The Raven and the Reindeer

by T. Kingfisher

The Snow Queen turned her head, and the first thing that Gerta felt was gratitude that she had not looked at Gerta, and the second was a stab of shame, because her eye fell on Janna instead. Janna staggered. Her face went slack and her eyes went wide. She let out a tiny moan and Gerta knew what she was seeing reflected in the Snow Queen’s eyes. The worst of herself, the messy mortal bloody bits, filthy and stinking and small and weak and unworthy and how dare she look that way at Janna? Rage rose up in Gerta’s heart, as hot and red as the ice palace was cold and blue. She launched herself across the room, away from Kay, thinking of nothing except that no one, no one, should ever think such thoughts about Janna. Her shoulder struck the Snow Queen and it was like falling against a shelf full of glass jars—the hard interspersed with the shockingly brittle. Things shattered. The Queen’s robe bucked strangely as the body under it broke apart and fell back. What? What just happened? Gerta stumbled forward, and Janna caught her. They staggered together as Janna’s ankle buckled. “I should have listened,” gasped the bandit girl. “You told me, but I thought—well, if someone told you that you were foul, you’d believe it with all your heart, so I didn’t realize—gods, how did you do that twice?”