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.

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.

The hay had been cut, but it remembered being alive, and its dreams were all of summer.

“You may call me he,” said Mousebones, “for ‘it’ is an ugly word. I may feel differently later, but I will inform you first.”

“All living things die. Then we eat their eyes.” “How nice,” said Gerta. “Are you going to eat my eyes?” “Well, obviously. You’d want a friend to do it, wouldn’t you?” Mousebones groomed a snowflake off her hair. “And it’s not like you’d be using them.”

Nobody ever mentioned that you didn’t let girls kiss you. It had never even occurred to her that was an option. Having now occurred to her, she couldn’t think of any reason it shouldn’t be an option…and then she thought of at least three houses in the village where two women lived together and felt a rush of embarrassment for having been so incredibly dim.

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.

“Be a human for a bit,” advised Mousebones, as if it were that were an easy thing to be.

“That was a good curse, though.” “It had real venom.” “We will behave.”