The Raven and the Reindeer (15 page)

Mousebones landed on her antlers. “Awk! Awk!” He weighed nothing.
 

There was a clear place to the side. She gathered herself and jumped and halfway through she thought
wait, how do I—?
but then she landed and it hadn’t been hard at all.
 

“Easy,” whispered Janna, her voice lower. She caught Gerta around the neck, her hands full of the reindeer harness. “Can I—Lord! Is this okay?”

Gerta wanted to laugh. What came out was a soft wheezing sound.
Was
it okay? She didn’t know.
 

She nodded again, ears flicking to catch the sounds of the approaching men.

Janna worked as swiftly as cold-numbed fingers would move, letting the straps out. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re bigger than he was. A lot bigger. You’re not just him again. This is the strangest thing that has ever happened or ever will happen.” She laughed herself, with a slightly hysterical edge, and then snapped her teeth down over it.
 

 
Gerta stood still while the other girl draped the harness over her shoulders. It didn’t hurt. It felt normal.
 

Janna lifted the halter that was supposed to fit over a reindeer’s ears. She looked at it, looked at Gerta, shook her head, and threw it into her pack. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
 

They moved through the forest as silently as they could, which wasn’t very. Gerta’s every step clacked as loudly as the old reindeer’s had. Janna was still trying to fasten the wood-pigeon cage to the harness.
 

“Incidentally, they’re about to find you,” said Mousebones. Gerta flicked her ears, but there was no way to relay this to Janna. She walked forward, faster and faster, until Janna was jogging beside her.

The shouts behind them had a different note suddenly.
 

An arrow struck a tree with a crisp
zzzip!
sound.
 

Gerta, human, would have panicked. Gerta, reindeer, knew that she had to run, that running was the only way, but the human bit of her mind fought—
I can’t run, if I run I’ll leave Janna, what do I do?

She dipped her muzzle under Janna’s arm and pushed upward, her eyes white and rolling in her head. Another arrow struck nearby.
 

Janna flung her arms around Gerta’s neck and put a leg over her back. She was heavy but the great reindeer heart in Gerta’s chest beat and the muscles in her hindquarters pushed and then it was easy, ridiculously easy, and she lowered her head and ran, as fast as her legs would carry her.

She ran a long way, and she ran like a reindeer. The bushes parted in front of her and her legs knew where to strike to carry her forward and the important thing was to follow Mousebones and not to let her slow, stupid human mind get in the way of running.
 

The cries of the approaching bandits faded behind them, and the sound of arrows became the distant whine of mosquitoes, and then stopped entirely.
 

The raven led her out along the edge of the woods. It was easier in the open. There were no branches to tangle with her antlers. The air was cold and clear and swept the dark brown smell of blood away behind them.
 

When she could no longer run, she walked, and Janna slipped off her back and walked too.
 

“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.

They walked for a little time, and then Gerta felt an urge to run again. She trotted a few steps, paused, looked back at Janna.

“You want me to ride?” asked Janna dubiously.

nod, nod, humans nod, crude gestures, nothing like the elegant flick of ears, a wolf could see a nod from a mile away
 

“Are you sure? I mean, when we’re running away, that’s one thing…”

you are so slow humans are slow up on their hind legs like birds
 

Mousebones laughed. “Careful,” he said. “Careful, Gerta. That’s the reindeer talking.”

She tried to listen.
Gerta. Yes.
She took a deep breath and tried to remember that she was Gerta, a human girl, wearing a reindeer skin like a coat.

It did not feel like a coat. She felt like ink slowly dissolving in a cup of water, each swirl distinct but slowly, slowly running together.

I am not a reindeer, I am a girl, I am looking for my friend Kay, but I must walk the reindeer road to reach him.
 

“Better,” said Mousebones. “Better.”
 

Janna looked up at him. “I wish I knew what you were saying,” she said.
 

“Awk!”
 

She has to ride,
thought Gerta
, or else it will take years to get where we are going.
 

And then, very faintly, like an echo without a sound to start it,
where
are
we going?

She tucked her muzzle under Janna’s elbow and flipped it up, impatient.

“Fine!” said Janna. “I get the point!”
 

“Awk! Awk!”
 

“This would be more comfortable if I had a saddle,” said Janna. “But—ah—yeah, that might be crossing a line. Let me try to do something with cloaks.”

She folded them and tucked them under the harness. It made no difference to Gerta either way.
 

Janna’s weight on her back was welcome. It seemed to settle her more solidly against her bones. She began to trot and Janna leaned forward and fisted her hands in the shaggy hair at Gerta’s withers.
 

They went on like that for many hours, walk and trot, walk and trot, until the light began to fail. As evening came on, Janna made as if to slip off, but Gerta shook her antlers and so they continued into the night.
 

The strange light that had settled on Gerta’s vision helped. It was not that it was not dark, but the darkness itself was shot with bright threads.
 

The road that they were on ran north, a weave of blue and white. It was easy to follow. Even a reindeer with a human soul could not have missed it.
 

Mousebones had settled in to roost atop the cage of wood-pigeons. Janna rode with her chin tucked down and her cloak pulled up, her hands in her armpits to warm them.
 

It seemed to Gerta that some of the road-threads were plaiting themselves together oddly. The moon was rising, haloed by frost. Underneath it, the threads wove together, until Gerta was running on a long white braid of light.
 

And she was running. She had been running for some time, but it felt strangely effortless, as if the road was pulling her along it. She began to feel that she could have locked her legs, even lain down in the middle of the road, and the trees would still go rushing past her at a gallop.
 

