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The house had only one room and little furniture. The firelight picked out a few details and crowded the rest with shadows. It gleamed here on a polished wooden bowl, there on a thin-bladed sickle hanging on the wall. Peer wandered about. In a corner stood Bjørn and Kersten’s bed, the rough blankets neatly folded. He felt like an intruder. And there was nothing to show why Kersten had suddenly rushed out of the house, carrying her baby.
His foot came down on something hard. It clinked. He picked it up, his fingers exploring the unusual shape before he held it into the light. A small iron key on a ring.
A key? His eyes flew to the darkest corner of the room where a big wooden chest stood, a chest for valuables, with a curved lid that Bjørn always kept padlocked shut.
It was open now, dragged out crookedly from the wall, the padlock unhooked and the lid hurled back. Peer threw himself on his knees and plunged his arms into the solid black shadow that was the interior, feeling about into every corner. But whatever Bjørn normally kept there was gone. The chest was empty.
Bjørn’s been robbed. Peer got to his feet, his head spinning. Is that why Kersten was so upset? But no; it doesn’t make sense. She’d tell Bjørn, not run into the sea. She’d have told me! And who could have done it? He tried to imagine robbers arriving, forcing Kersten to find the key, open the chest…
It still didn’t make sense. Trollsvik was such a small place, the neighbours so close. Kersten need only scream to raise the entire village. And he couldn’t imagine what Bjørn might own that anyone would want to steal. He sat down on a bench, his head aching, longing for Bjørn to come.
At last he gave up. He banked the fire up with logs and peat, and bent to scoop the baby out of the cradle. It was awake, and hungry. It had crammed its tiny fingers into its mouth and was munching them busily. Peer’s heart sank.
“I haven’t got anything for you!” he told it, as if speaking to his dog, Loki. “Come on–let’s get you wrapped up.” He grabbed an old cloak from a peg behind the door, and as he bundled it around them both, the baby looked straight into his eyes.
It didn’t smile–Peer didn’t know if it was even old enough to smile. It gazed into his face with the most serious and penetrating of stares, as if his soul were a well and it was looking right down to the very bottom. Peer looked back. The baby didn’t know about robbers, or the wild night outside, or its missing parents. It didn’t know that it might die, or grow up an orphan. It didn’t even know it needed help. It knew only what was right here and now: the hunger in its belly and Peer’s arms holding it, firmly wrapped and warm, and his face looking down at it. For this baby, Peer was the only person in the world. He drew a shaky breath.
“They left you,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I won’t. You come with me!” Pressing the baby to his shoulder, he elbowed the door open and strode furiously out into the pitch-black night.
A bullying wind leaped into his face, spitting rain and sleet. Peer tried to pull another fold up over the baby’s head as he hurried along. No one was about, but the wind blew smoke at him, and the smell of cooking. He splashed by Einar’s house, and a goat, sheltering against a wall, scrambled to its feet and barged past, nearly knocking him over. As he cursed it, the door latch clicked and Einar poked his head out. “Who’s there?” he quavered.
“It’s me…” began Peer, but he couldn’t go on. Kersten had thrown herself into the sea. Bjørn’s house had been robbed. He was holding their baby. He could never explain. Face burning, he turned and fled, leaving Einar puzzled on the doorstep.
Feeling like a thief, Peer slunk out of the village, and the wind blustered after him up the hill. He cupped the baby’s head against his throat with one rain-chilled hand, and felt a tickle of warmth against his skin as it breathed.
He trudged up the path. The cloak kept unwrapping and tangling round his legs; he had nothing to pin it with and needed both arms for the baby. Every gust of wind blew it open, and rain soaked into him. But he hardly noticed. His mind was back on the shore, reliving the moments when Kersten had rushed down the shingle. If only I’d grabbed her, he thought. Surely I could have stopped her! But I was holding the baby. Why did she do it? Why?
The baby shrank in his arms as if curling up. Afraid it would slip, he stopped and tried to find a dry edge of cloak to wrap around it, but the woollen fabric was all muddy or sodden, and he gave up in despair. The baby’s head tipped back. There were those dark eyes staring at him again. Uneasily he returned their stare. Something was wrong. This baby was too good, too quiet. Little Eirik would be screaming his head off by now, he thought. What did that mean? Was the baby too cold to cry? Too weak?
