I changed the water in the scrying bowl and got myself something to eat. I checked; still running. I went out quickly to check on my garden, then came back in; still running. I couldn’t bring myself to spend more than a few minutes on any task; I kept darting inside to check on Gerda. Finally I saw that they had spotted a hut built of cinderblocks. There was a chimney at one end, and a plume of smoke curled out. “Stop,” Gerda said to the dog. “If there is a Snow Queen, maybe the person who lives there knows where to find her.”
The woman who lived in the hut was an old Hmong woman—a hermit, like me. She was tiny, shorter than Gerda, though not at all bent over, and she didn’t speak much English. She could see that Gerda was hungry and cold, though, and that the dog was hungry and thirsty. Without speaking, she brought out a bucket of melted snow for the dog, as well as some meaty bones to gnaw on, and she led Gerda into her hut to sit by the fire and drink sweet tea.
“Kai?” Gerda said. The old Hmong woman blinked at Gerda slowly, then smiled and shrugged, shaking her head to say that she didn’t understand. “Snow Queen?” Gerda tried. The Hmong woman shook her head again. Gerda stood up and tried to pantomime. “A grown lady . . . with children. A woman who steals children.”
“Child-stealer?” the Hmong woman said suddenly in English.
Gerda nodded her head, her eyes widening with surprise. “Tell me where,” she said.
But the Hmong woman didn’t want to. She shook her head and pursed her lips. Finally she said, “You go to Norse woman.” She took Gerda out of her hut and pointed north. “Norse woman, she tell you.”
“Thank you,” Gerda said. She finished her tea, and went back out to the sled.
Hours passed. I forced myself to go out to my garden—I had weeds to pull, slugs to pick, vegetables to harvest, but every time I stepped away from the scrying bowl I found myself panicking and rushing back only moments later. Finally, Gerda and Flagstaff came to another hut. This one was also built out of cinderblocks, but snow had been packed all around it like an igloo, to keep it warm. There was a pen in the yard with a high fence, with a dozen other huskies inside—but these were ordinary huskies, not talking huskies. When they saw Gerda and Flagstaff, they all began to bark at once. Gerda knocked on the door. When the door opened, she fell back a step; it was so warm in the hut, the Norse woman went naked. She had tattoos of blue vines winding across her breasts, and a sunburst design around her navel, half hidden by the folds of her belly. She looked Gerda up and down for a long moment and then said to the dog, “You had better stay outside. It’s very warm inside and you wouldn’t be happy. But I’ll send the girl outside with food and water for you.”
“Thank you,” Flagstaff said.
“You though, girl, you can come in.”
Gerda went into the house and almost immediately had to wipe sweat from her forehead and cheeks. She hung my cloak on a hook and rolled up her sleeves. The Norse woman watched her with a raised eyebrow.
When Gerda had brought the dog food and water, and untied his harness, the Norse woman gave Gerda a bowl of fish soup, and a mug of coffee with whiskey in it. She finished her own meal quickly, and then took out a long pipe, which she lit quietly while Gerda finished the soup. The house filled with curling feathers of smoke.
“Now then,” she said, when Gerda had finished eating. “What brings you here?”
“The Hmong woman who lives over the hills to the south said you might be able to tell me where to find the Snow Queen,” Gerda said.
“I don’t know a Snow Queen,” the Norse woman said. She pulled her legs up to cross them over each other, then leaned forward to pick up her pipe, and began to refill it.
“The child-stealer,” Gerda said. “Do you know where I can find a child-stealer?”
“Ah,” the Norse woman said. “So that’s what you meant.” She lit her pipe again and sat back, studying Gerda with bright eyes through the haze of smoke.
“I’m really looking for my friend Kai,” Gerda said. “We used to live in the station, and then Kai disappeared . . . and they said the Snow Queen took him, because he was disobedient. But I’m sure they told everyone the Snow Queen had me, and I was perfectly safe, living with Natalia. Anyway, Flagstaff brought me north . . . and the Hmong woman said you could tell me about the child-stealer, so . . .” She slumped backwards, and I thought how exhausted she must be.
