The Raven and the Reindeer (14 page)

Janna went for her knife.

If he had been holding her other arm, it might have worked. But she had to draw awkwardly with her left and he saw her do it.

“None of that!” said Marten, and punched her in the side of the head.

Gerta gasped.
 

It was suddenly, shockingly violent. It sounded like someone dropping a sack of flour on a board. Janna’s head snapped back and she staggered and went to her knees.
 

“No!” said Gerta. “No, stop!”
 

Marten pulled Janna up. She stumbled in his wake, her face slack and dazed.
 

“Stop!” Gerta ran after them, her arms still full of pigeons. Her voice was a thin, useless bleat. What was she going to do? Attack Marten? Get hit herself? “Stop! Please!”

He didn’t.

Mousebones dropped out of the trees, cawing corvine obscenities, and tore at Marten’s scalp. Marten slapped at the raven with his free hand.
 

“Damn bird!”

“Stop!” cried Gerta. Her voice was not loud enough, nobody could hear her, why couldn’t she shout loud enough to make someone listen? Mousebones was going to get hurt. If Marten hit him like he’d hit Janna, the raven’s delicate skeleton would shatter into a thousand pieces.
 

Mousebones broke away and swooped upward. His scarred wing was beating hard and Gerta couldn’t tell if he was cursing it or Marten.

All three of them broke through the trees, into the clearing. Janna was trying to pull away, shaking her head now like a horse with flies. “Let go,” she mumbled. “Hands…hands…off…”

Gerta caught up with them. She clutched the cage with one hand and grabbed for Janna’s arm with the other. “Let her go!”
 

Marten turned back. Janna half-staggered, half-fell against him, and tried to elbow him in the ribs as she went.

He lifted his hand to strike her again and an arrow sprouted out of his neck.

Gerta stared.

Her first response was not shock or horror or dismay, but only bafflement. Why were there feathers coming out of his neck? What was going on?

The moment stretched and stretched and very slowly Gerta thought
it’s an arrow
and then
there is an arrow sticking in him
and then
people who have arrows in them die
and then Marten opened his mouth and blood came out and he fell.
 

Gerta stumbled backward, but she was not thinking clearly enough to let go of Janna, so she pulled the older girl back with her. Janna was not exactly walking but she could stumble.
 

Gerta would have kept backing up for hours, possibly forever, but she ran into something hot and solid and staggered.

The reindeer went
Hwuff!

In the doorway of the earthhouse, Aaron lowered his crossbow.
 

They stood there. Gerta breathed and the reindeer breathed and Janna breathed and Marten would never breathe again. From inside, very faintly, Gerta could hear Old Nan calling, “What is it? Who’d you get?”
 

Janna leaned heavily on Gerta’s shoulder. “I’m all right,” she croaked finally. “I’m all right.”
 

“You don’t sound all right,” whispered Gerta, looking nervously toward Aaron.

Janna followed her gaze. She, too, looked to Aaron. And then, with unsteady grace, she bowed to the man with the crossbow.
 

Aaron nodded, once, and turned away.
 

Mousebones landed on the reindeer’s antlers and said “The man-flock is coming this way. They cut right through the trees like they knew where they were going.”

“We have to go,” said Janna. “Fast.”

It was easier said than done. Janna could walk, with difficulty. Three steps would be fine and the fourth would be set a little too wide. Gerta had to hold her arm to help steer her, and trust to Mousebones and the reindeer to lead the way.

“He didn’t hit me that hard,” said Janna, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. “I’m not seeing double. It’s just my eye.”
 

Her eye was already swelling closed. She held snow against the side of her head, and that seemed to help, but her steps were still uneven.
 

“Okay,” said Gerta, holding her by the elbow. “Why did Aaron let us go?”

“Because he’d have to shoot me otherwise and he knows it.”
 

The reindeer carried their packs. His tendons clacked at every step, a hollow sound like fingers snapping. His hooves cut through the snow like knives, every step precise. Gerta tried to walk in the holes he left behind.
 

