Book Six: Chapter 78

Determined to see a reindeer, she let the others walk ahead and allowed herself to fade into the background. It was easy enough to hop up onto a nearby bale of hay and then scramble to the stall door.

There were a lot of things she expected, but the misty creature sitting in the back of the stall was not one of them. It had the shape of a reindeer, that much was true, but it was almost like her brain couldn’t process what she was looking at. The antlers seemed to shift and distort whenever she wasn’t looking directly at them, and the animal itself looked as though it was made of a sparkling fog. Black streaks ran through the creature, and one of its eyes was a terrible crimson that gazed directly into Kisa’s soul.

The reindeer charged. Kisa fell backwards off the stall door, flipping over to land on her feet. The door shuddered from the impact, and the creature made a hissing sound that reminded Kisa of a bag of snakes. Black mist curled through the gaps of the door with