The Raven and the Reindeer Read Online Free Page A

It’s all worth it for Kay.  
    Kay seemed very far away.
    I will tell him all about this. He’ll be very impressed. He’ll say, “Oh, Gerta, how you’ve suffered for me…”
    She engaged in this fantasy for a few moments, and then sighed. She was fundamentally honest, even with herself. Kay would look at her and say “You walked through the woods and it was cold? That’s your great suffering?”  
    “It was scary,” she would say. “And I had a blister.”
    Gerta could actually hear in her head how “I had a blister” would hang in the air between them. She flushed a little, at the sheer stupidity of the thing she hadn’t actually said yet.  
    She kept walking. She tried to swing her right foot so that the heel wouldn’t rub. It was only partially successful.  
    The road began to go uphill. Gerta wanted to cry and hated herself for it, because all she was doing was walking down a muddy road in the dark. You didn’t get to cry about just walking down a road.  
    The Snow Queen could be days and days north of here. She probably is days and days north of here. I’ll have to walk the whole way, and there won’t be farmhouses for most of it. I’ll have to sleep in the woods. And make camp. And build fires.  
    She took a deep breath. She knew how to build a fire in a stove. Presumably it wasn’t that much different from building a fire on the ground. Making camp…well…that was something else again.  
    Her grandmother had taught her any number of things, like embroidery and spinning and plain sewing and some basic knitting. She had started to teach her how to use the great loom that stood in the corner, so that someday Gerta could earn her living as a weaver, if she didn’t marry, or if she outlived her husband as her grandmother had done. And Gerta could cook on a stove and clean nearly anything. All good, useful skills. She’d make someone a fine wife some day. Everybody said so.
    Making someone a fine wife had not included learning how to sleep in the woods without freezing or getting soaked. This struck Gerta as an enormous and unexpected gap in her education.  
    This is stupid. This isn’t suffering. I don’t get to feel bad about this.
    Feeling bad about feeling bad was not significantly better than feeling bad in the first place. Gerta sighed again.  
    I will learn how to make a camp. I will learn how to sleep in the woods. I will find someone to teach me or I will figure it out myself.  
    People do it all the time. I’m not stupid, even if I’m not as smart as Kay. If I can take apart a stove, I can do this.
    She squared her shoulders and went on.
    Her newfound determination bought her a few more hours. The hill crested and going downhill helped.  
    She tried not to think about how long she had been walking.  
    I’ll sing. It’ll be easier if I sing a song.
    She tried to think of one, and for some reason all that came to her was a hymn which she’d never even liked very much.
    “The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet,” she sang, “and angels descend there the children to greet.”
    Her voice died away. There were no roses here, and if there were angels, they were staying well hidden.  
    Eventually the world was no longer black but a seeping brownish-grey. Each twig was outlined with cold light.  
    Gerta did not really notice that it was dawn. She had moved from thinking too much to a place where she was no longer thinking at all. The pain on her heel had been absorbed by a general pain in her feet and her back and her hips and her shoulders.
    She also did not notice that the trees were getting thinner or that the pines had given way to scruffy brambles with green buds on them. All she saw was the road.
    It was not until she emerged from the woods completely that she stopped. Morning light broke over her like a wave.  
    “What…?” she said aloud, looking up, as if someone had spoken her name.
    There was a farmhouse in the distance.
    It stood by the side of a stream.