Robbergirl

by S T Gibson

  But after a moment, Rasmus put his arms around Helvig and hugged her tightly.

  "Please don’t die." He sounded young, and scared, but then he cleared his throat and spoke again with his usual cynicism. "Your father is already going to kill me for losing a horse and I don’t want him to skin me alive first for sending you off to your death."

  "Come with me."

  "What?"

  Helvig pulled away but kept her hands tight around his shoulders. Excited possibilities buzzed through her, heightened by emotion and the late hour.

  "You already lost one horse, what’s another? Come with me. We’ll get Gerda and bring her back, and we’ll be heroes."

  Rasmus’ eyes skittered around the forest, afraid of being found out. He did not look convinced.

  I know you care for her," Helvig urged.

  Rasmus smiled crookedly, never one to pass up an opportunity to quip even when his safety was precarious.

  "Not as much as she cares for you."

  "That doesn’t matter. I don’t want you taking the fall for this alone. Go get a horse. We’ll leave together and we’ll come back together."

  Rasmus shook his head, pulling out of the girl’s grasp. He smiled at her with sadness shining in his eyes.

  "I’d rather stay where there’s food and a warm fire, thanks. No promises that I won’t rat on you to old Bertie when he tickles me with his knife, though, so you had better do whatever you’re going to do quick"

  Helvig swung herself up onto Bae’s sturdy back. He had been well-saddled and was ready for a long trek. In the trees above, Svíčka ruffled her feathers and watched them with sharp eyes. She seemed irritated to be woken from her slumber, and Helvig realized that Gerda must have left the crow on purpose. The girl was so attached to her bird that Helvig couldn’t imagine her leaving it unless she believed Svíčka would be safer here than with Gerda, and that thought sent a chill down Helvig’s spine.

  "You are brave, Rasmus," she said, unfastening the feed bag from around Bae’s neck. "I promise you I won’t forget this."

  "Live long enough to buy me a drink and I’ll consider the debt repaid."

  Helvig didn’t waste any more time on sentimentality; it wasn’t their way. She kicked Bae forward with a cry and the deer set off at a clip through the snow, leaving Rasmus to shiver alone in the forest.

  Gerda was a fool to take the horse. They couldn’t survive this weather without campfires and a pair of helping hands close by with a feed bag. The animal would valiantly make the sprint for an hour or two, then tire, lay down in the snow, and eventually die.

  Helvig was furious with Gerda for having the audacity to go and get herself killed without so much as asking first.

  Underneath that anger was a fear strong enough to curdle blood, the fear that Helvig would soon find the finest creature she had ever known dead in a snowdrift. Gerda could argue otherwise, but Helvig knew what was true. If you loved something too much, especially something girl-shaped, you were all but begging the whole host of nature to swoop down and pick its bones clean. Well-loved things must taste sweeter to wolves and frostbite and bears.

  Bae plodded on against the biting wind as the sun rose wearily. Helvig rode with her fingers knotted into his mane, her mind a whirlwind of contradictions. She should not have touched Gerda; she should never have let her go. She should never have mentioned Astrid; she should have told Gerda the whole story on the first day. And again and again: you should never have taken her to the church, stupid girl.

  Further out past the thickest part of the woods, the terrain became increasingly sparse and rocky. Little grew this far north besides hardy mosses and low-lying shrubbery that reindeer knew to root under the snow for. The breathtaking lakeside vistas, which Helvig so looked forward to on her trips with her father to trade with the Sami, were lost on her now.

  Every tree that was not Gerda, every rocky outcropping and fallen boulder, was a weight around Helvig's heart. Each mile she travelled further from safety brought her further from hope, and every new mountain the brightening sun revealed reminded her just how wide and empty her world was, until she was sobbing into her hands, alone in the world with her poisonous heart.

  Bae grazed underneath her, indifferent to her suffering.

  A faint tremolo wafted towards Helvig on the wind, and she snatched her hands away from her face.

  A voice.

