Kay, she told herself. It’s all worth it for Kay. Kay seemed very far away. I will tell him all about this. He’ll be very impressed. He’ll say, “Oh, Gerta, how you’ve suffered for me…” She engaged in this fantasy for a few moments, and then sighed. She was fundamentally honest, even with herself. Kay would look at her and say “You walked through the woods and it was cold? That’s your great suffering?” “It was scary,” she would say. “And I had a blister.” Gerta could actually hear in her head how “I had a blister” would hang in the air between them. She flushed a little, at the sheer stupidity of the thing she hadn’t actually said yet.

The Snow Queen could be days and days north of here. She probably is days and days north of here. I’ll have to walk the whole way, and there won’t be farmhouses for most of it. I’ll have to sleep in the woods. And make camp. And build fires. She took a deep breath. She knew how to build a fire in a stove. Presumably it wasn’t that much different from building a fire on the ground. Making camp…well…that was something else again. Her grandmother had taught her any number of things, like embroidery and spinning and plain sewing and some basic knitting. She had started to teach her how to use the great loom that stood in the corner, so that someday Gerta could earn her living as a weaver, if she didn’t marry, or if she outlived her husband as her grandmother had done. And Gerta could cook on a stove and clean nearly anything. All good, useful skills. She’d make someone a fine wife some day. Everybody said so. Making someone a fine wife had not included learning how to sleep in the woods without freezing or getting soaked. This struck Gerta as an enormous and unexpected gap in her education.

This is stupid. This isn’t suffering. I don’t get to feel bad about this. Feeling bad about feeling bad was not significantly better than feeling bad in the first place.

Gerta’s desire to be useful was an open road down which nearly any magic could walk.

The plants did not like it. A witch’s garden gains a sense of itself before long, drinking magic in with the mulch and the rain. They knew that Gerta was looking for someone and they knew by their roots that he was not down under the earth, down among the dead. But to plants, most humans look alike, and so the dreams they sent Gerta ranged far afield, in distance and in time, based on some unknown vegetative logic. From the grapevines came a vision of a girl a little older than she was, with dark amber skin and thick black curls. She wore a bright scarf and a half-dozen wood pigeons moved around her, cooing to one another. Gerta thought she had an interesting face, and would have liked to know her better. The rowan tree at the end of the garden sent her a dream of a heron standing at the edge of a lake. A man approached in ragged finery, and the heron turned and bowed like a courtier to a king. The apple tree, as autumn approached and the small green apples swelled on the stems, sent her dreams of a child with hair as white as bone and eyebrows that stood out like scars. Gerta could not tell if the child was male or female, but she knew that she was looking for someone else, and the dream of apple leaves dissolved. She did not know what to make of the dream sent to her by the bindweed, of three white foxes having tea together, drinking from delicate lacquer teacups—and likely no human would have known what to think of the vision brought by the reeds, of golden fish spe...

“You can’t leave now,” said Helga. “It’s coming on winter. She’ll be at the height of her power, if you even reach her, traveling in the snow. Come inside. You can go in spring…” Gerta stared at her. Did she really think that Gerta would go back in the house? Does she think I’m stupid enough to trust her again? “Are you mad?” she asked. “Do you think after all this—Are you mad?” “I was keeping you safe!” “I don’t need to be safe!” Gerta could feel herself getting mad, but surely it was all right to be mad now, surely this, of all things, one could be mad about.

“The Snow Queen will kill you,” said Helga. “She’ll reach into your heart and you’ll feel like the lowest thing in the world. You’ll kill yourself just to get away from being yourself.”

A few fields had a single tall tree in the middle, but not many. Her grandmother had said that such trees were sacred to Ukko, but perhaps no one cared about that any longer.

It was strangely pleasant to have company that was not a human who might ask inconvenient questions.

Ravens have spoken since Odin brought us to sit on his shoulders. My great-grandmother rode on the Morrigan’s battle-harness. It is not our fault that humans are usually too cloddish to understand.”

