by S T Gibson
After yet another failed attempt to bring the deer down and another arrow lost to the forest, Helvig let out a groan. She should have trusted her instincts and gone out on foot in the snowshoes. It would have taken her an entire day to track down a deer and haul it home, but at least she wouldn't feel like such a failure.
"Come here," she called over to Gerda. "Here's your chance to prove you weren't lying about that moose."
Gerda rode up beside her, fire in her eyes, and Helvig gave her the meanest glare she could muster. She had to shout to be heard over the trammel of hooves and the crunch of snow underneath.
"Shoot me dead and father will send all the men out to skin you."
"If I wanted you dead, I would have smothered you in your sleep"
"Fair enough."
Helvig palmed over her bow and one of the few arrows she had left, nearly fumbling them as she stretched to bridge the gap between their mounts. Their hands touched for a moment, Gerda’s slim fingers cold and real against her own. Then she was gone.
Gerda slung the bow over her shoulder and snapped the reins against the stallion’s neck, pulling a few more crucial feet ahead.
The deer flew parallel to the hunting party, black hooves moving so fast they were little more than a blur.
Gerda retrieved her bow and strung her arrow, then waited until the very moment her horse crossed the deer's path to swing her arms out, draw the string back, and fire.
The doe went down hard, the arrow plunged deep into its thigh.
Helvig whooped in triumph.
The horses slowed to a cantor as they approached the wounded animal. Gerda’s face was the picture of elation, and Helvig couldn't help the swell of pride in her chest. She was usually so cross when one of her men brought down an animal before she did, but now genuine delight on Gerda’s behalf shone through despite her bruised ego.
Helvig's boots hit the ground unsteadily, and she swayed a bit in the transition from speeding animal to shifting snow
"Good girl," she said, pressing her face to the mare's neck and feeling the way she panted for breath. She smoothed the mane of her horse with firm, long strokes. "You rode hard and well."
Helvig took the reins and began to lead her mare closer to the spot where the doe had fallen, carefully traversing snow drifts and branches.
Gerda was further ahead, and had descended her horse in a billow of pale skirts. The snow parted at her knees as she wound a narrow path towards her quarry.
Rivulets of red were pouring from the doe's thigh. Gerda stepped lightly through the blood in her soft-soled moccasins, then bent down to slit the animal’s throat faster than blinking.
Helvig loitered near her horse, and watched the light go out of the deer's eyes as Gerda gently stroked its muzzle.
The deer's gaze found Helvig's as Gerda whispered something sweet, and for one fleeting moment, girl and animal understood each other. Somehow, Helvig felt like she was the one bleeding out, slow and sure towards a death soft as sleeping.
"You should stay," Helvig said, so suddenly that the sound of her own voice surprised her. Gerda’s eyes met hers across the clearing.
"Stay? With you?"
"With all of us. Until after Christmastide, at least. It’s only a few weeks more." Helvig felt as though she were begging the queen herself for a stay of execution, not inviting a lost girl to share her table for a few nights more. She swallowed hard and nodded towards the deer. "I'll make you a fine pair of winter boots from her hide and hair, and then you can be on your way."
Gerda's smile was thin and knowing as the edge of a knife.
"You want to make me a present?"
"Seems only right. That doe will feed me and mine for weeks. You earned a pair of boots out of it, and I can't stand sitting around waiting for your poor toes to fall off from frostbite."
"These shoes have gotten me this far. They're fur-lined and watertight."
"Maybe in the spring, but not in this weather. Pass the holiday with us. We'll have spiced wine and good venison and listen to the boys tell their tall tales." Helvig stuffed her hands into her pockets and kicked a chuck of ice across the ground. "It isn't right, being alone on a holy day."
"I didn't realize you were so concerned with observing the feasts and fasts."
"I'm not. But still, it isn't right. I couldn't have it on my conscience, you out there at the end of the year. Stay with us until the dark days are over, and then I'll send you on your way with new boots and a pack full of bread and ham. How does that sound?"
