CHAPTER EIGHT

A White Reindeer

That night, Saga dreamed about runes.

She wasn’t carving them into stone or wood, but drawing them with her finger in the air. They left curving shapes behind that she didn’t recognize; these were not any runes that she’d seen Afi make. Bubbling with magic, they glowed the bright blue of ancient ice before turning into her afi’s fierce blue eyes. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t work out what he was saying and then she began to fall, sliding down the deck of a boat, slipping through her afi’s arms as he reached out to catch her and down, down, down … She woke with a gasp when she hit snow.

Bjørn patted her with his paw.

‘I’m awake, I’m awake,’ Saga grumbled, getting to her feet and brushing the powder from her furs. Stifling a yawn, she jerked her head towards the trees. ‘Come on, let’s make camp.’

With the trees sheltering them, Saga collected dry firewood before digging inside the small pouch her afi had given her. One of the things inside was a firestarter: a strip of mushroom beaten, charred and boiled in urine until it could smoulder for days. Saga gently blew on it and it flamed. Soon, they had a roaring fire. She huddled up against Bjørn as they shared some salted fish Afi had also packed. As Bjørn slurped up the snow Saga melted for water, she thought over what the seer had told her.

‘I don’t know if the trolls are still heading further north or not but I think we need to,’ she said to Bjørn as she set down her drinking cup. The bear immediately got his nose stuck in it. Saga tickled his belly. ‘It’s just the two of us now,’ she told him. He shook off her cup and looked up at her seriously. ‘And I think we’re going to have to pretend to enter the contest just to get inside the sorcerers’ castle.’ A soft growl rumbled in Bjørn’s chest. Saga nestled closer to him. ‘It will be all right. I’m not going to actually enter the contest. Once the sorcerers have agreed to help, we can leave straight away and go and get Afi and Dag and everyone, and go back home, where we all belong.’

Outside their little fire, the world was vaster, darker and lonelier than Saga had imagined. And every time she worried about what the trolls were going to do to her afi, Saga felt smaller. She sighed and rubbed her head, trying to remember the stories Afi had told her of the contest and the time her parents had entered it. But all the stories had been about how Saga’s father had fallen so in love with her mother that when he lost the first challenge and had to leave the castle he waited outside in the snow for days, until her mother failed at the last challenge and joined him. Then there were the stories about that village that had disappeared after a winner went home with a horn full of ice crystals. Saga stared at the fire. Magic was dangerous, but what if it was the only way to save Dag and Afi? The thought of something happening to either one of them was even scarier than magic. Bjørn whined, but she gritted her teeth and reached out a hand.

‘I have to try. What if I could save them?’

Using her finger like a knife, she started carving the rune she’d seen in her dream. Her hand trembled. Sweat dribbled down the back of her furs and her breathing fogged into the air. Still, she tried until her vision swirled and she felt so dizzy she was nearly sick. Bjørn huffed, pawing at her until she abandoned the rune.

‘I can’t do it,’ she whispered miserably, leaning against his soft flank.

Suddenly, the trees nearest to Saga began to tremble and shake. She stood up, laying a hand on Bjørn as he tensed, sensing whatever was lurking there.

The ground shook.

Saga looked to the stars; thunder was the rumble of Thor’s wagon, rolling across the sky – but the stars hadn’t shifted. She began packing her little pouch in a hurry. This far north, she wouldn’t survive without it.

Then there were footsteps. Massive, tree-rattling footsteps, coming their way. Saga was desperately reaching for the last bit of fish when a troll stepped out of the trees. Though this one had only one head, its eyes were hungry.

Saga dropped the fish. Bjørn reared on to his back legs, puffing himself up, ready to fight the troll.

‘Bjørn, no!’ she yelled.

But Bjørn was a fiercely protective bear. He roared. And the troll unhinged its jaw and roared back. Its breath blew Saga’s hood down, hot and rancid against her face. She gagged at the stench, her ears ringing as she tugged at Bjørn’s fur.

‘Come on, we have to go,’ she cried.

Bjørn tipped forward, landing on all four paws. Saga clambered on to his back and he broke into a run, heading away from the warmth of the fire and back into the night.

But the troll wasn’t finished with them yet. It bellowed and gave chase.

Bjørn gathered speed, his paws padding in the snow like snowshoes as they fled northwards over the land.

Each time Saga looked back, the troll seemed to be closer. ‘It’s catching up with us,’ she shouted, wiping her eyes and nose as they watered from rushing through the frozen night. The next time she looked, it was close enough to spot the shrubs nesting in its hairy ears. The time after that, she could see the stones that encrusted its knuckles as it reached out to swipe at them.

Saga ducked and grabbed for her knife.

A bellow sounded in the distance. The troll paused, listening. Bjørn managed to carve out some distance between them, but Saga didn’t dare sheath her knife just yet. Then the troll turned and darted back, disappearing into the dark. Saga knew that without lighting a torch she wouldn’t know if any others might be lurking, just out of sight.

