Chapter Four
She slept surprisingly well considering that the night’s quiet was interrupted by the clicking of wolf claws on the wooden floor as they patrolled the cottage. Lilja woke her up with giggles and coos. Half opening one eye, Hanne could see that daylight was fighting to take hold. Ragnifer was not on his trundle bed and his boots were gone. She hurried to dress, and even pulled an extra dress on, and two pairs of stockings. It had been cold yesterday, but as they moved resolutely north it would only get colder. She had Lilja changed, fed, and bundled up when a sudden gust of cold air told her that a door had been opened. She cradled Lilja in one arm and made her way down the ladder. The curtains that divided the room had been pulled back and a very large door was open. Ragnifer was pushing a sleigh outside. Hanne gasped. “It is beautiful!”
Beautiful was an understatement, but Hanne didn’t have a word that was adequate. It was not like the ornate brightly colored sleighs she had seen in the city at Yule time. It was sleek and glowed as if the wood itself were alive. Vines and berries were etched into it and the runners were like nothing she had ever seen.
He noticed her bending to examine them. “Antlers from a dire elk, none left this side of the wall,” he said, bursting with pride.
“They must have been enormous.”
“Indeed, they were. Their antlers did not branch like our reindeer do; each had one giant horn that curled back.”
She dashed to shut the big door behind the sleigh. Ragnifer joined her inside the cottage. “I see the wolves left,” she said, thinking that was the strangest sentence she had ever uttered.
“I sent them on ahead.”
She paused. She didn’t want to stare, but his beard was white again although there was no snow falling. Giving his waist-length beard a fond stroke, he said, “It’s my winter’s coat; when I’m out in the cold it’s white, and when I’m warmer it changes color. My kin used to always live outside, so you needed to blend in with the winter weather but then also be able to hide in the warmer months. Now that I live all free and easy like, it goes haywire.”
Hanne looked at the tiny cottage nestled in the snowbank that needed to be guarded by an entire wolf pack and marveled at his definition of ‘free and easy like.’
Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Like those lizards that can change color?”
Sensing his impending fury, she instantly began to apologize profusely. Over her protestations, he glared at her and stuffed the end of his beard into his mouth and began to furiously chew it. With his mouth full of beard, he still managed to keep a negative commentary pointed at her for several minutes. “Colored lizards… Lizards? Toadstools and bog bodies! A calumny! A malignment, an aspersion of the highest order!” Throughout his tirade he paced around her in angry circles. Lilja reached out for him happily and this seemed to do much for his temper. In a milder tone he continued, “No, I am not some unnatural lizard that changes his colors to appeal to dissipated lady lizards.”
Hanne was reasonably certain that was not how chameleons worked, but she had only read about them, so she said nothing
“I blend into the woods because I am a vaettir, entrusted with the care of this here forest and its citizens.”
He said this with such solemnity that Hanne controlled herself and did not say, Wait, wood sprites are real? How much have you had to drink this morning? His pronouncement seemed to have summoned the snow. It began to fall in sheets of icy white.
She wondered who would pull the sleigh, but she was risking no more questions. She gathered up her meager belongings. Ragnifer handed her a small basket that contained oatcakes, white cheese, and some pears.
He filled a skin with beer for himself and handed Hanne one. “Take it, it’s good for you.” He dashed up the ladder and reemerged a second later in a woolen overtunic embroidered with a design of antlers twining around the hem. His tall dark green cap was lined with fur and tied under his chin. Sandwiching Hanne and the baby between a bearskin and woolen blankets didn’t satisfy him and he tucked another bearskin around them. Ragnifer fetched the reins and harnesses from the cabin. He laid them on the ground in front of the sleigh. Hanne glanced around; there appeared to be no horses to pull the sleigh. She wasn’t sure how she could politely point this out, but it did seem like a substantial flaw in his plan.
He stood on the driver’s seat of the sleigh and a solemn hum rose from deep within his chest. “Herinin… herinin… herinin.” The chant rose like rumbling thunder. The snowfall seemed to hesitate in the air and shimmer. Ragnifer held a pole with antlers on the end. An enormous stag emerged from the woods and bent his head before him. The woodsman returned the bow. Other reindeer silently converged on the sleigh and stood for Ragnifer to attach their harnesses.
Hanne thought she had seen deer before; they had nibbled on flowerbeds at the edge of town, sylphlike, delicate and lovely. These hardy specimens were none of those things. They were barrel chested, shaggy coated, and at the shoulder they were taller than most men. Against all of her better instincts Hanne called out, “They are huge. Are they moose?”
The sprite and his noble team turned as one to glare at her. “Moose? How in the name of Thor and his iciest minions could a pack of moose pull a sleigh?” Hanne had no idea how to answer that.