  Helvig kicked wildly at Bae, disrupting his breakfast, and urged him forward in the direction of the sound. He tottered down a rocky grade, pebbles scuttering around his hooves, and then Helvig's eyes feel on a slim girl petting the mane of an exhausted horse. She sang softly in Danish, shivering in the heavy snow.

  Helvig was off Bae before he had come to a complete stop. She sprinted to Gerda so quickly that the witch hardly had time to notice her before Helvig took her by the arm.

  Gerda spun around, knife drawn and pressed to Helvig’s throat, but when she saw who had grabbed her, her expression didn’t soften. Wind whipped Gerda’s hair around her stony face, turning her into a fearsome troll-wife.

  "What have you done?" Gerda fumed.

  Helvig felt no fear, only an all-encompassing need to make Gerda understand what she had done to her, to feel that in the pit of her stomach the way Helvig felt it in hers.

  So this is why she's never afraid of anything. This was what it was like, to be driven by a single-minded need, heedless of the consequences.

  Helvig knocked the knife away with all the respect she would show a toy and crushed her mouth against Gerda’s like she could kiss the death out of her.

  Gerda struggled and wrenched herself free. All the blood had rushed to her mouth, pulsating an angry red. It seemed to Helvig the only proof that Gerda was really alive, and not a dead thing strung along by her quest to find Kai.

  "God, you’re infuriating!" Gerda cried. She was almost shrieking, her hands curled into fists. "I deliberately left you where you would be safe. What have you done?"

  "Me? What have I done? I could ask you the same, stupid girl!" Gerda flinched when Helvig insulted her, and the thief knew she would regret saying it later, but twin waves of relief and rage crashed over her, swallowing her self-control. "You could have died!"

  "Go back to your father Helvig," The witch said, her stony mask fixed back into place. "He’ll be missing you."

  "Not without you."

  Gerda, apparently done with their conversation, turned back to her horse and reached for the reins.

  "Do you know what it’s like," Helvig hissed between her teeth. "Watching some girl drag your heart behind her like a pet she’s gotten tired of?"

  Helvig took up Gerda’s knife and turned it towards her own chest, then wrapped Gerda’s hands firmly around the hilt. The tip bit into the flesh between Helvig’s breasts and she squeezed Gerda’s wrist hard enough to bruise, but neither woman relented.

  Gerda’s blue eyes were placid as ever, two lakes that would not give back what they had drowned.

  "You’re being nonsensical," she said. "Now let me go."

  Anger clawed its way up Helvig’s throat.

  "I ought to just cut it out and give it to you, for all the use I have for it. Maybe you can use it in one of your spells."

  "If you stand in my way, I will show you just how awful my ‘spells’ can be."

  "I don’t want to stop you. I want to go with you."

  Gerda tugged her hands free, taking the knife with her.

  "I won’t have it on my conscience if you die up here."

  "No one is going to die," Helvig said, so sternly she sounded like her father. "And how do you think I feel? You went off alone without supplies, without saying goodbye, and you left that damn bird that loves you so much...what was I supposed to do?"

  "Respect my wishes!"

  "I have respected your wishes! I’ve respected your secrets and your obsessions and your love for your brother, and if you spurn me and never want to share my bed again, I’ll respect that too. But when someo
ne you care for puts their life in danger you go after them whether you respect them or not. You’re acting...You’re acting like someone who doesn’t care whether she lives or dies."

  It terrified her to even say it out loud, but this felt too much like a suicide mission.

  Gerda’s shoulders sagged, folding under the immense weight she had been holding up for years.

  When she spoke again, the fight had gone out of her voice.

  "I’m tired, Helvig. I have been travelling for so long and I have weathered much suffering in this life and all I want is to see my brother again. Then I can rest."

  "Then take me with you," Helvig urged. She wanted to reach for Gerda, to pull her in close again, but she resisted the urge. "Let me guard you in your rest and your waking. I can’t…"

  Her voice sounded close to breaking. Gerda’s eyes flitted across her face, studying her distress.

  "What is it?" Her voice was softer than it had been moments before, and she drifted a little closer to Helvig, as though drawn by an invisible force.