Gerda said nothing, just stroked the white spot between the dead deer’s eyes.
I cannot force you to stay," Helvig said.
It was too much like a plea, too much like a prayer, and Helvig felt as though she had exposed something horrible. But Gerda just sighed and rose to her feet.
"No. You're smarter than that."
Gerda thought for a long moment, squinting up at the grey of the sky. When she spoke again, her voice was soft.
"I cannot be delayed, Helvig. I am long-expected."
"By the boy at the top of the world?"
"Yes, by the boy."
Helvig clenched her hands around each other behind her back.
"Then I will send you on to him with the kiss of friendship and all my well-wishes in your back pocket. But after Christmas."
Fear crept into Gerda’s eyes, a fear that made her look even more ancient, as though she were a wraith shrinking away from the sunlight come to break her curse. Then she straightened her back, and she was herself again.
"Very well. I will pass the Christmas holiday with you and your father here in the woods. I’ll rest and resupply. But after that —"
"You've a queen to kill. I understand."
"Good. I’m glad we have an accord."
Helvig's heart threatened to wing right up out of her mouth. A smile of triumph split her face as Gerda turned from her to drag the carcass over to her horse.
"That we do, Miss Witch. Let me help you."
The two girls worked with silent efficiency to haul the deer onto the narrow wooden sleigh that Helvig had brought out with them. It took some straining and grunting, but in very little time they had secured the carcass and hooked the sleigh up to Helvig’s stocky mare.
When they finished, Helvig beat the snow from her gloves and asked,
"You ever going to tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"What you’re running from. A girl doesn't take off into the woods in that fine a dress and shoes so ill-suited for the weather unless she left where she came from in a hurry."
Gerda's eyes leapt from tree to tree like she was keeping watch against wolves. Or worse.
"You told me your father takes in people the world no longer wants. Surely he must have taught you that sometimes the past shouldn't be spoken of."
Helvig opened her mouth to try and wheedle out more information, but she was cut off by the icy wind that came whipping through the clearing. The fierce chill pierced Helvig's clothes and snatched the breath right out of her lungs, and it made Gerda’s hair snap like the tail of a kite.
"The horses!" Helvig cried, and Gerda lunged forward to seize the reins of her stallion moments before it bolted. The mare's eyes were rolling wildly in their sockets as she stamped and whinnied, straining against Helvig's grip on her bridle.
Gerda shouted something to Helvig, but the gale battering down from the north swallowed up her words. The stallion had whipped himself into a frenzy and was all but dragging Gerda across the clearing. Veins stuck out on her arms as she yanked the reins and screamed at the horse.
Another punishing blast bore down on them, but this time Helvig could make out a sound above the roar of wind and creak of bending pines. It was a sound of anguish, a horrible, sourceless wail that seemed to rise up from the very ground. The sound vibrated through Helvig's chattering teeth, and the blood ran cold in her veins.
She knew that voice. She heard it in her sleep, every fitful night the indi
scretion of her past troubled her dreams.
The voice screamed out again from the ungodly wind, and this time, it sounded awfully like her name.
"We must leave this place!" Helvig yelled, fumbling for a grip on her mare's saddle. She swung herself up onto the horse and was almost bucked down into the snow.
Gerda was faring no better, and had fallen into a snowdrift. She kicked against the icy ground and strained at the stallion's lead, but the huge animal was too strong for her. Helvig was sure if Gerda didn't let go soon, she would either get trampled underfoot or dragged to her death down a ravine.
"Leave it, Gerda! I said leave him!"
Helvig kicked her horse forward into the searing chill of the wind. The animal ran a wild serpentine path, whinnying as though pursued by the Devil himself, but Helvig managed to urge her on to where Gerda lay in the snow.
Helvig swung down and clamped her hand around Gerda’s forearm, hauling her to her feet and onto the back of the mare. As soon as she felt Gerda’s arms lock around her waist, Helvig wheeled the horse around and rode her as fast as the animal could manage back towards camp.
