“Go on, have one,” Taiga said, and for the first time she smiled a little. September knew that smile. It was the smile a farmer wears when the crop is good and she knows it, so good it’ll take all the ribbons at the county fair, but manners say she’s got to look humble in front of company. “Best moonkins east of Asphodel, and don’t let anyone tell you different. They’ll be gone in the morning, so eat up while they’ve got a ripening on.”
September crawled partway up the hill and found a small one, small enough that no one might call her greedy. She cradled it in her skirt and started back down-but Taiga took a running start and darted past her, straight to the top. She sprang into the air with a great bounding leap, flipped over, and dove right down into the earth.
“Oh!” September cried.
There was nothing for it-she followed Taiga up the hill, making her way between giant, shining moonkins. Glassy vines tangled everywhere, tripping up her feet. When she finally reached the crest, September saw where the deer-girl had gone. Someone had cut a hole in the top of the hill, a ragged, dark hole in the dirt, with bits of root and stone showing through, and grass flowing in after. September judged it big enough for a girl, though not for a man.
Much as she would have liked to somersault and dive like a lovely gymnast, headfirst into the deeps, September did not know how to flip like that. She wanted to, longed to feel her body turn in the air that way. Her new, headless heart said, No trouble! We can do it! But her sensible old legs would not obey. Instead, she put her pale fruit into the pocket of her dress, got down on her stomach, and wriggled in backward. Her bare legs dangled into what ever empty space the hill contained. September squeezed her eyes shut, holding her breath, clutching the grass until the last moment-and popped through with a slightly moist sucking noise.
She fell about two feet.
September opened her eyes, first one, then the other. She was standing on a tall bookcase, and just below it stood a smaller one, and then a smaller one again, and another, and another, a neat little curving staircase of books down from the cathedral ceiling of the moonkin hill. Down below, several girls and boys like Taiga paused in their work to look up at the newcomer. Some of them wove lichen fronds into great blankets. Some of them boiled a creamy stew full of moonkin vines that smelled strange but not unpleasant, like peppermint and good thick potatoes. Some had on glasses and worried away at accountants’ books, some refilled the oil in pretty little lamps, some relaxed, blowing smoke from their pipes. The coziness of the scene quite overpowered September, whose feet and fingers still tingled with numb coldness. Here and there peeked everything that made a house feel alive, paintings on the walls and rugs on the floor and a sideboard with china and an overstuffed chair that didn’t match anything else. Everyone had very delicate, very bare feet.
“I daresay doors are more efficient.” September laughed as she made her way down. “They aren’t hard to make, either. Not much more than a hinge and a knob.”
Taiga held up a hand to help September off of the last shelf.
“Hunters can use doors. This way we’re safe.”
“You keep talking about hunters! We didn’t see one on the way here and really, I can’t believe someone would hunt a girl! I don’t think girls make very good roasts or coats.”
“They don’t want to kill us,” Taiga said darkly. “They want to marry us. We’re Hreinn.”
September bit her lip. Back home, she had gotten used to knowing things no one else knew. It was a nice feeling. Almost as good as having a secret. Now she was back in the country of never knowing anything.
Taiga sighed. She took off her boots and her gloves and her coat and folded them neatly onto the mismatched chair. She took a deep breath, then tugged on her deer-ears. Her whole body rolled up like a shade suddenly drawn-and then standing before September was not a girl but a smallish reindeer with black fur and white spots on her forehead, a big, wet nose, and big, fuzzy, heavy antlers. She was somewhat shorter than September expected a reindeer would be, big enough to look her in the eye, but not to make her feel afraid. Yet Taiga was not cuddly or sweet like a Christmas reindeer in a magazine-rather, muscles moved under her skin, and everything in her lean, graceful shape said speed and strength and a feral kind of thrill in biting things. Taiga turned her head and caught her ear in her teeth, yanking on it savagely, and her sleek reindeer-self rolled down into a dark puddle. The girl with white hair and black ears stood before September again.
And then, slowly, Taiga pulled the puddle into her arms. It was black and furry. She held it lovingly.
“This is my skin, you see,” Taiga whispered. “When we’re human, we have this little bit of reindeer left over. Not just deer, you know. Deer are gossips and prank-pullers and awful thieves. Reindeer. Hreinn. Reindeer aren’t from around here, you know. We come from the heavens-the moon is our motherland.”
“But no one can live on the moon!” said September. “It’s too cold and there’s no air. I’m in the astronomy club, and Miss Gilbert was very specific about that.”
“Then I’m sorry for your moon-what a poor, sad planet! We will set a place for her at dinner, out of respect. Our moon is rich and alive. Rice fields and moonkin meadows as far as you can see. And Hreinn like moss spores, so many and scattered so far. And hunters. All kinds-Fairies, Satyrs, Bluehearts, Ice Goblins. Once the moon was generous enough for all of us. In our reindeer-bodies, we ran and hid from pelt traders and hungry bowmen. That was fine. That’s how the moon plays her hand-she’s a tough, wild matron. We eat and they eat. Grow fleet and clever went our lullabies. Escape the hunter’s pot today, set your own table tomorrow. But once the huntsmen saw us change, they knew our secret, and they wanted more than stew. They stole our skins and hid them away, and when a body has your skin, you have to stay and cook and clean and make fawns for them until they get old and die. And sometimes then you still can’t find your skin, and you have to burn the cottage down to catch it floating out of the ash. They chased us all the way down the highway to Fairyland, down from the heavens and into the forest, and here we hide from them, even still.”
“You’re cooking and cleaning now,” September said shyly. A Hreinn boy looked up from kneading dough, his pointed ears covered in flour. She thought of the selkies she’d read about one afternoon when she was meant to be learning about diameters and circumferences: beautiful seals with their spotted pelts, turning into women and living away from the sea. She thought of a highway to the moon, lit with pearly streetlamps. It was so wonderful and terrible her hands trembled a little.
“We’re cooking for us to eat. Cleaning for us to enjoy the shine on the floor,” Taiga snapped. “It’s different. When you make a house good and strong because it’s your house, a place you made, a place you’re proud of, it’s not at all the same as making it glow for someone who ordered you to do it. A hunter wants to eat a reindeer, just the same as always. But here in the Hill we’re safe. We grow the moonkins and they feed us; we love the forest and it loves us in its rough way-glass shines and cuts and you can’t ask it to do one and not the other. We mind our own, and we only go to Asphodel when we need new books to read. Or when a stranger tromps around so loudly someone has to go out and see who’s making the racket.”
September smiled ruefully. “I suppose that’s my racket. I’ve only just arrived in Fairyland, and it’s hard to make the trip quietly.” She hurried to correct herself, lest they think she was a naive nobody. “I mean to say, I’ve been before, all the way to Pandemonium and even further. But I had to go away, and now I’m back and I don’t want to trouble you, I can clean my own floors quite well even if I complain about it. Though I think I would complain even if it were my own dear little house and not my mother and father’s, because on the whole I would always rather read and think than get out the wood polish, which smells something awful. I honestly and truly only want to know where I am-I’m not a hunter, I don’t want to get married for a long while yet. And anyway where I come from if a fellow wants to marry a girl, he’s polite about it, and they court, and there’s asking and not capturing.”