Frightened, he plunged on up the path. He had to get it to Gudrun. She could give it warmth and milk. But at the moment the rain was beating down out of the black night; he could hardly see where to put his feet, and there were a couple of miles of rough track to go, past the old mill and up through the wood. The trees overhanging the path were not in leaf yet, and gave no shelter.
Ahead of him the black roofline of the mill appeared between the trees, the thatch twisted into crooked horns above narrow gables. Peer tripped over the hem of the cloak, ripping it. His pace slowed. The mill…It was on just such a wild night that he’d first seen it, three years ago. His half-uncle Baldur had brought him jolting all the way over Troll Fell in an ox-cart, through thunder and drenching rain. He’d caught his first glimpse of the mill in a flash of lightning. Peer remembered huddling in the bottom of the cart, staring fearfully up at the mean windows, like leering eyes, the rotting thatch and patched shutters.
He still hated going past there after dark, even now that it was empty. The yard was choked with dead leaves, the sheds crumbling. The very walls reeked.
True, his uncles had long gone. They had tried to sell him to the trolls, but their brutish greed had led them to quarrel over a cupful of the trolls’ dark beer. Gulping down the strange brew, they had changed into trollish creatures themselves, tusks sprouting from their faces. Though Peer and his friends had escaped, Baldur and Grim Grimsson had remained under Troll Fell. No one had ever seen them again.
But the mill had a bad name still. Who could say if it was really empty? Odd creatures were said to loiter in its dark rooms and squint from behind the broken shutters. A sullen splash from the millpond might be Granny Greenteeth, lurking under the weed-clogged surface, waiting to drag down anyone who strayed.
Peer clutched the baby tighter. There was no way of avoiding the place; the road led right up to it, before bending to cross the stream over an old wooden bridge. As he passed he glanced up, feeling like a mouse scuttling along past some gigantic cat. The walls leaned over him, cold and silent.
He hurried on to the bridge. The wind snatched and pushed him, and he grabbed at the handrail. The noise of the river rose around him, snarling over the weir in white froth. As he crossed, he looked upstream towards the water wheel, in the darkness hardly more than a tall, looming bulk. Through three long years it had never stirred. Perhaps it was already rotting away.
There was a gust of dank, cold air, and a surge of water. The bridge trembled. Clinging to the rail, Peer looked again at the wheel, and was instantly giddy. It’s moving! But it can’t be. Surely it was only the water tearing past underneath…or were those black, dripping blades really lifting, one after another, rolling upwards, picking up speed? His skin prickled. The wheel was turning. He could hear the slash of its paddles striking the water.
An unearthly squeal skewered the night. Peer shot off the bridge. The anguished noise went on and on without stopping, far too long for anything with lungs. It came from deep within the mill. Peer fought for his wits. The machinery! It was the sound of swollen wooden axles twisting into tortured life. Then the motion eased, the squealing stopped, but the mill went on rumbling like some monstrous stomach. Muffled by wind and rain, the millstones grumbled round, the clapper rattled.
Eyes fixed on the mill, Peer stumbled backwards, half expecting the lopsided windows to blink alive with yellow light. He slithered and almost fell. The shock cleared his head. It’s just a building. It can’t start working by itself. There’s someone here. Someone’s opened the sluice, started the wheel. But who?
He stared along the overgrown path that led to the dam through a wilderness of whispering bushes. Anything might be crouching there, hiding…or watching. He listened, afraid to move, but heard no footstep, no voice. No light glimmered from the walls of the mill. Bare branches shook in the wind over the damaged roof. The wheel creaked round in the thrashing stream. And from high up on the fell came the distant shriek of some bird, a sound broken into pieces by the gale.
He drew a deep, careful breath.
With all this rain, perhaps the sluicegate’s collapsed and the water’s escaping under the wheel.
That’ll be it.
He turned hastily, striding on between the cart tracks. The steep path slanted uphill into the woods. Often, as he went, he heard stones clatter on the path behind him, dislodged perhaps by rain. And, all the way, he had the feeling that someone or something was following him, climbing out of the dark pocket where the mill sat in its narrow valley. He tried looking over his shoulder, but that made him stumble, and it was too dark to see.
CHAPTER 2 A Brush with the Trolls (#ulink_d6aa9731-f885-585b-8362-eefa7b7d309c)
A few hours earlier, just before sunset, Peer’s best friend Hilde stood high on the seaward shoulder of Troll Fell, looking out over a huge gulf of air. In front of her feet, the ground dropped away in fans of unstable scree. Far, far below, the fjord flashed trembling silver between headlands half-drowned in shadow. On the simmering brightness, a tiny dark boat crept deliberately along like an insect.