When they were finally far enough away from the phantom wind to slow to a cantor, Gerda spoke into Helvig’s hair.
"What was that?"
"Christmas come early. From now one we mustn’t venture so far into the forest. The veil is thinning fast."
Helvig felt a shiver go through Gerda’s narrow frame.
"That voice…"
"A mirage," Helvig said, a little sharper than intended. "An illusion sent to drive us mad."
"It spoke your name."
For a moment, Helvig said nothing, just watched Svíčka as she circled overhead. The bird always looked like she was waiting for something to die, biding her time until the opportune moment.
"The fiends of this forest will employ all kinds of trickery to snare unsuspecting victims. It was just some elf mischief. A huldra maybe, or a nisse."
"Or a ghost," Gerda said.
Not another word passed between them the entire ride home.
NINE
As the days drew on, Christmas settled around the bandits like snow. Quietly but relentlessly, until they were up to their knees in it. As the nights got colder the stories told around the fires became darker, more bent towards the preternatural. The men spoke more wistfully of lovers they had lost to the arms of another or to the cruelest suitor of all, consumption. As surely as the sun sets and rises, the trickle of tradesman the bandits had been preying on dried up, and most of them settled in to their tents to ride out a satiated hibernation.
Helvig knew well enough that as soon as the snow started to thaw the men would get itchy and contentious, desperate to stretch out their legs and have a go at each other like roosters in a cockfight. Then her father would spend his time sending the more argumentative of his lot out on long supply runs or quests for a few new horses to add to their stable.
Gerda, for her part, slipped into life as the Robber Princess' favorite like a new pair of shoes. There was pinching and discomfort at first, but she soon broke in her routines until they fit her snugly. She could never be accused of sloth, and was always skinning rabbits or offering to sew up the split faces of men who got into fights with one another. She seemed universally admired and was rarely denied any request. To be sure, some of this was on account of her beauty, and yet the men didn't hound her steps like wolves or salivate over the scent of her.
This amazed Helvig. Even though she was the beloved daughter of a feared criminal, Helvig had been raised in a world where women had to work doubly as hard to prove their usefulness. She had learned to fight and boast to get men to keep their hands away from her and their expectations of her toughness high. The few other women in their camp were attached at the hip to their husbands, or masters of cruelty in their own right. But Gerda simply took up the space she wanted, dragging skirts and mannered airs and all, and the men respected her. Even Rasmus, who grew cheekier as his health returned, only teased Gerda as far as she would allow him, and only in good fun. Maybe she really was a sorceress.
Helvig and Gerda passed their days in the comfortable companionship of shared chores and shared meals. The strident urgency with which Gerda had pursued her quest to the north waned, replaced by a contented assurance that her travels would resume in the future.
Despite the initial violent distrust that had sparked between the two of them, Gerda continued to share Helvig’s bed, and Helvig looked forward to drifting off with Gerda’s warmth nearby. Gerda often didn't sleep through the night and would start awake at any sound. On these nights, Helvig would reach over through her groggy stupor and rub a small circle into the other girl's back until she fell asleep again. Nightmares, the thief supposed. Or memories.
The monstrous woman who had appeared to Helvig in her dreams never resurfaced, White Lady or no, and Gerda never explained her lunatic ravings their first night together. Despite her hunger to learn everything she could about Gerda, Helvig was grateful for this. She didn’t want to remember that suffocating, punishing kiss, the way shame had made her cheeks burn when Gerda had questioned her about it. Helvig was happy to let the past lay down and die, and to enjoy every moment Gerda brushed against her in her sleep or huddled close against her back on the colder nights.
The boys, for their part, mostly behaved. After some time, they even began to invite Gerda to play their sleight-of-hand games with them, for which she had a ferocious natural talent. Helvig was a little cross that Gerda had won through sweetness the respect that Helvig had dragged out of all of them with threats and arm-wrestling matches, but having everyone in her charge get along was better than having them squabble.
