The Fox Who Guided the Reindeer Home

Far out at the edge of the great northern forest, where the pines stood close together and the wind always smelled of snow, there lived a small red fox named Ravn. She was not very big, scarcely taller than a tuft of moss, but she knew the forest better than anyone else. She knew which stones hid warm dens beneath the moss, and she knew which paths lay safe beneath the snow. One winter evening, when the sky was softly violet and the stars had just been lit, Ravn sat on a fallen pine and pricked her ears toward the wind.

All at once the wind shifted. It grew harder and sharper, and from the north a white haze came sweeping in between the trunks. Snow began to fall in great, swirling flakes, and in only a few moments the moon disappeared behind the clouds. Ravn felt cold needles settling into her fur. She knew what it was: one of the great snowstorms that sometimes rose in a single evening hour and covered the whole forest in white. She turned toward her den beneath the spruce root. Then she heard something through the wind.

It was a sound that did not belong in the storm. Not the murmur of the pines, not the whistle of the wind, but a thin, complaining cry. Ravn froze and listened. There, again. Someone was calling. She recognised the tone: it was reindeer calves, small and frightened. Reindeer usually moved in a herd across the great marshes, but no calf should be out alone in a storm like this. Ravn hesitated. She was small, and she had almost reached her warm den. But the cry came again, even thinner now.

She turned and ran toward the sound. The snow was already deep, and with every step she sank to her belly. Her tail whirled white with flakes. She followed the cries through hazel and juniper, past a great stone she called the Owl Stone, until she came out into a clearing where three small reindeer calves stood pressed close together. They were much bigger than Ravn, each calf was as tall as a birch trunk, but their eyes were wide and black with fear. When they saw Ravn, they shrank back. A little fox did not mean safety to a reindeer calf.