“Sorry, stupid thing to say,” she called and gratefully buried her face in the furs. Furtively peeking, she noticed that the team was not buckled the way she had expected, two by two. They were in a slightly staggered formation that prevented their enormous many tined antlers from interlocking. The last animal was buckled, and the sled lurched forward, the team pulling as one. The wood sprite bounded along beside the sled for a dozen strides and then leapt into the driver’s seat of the sleigh with the speed of a fox. He tossed the pole beside Hanne. The woods passed by and Hanne nestled down deep into the furs.
Ragnifer kept up a steady stream of commentary. “They are reindeer. Not just any reindeer, these be vltavas.” The team required his attention and he kept up a running encouraging commentary. “That’s it, Aksa… Tread carefully, Blix. Well done, Lavin; I knew you would be as strong as your sire. Careful, there’s a fallen tree ahead.” The team pulled as one, turning around trees and moving through openings that Hanne was sure they would never fit through. She stayed low to avoid the branches that would snap back after the deer passed.
The day stretched on until the trees became sparser. She would not have thought it could get colder, but it had. They moved past the tree line and suddenly, they were on the tundra.
Ragnifer cried, “And now my beauties, run!” Hanne thought they had been running, but apparently, they had not. The wind whistled around her as the sleigh raced along the snow. Hanne’s head grew heavy. She shifted Lilja and closed her eyes.
The sleigh jolted forward, waking her with a start. She heard a vicious snarl and whipped her head around. A snow bear was abreast of them. With a marvelous spring, Ragnifer leapt onto the back of the lead reindeer and guided the team in crazed zigzags. Hanne tightened her arms around Lilja. A wolf’s howl careened through the frigid air, which seemed to make the bear even more determined to catch his prey. Just as the pack of wolves caught up with it, the bear pounced onto the sleigh. Cowering on the floor, Hanne could smell the bear’s foul breath. The sleigh jerked jaggedly. Everything in the sleigh was being tossed back and forth and her scrabbling hands found Ragnifer’s pole. She braced herself for the crunch of her bones in the fearsome jaws. The bear ignored her; apparently he was chasing more succulent meat. She peered from underneath the fur that covered her.
The bear crouched, readying to pounce onto a reindeer. As he leapt, she desperately jabbed the pole upward. At first she thought that the dreadful shriek was coming from her own throat. A heavy weight crashed upon her, knocking the breath from her lungs. She was too stunned at first to realize that the sleigh had come to a stop. It was a struggle to move. The weight was yanked off with a fierce cry of “Ya!” Ragnifer hauled the dead bear off of her and rolled it out of the sleigh. “Well done, Princess! I knew you were of a fearsome disposition!” The wolves circled their quarry and Hanne turned her face to avoid the sight of the gruesome meal.
Ragnifer took notice of her sensibilities and walked the team a ways on. He unharnessed the reindeer. Hanne winced when the little man retrieved his bloody pole and rubbed it with snow to clean it. He held it high and began to chant, “Gronn, gronn, gronn.” With amazement, Hanne watched the snow melt in a circle around him as he continued to chant. Fresh sweet clover emerged from the winter ground. The reindeer happily began to eat. “Princess, you might want to eat a little something,” he said.
“I will soon,” she promised, with no intention of ever touching food again. The team ate quickly and it was soon time to keep moving. “Mjoĺl,” Ragnifer said with a wave of his hand, and the green patches were instantly covered with soft, deep, seemingly undisturbed snow.
After harnessing the team again, Ragnifer hopped onto the sleigh. “Away, me friends and fellows!”
They were off again. The traveling was more straightforward now that there were fewer trees, but there was nothing to buffer the wind.
“You think this is cold? Hardly a bit—this is just a wee bit nippy, compared to yon wall,” the wood sprite called over his shoulder, in a way that struck Hanne as less than encouraging. The wind blew the snow almost horizontal, and she gave up on seeing anything and hunkered down into the furs.
She had dozed and awoke when Ragnifer whistled in her direction. He tossed the reins over his shoulder and she barely succeeded in clutching them. “What do I do?” she called as the snow bit into her face and caused her eyes to burn.
“Just don’t drop ‘em,” he called over his shoulder. With a bound, he leapt onto the shoulders of each reindeer one after the other until he was carried on the lead reindeer’s broad back. He touched the lanterns with his pole and they each sprang alight. Circles of light illuminated directly in front of the sleigh. The sprite turned and launched himself back into the driver’s seat. He took control of the reins. “Back ye get, under the furs, miles to go and all of that…”
Lilja was awake and Hanne ducked her head under the fur and bounced the fretful baby on her knee. She remembered a song her mother had sung to her when she had been a child.
The fawn falls soft asleep in a bed of deepest moss
His mother stands and bleats a tender lullaby.
Hush, hush, baby mine
Like the dam and the stag I will tend you,
Soft in the nest of your dreaming…
Being carried to safety by the strong shoulders of Ragnifer’s crew made the words resonate within the little warm cave formed by the furs. Hanne kissed her daughter’s nose, and sang it again and again and again. The lullaby worked its magic on both Lilja and her mother. The quiet whoosh of the bone runners providing the rhythmic background noise, they both slipped into slumber.