Let’s agree that it was an accident, what happened when the tourist interrupted us choosing our king. All 12 of us boys were climbing on each other’s shoulders, turning our forearms into lances, charging at each other, crumpling at impact. Pine boughs buckled under the weight of the season’s last snow. The ground was so hard that when one of us fell it sounded like we were splitting the earth.
Of course, when the tourist strolled into the clearing, his big belly straining under the thin wool of his peacoat and the snow crunching under his Chelsea boots, we politely told him to head back to the lodge, lest he miss the last bus back to the city.
We understand, right, that the antlers, shed by the biggest reindeer after he’d rutted his way into fucking his whole harem at the beginning of the tourist season, were intended as a winner’s crown, not a weapon? Yes, the bone was fanned into sharp points like a Swiss army knife, but we’d held onto them simply because they were beautiful: giant wishbones, thick as a wrist, new-wood-pale and buffed perfectly smooth. We’d found the antlers, polished them, and kept them safe all winter as we mucked reindeer shit, oiled bridles, and cleaned sleds left muddy, littered, and dinged by the tourists who fly here, melting ice caps be damned, to live out their Santa fantasies.
Let’s remember we’d survived another winter north of the Arctic Circle. We were sun-drunk after three months of almost complete darkness. Being outside in the light of spring’s first afternoon, not working, gulping brightness — it felt so good we’d all stripped off our jackets, then our sweaters, then our undershirts, the warm velvet sun coating our torsos. We didn’t notice the cold. It didn’t hurt when we fell from each others’ shoulders. When we got knocked off, out of the running, we circled up around those left in and screamed until our throats turned to ash.
Say that when the tourist picked up the antlers, we tried to take them from him and he wouldn’t let us. When he insisted on belting the antlers to his head with the soft leather thongs we’d made from old reins, we helped only when he shouted for us to.
Clearly it was the tourist’s idea. He wanted to see what it felt like to be a reindeer. He wanted our winningest jouster — unbeatable Juhán, the only boy who hadn’t fallen — to face him. He wanted Juhán equipped with a smaller set of antlers. The tourist would charge at our champion and they’d lock their roped-on antlers crowns like the reindeers did in the fall with the challenger bulls, fighting for their harem, pressing against each other until one of them dropped.
Naturally, as we geared up Juhán, we didn’t look at each other, and we certainly didn’t pass around nods and glances and agree on anything. That’s why it surprised all of us when Juhán stepped out of the path of the tourist’s charging leather boots with a gentle toss of his borrowed antlers. We never expected the tourist would keep going, that he would sprint straight into a tree. We couldn’t have imagined the tangle of pale bone and pine needles, the buckling of his thick neck, the unnatural angle of his head, his invisible brain having slammed into his skull, blood spreading inside like snowmelt.
Let’s agree it was new, the feeling that coursed through us in the first slanted shards of spring sun — flames that seared our torsos from inside out and made us grab each other, needing to spread, and drove us to lick the hollows of each other’s collarbones, bite the sinews of each other’s necks, flick wet tongues into each other’s mouths, crush each other’s waists under hungry hands, push each other against pines and rut and thrust, chasing each other around our kingdom, occasionally stepping lightly over the crumpled body.
Let’s agree that it lasted only a few minutes. That we calmed down, got dressed, and left the antlers behind. That we’re walking towards help right now. That we’re not following Juhán into the summer pastures, putting hours between the clearing and the tourist and the town that was once built for us, heading in the direction we released the reindeer, newly free to roam.
