“Us,” said Janna. “He saved us.”
Gerta smiled up at her, surprised. “Yes,” she said, and then Janna bent down and kissed her. Her lips were even warmer than the hot spring and that was all right, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
When they put on their clothes at last, and slogged up to the fire, the otters came galloping to greet them. Gerta laughed and nearly staggered as they brushed against her in a wave of fur and whiskers.
“You’re fine.”
“We knew you would be.”
“We said to keep you warm.”
“The hot springs are excellent.”
“We like them very much.”
“They could fix anyone.”
“They fixed you.”
“The palace has fallen down.”
“Herself is gone.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Yes, she is.”
“She’s gone enough.”
“She’s wrapped up in tree roots.”
“She’s made of winter.”
“She won’t be free by spring, though.”
“Spring will end her.”
“Enough!” said Gerta, still laughing. “Thank you! You saved us all.”
“It’s true.”
“We did.”
“We are very brave.”
“You are very brave and very talented and very wonderful,” said Janna. “And you all know it, too.”
The otters looked very pleased.
“Is she really gone?” asked Gerta. “Will spring really end her?”
“It will,” said Glitter.
“Spring has not been here for a long time,” said Glint.
“We are nearly sure of it,” said Ur.
Mousebones landed on her shoulder. “Awk!” he said. “Awk-awk! Awk!”
Gerta waited for him to say something coherent. “Hi, Mousebones.”
The raven bent forward, meeting her eyes. “Awk! Aurk?”
The first whisper of unease touched Gerta. “I can’t understand you,” she said.
“Awk! Awk! Awk!”
“He says that the magic fell off you,” said Ur. “It was clinging to you like snow to a leaf, but you melted it all off.” She sat down and scratched her ear.
“What?” said Gerta, bereft. “It did? You mean I can’t understand you any more?”
“Awk,” said Mousebones grumpily.
Gerta remembered what Livli had said about magic filling her up like a pot, and then being poured back out again. Or the way Mousebones had described it, like frost on a branch. Had the frost finally melted off?
Perhaps I couldn’t have used the reindeer skin any more anyway…
The skin hardly seemed important, compared to Mousebones.
“But you’re my friend! I want to talk to you. How can I get the magic back?”
The raven huffed, gaped his beak and said, in a hoarse, creaky voice “You…can’t…”
Janna started. “Hey! I understood that!”
“Stupid…human…speech. Awk!” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Could…go…get some…other magic…maybe. Don’t…know…where. Find some…somewhere…”
“Wait a minute,” said Janna. “Are you telling me you could speak human all this time? Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t…feel…like it…” croaked Mousebones. He launched himself off Gerta’s shoulder and took to the air.
“I’m gonna wring his feathered neck,” said Janna, to no one in particular.
Gerta laughed.
As they reached the fire, though, her good mood faded.
Kay was gazing into the fire. His hands were wrapped in bandages torn from blankets.
He also had the beginnings of a truly magnificent black eye. Gerta tried to feel bad about that.
“Hello, Gerta,” he said. “You’re awake.”
“I am.” She crouched down next to him. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m cold. And my hands hurt.” He sounded very young.
“I’m sorry,” said Gerta.
He was silent for a little while, and then said “I think I’d like to go home.”
“Okay.”
“He’ll be all right,” said the other boy. He had pocked skin, and a faint accent she couldn’t place. He was also very ugly, which surprised her a little. She thought the Snow Queen only took pretty boys, but his face was badly scarred.
Well, who knows what a spirit of frost finds pretty?
The boy smiled at Gerta encouragingly. There was a gap in his front teeth, oddly familiar, like something she had seen once in a dream. “I’m Shan. Your friend will be all right. The heart thaws more slowly than the rest. It takes time.”
“Was your heart not frozen, too?” asked Gerta.
He shook his head. “I went with her willingly—more the fool I—but I tired of the palace quickly. But the otters told me what happened to those who tried to leave. So I did not try. Eventually I think she forgot me, or grew tired of me. I saw a few others come and go, but she froze them when they became restless.”
“She was very beautiful,” said Kay abruptly.
“Yes,” said Shan kindly. “She was.”
Kay lifted his head. His eyes passed over Gerta without really seeing her, and it came to Gerta that he had looked over her like that many times before, that his frost-colored eyes had never really seen her.
A year ago, it would have made her frantic, but now it just seemed easier that way.
He said, “The snow’s melting. It shouldn’t melt. We’ll see what’s underneath.”
“Only temporarily,” said Shan. “It’ll come back.”
Kay relaxed. “That’s good, then.”
Gerta looked at Shan helplessly. The boy shook his head. “Give it time,” he said quietly.
Gerta did not particularly want to give Kay time. It seemed that she had given him quite a few years already, for all the good it had done her. “We’ll take him home,” she said. “His parents can take care of him.”
“You’re putting the cart a bit before the horse,” said Janna. “How exactly are we getting home, anyway?”
