Before I could question what exactly he meant by “protect,” Dane rose beneath me, bringing me to a height that made me yelp and clutch the saddle horn with white knuckles.
“Wait, I’m not ready!” I looked frantically at Rudy. “What do I do? How do I steer? Is there a seatbelt on this thing?”
Rudy’s lips twitched. “Just hold on. Dane knows what he’s doing.”
The reindeer began to move, padding to the center of my yard where there definitely wasn’t enough space for eight massive reindeer to take off.
“If I die doing this,” I hissed toward Rudy, “I want ‘I told you so’ on my tombstone.”
Dane’s muscles bunched beneath me, and I tightened my grip on the saddle horn so hard my knuckles ached. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the reindeer floated up like balloons.
No warning. No countdown. No galloping start.
My stomach plummeted as the earth fell away, hooves still positioned as though they were standing on solid ground instead of thin air. It was like being in an elevator with no walls, except the ground dissolved beneath us as my yard shrank to dollhouse size.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” I chanted under my breath as I sent a prayer to whatever deity might be listening to not let me become a Neve pancake.
The world tilted and swayed as we rose higher, my backyard palm tree now a tiny toothpick against the sprawling grid of Palm Springs lights. The massive bodies of the reindeer were weightless against the night sky.
A thought struck me with sudden, horrifying clarity.
“What if someone sees us?” I called out, panic sharpening every syllable. “There are planes and drones and helicopters and… and telescopes! People look up!”
Rudy turned his head, his posture relaxed on Don’s back. The moonlight caught his profile, calm and untroubled by our casual defiance of gravity. “They won’t. Our magic bends light and hides us from human eyes.”
My laugh edged toward hysteria.
I might have believed him if Dane hadn’t chosen that exact moment to surge forward in a smooth, impossible leap through the air. We shot forward, the rest of the herd falling into formation around us like some kind of Christmas cavalry.
Palm Springs transformed from a recognizable grid of lights into a blurred smear of distant sparkles. My brain was confused as the world whipped by, but I could hardly feel the air move.
There was no skin-peeling, eye-watering hurricane-force wind. Just comfortable, slightly cool air and the gentle rhythmic motion of Dane’s body as he practically swam through the sky.
I’d expected the saddle to chafe, for my legs to cramp, for the cold to bite through my clothes. Instead, I felt... protected.
“How fast are we going?” I shouted, despite not needing to do so. I pressed myself lower against Dane’s neck, feeling exposed sitting straight up. This wasn’t a casual horseback ride.
Don moved close enough that I could see Rudy’s expression in the moonlight. “About five hundred miles per hour.”
I blinked, waiting for the punchline.
Itdidn’t come.
“That’s not possible!” My voice cracked on the last word. “We’d be torn apart by the wind at that speed!”
A rumble vibrated through Dane’s body beneath me. Was he laughing at me?
“It’s possible with magic,” Rudy reminded me with infuriating casualness, as though we weren’t currently breaking several laws of physics. “We’ll also be going through a few sky gates that will get us there faster. You’ll see a slight shimmer, but there’s no reason to be alarmed.”
We soared over cities that flashed by too quickly to identify, desert giving way to mountains, then forests, then more mountains, higher and craggier than before. Clouds surrounded us, parting now and then to reveal glowing ribbons of highway, neat grids of towns, and dark stretches of wilderness.
I lost track of time, mesmerized by the impossible journey. My terror gradually mellowed into awe as I realized the reindeer herd moved as one, shifting and adjusting around each other with the precision of a dance. No matter how they dipped or turned, I remained perfectly balanced, as if gravity itself had been changed to keep me safely in place.
The sky gates were a little disorienting, and I quickly learned not to look down when the air shimmered in front of us. The first time we’d gone through one, a building had blinked into a mountain so fast it made my head spin.
Eventually, the snowy peaks below grew larger, and the city lights became sparser until they disappeared altogether. We gradually descended toward an endless expanse of mountains, forests, and valleys, all blanketed in snow that glowed silvery blue under the moonlight.
My breath caught at the beauty. This wasn’t the manufactured winter wonderland of mall displays or holiday cards. This was winter in its purest form.