Janna was lying almost flat against Gerta’s back. She could feel the bandit girl’s ribs rise and fall against her shoulders.
 

“What’s happening?” said Janna.

Even if she had known, she could not have answered.
 

It should have been frightening, but it was not. It felt familiar. Surely someone had told Gerta stories of a road like this…somewhere…long ago?

She could almost hear her grandmother talking, but she could not make out the words.
 

It smelled like snow. It smelled like other reindeer.
 

If other reindeer had come this way, then it was safe.
 

The braid of light veered away from the human road. Gerta left that road without question. The strike of her hooves against the ground was oddly muffled, as if the glowing threads were taking her weight.
 

Janna made a small noise; half alarm, half resignation. Gerta felt the girl’s fingers tightening in her hair. Humans had such small fingers. Good for things like scratching itchy spots, but useless for running.
 

If Mousebones had been awake, he might have said her name, but he slept with his head under his wing. There was no one to keep her from sinking into the reindeer dream.
 

The smell of other reindeer had grown stronger. She could make out individuals now—calf and cow, bull and matriarch. The echoes of their clicking hooves rang in her ears.
 

When the first one touched her, shoulder to shoulder, she was neither surprised nor frightened.
Of course, of course, there they are, here we are, we are running…

Sight was the last sense to waken, but when it did she turned her head and saw them: the sea of antlers, the white backs, the ones who walked the reindeer road.

She was part of a herd and the herd was around her. She was not alone. While she was with the herd, she would never be alone.
 

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.
 

There were few human souls who could have stood against that.
 

Surrounded by the ghosts of reindeer, Gerta lowered her head and ran on, through the glowing threads of light.

There was no time on the reindeer road. She could not have said if it was an hour or a day or a year. The human mind that carved the world up into hours and minutes was deeply buried, while the reindeer heart ran on and on.

“Gerta,” said Janna from her back, “where are we? Where did these reindeer come from?”

The words meant nothing. The reindeer dream was too strong for a human name to call her back.
 

It was Mousebones who saved them. He woke at last and looked around. “Awk! A long way! Awk!”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” said Janna. “I wish I did! I’d feel less like I was talking to myself.”

Mousebones shook his feathers. “We’ll run off the edge of the world at this rate. Next time, put a bridle on her—human fledglings in reindeer skins can’t keep themselves for long.”
 

He hopped across her neck, down between her antlers, and pecked Gerta hard between the eyes.

“Whuff!” said Gerta, startled.
 

Mousebones pecked her again, and then grabbed one of her ears in his talons. He yanked.

Gerta turned her head toward the tugging.
 

“That’s right,” said the raven. “Come on.”
 

Alternating pecks and tugs, he steered her out of the main flow of the reindeer road. Ghostly bodies streamed past, their antlers a forest overhead.
 

The glowing threads were thinner here. Sometimes they tied together into knots and led outward. As Gerta swung her head, she saw some of her herdmates splitting off from the road, down the knots.

Mousebones cawed a question across the herd. “Which one?” he cried. “Which is this one?”

“Sápmi,” said one of the reindeer, who seemed a trifle more solid than the rest. A living reindeer on the road, perhaps, not one of the vast spirit tide. “And that one, and the next.”

“A very long way,” said Mousebones. “Aurk! Well, as good as any.”

He began steering her toward a knot, but Gerta resisted.
 

“Awk?”

“Not…this…one…” she said. The words were hard. They were human words spoken in the reindeer tongue, and they fitted together strangely.

“No?”

There was a fine glowing thread that was slightly different from the others. She had been following it for some time without quite realizing it.
 

It was only when her hooves left it that she recognized it for what it was.
 

It was bound to a knot up ahead, and it felt like an old woman sitting in a bar, telling stories.
 

“That…one…” said Gerta, pulling the words from some deep well.
 

“Very well,” said Mousebones. “Very well. I hope this doesn’t break us out in some wretched snowfield with nothing to eat.”
 

She ran on.
 

It was only a little way to the next knot, although what that meant in time or miles, she did not know. But she veered off the reindeer road and her hooves struck the knot and the threads unbraided themselves around her.
 

Between one stride and the next, the herd of reindeer faded away. She felt a last few ghosts go with her, shoulder on shoulder, and then they too were gone and she was back, alone, in the world of humans and ravens.
 

The loss of the herd fell on her like a blow. She had not known that she needed one until it was gone. Her bones and her sinews cried out against it, and she tried to swerve back on the reindeer road.

Mousebones pecked her hard between the eyes. “None of that!”
 

“I felt that,” said Janna, sitting up. Gerta could feel the girl’s weight shifting on her back. “What happened?”

“We went a little outside of the world,” said Mousebones. “A shortcut, maybe. Like a tunnel carved by the dreams of reindeer.” After a moment he added, “Dead reindeer, mostly. And not one of them there enough to eat. Awk!”

Janna looked at him and shook her head. “You’re saying something,” she said, “but I have no idea what it is. I wish I did.”

“Awk,” said Mousebones.
 

Gerta dropped her head. Listening to her friends talk at each other eased the ache in her chest a little. They were a small herd, and strangely shaped, but still better than being a reindeer alone.
 

Janna slid off Gerta’s back and wrapped an arm over her withers. “Are you all right? We went…I don’t know how far we went.”

She glanced around. “We went all night, anyway. I didn’t think people rode all night except in stories.”
 

It was not yet dawn. The air was cold and grey and smelled of frost. The ground under Gerta’s hooves was frozen hard.