The Raven and the Reindeer

by T. Kingfisher

They entered yet another hallway. This one was reflective ice, and made a vast, distorted mirror of the walls. Ur became three giant white otters, weaseling along in unison. Gerta looked at her own reflection and recoiled. “Oh…” she said softly. It was stupid. She had not worried what she looked like for many days now. It did not matter. She only needed to find Kay. But the girl in the mirror was a wild, ragged thing, her hair straggling under the fur cap that Livli had given her. There were dark circles under her eyes and smears of dirt. The reindeer hide hung lumpy and bunched and the dead head lolled behind her. She could not think for a moment, what the pattern on the front of her tunic was, and then she realized that it was long rivulets of dried blood, where the cuts on her neck had dripped and healed and dripped again. She thought, No wonder Janna does not want me right now. I look like a madwoman. Oh, I am being so stupid! I should not care. We are going to face a great enemy. It doesn’t matter what my hair looks like. And then, a long moment later, she thought, What will Kay think? Gerta knew that he should be grateful for rescue, for any rescue, but she remembered Kay. Kay who loved snow because it was clean. And she would appear, filthy and stained and stinking of dead reindeer, and he would think…what? She was surprised to feel a spark of irritation at the Kay in her imagination and had to shake her head at herself. Now I’m inventing slights with the per...