The snowflakes, barely a flurry, landed and melted almost at once.
“It’s autumn,” said Gerta. Horror stole over her. “It’s autumn. I set out in spring. What has happened? How long—?”
Helga burst from the house. “Gerta!” she said. “Gerta, my dear, come inside—please, I can explain—”
Gerta backed away, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “No! Stay away!”
Helga might not have stopped, but Gerta screamed—Gerta, who never screamed, who could not raise her voice without blushing—“I said stay away!”
The older woman halted. Her face trembled, all the parts of it, as if it might collapse. “Gerta…”
“How long have I been here?”
Helga held up her hands. The painted flowers on her hat shuddered. “Seven months,” she admitted. “But Gerta—”
Gerta staggered and had to catch herself on a wooden trellis. It creaked under her weight.
“Seven months,” she said. A snowflake swirled past her face and she stared at it. “Seven months.”
“I couldn’t let you go!” said Helga. “You would have died…the Snow Queen would have killed you…you’ve been safe here, haven’t you? I’ve been protecting you!”
Gerta barely heard her. She wracked her mind for memories of the last few months and all she had were fragments. She remembered working in the garden and strange dreams. Surely it had only been a week or two, surely not more than that…
Seven months.
Her birthday had come and gone, nearly half a year ago. Gerta choked on a laugh or a sob. She was suddenly closer to eighteen than sixteen.
They’ve had the harvest feast back home. The sweetheart’s dance. Kay would have asked me to dance, I’m sure of it, but he didn’t because the Snow Queen took him, and I went after him, and I only got this far…
She was consumed with shame. Barely a day and a night down the road—fifteen miles from home? Twenty?—and she had been here seven months. Her grandmother undoubtedly thought she was dead.
Kay might be dead.
“It will be all right,” said Helga anxiously. “Come inside—I promise—I’m sorry—”
“Stay away from me,” said Gerta again. She backed toward the garden gate. “I have to find Kay.”
“You can’t leave now,” said Helga. “It’s coming on winter. She’ll be at the height of her power, if you even reach her, traveling in the snow. Come inside. You can go in spring…”
Gerta stared at her. Did she really think that Gerta would go back in the house?
Does she think I’m stupid enough to trust her again?
“Are you mad?” she asked. “Do you think after all this—Are you mad?”
“I was keeping you safe!”
“I don’t need to be safe!” Gerta could feel herself getting mad, but surely it was all right to be mad now, surely this, of all things, one could be mad about. “You kept me here for seven months! Kay could be dead!”
“He isn’t dead,” said Helga, her shoulders sagging. “The plants haven’t seen him.”
There were few plants left awake in the garden, but the long bare braids of the grapevines creaked when she spoke, a long, wordless sound, almost like assent.
“Good,” said Gerta. Her voice sounded thick and strangled in her ears. “Good. I haven’t failed yet.”
She turned and began to walk toward the garden gate.
“Wait!” called Helga. “Wait!”
“Don’t try to stop me,” said Gerta. “Don’t.” She did not know what she would do if Helga did try—attack her, perhaps? She had never attacked anyone. Perhaps she would figure it out. If you hit a witch with your fists, did anything happen? Did magic stop you?
“I won’t,” said Helga. “I swear it. But it’s starting to snow. It’s nearly winter. You’re not dressed for travel. If you wait just five minutes, I swear, not any longer, I’ll get you a cloak.”
“How do I know it won’t be magicked?” said Gerta suspiciously. “I don’t want to put it on and be under your spell again.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Helga wearily. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. I would if I could, to keep you here.”
“How can I trust you, then?” asked Gerta.
Helga rubbed her hand over her face. “I will swear by anything you like,” she said. “I will swear by the Blessed Virgin and the hosts of angels, by the soul of my mother, by the sacred pool where the witch-water is drawn. Give me five minutes, and let me give you a cloak to keep from freezing.”
Gerta exhaled through her nose. She was cold, now that she was not working, cold, and her clothes did not fit as they had seven months ago. Her shirt gapped open between the buttons and had nearly worn through at the elbows.
In the seven months that she could barely remember, she had grown. And she had spent the nights dreaming of plants. Plants who had tried to help her.
Plants who might help her now.
She turned her head, not taking her eyes off Helga. “Reeds,” she said. “Grapevine. Rowan tree. Is she telling the truth?”
She was aware on some level that she was asking plants for help, and how ridiculous that was. But she remembered the dreams and the green smell of chickweed and the rustle of rowan leaves overhead.
The grapevine creaked another long sound of assent. The reeds bent down as if they were nodding.
The rowan tree dropped a red berry at her feet. It was the color of the cords that her grandmother wrapped around Gerta’s wrist when she was small, to protect against the folk of the woods.
Gerta exhaled.
“I won’t put it on until I’m out of the garden,” she told Helga. “And I’m staying right here by the gate. And I don’t want you to touch me. But…all right.”
“Very wise,” said Helga bitterly, and went inside.