“Oh, that,” said Mousebones. The raven landed next to them, preening under his wing.
Shan clapped his hands together. “A raven that talks! Well, I should not be any more surprised than that otters talk.” He bowed very deeply to Mousebones.
“Courtesy,” said Mousebones. “I…ap…awk! Approve.” He glared at Gerta. “Only…for you…would I try to say P. Stupid mammal sound.”
“You were saying?” said Janna. She leaned over to Gerta. “Finally, I can answer him back when he insults me!”
“I have never insulted you,” said Mousebones. “I have merely p…pointed things out in the—sp—awk!—spirit of constructive criticism.”
“Sure,” said Janna. “Now about getting out of here…”
Mousebones flapped past them, around the edge of the fallen thorn hedge. They left Kay in the care of Shan and followed. The otters wove around them.
“How’s your ankle?” asked Gerta.
“Better after soaking it. You were out for over a day, incidentally.” Gerta blinked.
Mousebones landed on something sticking out of the jumble of snow and dirt at the base of the thorns.
“It’s Herself’s sled!”
“We know that sled!”
“We can fly if you hitch us to it!”
“Assuming the magic isn’t gone.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“It’s our magic, not hers.”
“Didn’t it used to be Herself’s?”
“It’s ours now.”
“I could fly if I wanted.”
“Like a raven.”
“But no flapping.”
“Flapping is right out.”
“Can you dig the sled out?” asked Janna, shouting to be heard over the flow of otterish enthusiasm.
“Of course.”
“Obviously.”
�
��Probably.”
“Let’s find out.”
Snow flew. Gerta and Janna fled to a safe distance.
“I didn’t imagine we’d fly home,” admitted Gerta.
“I didn’t imagine any of this,” said Janna.
Gerta stood up on her toes and kissed Janna, because she could. It seemed to work just as well as it did when Janna kissed her. She made a mental note to do it as frequently as possible.
Janna grinned down at her.
“Will you come home with me?” asked Gerta plaintively.
“I suppose I have to. Otherwise you’ll be home for five minutes and something terribly bizarre will happen to you and when I see you again, you’ll have befriended three chickens and a whale.”
“Oh, good,” said Gerta, folding Janna’s hands in hers. “Because I’ll have to go home and see my grandmother. And I imagine Shan will want to go home, and we’ll have to drop Kay off with his parents.”
“Sooner rather than later,” muttered Janna.
The largest of the otters—Fish-eater, Gerta thought—got the edge of the sled in his teeth and backed up. The others grabbed onto the tangle of traces and pulled too, and it came up out of the snow, beautifully carved, white as snow.
One of the otters slithered up into the harness, moving like a furry snake, and leapt. The sled came up off the ground for a few inches, then settled back down.
“It still works!”
“I knew we could do it!”
In the end, Shan and Janna had to harness up the otters, who kept squirming and slithering over top of each other. The sled came up off the snow three or four times, until Shan cleared his throat and looked beseechingly at the otters and when that didn’t work, Janna cursed them out soundly.
“Sorry.”
“We get excited.”
“Flying is very exciting.”
“But not flapping.”
“That was a good curse, though.”
“It had real venom.”
“We will behave.”
They loaded Kay into the back and Shan took up the reins.
“Are all of us quite ready?” he asked.
Mousebones clenched his feet in Gerta’s pack and hunched down, muttering.
The otters sorted themselves out and began to gallop across the snow.
The sled came up off the snow with a shuddery sensation, and then they flew.
CHAPTER FORTY
It was like nothing that Gerta had ever felt before, nor, to be honest, did she want to feel it again. It was magical and terrifying. The otters were slipping and slithering over thin air and surely the magic could give out at any moment. Wind screamed over their heads.
She dug her nails into the carved ivory grips. “How do you do this?” she shouted at Mousebones.
“I fly a lot slower!”
They circled over the top of the mound. A green web of stems held down a pile of rubble larger than Gerta’s entire village back home.
“Will the plants die in the snow?” asked Janna in her ear.
Gerta dragged her mind, with difficulty, away from the horrors of flight. “I don’t think so. The green stuff will wither under the snow, but the wall was very…very strong.” Janna nodded, satisfied.
“I’ve flown like this before,” said Kay thoughtfully. The wind blew his hair back from his face, and his eyes were watering—or possibly he was crying.
The otters turned the sled south and began to gallop.
Everyone ducked down out of the wind. Shan poked his face up over the front, looked at the reins, then shrugged and dropped them. The otters ran through the sky without human direction.
It was a long ride and very cold. Gerta and Janna huddled together for warmth. Janna laughed ruefully. “This is the trip of a lifetime,” she said, “and I will be glad when it is over. How did she do it?”
“She must have had magic to keep the wind out,” said Gerta.
The sun set over them. The stars came out. Ducked down below the level of the wind, Gerta looked up.
“Look,” said Janna, pointing up at the great band of stars. “The Bird’s Pathway.”
