Valeri continued on. “I found this passage when I was half this tall, and I been usin' it to come an' go when I wanted t' creep off somewhere where Papa and the men didn't know.”
“But it's not secret — ” Gerda protested. “All those lanterns — ”
“This part ain't. It goes down t' the little lake where we get our water from. See?” She raised the lamp and light bounced back at her as they came out into a much larger chamber. The steady drip of water from the ceiling echoed around the rocks. This was a sizable room and it was hard to tell just how deep the “lake” was. Valeri skirted along a ledge to the right so narrow that she and Gerda had to put their faces to the rock wall and edge along sideways. At the back of the cavern was another crack, this one very narrow and not at all visible from the other side. Gerda had to take off her pack to squeeze through it.
“Papa thinks when I disappear it's 'cause the men have gotten drunk an' I want some peace,” Valeri continued when they were finally making their way down yet another rough tunnel. “I told him I come back here to think and get some quiet. So he don't come lookin' for me. I did just that just enough times that he figures that's what I always do.”
“That's clever!” Gerda exclaimed. Again, Valeri chortled.
“You think that's clever, you just wait.” It seemed that Gerda and Aleksia did not have long to wait, either. There was light at the end of this crack, and soon the two young women pushed through a screen of cedars into a tiny pocket valley.
And there, looking at both of them with great interest, was a tall, shaggy reindeer. When he saw Valeri, he snorted, and shambled over to them.
“I learnt my lesson,” Valeri said, scratching around the base of the deer's antlers. “I got me another fawn, an' I kept this 'un safe.” She pulled an old, withered apple out of a pocket and offered it to him. While he crunched it up, she blew out the lantern and pulled a sledge and an oiled canvas bag from out of another tangle of bushes. In moments, she had the deer harnessed and hitched to the sledge. The deer snorted happily.
“Well, get on!” Valeri said impatiently to Gerda, who hastily — if gingerly — settled herself onto the back half of the sledge. Valerie led the deer to a cleft in the rock walls surrounding them, pulled back yet more brush to reveal a stout and very tall gate, and opened it. Then, taking up the reins and jumping onto the front part of the sledge, she snapped the reins briskly on the deer's back. Without a moment of hesitation, he loped forward, starting the sledge over the snow with a jerk.
Aleksia moved her viewpoint to a shiny buckle on the deer's harness.
They made very good time. Valeri drove standing up, looking like a practiced sailor in a storm as the sledge bumped and skidded over the snow. Gerda clung to the sides of the sledge, white-faced.
It was at that moment that Aleksia heard Kay's footsteps outside the throne room. Satisfied that things were going well for now, she dismissed the mirror-vision, and turned to face him.
He looked miserable.
He had certainly lost weight, and if the reports her Brownies gave her were true, of how at meals he listlessly pushed things around the plate before finally swallowing a few bites with apparent difficulty, there was no question of why he had lost the weight. His eyes were darkly circled. More reports had reached her that he woke up in the night often, sweating, shaking, out of the grip of nightmares.
She simply looked at him, schooling her features into a mask of boredom. “Yes?” she said, finally, when the silence had stretched on too long. “You may speak.”
He coughed. “Great Queen,” he said, hoarsely. “I — uh — ”
“You began with „Great Queen' rather than „I' and that is certainly an improvement,” she said coldly. “I presume you have more to say?”
He went red, then white. “It — it's very lonely here — ” He faltered. Interesting. All of the arrogance seemed to have leached right out of him!
“You should have thought of that before you accepted my invitation,” she reminded him.
“It's — not — ” He faltered again. “It's Gerda. It's — I'm worried about her — ”
She tilted her head to the side. “Gerda? What a common name. Who is this wench?”
She could see him struggle. He wanted to lash out at her because she dismissed Gerda as common and insulted her by implication. But he had finally accepted the fact that she was, and always would be, more powerful than he was and that he was under her control.
“Gerda…” he finally managed, “Gerda is a young lady who has…always been my friend. And I — am very fond of her.”
Aleksia almost laughed, but her control was too good to let that slip. He had almost said that he loved Gerda.
She shrugged. “I am sure she will find someone else. You have important work to do. You should not be distracted by a mere girl.”
Once again he went red, then white. “She wouldn't — I am worried about her!” He persisted. “Without me there, she might — ”
“Might find someone with an equally shallow mind, who is only interested in settling down and raising fat babies.” She shrugged. “You are destined for greater things as long as you concentrate on your work and not on silly girls.”
She could see him struggling with all this. On the one hand, she was complimenting him. She clearly valued him, and for the thing he had once thought was the most important. On the other hand, somehow over the past several days, Gerda had pushed everything else out of his mind. She knew that look in his eyes now. He was lovesick, obsessed. His nightmares were probably compounded of equal parts of terrible things happening to Gerda, and Gerda finding some other young man.
My, my. An interesting development.
“Go,” she said, with a shrug. “If that is all that concerns you, put your fears to rest. The girl will be fine. Her parents will find her a husband, she will have a litter of brats and all will be well in her world. Meanwhile, you will