“Do you want to go back to the station once you’ve found your friend?” the Norse woman asked.
“Oh no,” Gerda said. “I want to go back to Natalia. If I do find Kai, I want to bring him to live with us.”
She wants to come back to me! I realized that the blood was pounding in my ears, and my head was spinning with relief—Gerda would come back.
The Norse woman smiled. “In that case . . .” She took a long draw from the pipe. “I think if you’ll think about it, you’ll realize that you already know where Kai must be.”
Gerda shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll show you something.” The Norse woman opened a chest, and took something from the bottom of it, which she handed Gerda. “Do you know what this is?”
It was a metal tag: F2168F. “This is the Fjerra tag,” Gerda said. “Fjerra from . . . sixty years ago.”
“That’s right,” the Norse woman said. “How do you suppose I came to have it?”
Gerda looked at the tag, and then at the Norse woman. She swallowed hard.
“The hard thing is, child,” the Norse woman said, “The Snow Queen comes for all the made-children in the end. Whether you’re good or bad, obedient or disobedient. Now do you know where Kai is?”
Without a word, Gerda stood up and went back out to the dog.
*
“I don’t see why we’re going south again,” Flagstaff complained.
“Because that’s where Kai is,” Gerda said.
Towards noon, she used the claw that I had given her, holding it in the palm of her hand and saying “Natalia, Natalia, Natalia.” A tiny wisp of a breeze ruffled Gerda’s hair and turned the claw slightly. “That way,” Gerda said to the dog.
Was she coming back to me? No, no, it was too good to be true. As dusk fell, she saw the station on the horizon. That was where Flagstaff balked.
“You’re going there?” he said. “Then you’re going alone. Do you know what they do to talking dogs?”
“Just a little closer,” Gerda said. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
“Wait!” I shouted, in my hut, knowing that she couldn’t hear me. “Why are you going there? They won’t let you back in. Even if they do, do you think they’ll be happy to see you? Do you think Kai is there?”
The dog consented to take her a little closer, then stopped again. “This is as close as I’m getting,” he said.
“Then thank you, for all your help,” Gerda said, and cut the harness so that the dog could go on his own.
“Thank you again for freeing me,” Flagstaff said, and turned north again.
I watched Gerda, unbelieving, as she circled the station once. There were doors in it, of course, as well as the one she’d escaped through, but they were all sealed tight, with no handle on the outside. Why was she going back there? That ancient tag the Norse woman had shown her—what could it have meant to her? I tried to think through this logically. Sixty years old. The Norse woman might be that old; she looked older, but she also smoked a pipe. I was fifty, though I didn’t look it except for my hair. Of course, I thought. The Norse woman had once been a made-child herself. She had escaped from the station, just as Gerda had. But what did that have to do with Kai?
I paced my hut. If I left my valley, now, it was just possible that I could make it back with Gerda before the creeping cold killed my warmth-loving trees. But if Gerda resisted—
She was still watching the doors. Waiting to see if they opened, perhaps. Why didn’t she at least come home to see me? I knew the answer to that, a moment later—she knew she wouldn’t have the hea
rt to leave me again.
Gerda had taken her shoes, but left her own tag behind—it was in my attic. I climbed up the ladder and found the tag quickly in the dark corner where I’d hidden her clothes. Then I looked one shelf down. And found it: another tag.
N2178F.
Forgetfulness tea is not a perfect spell. Of course, it all came back.
My Kai had been a year younger than me—oh, and it was the Lars, not the Kai. The Kai of my year was a dullard, a blue-eyed boy who’d never asked a question more complicated than “where is the bathroom” in all his years. Lars had been far too clever, like me, and far too stubborn, like me, and one day he had simply not been there anymore. I had gone to look for him, and had found my way to the outside. Like Gerda, I had quickly gotten lost; like Gerda, I had been found by the witch of the garden. Like Gerda, I had been adopted.