There must have been some magic involved. When she returned, she carried a luxurious fur muff and a heavy wool cloak. She had Helga’s old pack slung over her shoulder.
“There’s food in there,” she said. “It’s little enough, but it’s not enchanted.”
She set them down in the middle of the garden and retreated to the porch. Gerta took a deep breath, snatched them up, and hurried back to the gate.
Nothing terrible happened, and she did not feel any compulsion to return to the house.
“The Snow Queen will kill you,” said Helga. “She’ll reach into your heart and you’ll feel like the lowest thing in the world. You’ll kill yourself just to get away from being yourself.”
“She has Kay,” said Gerta grimly. She shouldered the pack. “I have to get him back.”
Helga shook her head. “She’ll kill you. Go home, if you can’t stay here. The Snow Queen is a power beyond you.”
Gerta closed the gate behind her.
When she was a good distance away, she stopped and clasped the cloak around her throat. It settled in heavy folds over her shoulders.
Nothing else happened.
She shoved her hands into the fur muff. It was very warm and a little of the desperation that had crawled into her heart at the thought of seven months passing eased.
She began walking north. Her last view of the farmhouse was of Helga standing among the empty vegetable beds with her hands over her face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
She slept that night in a haystack, because she was afraid to go up to a farmhouse. It was probably unlikely that they would also be witches, but she had lost far too much time.
Besides, how would I explain what I’ve been doing, or where I came from, or why my clothes don’t fit?
The idea of trying to explain it all was too exhausting, and much too humiliating. She flushed with shame at the mere thought.
Hello, yes, I’m trying to find my true love, but I got enchanted for seven months but I’m better now. Can I buy some sausages?
Did she even deserve to call Kay her true love? She’d kissed him once, and certainly she loved him, but he deserved someone better
. Someone who wouldn’t get stuck at the very first house and lose seven months to a garden and a witch.
There was bread and cheese and ham in the pack, and a small bottle of water. She poured the water out and rinsed it in the stream before refilling it, just in case.
The food…well.
She was nearly faint with hunger by the time she stopped at the haystack. She sat down out of the wind, and opened her pack.
If I don’t eat, I’ll faint and fall down and freeze to death.
If I do eat, I may turn around and run back to Helga.
A few more snowflakes fell. The sky had not committed to snowing, but it was the color of iron and the wind was bitter cold.
One bite. I’ll take one bite and see what happens.
She selected the ham, because it did not seem worth it to risk life and liberty for a bite of bread.
Well, it looks like ham…smells like ham…
It did not look or smell significantly magical. Perhaps it was difficult to enchant a ham.
She took the first bite, watching herself closely.
She did not turn around and run back to the garden. She stayed sitting with her back to the haystack.
A few minutes slid by, a few more snowflakes glided past, and she took another bite.
I suppose it might take effect once I sleep.
There was nothing much that she could do about that. She ate a frugal amount of bread and cheese and another bite of ham, then packed everything away and turned her attention to the haystack.
It was not as easy to dig into the stack as she had expected. The hay made her hands itch terribly and shed quantities of fine dust everywhere.
In the end, she did not so much hollow out a sleeping area as make a depression in the side, and cover the cold ground with hay. She curled into a tight ball with the cloak wrapped around her and the hood pulled down, partly to keep out the cold and partly to shield her from the godawful hay dust.
I know I’ve heard stories where people sleep in haystacks. I’m sure Grandmother told stories about that. Why didn’t they ever mention how dusty it was?
Her dreams were the dreams of hay, of small animals rustling and the wind bending and the sun beaming. The hay had been cut, but it remembered being alive, and its dreams were all of summer.
Gerta woke in the morning, better rested than she probably deserved to be. Her back was sore, but she had not frozen to death. Given how the ground crackled with frost when she walked on it, this seemed like a victory.
She walked to the road. There was nothing in either direction but grey clouds and fields and frost. The hay’s dreams were a small, warm ember in the back of her mind.
She walked on.
On the third day, she knew that she would have to stop. Her cloak was warm, if dusty, and the muff was marvelous for keeping her hands from freezing, but she was running low on food.
Chores, she thought. I will offer to do chores. And I will not sleep in the house or drink anything they offer me, except for water.
She gritted her teeth.
They can’t possibly be witches, too. Every farmhouse between here and the North Pole is not inhabited by a witch. I was just very stupid and very unlucky.
The familiar flush of shame started up the back of her neck, and she waited it out grimly.
The farmhouse she chose was smaller than Helga’s, and there were cobwebs on the porch. When she climbed up the steps, the boards creaked under her feet.
She stared at her hand and the door and lifted one to knock on the other, then lowered it again.
I have to knock. I’m being stupid. They can’t all be witches.
But she did not have to knock. The door opened to reveal a girl only a few years older than herself, severely pregnant.
“I heard the steps,” said the girl. “Can I help you?”
Gerta took a deep breath. “I’m traveling,” she said. “I was hoping that I might do a few chores in return for a meal.”
The girl’s eyes moved over Gerta—the too-small clothing, the too-good muff and cloak, but she did not say anything. “I think we can manage that,” she said. “The rugs need beating. It’s heavy work and easier with two.”