“We’re leaving a trail,” said Janna. She turned her head carefully, holding her chin exactly level, and looked behind them. The muscles under Gerta’s fingers tightened. “Anyone could follow that.”

“Will they?” asked Gerta.

“When they get to the lodge and find Marten dead? Yes.”
 

“What do we do?”
 

“I don’t know.”

“You will walk the reindeer road,” said Mousebones. “He says, anyway. I’d listen, if I were you.”

 
“Will it work?” asked Gerta. “I mean—if we take his skin—will that really work?”

“Aurk!” Mousebones flapped. “Don’t ask a raven. Reindeer know reindeer best. If he says it will, why wouldn’t it? There’s enough magic stuck to you that a skin could stick, too.”
 

They floundered on in the reindeer’s wake. It had been less than an hour since the reindeer suggested taking his hide.
 

And I was horrified and now I am probably going to try it.

She tried to feel something about this. She could not. Her feelings seemed to be lying back in the clearing, as throat-shot as Marten.
 

If this is what I do to get away, then I will do it. Someone will have to help me.

Janna took a few deep breaths and straightened. “I’ll need half an hour,” she said. “It’d be less, but I’m not moving well right now.” Gerta nodded.

The reindeer walked a little way farther, his great head turning from side to side. Then he seemed to see something that he liked, and turned.

“Here,” he said, through Mousebones. “Here is a good place. If my bones lie here, I will not mind the heat.”
 

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.

Janna leaned against a tree, breathing deeply. “All right,” she said. “Are you sure?”
The reindeer stepped up to her and tilted his head back.

Janna could not nod, but she let out a little huff of breath. “Very well.”
 

It was happening too fast. She knew she would do it, but she had just seen a man die and she was about to see a reindeer die, and—“Wait!” said Gerta.

The reindeer rolled a mild eye in her direction.

“You have no time,” said Mousebones, overhead.

 
Gerta wrapped her arms around the reindeer’s neck and said “Thank you.” Tears were pouring down her face. Where had they come from?
I don’t have time to cry, I have to help Janna, I can’t do this—

“It will be well,” translated Mousebones. “Strike, human, and cut the frost from my heart at last.”

Janna put her hand on the reindeer’s chin and pressed her forehead against his muzzle for only a moment. It came to Gerta that the other girl had known him for far longer and loved him in her own way and she cried then for Janna’s grief.

The knife was sharp and silver. The blood was boiling red.
 

The reindeer sank to his knees and Janna sank down with him, her clothes soaked in scarlet. She held his head while he breathed his last and then she stood. Her one good eye was bright with unshed tears.

“This is all quite mad,” she said hoarsely. “I am listening to a girl talk for a raven. My father is coming and now he will kill me if he can. But I don’t know what else there is to do. Help me roll him over.”

Mousebones circled the clearing on dark wings. Gerta took a stumbling step forward, then another, and helped Janna skin the reindeer who had been her friend.
 

It was hard, messy work, and in very short order it was hard and messy and cold.
 

The reindeer’s body was hot and the hide was warm, but the blood cooled on Gerta’s hands and she knelt in bloody slush that refroze around her legs.
 

If there was magic here, it was nothing Gerta recognized. The Snow Queen’s magic was cold and clean and pure. The witch’s had been drowsy and sweet.
 

This was mud and hide and horror. Gerta had never skinned a large animal. Her grandmother got meat from the butcher, already separated. She’d skinned rabbits before, and plucked chickens, but there was a vast difference between a rabbit and a reindeer.
 

Janna had skinned deer. Her movements were deft, even one-eyed and groggy. There was only one knife between them, so all Gerta could do was grab things when Janna told her to, and try not to look at the dead reindeer’s face.

How is this even going to work? I don’t know how to do magic! Do I put the hide on…or am I supposed to do something…say something…

 
Did we just kill him for nothing?
 