I didn’t have the heart to look to see if my mother had had a tag too.
I flung my second-best cloak around my shoulders and hurried out of the house. I had to talk to Gerda. It didn’t matter if my garden died; even if Gerda refused to come with me, at least I’d know I’d tried.
*
Gerda was still perched behind her rock when I arrived. Her face blossomed into a smile when she saw me. “Mother! What are you doing here?”
“My magic told me you were close by,” I said, truthfully.
“But your garden—”
“I’m going to hurry back there.” I squatted beside her. “But I wanted to tell you, I realized what happened to Kai.” She turned towards me. “Gerda, I realized something while you were gone. I realized that I, too, am a made-child who escaped from the station. And I, too, lost a friend. Gerda, the made-children who stay behind—they are sold into slavery. The girl you saw at the laboratory—she was your friend. She had been fragged—they used their magic to see that she would behave herself, and they sold her. Kai just had it done sooner, since they were afraid he’d cause trouble.”
“Sooner or later, the Snow Queen comes for all the made-children,” Gerda said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I had realized that, too,” Gerda said. “I still want to find Kai.”
“There’s nothing you can do for him,” I said. “Must you find him today?”
Gerda looked away from me, towards the station. “Yes.”
*
We slipped into the station with a shipment of supplies, and hid in the storage warehouse. To either side of us, storage shelves stretched from the cold slab floor to the cavernous ceiling, disappearing into dusk near the top. “Now what?” I whispered.
“I guess we look for Kai,” Gerda whispered. She looked around at the shadowy warehouse, unsure where to even begin.
“Use the claw,” I said. “Its magic will help you find anyone who is close to your heart.”
Gerda took the claw in her hand and said, “Kai, Kai, Kai.” The claw moved slightly in her palm and pointed. Looking carefully to be certain that no one could turn suddenly and see us, we hurried through the narrow corridor between the shelves until we found a solid wall, and then a door in the wall. Through the door, and we were out in a hallway.
“Kai, Kai, Kai,” Gerda whispered. The claw pointed—but the corridor ran straight, and the claw pointed at an angle. “This way,” Gerda said after a moment, and we continued on.
I shivered; my years as a made-child in the station were flooding back. We heard footsteps, and flattened ourselves uselessly into one of the doorways, but the footsteps faded away.
“He’s behind this door,” Gerda said suddenly.
The door was not locked. We felt a blast of cold air as we stepped inside, colder than the winter air outside; Gerda closed the door quietly behind us.
We were in another warehouse, but it was a warehouse for storing frozen things. Frost coated the walls; a patch of it melted under my breath as we hesitated by the door. I tucked my hands under my second-best cloak and shivered. Gerda, beside me, hardly seemed to feel the cold.
At the far end of the room, a brown-haired boy was stacking boxes on a pallet. Gerda sucked in her breath.
“That’s Kai?” I whispered. She nodded tightly. “Well, let’s go talk to him, then.”
The boy didn’t look at us as we approached. “Kai,” Gerda said softly. He stopped what he was doing and looked up. “Kai, do you remember me?”
Kai’s eyes were strange and foggy. In his temple, I could see a flicker, like light catching in a bright jewel.
“He’s a frag,” Gerda said. “There were frags who did the cleaning and the cooking. Even some of the care for the made-children. I never realized . . .”
Of course not.
“Come with me,” she ordered Kai, but his masters had not told him to obey her, so he simply stood where he was. He didn’t cry out or alert anyone to our presence; that wasn’t one of his orders, either. He was just there to load and unload boxes. Through the mists of the forgetfulness tea, I thought back to my own childhood—to the training classes I took as an eleven-year-old, a twelve-year-old. Frags could learn nothing new. Kai, fragged early, could not do any of the more technical work that would have made him valuable to the scientists.
Gerda took Kai’s hand; he allowed her to hold it, pausing in his work for a moment, puzzled but cooperative. “Oh, Kai,” she whispered. She turned to me, fiercely, for a moment. “Can you help him? Can your magic help him?”
