The Raven and the Reindeer

by T. Kingfisher

Gerta would have said that Kay was her best and truest friend, that they could tell each other anything and they would take on the world together. Kay would have said Gerta was the neighbor girl. “She’s all right. I guess.” In fact, he did say this, on a number of occasions. 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.

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.

Kay liked puzzles with pieces that you could fit together, and Gerta liked making up stories of heroes and gods and monsters.

“If wishes were fishes, we’d have herring for dinner.” “We’re going to have pickled herring anyway,” said Gerta.

He did not know that Gerta treasured these statements, saving them up and repeating them to herself at night. They were her great comfort. In summer, when he went around with the other boys and pretended to ignore her, she remembered his words. 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.

“I don’t like the other girls,” said Gerta, scowling. “Besides, I’m not like them.” (Kay had told her once that she wasn’t much like other girls. It was one of the phrases that she held very close, tucked up in the space beneath her breastbone.)

“I don’t like any other boys.” “Yes, and he knows it, too.”

(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.)

“Sounds rotten of her,” said Gerta. “Oh, I daresay she had her reasons,” said her grandmother, who could think of a few men that would have been much improved by spending time as an enchanted seal.

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

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.

There was a farmhouse in the distance. It stood by the side of a stream. The whitewashed sides sparkled. Gardens ran around it on three sides, dotted with green as the spring plants emerged.

Chickweed is a low, weedy little plant, not very distinguished. No one writes poetry comparing their lovers to chickweed (or if they do, the poems are rarely well received).

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.

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.

The rowan tree dropped a red berry at her feet. It was the color of the cords that her grandmother wrapped around Gerta’s wrist when she was small, to protect against the folk of the woods.

She selected the ham, because it did not seem worth it to risk life and liberty for a bite of bread.

“Do you still talk?” she asked. “Hell of a thing to forget in a day,” said the raven. “Do you have any cheese?”

The raven fluffed its beard. “I am the Sound of Mouse Bones Crunching Under the Hooves of God.”

“May I call you Mousebones?” asked Gerta. “It’s…a lot to say all at once.” It was hard for a creature with a beak to scowl, but the raven managed, mostly with the skin around its eyes. “I suppose,” it said. “If you must.”

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.

“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.”

“I thought birds spent the winter in the land of the dead,” said Gerta. “Aurk!” He gave her a suspicious look. “Who told you that?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Everyone, I guess.” “Nobody I know,” said the raven. “I’ve certainly never been to the land of the dead.” He considered this. “Maybe sparrows. Sparrows always seem like they know more than they’re telling.” He flew to a fencepost and fluffed his beard briefly.

“It is possible that I am going to die,” she said. She wanted to feel badly about this, but her nose was running in the cold and it was hard to concentrate on her own death when she felt as if she might drown in snot.

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, I like you. I won’t have you starve to death in the snow while your prince marries another. I save that for rude people.”

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.

Gerta tried to look like a person who was releasing pigeons, not a person who was escaping. She wasn’t sure what the difference was.

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.

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.

“Nothing would surprise me today. I may never be surprised again.”

She had broad cheekbones and a broader smile and everything else was so wrapped in knit blankets that there was no telling about the shape underneath. “You’re

“Reindeer have greater hearts than humans.

In a proper fairy tale, there would be magical herbs in it, but Gerta thought that it was only tea—and tea was more than enough.

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.” “I…well. But Gerta doesn’t?” Livli shook her head. “Some people don’t. Their bodies carry them around, but they don’t live in them quite the same way.”

shapechanging is easier when your own shape does not quite fit. The door inside your skin is a little way open—or at least, I think that is the human equivalent of what they are saying. Swans don’t speak of doors, and they have very sharp minds.” She rubbed her forehead, as if to banish an old headache. “So children when their bodies change to adults, and old women when they are becoming crones…and girls pregnant for the first time, though that often ends badly for all involved.”

“You didn’t use a knife,” said Janna. “Get to be my age, girl, and your tongue will be as sharp as one. Then you can try cutting someone out of a skin with words alone.

You’ve got your own gods to deal with. But reindeer belong to our gods, and our gods belong to them.” “I thought you were Lutheran,” said Janna. “I am. Doesn’t mean I’m stupid, girl. Luther lived a long ways away. Jábmiidáhkká lives under my feet. And I’ve never heard that Luther had much to do with reindeer, which was clearly a failing in an otherwise upright man.”

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

They put up the tent together. There is hardly anything romantic about putting up tents, but every time their hands touched, Gerta felt it down to her bones.

She would trust Janna to the ends of the earth. And that was good, because that was where they were standing.

Occasionally he would tuck himself into a feathery black oval and slide down the ice on his back, snickering in raven-fashion.

The other otters turned and stared very hard at that one, which looked abashed. “What?”

“Words are like fish and you catch them and you get to keep them forever.”

“A raven!” “We speak Raven!” “Ark! Ark! Ark!” “That is not speaking Raven,” said Mousebones severely. “That is saying ‘Ark’ and you are saying it badly.”

There were no words in reindeer speech for I hate myself. It was not a concept that could be thought, and so she did not bother to think it.

There is nothing in the world so patient as a plant awaiting spring.

Salt. Ash. The smell of burning. In the heart of the thorn hedge, something woke. It felt like rage.

And that made the thorns very upset.”