One day, when the sunlight was thin and wan and the solstice darkness was creeping in through long shadows, she found Gerda standing on an upturned crate with Rasmus, Wilhelm, and Jakko huddled round.
Wilhelm reached up and placed a wreath of evergreen boughs on her head with his huge hands. Four stubby candles rose proud from the greenery, flickering with light. Svíčka, who was watching from a nearby tree branch, cocked her head curiously.
Jakko was appraising the scene like an artist would a painting. He rubbed the meager bristles that had just started to come in on his chin.
"Not a bad resemblance, I’d say. Though it’s a pity about her dress."
Most days Gerda wore the clothes she arrived in, sleeping in her shift and borrowing a tunic and breeches from Helvig when her dress wanted for washing. Traditionally, the girl playing Saint Lucia would be robed in white to represent her purity, and adorned with a sash of crimson to recall the blood of the martyrs.
The thick red scarf Wilhelm had knotted around Gerda’s waist looked a little out of place against her cream and moss colored dress, but to Helvig, the image was perfect.
Willowy Gerda looked all the statelier for her spruce crown, and the scarf suggested a little color in her cheeks. If she had appeared to Helvig on the road dressed like this and claimed to be a divine apparition, Helvig would have believed her.
"She makes a fine Saint Lucy," Rasmus said. "Best we’ve had in ages. No offense, Helvig."
The Robber Princess rolled her eyes. The criminal dregs of society weren’t very pious types, but the feast of Saint Lucia was almost universally observed. Even the most hardened heathen could appreciate a little light and frivolity in the dark of midwinter, and it was fun to order around whatever girl played serving Saint Lucy with her overflowing plates of food.
Being the only young girl in a camp full of men meant that when the boys started feeling festive, Helvig was usually saddled with the itching headdress of dripping wax.
But the picture was all wrong. Helvig was resolutely of the earth: steel-eyed and wild-haired and strong-armed. Saint Lucia was an ethereal creature of sanctified adoration, and Gerda fit that bill much better.
"Besides, she’s supposed to be played by an innocent virgin," Rasmus continued wryly. Boys of his age loved to pass the time gue
ssing who had been had and who hadn’t. Helvig never let on either way, because it seemed like a losing game no matter what she admitted to. She had dallied with some of the other youth in the camp, and had even kissed Rasmus once when she lost a bet (he tasted like stale woodsmoke) but nothing serious had come of any of it.
And then, of course, there had been others. Liaisons outside of their close-knit community. But she wasn’t sure those counted against her virginity in the way Rasmus was imagining.
Gerda smiled down at Rasmus while Wilhelm stuck a holly sprig into her crown.
"I may not be sullied by the hands of men, but I wouldn’t call myself an innocent either," she said.
Her cool eyes found Helvig’s, and heat flooded the thief’s body from sole to crown.
"Oh, she’s got secrets she’s not telling," Jakko crowed, eager to join in the game.
"Been up to some wickedness under cover of night, have we?" Rasmus. "Been lifting your skirts for the Devil when old Wilhelm has his back turned?"
He was only teasing her, in his crass way, but Helvig still opened her mouth to shut him up the only way she knew how; with a threat. Wilhelm saved her the trouble.
"You’ll not speak so crudely to her, especially not when she dressed as a saint!"
"I thought she was an evil enchantress come to lead the men into damnation," Rasmus shot back.
Wilhelm, to his credit, looked contrite. Once the loudest voice against Gerda joining their ranks, he had weakened in his resolve over time. Especially once he found out she liked listening to his stories.
"Witch or no, she has enough sanctity in her to respect the saint’s day, and so should you. Anything else is blasphemy."
"Blasphemy is my middle name," Rasmus said with a roll of his eyes. "What’s so special about the day, anyway? Somebody jog my unchurched memory."
Helvig had spent more time in taverns than in churches in her life, and she still knew the reason for Saint Lucia’s day. Most children in the region did. But one of Wilhelm’s hagiographies was a welcome escape from all this talk of wickedness and virginity, so she grabbed at it.