Her heart clenched thinking of this, but all she had to do was hold a leg up out of the way while Janna slit down the belly, so it didn’t matter if she couldn’t see for tears.
 

“Do I leave the head?” asked Janna.

“I don’t know,” said Gerta. “I’ve never done this before.”
 

“I don’t know if anyone’s done this before. Where’s Mousebones?”

Gerta shook her head. The raven had vanished.
 

Maybe it’s just as well. If he was trying to eat the poor reindeer’s eyes, I don’t think I could handle it.

“I’ll leave the head, then. It takes longer, that’s all, since I have to skin backward.” She grimaced “If we could get the head up in a tree, this’d be easier, but I don’t think either of us can lift him.”

They tried. They couldn’t. It seemed obscene to be manhandling the reindeer’s body like that. They laid him back down and slumped against each other, shoulder to shoulder. Janna’s breathing was harsh and steamed against the air.
 

It was nearly twenty minutes later that Mousebones returned. He landed in the snow and cocked his head.

“The man-flock’s arrived at your old nest.”

“What are they doing?”

“Oh, it’s a regular anthill. Lot of swirling and shouting and people carrying things back and forth.” He fixed an eye on Janna. “A few of them are coming up your backtrail.”
 

Janna started to nod, then grimaced. Blood smudged her cheekbones, mostly the reindeer’s, a little of her own.
 

“I’m working as fast as I can,” she said. She had her hands under the reindeer’s skin now, punching at it to pull it away from the body.
 

“What do we do once it’s off?” asked Gerta desperately. “Are we—are we supposed to do something?”

“Awk! You put it on.”

Janna had all but the front legs clear now, cutting off the hide at the joint. The skinned body was red and white, garishly bright against the snow. Gerta tried not to look at it and hated herself for not wanting to look.
 

That’s the reindeer. Part of him, anyway.
 

She shoved her hair out of her face with a bloody hand.
And how will it do him any good if I stare at what’s left of him and feel sick?
 

Someone shouted off in the distance. Gerta jerked upright, looking over the bushes, then realized that was a very stupid thing to do and dropped down beside Janna.

“Almost,” panted the bandit girl. “I hope holes don’t matter.” She gave a final pull, nearly tearing the skin off, cutting the last bits holding flesh to hide—and it was free.

More shouting. Whether they were bandits or soldiers no longer seemed remotely important.
 

Janna clutched the hide to her chest. It was pale underneath, stained pink with blood. “Ready?” she panted.
 

“Yes? I don’t know!” Gerta laughed, because things had gone too far for tears. “How do you get ready for this? What if it doesn’t work? Are we supposed to say some kind of words?”
 

Mousebones looked at her—a little oddly, Gerta thought.
 

“Try
thank you
,” he said, and then Janna dropped the hide over her shoulders.
 

Gerta did not have time to fear that it wasn’t working. All she felt was the clammy interior of the hide, and the weight of the skull, bowing her shoulders.

The weight bowed her right down to the ground. Her hands hit the snow and a shock traveled up her arms.
 

She was still cold, but the hide was warm. It wrapped around her like love, like her grandmother hugging her, and then
she
was warm and everything was warm and something happened to her spine and her legs and she gasped in surprise and it came out as
Hwufff!

“Holy…Mother…of…God…” said Janna.
 

There seemed to be a bar between Gerta’s eyes. And things had colors around them that hadn’t been there before. Mousebones had a violet halo around his feathers. Janna was green and gold as summer.
 

The ground stank of reindeer blood—of her blood—and dark brown colors swirled up from the blood, like thin veins of smoke. Gerta lifted her hooves to get away from the brown smoke and tried to shy away, except that it was everywhere around her.
 

“Easy,” said Janna, and laughed in disbelief. “Easy, Gerta! Gerta?”

Gerta had to think what to do. A reindeer would have tilted her ears. Humans had stupid ears.
 

She nodded clumsily instead. It felt uncomfortable. Her antlers were a fan of swords, but her neck was a pillar to hold them up.