In the north country
beneath a winter moon
a small gray stag with a silver hoof
speaks with a red-brown cat.
In the north country
in a darkened hut
a hunter watches over
an orphan child
and the red-brown cat
who is all that the child has left of her home.
She has changed his evenings.
He used to return to an empty hut
to eat, sleep,
then rise again at dawn.
Now he returns to a child laughing.
It is still a wonder to him.
Now he feeds wood to the stove,
eats the simple meals
she's so eagerly prepared,
and tells her of the five-point buck
he has never seen
and will never hunt.
Sixty winters he's followed the herds.
He knows every ridge, every trail, every tree.
He never comes home without a deer,
he finds them even in blinding snow.
She cannot understand
why he has never glimpsed
the one they call Silvershod.
He can only tell her
what he has known since he was a boy:
You can wait a lifetime to see the stag.
"He is small for a buck,
his pale gray coat
nearly bright as his hoof,
his eyes like amber.
And when he strikes the ground
with his silver hoof
colored sparks fly through the night air
and turn to colored gems.
Rubies cut like roses,
crystal drops like tears,
emeralds like the heart of spring . . ."
The hunter stops his tale
for he has never known
if it is true.
It is the child's sixth winter.
She listens to the stories
as a bride listens to her wedding vows,
breathless, hoping,
knowing that to see the stag
will forever change her life.
Each night she dreams of Silvershod
racing across a road of white starlight
sending topaz and sapphires and diamonds
tumbling through the night sky.
Pearls hover on the tips of trees.
Opals and citrine blaze fire
as they ring the wide frozen lake.
And then it's the stars themselves that turn to gems,
falling red and green, purple and blue from the sky.
In the dreams she reaches out
and catches the stones
and cannot understand why
when she wakes
they are no longer in her hands.
By day she cleans the hut:
a rough table
two chairs, two sleeping pallets
a basin for washing
and the blackened wood stove.
"I will find Silvershod,"
she tells the hunter.
"And then we will have a tall, gabled house
with crystal plates and goose-feather beds.
I will wear fine wool frocks and soft leather shoes
and you will no longer go out into the storms to hunt."
Each day she searches the slopes,
reads the marks in the snow.
She trails birds and squirrels,
rabbit and fox
and once the prints of her own dear cat.
She finds no trace of the stag.
In the hut she weaves a cord of silver thread;
when she sees Silvershod
she will catch him
and bring him home to be her friend.
Each day at dusk
the hunter returns
pulling a sled piled high with pelts.
And each night
beside the blackened stove
the child listens
to the story of the stag.
But the cat listens even more closely,
and somewhere in the snow-filled skies
the stag listens, too.
At last there are too many pelts to store.
The hunter takes them to the village
and leaves the child alone.
She sits by the window
as sunset colors the slopes blood red.
A quick shape darts from the trees,
quicker than the wind across the frozen lake.
Her heart skips a beat
as she glimpses
the small gray stag.
She grabs the silver cord,
races for the door,
but long before she reaches it,
the stag is gone,
leaving no trace in the snow.
Darkness falls, and the orange glow of the stove
lights the hut.
The child steps out into the night
where even starlight is ice.
She clears snow from a wooden bench,
sets the cat on her lap,
and gazes up at the stars.
urely, even they
cannot move through the frozen sky.
And, indeed, the stars are fixed,
waiting
until, half-frozen, the child returns
to the warmth of the stove.
The cat follows,
touches a cold nose to her neck
and curls sleeping in her arms.
The stars are patient.
They wait until the child dreams
until the cat stretches,
and slips out the window.
As if she understood the clear, bright song of the stars,
as if the roof were no higher than a chair,
the cat leaps to the top of the hut
and greets the silver-hoofed stag.
All here is known.
Cat and stag and stars,
they have all been calling to each other
for a very long time.
When the sun catches on the tops of the pines
the child wakes.
The hut is empty of all life but her own.
The cat has gone missing.
All that day
the child searches for the cat.
It is not until the moon blazes silver on the snow
and the stars burn fixed in the frozen night
that she finds her cat
sitting atop a round white hill
conversing with a small gray stag.
Carefully, the child counts five points on each antler,
and checks to find the one silver hoof.
Then she cries out, and mortal that she is, stumbles
knee-deep in thick wet snow
only to watch the cat dart away
and the stag after her
until it's the cat's turn
to give chase.
Never once do they break the surface.
They skim across the snow
like ghosts
casting no shadow beneath the moon.
And the child watches the wild dance
beneath fixed stars
until it slows enough for her to follow them
back to the hut.
There the cat waits on the bench,
as if she'd never left,
amber eyes gazing at the roof
where the stag strikes with his silver hoof.
It is all the child hoped for.
The stag strikes fire into the winter night,
and the night freezes that fire
into gems.
Blue sparks leap into the air
and sapphires fall to earth.
Red sparks fly into the black night
and rubies sink into the snow.
Green sparks to emeralds,
pink to tourmalines.
Amethysts like a rain of wild violets.
The stag's silver hoof strikes and strikes
until even the roof thinks itself a tinderbox of jewels.
It is a blaze of color,
a flowering of light.
The child will never know another night
like this one.
Silvershod stops
only when the child closes her hands
laughing
as gems pour through her fingers.
There are so many,
they are so big,
no one could hold them all.
She does not hear the cat cry out
or see her leap to the roof.
She does not hear the stag laugh
as he and the cat beside him
soar toward the blazing stars
that once again
wheel through the night skies.
The hunter returns
to find that the child has learned to juggle.
She stands in the moonlight
charmed
beneath a spinning arc of colored stones.
And still more spill from the roof.
He can barely find his hut
under the rain of precious gems.
He kneels in the snow
pulls his hat from his head
and fills it with jewels.
"Leave the rest!" the child tells him.
"Think how they'll sparkle in the sun!"
That night the snow drifts down from the stars
soft and silent and deep.
The sun has barely risen
when hunter and child
dig through the snow.
They dig until they reach
bare, frozen earth.
The gems are gone
as if they'd never been.
They have only the hat.
"It is enough," he tells the sobbing child.
"You will have your house and frocks and shoes.
It is enough to last a lifetime."
In the north country
a child wakes in a soft feather bed
and remembers
a red-brown cat
whose nose was cold against her neck.
In the north country
a child sits in a tall, gabled house
and remembers a pale gray stag
with a silver hoof
who gave and took
what was most precious.
In the north country
a child finds her dreams unchanged:
Each morning she wakes
and cannot understand why
what mattered most
is gone from her hands.
About the Author: Ellen Steiber has published adult fiction in the Snow White, Blood Red series, Sirens, and other anthologies, as well as books for children. This poem was inspired by the Russian fairy tale Silvershod, and by illustrations for it in Adrienne Segur’s Golden Book of Fairy Tales.
Copyright © 1995 by Ellen Steiber. The poem first appeared in The Armless Maiden, published by Tor Books. It may not be reproduced in any form without the author’s express written permission.