“Then why can I understand you?” The raven made a very derisive squawking noise. “I’m not doing anything,” it said. “If you can hear me talk, it’s all on you.” “Are you saying I’m doing something magical?” asked Gerta, baffled. The raven turned its head to one side, then the other, fixing her with each eye in turn. “No,” it said finally. “You haven’t a drop in you. There’s magic coating you like frost on a tree branch, that’s all.”

“Do you have a name?” asked Gerta. “I do,” said the raven. Gerta waited. The raven fluffed its beard. “I am the Sound of Mouse Bones Crunching Under the Hooves of God.” Gerta blinked a few times. “That’s…quite a name.” “I made it myself,” said the raven, preening. “I stole the very shiniest words and hoarded them all up until they made something worth having. Sound and God were particularly well-guarded. Crunching I found in a squirrel nest, though.” “May I call you Mousebones?”

“Mine’s Gerta,” said Gerta. “There’s your problem right there,” said Mousebones. “Much too short and not enough in it. I don’t know how you expect to become anything more than you are with a name like that.” Gerta put the bread and cheese away. The smell of snow was stronger, and she needed to move quickly if she wanted to find shelter by nightfall. “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.” “Aurk! Aurk! Aurk!” laughed the raven. “Oh, aurk! Not bad for a fledgling human, not bad.

Her grandmother had been a good Christian, as everyone in Gerta’s village was, but she loved a story and so Gerta had grown up on tales of Thor and Loki and Sampson and Martin Luther all tangled together like rumpled knitting.

“No magic,” said Mousebones. “When it’s that strong, being unmagical is a thing itself. Like being a white raven. White ravens aren’t really white, they’re just an absence of black. But they’re very good at it.”

“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.”

If the snow had been deeper, she would have been in better spirits. Every child in the village knew how to build a snow cave and hunker down in it—it was one of the things you learned about winter, like throwing yourself flat on ice that started to crack, like watching out for icicles that might fall off the eaves and drive themselves into your skull.

The Snow Queen heard, though, and as the sled ran past, she turned her head. Her single glance fell over Gerta like a blow. —mewling, red-faced, mortal, stinking of sweat— Gerta staggered and went to one knee under the weight of her own uselessness. The Snow Queen’s gaze flicked away. Gerta gasped for air, feeling the cold stab her lungs, and what did it matter, none of it mattered, she should lie down and die the snow was clean and she was filthy but if it covered her over no one would see what a wretched creature she was and that was the best that she could ever hope for. “No,” said Gerta. She had to bite the word and spit it out. “No. I can’t die now. Someone needs to help Kay.” 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.

“And when she did, you didn’t…you didn’t feel…” She paused, trying to find the words. “Dirty,” she said finally, feeling even more wretched for not being able to describe it. “Mortal. Awful, compared to her.” “Aur-k,” said Mousebones. “Compared to her, I’m a raven. And ravens do not bow to gods or men or giants.” He lifted his head proudly, and Gerta felt even worse. She was not a raven. A little cat-sized bundle of feathers and bone could stand before the Snow Queen and she could not. She trudged on in silence.

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.

“No one wants true stories. They want stories with truth dusted over them, like sugar on a bun.” She cackled again. “But tell me a little bit of yours anyway.”

“That one lives farther north than north, and you won’t get there on a human road. You’ll need to find another way.” Her eyes rested on Mousebones for a moment. “Still, walking north with a raven on your shoulder is a good start. Keep your eyes closed and your heart open. The way will open, or it won’t. You’ll know if it doesn’t, if you come at last to the sea.”

