The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 58:

White Reindeer

Moth was tired from being picked at by thorns and from spending the entire day on a saddle. Despite the lumpy, root-knotted ground, she managed to get some sleep.

For the first few hours she slept peacefully, but soon, every hour or so, she’d stir and look around. In the forest were nocturnal creatures calling out in the dark, but nothing to worry about – Moth would lay her head back on Aggo and drift off again.

When the ground grew too uncomfortable to bear any longer, Moth sat up against Aggo and waited for the morning, her eyes half closed to get what rest she could. It was just before dawn, when the cracks of sky seen through the forest began to flush blue, that Moth saw something between the trees.

It was a beautiful white reindeer.

Moth stared delightedly as the reindeer – a female – grazed amidst the grass, glancing up now and then with twitching ears, her breath hot and ghostly in the cool morning.

It flitted out of view, and Moth stood up to get another glimpse of it – she took a few steps forward, and then realized she shouldn’t leave Aggo alone.

When she looked back towards her horse, she saw herself – her body was still laying asleep against Aggo. A long blue thread connected her to her body, like an umbilical cord.

“Oh, I’m dreaming,” Moth said, and then covered her mouth. She didn’t want to wake herself up.

The woods didn’t feel so dangerous to her – after all, she couldn’t be hurt in a dream. She had never dreamt so vividly before, been aware of herself in a dream as strongly – it must be Picky Woods. They had felt different to her.

Moth was able to, with some concentration, raise off the ground a few feet, and she began wriggling to move through the woods like a fish in a stream.

She laughed delightedly and followed the reindeer, which saw her but wasn’t frightened – just disinterested, and continued to move through the thorny woods.

Moth followed her for some minutes but felt conscious of her blue thread that connected her back to her body. She wasn’t sure how far it’d go, but it didn’t feel taut yet. She was about to turn back, when the reindeer took a sharp turn and came to a tree.

Moth stood under the tree. It was full of beautiful, yellow crisp apples, growing full and ripe well before the season. Straining her hand upwards, she tried to grasp the apples, but they were always just a little out of reach – her stomach growled hungrily, the meat buns were just a memory, and so she clung onto a branch and dragged herself up the tree.

Surrounded by the golden apples, she reached for one, but saw something strange hidden behind the leaves of the tree. Something bleeding.

A wave of fear washed over Moth, and she pulled on her blue thread and was yanked backwards, speeding backwards through the woods that blurred around her, and she slammed so violently into her body she tumbled off Aggo, waking him up.

Moth, the moment she was awake, felt foolish for wandering so far away from her body while she slept – something every grandmother in Hiren had warned their children about at least once.

“Sorry, Aggo,” said Moth shakily, scratching his ear.

Stiffly, they both got up and stretched. There was no breakfast and only a little water left in her canteen, so Moth got into the saddle, and they continued the slow arduous path through the thorny trees.

The sun began to rise and lighten their way. In the quiet of the early morning, Moth could hear a faint trickle, and she and Aggo followed the sound to find a fast-flowing brook.

She let Aggo drink, and absently watched the minnows glinting behind the rocks. Ama had taught her a long time ago how to catch and eat minnows, but Moth – though her stomach felt hollow – wasn’t hungry enough to try.

Aggo snapped up his head, nostrils flared. Moth jumped up, turning to where he stared into the woods – she searched the forest for any movement.

Birds fluttered and squirrels shook tree boughs, but there was nothing Moth could see that was dangerous – still, Aggo’s ears swiveled, and he looked back behind them with an anxious snort. Moth pulled herself into the saddle and they set off again.

Aggo’s nervousness had set her on edge, and Moth kept looking behind her for anything following. She threw her napkin down - it still smelled of meat buns – in the fear it could be causing something to follow them.

Something coughed.

Moth felt a shiver run through her, until she recognized the sound. The coughing-bleat of a reindeer. It was loud and nearby, and Aggo’s head swiveled towards it, ears twitching.

Moth patted his neck soothingly, and then stared in wonder as a white reindeer came into view. There was an overgrown logger’s trail just ahead, and the reindeer stumbled from the bushes onto it.

It was a bright white reindeer. Just like her dream.

“Hello?” Moth called, though she didn’t know why.

The albino reindeer looked back at her but wasn’t afraid. It kept on down the overgrown path ten feet ahead of them.

They travelled like this for some time. Moth wondered what it meant – she wondered why the reindeer wasn’t afraid of her. She looked down to make sure she was still in her body, to comfort herself she wasn’t still dreaming.

