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“Go out with some other boys, then,” said her grandmother. “At least meet a few.” Almost under her breath, she added “Make Kay sweat a little, for a change.” “I don’t like any other boys.” “Yes, and he knows it, too.” Her grandmother shook her head. “Wouldn’t hurt to meet them. Girls not much older than you are getting married, and I’d hate to have you settle for the boy next door.”
(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.)
The days passed, and the spell on Gerta deepened. Helga was not a powerful witch, as such things are measured, but she did not need to be powerful for this. Gerta’s desire to be useful was an open road down which nearly any magic could walk. “It is for her own good,” Helga whispered to herself, fiercely. “It is for her own good. She would never reach the Snow Queen. She would be set upon by bandits, wolves, bears, anyone at all. And if she did somehow reach the Snow Queen…” She shuddered. The notion of Gerta, who was sturdy and cheerful and kind and quite desperately mortal standing up against
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“What’s wrong with your wing, bird?” The raven looked up. “I broke it,” it said simply. Gerta’s jaw dropped. “You talk…” she said. “So do you,” said the raven. “Kudos all around. We are talking beings. Auurk.”
Gerta took a deep breath and felt the cold like knives in her chest. “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. She wiped furiously at her nose and wished for a handkerchief. “It is a certainty that you are going to die,” said Mousebones. “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
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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.
Then a disturbance—a chiming sound and a howl of wind—and the trees shuddered. In their hollow nests, the woodpeckers huddled together. The squirrels chattered worriedly in their drays. Only the caterpillars seemed unbothered. Very few things bother a caterpillar.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and Gerta had to remember to nod her head up and down, like a sandpiper bobbing in the surf but I’ve never seen a sandpiper at the stony edge of the sea.
Being an empty vessel, magic will always take you very hard, I think, and leave something of itself behind for a time, like dregs at the bottom. But at the same time, it can’t really get at the core of you. You can be filled up and emptied out, but the pot does not become its contents. Does that make sense?” “A little, I suppose,” said Gerta. It sounded rather dreadful when put like that. Was she going to spend her life wandering around being filled up with other people’s enchantments?
“the swans tell me that 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.”
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.”