“Creatures of the south,” said Gran Aischa. “They live a little outside the world and steal people from our world into theirs. When the plagues came so long ago, most of the people died, but I imagine the Fair Folk lived.” She took another drink. “I won’t get to the great port again in my lifetime, or I’d ask a trader there if they still put out milk for the fairies. I’d be surprised if they didn’t.” She leaned forward and poked a withered finger at Gerta. “Not like us. The tonttu were never as cruel as the Fair Folk.” Gerta nodded politely. The old storyteller was rambling now, and Gerta wasn’t sure if there was much more sense to be gotten from her. Her grandmother had put out hot oatmeal for the tonttu, the spirits of the house and the sauna, but those little household magics were a long way from the Snow Queen.

“I’m sorry,” said the bird. “And we ravens don’t apologize often, so please make a note of it. She helped my wing so I thought she’d help you. I didn’t think that a human could be kind to a raven and cruel to another human.”

Gerta dreamed that night of rowan trees, of long roots that twined around her. The rowans, too, were dreaming under the blanket of snow. Squirrels scratched around the base of the trees and woodpeckers were tucked into holes drilled into the heartwood. The trees dreamed of these things, of the movement of carpenter worms in wood and the caterpillars sleeping in hollowed out twigs.

My soul will go on to the herd of stars, and then when I am tired of stars, into the young calves that sleep in their mother’s bellies. I will die soon anyway. Let me give you a gift, for kindness’s sake.”

But her grandmother had said once, “It’s surprisingly hard to fool very stupid people.”

“Here,” he said, through Mousebones. “Here is a good place. If my bones lie here, I will not mind the heat.” The snow here lay over thickets of waxy-leaved evergreen shrubs. A rowan tree, limbs bare, stood among the firs. A human would have overlooked it, but perhaps a deer might find it beautiful.

It seemed to Gerta that some of the road-threads were plaiting themselves together oddly. The moon was rising, haloed by frost. Underneath it, the threads wove together, until Gerta was running on a long white braid of light.

The smell of other reindeer had grown stronger. She could make out individuals now—calf and cow, bull and matriarch. The echoes of their clicking hooves rang in her ears. When the first one touched her, shoulder to shoulder, she was neither surprised nor frightened. Of course, of course, there they are, here we are, we are running… 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. She was part of a herd and the herd was around her. She was not alone. While she was with the herd, she would never be alone. 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 were few human souls who could have stood against that. Surrounded by the ghosts of reindeer, Gerta lowered her head and ran on, through the glowing threads of light.

Janna interrupted her thoughts by asking, “What if I wear the skin instead?” “Can’t,” said Livli. “Oh, I’m sure you’d try, don’t get me wrong. But you’re too set in your own skin. You’re a healthy young animal and you know it. And people who really live in their own flesh and know it and love it make lousy shapechangers.”

Livli shook her head. “Some people don’t. Their bodies carry them around, but they don’t live in them quite the same way.” She leaned over and patted Gerta’s hand. “Don’t look so stricken, dear. It’s not a personal failing.

“But I am weak-willed,” said Gerta glumly. “If I wasn’t, the witch would never have caught me.” Livli shook her head. “You may be or not be, but it’s no bearing on the matter. Being an empty vessel, magic will always take you very hard, I think, and leave something of itself behind for a time, like dregs at the bottom. But at the same time, it can’t really get at the core of you. You can be filled up and emptied out, but the pot does not become its contents.

“If nothing else,” said Livli, “it was a gift to her, and gifts given freely are a bit less likely to turn bad on you. It’s a thin bit of luck, but there you are.”

Livli reached out and tapped the bandit girl’s knee. “I am not trying to be unkind here. This is not a Sámi thing. We don’t take our skins off any more often than anybody else. Less often than some, if you believe all the stories of wolf-skin walkers from the south. There are stories of noaidi from long ago turning into birds, to lure flocks north to Sápmi, but those are only stories. I’m in the dark nearly as much as you.”

We are so far beyond what is normal here, there are no words. My grandmother never told me any stories about this. Kay and I… She looked down at Janna’s dark fingers laced with her own pale ones. She could not think of anything that she and Kay had ever done that had mattered half so much or had been even half so strange.