She flung out her arms as if she might soar away like an eagle. A strong wind blew back the hair from her face and slapped at her skirts. She closed her eyes, leaning on the wind, feeling its cold buoyant pressure. She heard it hiss in the thorn trees that clung to the slopes, and she heard the sheep bleating–the dark, complaining voices of the ewes and the shrill baby cries of the lambs.
“Hiillde!” A long drawn-out yell floated from the skyline. She turned quickly to see her little brother racing down towards her, a small brown dog running at his heels. Bracing herself for the crash, she caught him and swung him round.
“Oof! Don’t keep doing that, Sigurd. You’re pretty heavy for an eight year old! Where’s Pa and Sigrid?”
“They’re coming. What are you looking at?”
“The view.”
“The view?” Sigurd echoed in scorn. “What’s so special about that?”
Hilde laughed and ruffled his hair. “Nothing, I suppose. But see that boat down there? That’s Peer and Bjørn.”
Sigurd craned his neck. “So it is. Hey, Loki, it’s Peer! Where’s Peer?” Loki pricked his ears, barking eagerly.
“Don’t tease him!” said Hilde. Sigurd threw himself down beside Loki, laughing and tussling.
Fierce sunlight blazed through a gap in the clouds. The wide hillside turned an unearthly green. Long drifts of tired snow, still lying in every dip and hollow, woke into blinding sparkles, and the crooked thorn trees sprang out, every mossy twig a shrill yellow. Hilde’s eyes watered. Two figures came over the skyline and started descending: a tall man in a plaid cloak, holding hands with a little fair-haired girl whose red hood glowed like a jewel. Shadows like stick men streamed up the slope behind them.
Sigurd pushed Loki aside and jumped to his feet, waving to his twin sister. “Sigrid, come and look! We can see Bjørn’s boat.”
The little girl broke free from her father and came running. “Where?”
Sigurd pointed. “Lucky things,” he complained. “They get to go fishing, and we have to count sheep. Why can’t Sigrid and I have some fun?”
“You can when you’re older,” said Hilde. “And I didn’t go fishing, did I?”
“You didn’t want to,” Sigurd muttered.
“I know who she wants to go fishing with,” said Sigrid slyly. “With Bjørn’s brother,Arnë! She likes him–don’t you, Hilde?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Hilde sharply. “You know perfectly well that Arnë doesn’t even live in the village any more. Not since last summer. He works a fishing boat out of Hammerhaven—”
“Yes, and it’s bigger than Bjørn’s,” Sigurd interrupted. “Bjørn’s boat is a faering, with a mast but only two sets of oars. Arnë’s boat is a six-oarer!”
“That’s right, and he has a partner to help him sail it,” Hilde said.
“You do know a lot about him,” Sigrid giggled.
“That’s not funny, Sigrid. Arnë is twenty-two; he’s a grown-up man.”
“So? You’re fifteen, you’re grown-up, too. When he came to say goodbye to you, he held your hand. You went all pink.”
Hilde gave her little sister a withering glance, and then wrapped her arms around herself with a shiver. A swift shadow came gliding down the fell, and the sunlight vanished. Out to sea, the clouds had eaten up the sun.
“It’s going to rain, Pa,” she said as Ralf joined them.
“We can see Peer,” Sigrid squeaked, pointing at the boat. “Look, Pa, look!”
“Aha!” Ralf peered down the slope, scanning every rock and boulder. “Now I wonder if our missing sheep have gone over this edge. I don’t see any. But they wouldn’t show up against all the grey stones. Anything falling down there would break every bone in its body. Sigurd! That means you, too, d’you hear?”
“How many are lost?” Hilde asked.
“Let’s see.” Grimly, Ralf ticked them off on his fingers:“The old ewe with the bell round her neck, two of the black sheep, the lame one, the speckled one, and the one with the broken horn. And their lambs, too. It’s a puzzle, Hilde. It can’t be wolves or foxes. They’d leave traces.”
“Stolen?” asked Hilde. “By the trolls?”
“That thought does worry me,” Ralf admitted.