  "I may not believe in priests and penitences, but I believe in sin. What happened to Astrid was my fault and it's mine to carry until the end of my days. If I let that happen again; if anything bad were to happen to you…"

  "Oh, Helvig," Gerda huffed, part irritation, part irrepressible affection.

  Slowly, her hands found Helvig’s. Helvig brought them up to her mouth and kissed Gerda's wrists delicately, as though too much passion may bruise her.

  "If Kai really is alive," she pressed on. "I want you to find him. I've thought it over, and it's true. I want to help you any way I can, and if you want to send me away, I won't argue. But please, hear me. See me."

  "See you?" Gerda breathed. "I always see you. Even when I don't want to, even when looking at you and all the things I could have if I stopped striving causes me pain, I see you."

  Helvig fumbled inside her many layers of clothing for the charm Gerda had given her, which she had never once taken off. She slipped it over Gerda's head, lifting her braids up so the herbs sat against her neck.

  "You forgot it," Helvig said in a raw voice.

  "No, I didn't. It was for you. To keep you safe"

  "Then humor me and keep it on for a little while more. You can give it back to me once this is all over."

  Gerda shuffled closer to Helvig until their two bodies were pressed together, a barricade against the cold.

  Helvig’s let Gerda encircle her in her arms, and the biting wind tangled their hair together.

  "I’m still cross at you for putting yourself in harm’s way," Gerda said into the fur of Helvig's hood. "But I’m glad you’re here with me."

  "Yes, well," Helvig said, trying to bring a little levity to the situation. "You stole a horse. I couldn’t let you get away with it."

  Gerda seemed now to remember what she had done. "Poor Rasmus. He spooks so easily."

  "It was he who sent you up fresh food and a tinderbox, so you’ll have to thank him properly when we return to my father’s camp."

  She hoped desperately that Gerda wouldn't protest, that she could still imagine surviving long enough to stop by camp as she travelled down south.

  "If Kai's not there when we arrive," Gerda said, voice hollow with terror. "If we can’t find him after all...I don’t know what I’ll do. What I’ll become."

  Helvig had never heard a sweeter sound than the word "we" on Gerda’s lips. The emptiness that had threatened to engulf Helvig over the past few hours was transmuted into wonderful lightness, and she squeezed Gerda tighter.

  "We’ll find him. But for now, we must keep moving. There's a herding family who passes their winters a few miles north of here. A friend of my father's is among them; she'll feed us and give us a warm place to sleep."

  Gerda tipped her face up and gave Helvig a tentative kiss. The touch surprised Helvig, but it was just as earnest as the kisses they had shared last night.

  "I’m...not used to people coming after me when I slip away," Gerda said. "Thank you."

  Helvig stole one more kiss, delirious with the knowledge that she was allowed, that she could do it without the skies falling down around her. Then she nuzzled her nose against Gerda’s.

  "I told you I would follow you into Hell. Now bundle up and get back on that horse. It's a long, cold road to Rávdná’s yet."

  THIRTEEN

  In the dark part of the year, the northern reaches of land received only a few scant hours of sunlight a day, and the light was fading fast by the time they reached the Sami camp. It felt to Helvig, as always, a wellspring of life in the middle of an inhospitable, if starkly beautiful, landscape. Women ducked in and out sturdy triangular lavvus wrapped in reindeer hide, carrying baskets of household goods and swapping gossip.

  The reindeer grazed in a great, meandering herd nearby, rooting tough lichen up from under the snow and wandering as they pleased. The men checked their deer's hooves and horns, or deftly repaired fishing nets while sending little boys running off with messages for their mothers. The entire camp was a swirl of color and vivacity, well-provisioned for winter and unbothered by its presence

  A child bedecked in florid shades of blue and red cried out in a language Helvig only understood in pieces. She shouted back a greeting and then added, in her native tongue,

  "Go find Rávdná! Tell her that her little squirrel has come."

  The child shouted back what sounded like a taunting song, but one of his older sisters appeared to usher him back inside with a click of her tongue.

  "Are you sure it’s safe?" Gerda asked.