The reindeer startled her by giving another coughing-bleat, and abruptly heading left off the logger’s trail.

Moth pulled Aggo to a stop. She looked down the trail that led to Hiren, and then after the white reindeer.

She remembered her dream. If her dream was real, there would be an apple tree full of fruit. She hesitated only a moment, and then followed the white reindeer, tugging Aggo off the road.

It was only a short while until she came to the clearing.

There was no apple tree, only aspens. And in the aspens was a shaman’s tree stand.

There was a platform built between four aspen trees, raised high up, with a ramshackle wooden roof that barely provided shelter. Many magpie-trap hoops hung from the tree, and the trunk of the tree was decorated with magpie skulls and feathers.

Unlike the conman Moth was used to, this one wasn’t painted the usual bright red to be found by travelers looking for a fortune – but was kept as raw wood, to blend in with its surrounding wood.

Prominent on the platform wast two human skulls painted blue, put on pikes. Swallowing nervously and glancing around, Moth saw the white reindeer had vanished.

Steadying her breath, Moth started to urge Aggo away, when she saw something move on the platform.

Something lifted itself up.

An abnormally large, red reindeer skull looked down at her.

Moth yanked on Aggo’s reins, but he didn’t move – he was transfixed, staring glassy-eyed up at the skull.

Long, spindly white hands clutched on the edge of the platform and pulled itself near to look at them better.

It was a leather mask, painted red. It looked like a flayed reindeer head, but with vacant black eye sockets looking down.

Moth yanked again on Aggo’s reins but he still wouldn’t move – he didn’t even seem to be breathing. She slapped his flank and shoveed his head to break the gaze, but he was in a stupor.

The person wearing the mask began to swing down the tree branches towards her. They wore no shoes – their hands and feet were stained blue with helra.

This was a real shaman.

Moth was about to jump off of Aggo and run on foot, until she saw the mask better. Through the leather, nails had been hammered to create makeshift teeth.

Moth remembered a mask like that, jumping out from behind a tree when she was young.

“Quin Barrowly?” Moth exclaimed.

The masked shaman stopped walking. The spoken name snapped something invisible, and Aggo snorted and danced backwards, shaking his head.

Angry, Moth demanded, “What are you doing? Why were you in my dream?”

Quin Barrowly removed her mask.

The last time Moth had seen her was when she was sixteen. Moth had been visiting Hiren’s largest town – Okatto – and had seen Quin and her grandparents’ buying supplies with their last pennies and leaving for Lad.

Seven years had aged Quin strangely - in that beaten, twisted way a lone tree on a windy plane grows. She was stunted and small, with a thin body and a large head, her violet eyes dulled and hungry, her hair matted, and several ticks attached to her neck and in her hairline.

There were wild dogs better groomed than her.

They were silent, surveying each other. Quin had a strange expression on her face as she looked at Moth – an expression like revelation.

The white reindeer came back. It went up to Quin and nudged its head under her arm – Quin absently scratched the reindeer’s head, but she said nothing.

Quin wore a ratty blouse – the buttons long gone – and it exposed her sternum. There was a large burn there, that was not fully healed. “What’s happened to you?” Moth whispered.

“Are you going to Hiren?” Quin asked, ignoring Moth’s question. Her voice was creaking and dusty with disuse.

Moth reluctantly nodded.

“To Poor Loom?” she asked.

Poor Loom was the name of Quin’s home that her family had lost during the fog and burns. It had since been acquired by the KCAC.

“N…No,” said Moth, confused.

Quin tilted her head, as if listening to something far in the distance. She turned away from Moth and climbed back up her tree stand, and began shoving items into a ratty burlap sack.

Moth stared up at her, and then wondered why she was staying as long as she had. She urged Aggo away from Quin’s home and back onto the logger’s trail.

She felt stupid for following the white reindeer, and believing her dream. In a shaman’s woods she should know better – she was too used to fake shamans in Hiren.

Both she and Aggo rode faster than was necessary along the trail. It was another hour before Moth could calm down – they had left the heart of Picky woods, and the strange feeling of the place began to fade away.

The loggers trail slowly curved north, and after hours of slow progress they emerged at last from the thorn-filled forest and out in steeply buckling hills she recognized so clearly as Hiren.

The grass, the air, the looming shape of Tiding Range far south, all was familiar as her own skin – she knew where she was, just a three-hour ride to Okatto, and then a four-hour ride to her home.

Moth didn’t want to travel anymore. If she did, she’d reach Okatto at night – when most of the farmers were asleep and most of the sentries were wandering around drunk. She was stop here for the evening and leave tomorrow morning.