“Thank you,” said Gerta.
They beat the rugs and then Gerta set to work with a broom, taking down the cobwebs on the porch. The windows were very small and the sills were very thick, and had acquired a coating of dead insects trying to get inside, away from the frost. She swept them away, the little brown husks pattering to the ground.
A few days ago—and seven months, she added mentally—she would have been squeamish about such work. Now it was simply an obstacle in her way to finding Kay, and she no longer had the luxury to worry about such obstacles.
“Thank you,” said the girl, when Gerta returned. “You’ve been a help. I can’t get around quite so easily at the moment.”
Gerta smiled.
The girl fed Gerta a large lunch, with farmhouse cheese and bread stuffed with fish and a few apples. Gerta braced herself to decline tea or small beer, but she was apparently not considered an important enough guest for anything but water.
The girl wrapped another few apples up in a cloth, with a roll and a wedge of cheese. “It’s a long way to the next town,” she said, handing them over. Her eyes lingered again on the gaps in Gerta’s clothing. “Did you leave someone’s service?”
“Sort of,” said Gerta. “It’s…complicated.”
“I will trade you a shirt,” said the girl. She stood with her hand braced against her back, leaning back against the weight of her belly. “Mine’s not such a good fabric as yours, but it will fit you better.”
Gerta looked up, startled.
“People will think you’ve stolen that cloak,” she said. “And perhaps you have, but it’s no business of mine. I’d guess by the look of you that somebody turned you off without your wages. You worked hard for me, so whatever it was for, it wasn’t shirking.”
“I didn’t steal it,” said Gerta, licking dry lips.
“Then you’ll do better with a shirt that fits,” said the pregnant girl. “Otherwise people will wonder where you got the money for a cloak like that, when you can’t afford a shirt.”
Gerta bowed her head. “Thank you,” she mumbled, feeling hot with embarrassment. How must she look, covered in hay dust, with her shirt hanging open?
She was glad to leave the house. Even though the girl had been kind enough, and more than fair in her payment for the work, it had been awkward.
The new shirt was rough homespun, and it did fit better, particularly across the chest. The girl had gotten a bargain, since Gerta’s old shirt was linen, but there was no point in carrying around a linen shirt that didn’t fit, particularly when it made her look like a servant girl who had been turned off from her employer without her wages.
She walked on.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a warm autumn day, the sort that can happen right into October. Gerta pushed her cloak back and put the muff in her pack.
The road surface was drier here, and walking was easier. Since she did not need to watch her feet, she looked around.
There was not a great deal of scenery. Trees marked the divisions between fields, and there was a blue band on the horizon that might be more trees. The fields were mown stubble and the weathered fences looked the same as weathered fences have looked since time immemorial. The ditches were full of dried grasses, which rattled in the breeze.
A few fields had a single tall tree in the middle, but not many. Her grandmother had said that such trees were sacred to Ukko, but perhaps no one cared about that any longer.
She kept an eye out for movement. Occasionally, a horse and rider would cross one of the fields, far away.
Mostly, though, she tried to remember the last seven months.
There was almost nothing left to her of those days, except for the dreams. She worried at it like a loose tooth, prodding from all angles, and was rewarded with fragments—a
cup of tea, a fire, the red quilt covered in roses. Tying up beans and cutting down the withered stems of the peas.
There were slugs on the roses, she thought, staring over the landscape of brown and grey and white. I picked slugs off the roses. But surely I didn’t do that for an entire seven months!
Even now, it was hard to believe that it had been so long. She did not even have a sense that time had passed.
But it was autumn. And her clothes no longer fit. Her breasts had grown, which was not entirely a blessing, and her thighs had thickened and her arms were more muscular. Her face, when she had seen it in the farm-wife’s glass, was sharper around the cheekbones.
To her deep digust, she had not grown even a fraction of an inch taller.
Seven months. And all I have to show is dreams about plants. A whole spring and summer gone.
You only got so many springs and summers. Gerta stalked down the road, imagining herself as an old woman, looking back on those lost seasons, feeling robbed.
After awhile, she sighed and rubbed her forehead.
Well, so she had lost two seasons. So had Kay, presumably, since he was in the Snow Queen’s clutches, and Gerta could not imagine that the Snow Queen lived anywhere but winter.
Being angry isn’t getting me any closer to Kay. I just have to keep going. Maybe I’ll remember more and it’ll all come back to me.
She tried not to think about things that might have happened during her time in the witch’s house, things that she might not want to remember.
She went on for most of a week, walking all day, hoping to reach the next town. The blue band proved to be a belt of trees, barely a hundred paces through. After that, there was nothing but fields.
She stopped at three more farmhouses.
Two of them were easy. The farmwife had children at both of them, and she was hailed with relief as another adult to talk to. (Adult? thought Gerta. Me?) She ate well and the second one even offered her a bath in a bucket of heated water, which Gerta accepted with gratitude.
The Raven and the Reindeer Page 4