  "How do you mean?"

  "You’ve heard the stories. They say the Sami are rough people."

  Helvig let out a belly laugh. "Rough people? You must be thinking of me and mine. The Sami are herders and craftspeople. The same family has been bringing their winter herds down this way since I was a little girl, and my father has always done honest business with them. I grew up playing with these children, taunting their reindeer, sharing their food. This is one of the safest places north of Stockholm."

  Before Gerda could reply, a thickly-built woman appeared out of one of the lavvus. She wore her silver-streaked mane in a swirl on top of her head, and her face was as wrinkled as paper that had been crunched up and smoothed out many times. She put her mittens on her hips as they approached, cheeks glowing red despite the biting cold.

  "My long-lost godniece has come to pay a visit! Are you still toting around that deer like a plaything?" She squinted over their shoulders to the horizon. "Where's Berthold?"

  "Uh..." Helvig began.

  Rávdná sucked her teeth. One flick of her eyes across Helvig's guilty face told the whole story.

  "You've run off, then?"

  "Yes," the thief admitted wearily.

  "Got a good reason, do you?"

  Helvig glanced to Gerda, who nodded.

  "Yes, I think we do."

  Please, don't send us back to my father, please.

  Rávdná harrumphed and regarded them with a keen eye. Snow collected on the shoulders of her thick coat. When she spoke again, she addressed Gerda.

  "Are you hungry, little one?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Awfully so."

  The old woman nodded and turned back towards her home.

  "Well, give over your mounts to one of the children. I'll fix you both a bite and then we can have time for stories. What do you say?"

  Helvig swung off her horse, relief washing over her.

  "Rávdná, that's one of the finest propositions I've heard all day."

  The meal was served with the generosity customarily shown to visitors, with cured meats and blood sausages laid out next to clots of cheese. Scents of vinegar and dill mingled together in a way that made Helvig’s stomach rumble. Such bounty in the middle of the year’s most barren season. The sight of the meal nearly brought tears to her eyes as she sat cross-legged next to Gerda in Rávdná's smoky lavvu.

  Gerda wrapped a piece of salted reindeer meat in th
inbread and pushed it into her mouth with greasy fingers. Helvig grabbed a handful of the cloudberries laid out on a cloth and took a deep sip of the fragrant guompa, fermented reindeer milk brewed with angelica stem and roots. The flavor was strong and not easily acquired by those accustomed to the food of the south, but to Helvig it tasted like childhood, like tight hugs and crunching walks through the snow with other children to go visit reindeer.

  Rávdná watched them eat in comfortable silence, hands folded across her lap, eyes hooded in the glow of the fire. Helvig knew her way. She would not press them for stories or explanations until their bellies were full and the warmth of the lavvu had permeated all the way down into their bones. But when she questioned them, there would be no hiding anything. Helvig hoped Gerda wouldn’t try her usual evasive tactics on the old woman. Rávdná was keener than either of them would probably ever be.

  When the girls had supped their fill and were starting to become drowsy from the creature comforts of fur and fireside and food, the old woman spoke.

  "Your father would never let you travel so far north unaccompanied, no matter how capable you may be of the journey." Not an accusation, merely a statement. She may not know about Astrid, but she knew how Berthold had tightened his daughter's leash after one of her dalliances brought icy ruin down on a city. "What’s happened that has you so disobedient?"

  Helvig opened her mouth to apologize for dropping in unannounced, but Gerda spoke first. With gentleness and, to Helvig’s relief, with honesty.

  "She was saving my life. I ran off into the wilderness alone and unprepared. I didn’t know what I was doing."

  Rávdná nodded. Helvig knew she was turning the story over in her mind like a ruby, inspecting it for imperfections and cracks.

  "I took Bae out before it was light," Helvig continued. "I was going to turn her around but by the time I caught her we were closer to you than to my father. I couldn’t leave her out here on her own."

  "Affection and foolhardiness make natural bedfellows," Rávdná said. "You’re lucky we had already moved down to the winter grazing lands, or else you would be miles and miles from the nearest herding family."