She looked around and saw an eroded side of a hill, forming a cozy overhang, and she climbed the top of the hill and looked around for streamlets coming down from the mountain, and saw one further south in a deep sandy creek.

She led Aggo there and let him loose to drink and graze. She climbed down the side to get the clear water at the bottom and stifled a scream.

Quin was there, drinking with her reindeer. She carried a burlap sack on her back.

“How did you…” Moth struggled. She had ridden, and Quin had no shoes.

Quin watched her vacantly.

“Don’t you live in Lad now? Why are you going to Hiren now?” Moth demanded.

Quin didn’t answer. She barely seemed like she heard when Moth talked, she was always half looking over her shoulder at something else.

Moth knelt to drink some water – Quin watching her with unblinking eyes – and she said, irritably, “Are you going to keep travelling today?”

“It’s getting dark.”

“So you’re going to camp nearby?”

Quin didn’t answer, and Moth took that as a yes.

“Don’t steal Aggo,” said Moth, her voice breaking as she tried to sound commanding.

Quin sat down by the water and washed her feet in the stream. She lifted her foot to her mouth to chew on a hangnail and get thorns out of her leathery skin. “You don’t steal from a Hevwed in Hiren.”

Moth didn’t like how Quin said that – her words felt pointed, as if she meant it like a lawmaker who took bribes. “What do you mean by that?”

Quin, her face flat and empty, cocked her head to the side and met Moth’s eyes. “Your family loves their own.”

Moth eyed Quin. She decided it wasn’t worth diving for an answer. She got up out of the creek with a tight grip on Aggo, and when she glanced back down in the creek, Quin and her snowy reindeer had gone.

She felt her stomach clench – at first she thought it was from worry, but then it turned to sore hunger and she recalled she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday.

She scrounged around and found some tubers and edible wildflowers, but she kept glancing up at the birds swooping overhead, and the roots tasted like dirt in her mouth.

As the light dimmed, she gave up trying to dig up a meal and returned to her overhang with Aggo. The alcove provided a decent protection from the wind, but the temperature was dropping, and she was already getting cold.

Moth shivered and huddled up next to Aggo, looking out over the purpled landscaped, when she saw, a quarter mile away, a fire spark to life.

Moth sat indecisively for a minute, rubbing her arms as the wind whistled, and finally she jumped up and walked over. The fire was kindled in a small copse, where Quin had set up her camp for the night.

“Quin?” she called out, approaching the fire.

Quin had stoked a good fire and was roasting six doves over it. The reindeer lay peacefully nearby, with Quin having a careful hand on its head.

The smell of grease dripping and crackling into the flames made Moth delirious. She forgot what she was going to ask and stared at the plump doves. Focusing, she asked, “Quin, could I take a stick of fire?”

“You can’t light your own?” Quin asked, her tone hollow. “I thought Hevwed’s could do everything.”

Moth bristled. “Is that a no?

Quin thought for a moment but gestured at her to take a branch.

Moth took up a burning branch, about to leave – but she decided to push her luck. “I have some coins – could I buy two doves from you?”

Quin shook her head.

“I didn’t even say how much I’d give you.”

Still, Quin shook her head. “I want your shoes.”

Moth looked down. She had much better shoes than those – they were her most practical boots. “Alright,” she said, and began to untie them.

“No!” Quin snapped. “Don’t take them off now. Before you sleep, take them off and put them to the side. I’ll get them later.”

Moth didn’t like the sound of it. She didn’t know what it meant, but shamans had strange practices. “Just take them now.”

“Then no doves.”

Moth’s stomach rumbled loudly. She wobbled on the balls of her feet and then said, irritably, “Fine.”

Quin gave her two doves, and Moth took them and her branch of fire to her alcove, leaving Quin and her fire far behind.

Moth was able to build a fire, and by the light of it she warmed herself and hungrily ate the doves – the best meal she’d had in a long time.

She made sure to remove her boots and put them further away from the fire and her bed. It did not comfort her to think Quin would come sometime in the night and take them, but she had made a promise.

“Hello?” came a shrill voice.

Moth whirled around, but relaxed when she saw the magpie.

“Oh, heavens, you startled me,” said Moth. “Do you have a message for me?”

The magpie nodded. It inhaled and said, “It’s not too late. Bury as planned, but hurry, hurry, a great fog burst will come at the end of spring.”

Moth felt a mixture of relief and fear. A Little less than five months to convince a whole region to bury gems. “Thank you.”

The magpie gave a bobbing bow and flitted off into the shrinking light.