“They don’t look any closer,” Gerta said.
“They never do,” said Mousebones. “And it’s a stupid name. You can’t fly anywhere near them. Or the moon, either.” He sounded disgruntled.
They flew on and on through the stars, which did not get closer, and the moon rose at a great distance away.
When the sled landed on the roof, at first Gerta didn’t recognize where they were. The otters pranced and bounced, and one—Misting, she thought—said, “This is it, right? The place where we got the last one?”
Gerta stood up unsteadily. Her knees were cramped from so long hunched down in the bottom of the sled. She looked out across the snowy rooftops.
Perhaps it was the angle. Perhaps she had been away too long. For a long moment, she did not know where she was.
But then the familiarity struck her, and the village settled into place like a bone back into the socket. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Kay—we’re home.”
They had to land in the street and lift him out of the sled. His hands were too badly damaged to climb down on his own.
“Home,” he said. “Yes. I would like to go home.”
He went up to the doorway. Gerta knocked for him and then stepped back. She slipped her hand in Janna’s as they watched.
The door opened. A golden square of light fell out onto the step, and she saw Kay’s father in the doorway.
The cry of joy and grief and astonishment was muffled by the snow, but they all saw Kay pulled inside and his father’s arms surround him.
Gerta let out a long sigh.
She had done it. It was over.
She thought that she should feel triumph or joy or pride or…something. Mostly, though, she felt tired.
“Is this where you’re going?” asked Ur. “We can take you somewhere else.”
“Not in that thing,” said Janna. “Unless Gerta wants to?”
“No,” said Gerta, turning back. “I have to go and see my grandmother. She’ll worry. Maybe we’ll come and visit you someday.”
“We would like that.”
“Yes.”
“Bring fish.”
Shan only nodded. Janna shook his hand and Gerta kissed each of the otters on the nose. “You are marvelous,” she told them. “You saved our lives.”
“We are very marvelous.”
“We are quite excellent otters.”
“You brought down Herself.”
“We didn’t like her very much.”
“There was never enough fish.”
“Will you be able to get out of the harnesses?” asked Gerta. “Once you’ve dropped Shan off?” She remembered being a reindeer, and the tightness of the harness and the complicated snaps and baffles.
“Oh, yes.”
“Maybe not back in again.”
“We could if we wanted to.”
“We hardly ever want to.”
The otters arranged themselves in a straggling line, still bickering, and galloped into the sky.
And then it was only two girls and a raven, alone in the snowy street.
“We should go in,” said Gerta.
“Yes,” said Janna, and didn’t move.
“My grandmother will be there.”
“Yes.”
Gerta nodded. She stood up on her toes and kissed the bandit girl and said “We’ll go in. And we’ll come up with a story about how someone kidnapped Kay and you helped me get him back, which is mostly true, although no one will believe us about the Snow Queen, except my grandmother. And my grandmother will make us tea, and probably there will be a lot of crying and a feast.”
Janna nodded. “Tea would be good,” she said.
“And after that,” said Gerta, “after that, I want to go to the coast with you.”
“The coast?” said Janna, sounding surprised.
“You told me about it once,” said Gerta. �
�Where the ravens slid down the roofs in winter.”
“I like this idea,” said Mousebones. “Will there be sausages?”
“We will work something out,” said Gerta firmly. “Because I’ve never seen the sea.”
“Then we will have to fix that,” said Janna, holding out her arms, and Gerta settled into them.
“Awk!” said the raven, as they embraced and left no place for a large bird to perch. “Typical. Awk!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Hans Christian Andersen was a weird dude.
I know that I am supposed to use the acknowledgments to tell people about everyone who helped with the book, and I’ll get to that, but I just want to put that out there first. Hans Christian Andersen. Wow.
His idea of a happy ending is that everybody dies attended by angels (or if you are very very fortunate, in church with your feet cut off.) I find his work mawkish, sentimental, and frequently utterly unreadable, and yet there’s…something. I can’t put my finger on it. (I’m a writer, not a literary critic.) People remember Andersen’s stories for a reason. The Snow Queen and the Little Mermaid have joined the popular fairy tale pantheon when other authors of the era are forgotten or obscure. He had a line directly to the lizard brain parts that react to fairy tales. Some people do.
So I suppose my first person to thank is the storyteller himself. I have not the least doubt in the world that he would be utterly horrified at what I have done to the Snow Queen, and yet, I could not have done it without him.
Next up, we have the usual suspects—my editor Brooke, with whom I have long, often hilarious arguments in the review comments on the documents and my faithful proofreaders, particularly Cassie Dail who frequently gets drafted as alpha reader these days, and so gets hit coming and going as it were, James Rice, Jes A, and Sigrid Ellis. They are the best sort of people.
This book took a lot more research than usual, into things like Sámi culture, Finnish folklore, and reindeer anatomy. A bunch of people helped with bits and pieces of that, but much gratitude to three in particular:
The Raven and the Reindeer Page 18
