The Raven and the Reindeer

by T. Kingfisher

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...