The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher Read Free Book Online Page B

it?” asked Gerta.
    The raven spread its wings. The right one did not extend all the way, and moved stiffly when it flapped. “Shouldn’t think you’d want to,” it said. “Being able to talk to ravens is a sensible magic. Moreso than most of the fool stuff you see flying about. Aurrk!”  
    It leapt. Two ragged wingbeats and it was aloft, the stiff wing dipping. It flew low over the ground, to a fencepost, and landed.  
    “Wait—!” called Gerta, but the bird took off again and was gone.  

CHAPTER TEN

    Gerta saw the raven again the next day, when she stopped to eat. A small copse of birch trees kept the wind from cutting through, and when the road passed through, she decided to stop for a few minutes. She had been smelling snow in the air, but was hoping that she was wrong.
    She sat with her back to the largest birch, alternating mouthfuls of bread and cheese.  
    The raven landed in front of her, light on its feet despite the awkward wing. “Aurk!”
    Gerta eyed it suspiciously. It tilted its head and eyed her right back.
    “Do you still talk?” she asked.
    “Hell of a thing to forget in a day,” said the raven. “Do you have any cheese?”
    Gerta tossed a chunk of cheese to the bird. It snapped it up in a single bite and looked expectantly for more.  
    “Do you have a name?” asked Gerta.  
    “I do,” said the raven.  
    Gerta waited.
    The raven fluffed its beard. “I am the Sound of Mouse Bones Crunching Under the Hooves of God.”  
    Gerta blinked a few times. “That’s…quite a name.”
    “I made it myself,” said the raven, preening. “I stole the very shiniest words and hoarded them all up until they made something worth having. Sound and God were particularly well-guarded. Crunching I found in a squirrel nest, though.”  
    “May I call you Mousebones?” asked Gerta. “It’s…a lot to say all at once.”
    It was hard for a creature with a beak to scowl, but the raven managed, mostly with the skin around its eyes. “I suppose,” it said. “If you must.”  
    “Mine’s Gerta,” said Gerta.
    “There’s your problem right there,” said Mousebones. “Much too short and not enough in it. I don’t know how you expect to become anything more than you are with a name like that.”  
    Gerta put the bread and cheese away. The smell of snow was stronger, and she needed to move quickly if she wanted to find shelter by nightfall.
    “Hugin and Munin,” she said, looking straight ahead at the road, “the ravens who sit on Odin’s shoulders, have names five letters long. Same as Gerta. They manage.”  
    “Aurk! Aurk! Aurk!” laughed the raven. “Oh, aurk! Not bad for a fledgling human, not bad. Who told you that?”
    “My grandmother,” said Gerta. “She told me lots of stories. Fairy tales, mostly, but some about the old gods, too.”
    Her grandmother had been a good Christian, as everyone in Gerta’s village was, but she loved a story and so Gerta had grown up on tales of Thor and Loki and Sampson and Martin Luther all tangled together like rumpled knitting.  
    “Aurk.” Mousebones hopped from fencepost to fencepost beside her, keeping pace. “You have no magic in you, you know, not even the little bits that come down because somebody’s great-great-grandsire crossed a fairy mound the wrong direction.”
    Gerta tried not to feel insulted.  
    “You get it from your grandmother, I imagine,” said Mousebones. “That’s a guess. Only a guess, but a raven’s guess is worth more than a magpie’s. Aurrk!”  
    “Get what?” asked Gerta.
    “No magic,” said Mousebones. “When it’s that strong, being unmagical is a thing itself. Like being a white raven. White ravens aren’t really white, they’re just an absence of black. But they’re very good at it.”
    This did not make a great deal of sense to Gerta, but asking questions would probably just make things even more muddled.  
    There was also the small fact that she was talking to a raven, which was