“I know of no magic that can restore a soul, once it’s been taken,” I said. “And I’ve never heard of a frag becoming whole again.”
Kai had started to turn away, to return to his work, and Gerda caught him in her arms. “I won’t leave you like this,” she said. With one hand, she caught the tag, snug against Kai’s throat, and wrapped her fist around it. “Be free, Kai,” she said, and yanked it loose. There was a soft pop, like popcorn, and a burned smell, and Kai dropped where he stood.
“Now we can go,” Gerda said.
*
Gerda didn’t speak again until we were back in my valley. The air had grown crisp in my absence, and the current crop of oranges and lemons would be lost—but the trees would survive. And the roses, I thought.
After inspecting the garden, I made tea for both of us, to give us strength of heart and body. Gerda drank a little of the tea, but mostly she just clasped the cup, warming her hands.
“Can I stay here with you?” Gerda asked.
“Of course,” I said. “You are my daughter, and I love you.”
Gerda drank the rest of her tea. “I’ll go back someday,” Gerda said. “To free the made-children.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Teach me your magic, mother,” Gerda said, and I reached out across the table to clasp her hand.
WHAT HAPPENED AT BLESSING CREEK
e circled our wagons at night so Reverend Dawson’s magic could protect us. The Reverend said it was the power of prayer, but Papa scoffed at that.
“He’s a magician, and a good one,” Papa said. “Or we wouldn’t’ve brought him along in the first place.”
My sister Adeline liked to pretend Papa had said something shocking, but I knew he was right. I could smell the magic on the Reverend. I could hear it humming when he said the last words of the nightly blessing that kept out trouble—dragons, wolves, fevers, Indians.
Adeline and I were twins, but not the sort who looked alike. She was the pretty one, with plump pink cheeks and hair the color of summer butter. My mother said I was the clever one, but she didn’t really believe it. I wasn’t pretty, though, so I suppose she thought it would be a consolation if people thought me clever.
“Papa’s right, you know,” I told Adeline one night. “I can smell the magic even now.” It smelled like burnt bread, and I could hear it crackle into place beyond our wagons.
“Don’t talk about your second sight, Hattie,” Adeline said. “It’s not ladylike. You know what Mother says.”
Mother said that every man wished he’d had a witch for a mother, but no one
wanted one as a wife. Witches were useful to have in the family. Sometimes they could keep a child from dying of a fever, or banish mice from your grain store. But that didn’t mean anyone wanted to marry one.
“So why would you want a witch as a husband?” I muttered, half to myself.
“He’s not a witch. He is a minister of the gospel.”
“Hush, girls,” Mother said. We were supposed to be going to sleep, even though the grownups would be talking by the fire for hours yet. We fell silent for a few minutes.
“Anyway, that was back east they said no one wanted to marry a witch,” I said. “We’re going west. Things could be different. There are dangers here.”
“Not so long as we stay close to the Reverend,” Adeline said.
“Do you think everyone who comes west wants to live in a town? Maybe I’ll meet a man who wants to strike out on his own.”
“No man wants to be protected by his wife. Anyway, do you think you could really make a good blessing? Just because you can smell the magic doesn’t mean you can do it.”
“Girls. I don’t want to tell you again.”
This time I kept my peace, and after a few minutes I heard Adeline’s breathing turn quiet and steady. I stared up at the stars, still wide awake. Out in the distance, somewhere in the darkness of the prairie, I heard a long, high-pitched cry, and then an answering cry, further away. I sat up and looked; my mother was by the fire. “You’re perfectly safe, Hattie,” she said.
“What was that?” I asked. We’d heard wolves howling a few nights ago. This was different.
“Probably a dragon.”
“Do you think we’ll see a dragon?” I asked.
“Mercy, I hope not.”
“Is it true the Indians ride them?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Dragons are bigger than houses and wilder than wolves.”
“Do you think we’ll see Indians?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“But isn’t this Indian country?”
Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories Page 10