‘Well done, Bjørn.’ She patted her bear, suddenly exhausted, having been awake the entire night. Judging by the deep blue tint creeping up the horizon, it was now late morning. Though the sun never rose above the mountains in winter, each day granted them a few hours of rich blue light that set the fjords aglow. It did mean Saga had lost the stars, but if they continued their current path, inland from the fjords, eventually they would reach the end of their world. The sorcerers lived beyond that point, on islands made entirely of ice, where white bears hunted and prowled, and horned whales clashed in the sea.

Bjørn eventually slowed to a comfortable pace and Saga settled down for a long day of riding her bear. They passed endless white landscapes, Saga drifting off to sleep. Until – She jerked upright. ‘Did you see that? I could have sworn that something just moved.’ She rubbed her eyes to see better. ‘Please don’t let it be another troll …’

Out of the snow stepped a white reindeer.

Saga squeezed her legs round Bjørn and he came to a quiet stop.

The reindeer walked towards Saga and her bear and halted nervously. Then Saga spotted the harness wrapped round its midsection; it was pulling a sled. And on the sled was a girl who looked the same age as Saga.

‘Hello,’ Saga said, feeling more than a little foolish.

The girl replied in one of the Sámi languages. Her eyes and hair were the earthy brown of the forest in early autumn and her pale skin was reddened from the wind and cold. Saga didn’t speak Sámi. But Bjørn seemed fascinated with the girl. He ambled over to her sled and Saga was about to call him back in case the girl was afraid, when to her amazement, Bjørn rested his head on the sled, allowing the girl to stroke him behind his ears.

‘He is beautiful,’ the girl told Saga, switching to Norse. ‘How did he come to be yours?’

‘He isn’t mine,’ Saga said a little defensively. ‘We belong to each other.’

Afi had told her that one day, when he’d been chopping firewood outside their longhouse, he’d returned to discover Saga cuddled up with a lost brown bear cub. Nobody had seen Bjørn wander through their village. Even her parents, who had been inside the longhouse, eating and talking, had sworn that the door had not opened. When she grew old enough to understand the stories that her afi wove, Saga suspected that Bjørn was her fylgja, a guardian spirit that mirrored her hugr, her immortal character. A fylgja was usually hidden inside a person, like warriors that held the wolf as their totem or like Dag, who pretended that the eagle was his when it was secretly a deer. But Saga was lucky enough to wear her guardian spirit outside of her person, treading through life with her best bear friend forever at her side.

‘I understand,’ said the girl in such a way that Saga felt that she did. ‘Where are you travelling to?’

‘To the Far North,’ Saga told her.

The girl gave her an evaluating look. ‘For the contest?’

After a brief hesitation, Saga nodded. This girl was a stranger and didn’t need to know that Saga was only pretending to enter the Fifth Winter to get inside the castle. Besides the seer, she was the first person Saga could remember meeting outside the safety of her village, but if Bjørn trusted her then Saga knew she could too.

‘As am I. Perhaps we should travel together. Your bear is tiring.’

Saga’s stomach pinched with guilt. ‘I know,’ she said quietly. She had asked too much from him already and they still had a long way to go. ‘I would be grateful to ride in your sled with you.’

The girl moved over and Saga slid down Bjørn’s back and sat next to her.

‘I am Ruvsá,’ said the girl, pulling her blankets over them both. They were made of thick, fuzzy wool and very warm.

‘Saga.’

Ruvsá gave the reindeer a command and they began to move. Bjørn ambled along at their side. ‘I come from a family of reindeer farmers,’ Ruvsá told Saga. ‘But this winter has been hard – and winning the contest would help.’

Saga watched Ruvsá guide her reindeer without saying anything. Saga knew villagers who had sailed a little way up the coast to trade with the Sámi so she knew that Ruvsá’s reindeer-fur coat and hooded cape were called a beaska and a luhkka, and that reindeer herders loved and respected their animals. She also knew it was rude to ask how many reindeer were in a herd. Instead, she asked, ‘What’s your reindeer’s name?’

Ruvsá’s smile warmed the night. ‘Snowflake.’ She glanced at Saga. ‘So why do you want to win the magic?’

Saga chewed her lip. She wasn’t sure how much to tell Ruvsá, though it could be useful to learn more about the contest just in case – her village had been hidden under a shield for many years, robbing them of visitors from the outside world, like storytellers who might have spun tales of what had happened in the last few Fifth Winters. So she sighed and turned to the other girl, telling her, ‘My village was attacked by trolls yesterday.’

Ruvsá gasped. ‘I am sorry to hear that. Trolls rarely attack the Sámi, but we have heard of the raids on villages all over the North.’ Most of the Sámi were nomadic, following their reindeer herds as they moved throughout the year, taking their homes, their lávvus, with them. This made them difficult prey for the trolls. Ruvsá went on: ‘This past year there were more than usual.’

Saga grimaced. ‘I didn’t know that. Our village has been protected until now.’ She gave no explanation for this but Ruvsá didn’t ask for one either and Saga liked her better for it.

The two girls fell into an easy silence and Saga rested her head against the curved back of the sled, watching the blue-stained sky darken, revealing the first stars. Now the day looked like night again. She couldn’t help imagining her parents travelling to the Far North all those winters ago, wondering if she was treading the same path now. Yawning, she let her eyes close, and fell into a deep sleep, helped along by the comforting motion of the sled as it gently creaked over the snow.