A chilly wind gusted through Hilde’s clothes. She rubbed goose bumps from her arms as she looked around. The fjord below was a brooding gulf of shadows. She glanced up at the skyline. Troll Fell loomed over them, wearing a scowl of cloud.
Sigrid tugged at Hilde’s sleeve. “The boat’s gone. Where is it?”
“Don’t worry, Siggy. It’ll be coming in to land. We can’t see the shore from here; the hillside gets in the way. Pa, we really should go. Those clouds are coming up fast.”
“Yes.” Ralf was gazing out to sea. “The old sea-wife is brewing up some dirty weather in that cookpot of hers!” He caught their puzzled looks, and laughed. “Did Grandpa never tell you that story? It’s a sailor’s yarn. The old sea-wife, Ran, sits in her kitchen at the bottom of the sea, brewing up storms in her big black pot. Oh, yes! All the drowned sailors go down to sit in rows on the benches in Ran’s kitchen.”
Hilde gave an appreciative shudder. “That’s like a story that Bjørn told us–about the draug, who sails the seas in half a boat and screams on the wind when people are going to drown. Brrr!”
“I remember it. That’s a good one,” said Sigurd. “You think it’s just an ordinary boat, but then it gets closer and you see that the sailors are all dead and rotten. And the boat can sail against the wind and catch you anywhere. And the draug steers it, and he hasn’t got a face. And then you hear this terrible scream—”
“Well, Peer and Bjørn are safe tonight,” said Ralf. “Let him scream! But we won’t see Peer this evening. He’ll stay with Bjørn and Kersten, snug and dry. Now let’s go, before we all get soaked.” But he stood for a moment, still staring west, as if straining to see something far away, though all that Hilde could see was a line of advancing clouds like inky mountains. Drops of rain flew in on the wind and struck like hailstones.
“Hurry up, Pa. It’s nearly dark and I’m hungry.” Sigurd hopped from foot to foot. “What are you looking at?”
“Oh…” Reluctantly, Ralf turned away. “Only trying to catch a glimpse of the islands, but it’s too murky now.” Sigurd and Sigrid dashed ahead with Loki.
“I passed those islands once, you know,” Ralf said to Hilde, following the twins inland around the steep fellside. “In the longship, the summer I went to sea.”
“I know you did, Pa.” Hilde wasn’t really listening. Rain was hissing all around them now. The only path was a sheep track twisting down between outcrops of rock, so she had to watch where she put her feet. The ground slanted at a forbidding angle. Hilde felt exposed, unsafe–as though Troll Fell might suddenly shrug its vast turf-clad shoulders and send them tumbling helplessly down into the fjord…
“I’d never seen them so close before,” Ralf called over his shoulder. “Never been so far from home. Some of them are big, with steep cliffs where seagulls nest. A wild sort of people live there. Fishermen, not farmers. They climb on the cliffs for gulls’ eggs, and gather seaweed and shellfish—”
“Yes, you’ve told me.” She’d heard the story many times, and just now she wished he’d be quiet and hurry up. In the rain and early darkness, it was hard to see what was what. Grey boulders scrambled up as they approached, trotted away bleating, and were sheep. And some were really rocks, but with movement around the edges. There! Hadn’t something just dodged behind that big one?
Ralf was still talking. “—But many of the islands are just rocks, skerries, with the sea swilling over them and no room for anyone but seals. They’d lie there, lazily basking in the sun, watching us. It’s tricky sailing. The tides come boiling up through the channels, sweeping the boat along, and there’s rocks everywhere just waiting to take a bite.
“But we got through. And further out, and beyond the horizon–many days’ sailing–well, you know what we found, Hilde. The land at the other end of the world!”
Hilde pulled herself together. “East of the sun and west of the moon,” she joked. “Like a fairy tale.”
“Just west,” said Ralf quietly. “And no fairy tale. To think I’ve been so far away! Why, by the time I passed the islands again on my way home, they seemed like old friends. How I’d love to…but I’ve promised your mother…and there’s the baby. Ah, well!”
He strode on. Hilde squelched after him, looking affectionately at the back of his head. She knew how part of him longed to go off again–to sail away to that wonderful land, adventurous and free. He’ll never be quite contented here, she thought. That worries Ma, but I understand it. I’d like to see new places too. Why, even Peer’s seen more of the world than I have. He used to live miles away, in Hammerhaven. I’ve spent my whole life here.
Hammerhaven…Her mind skipped to the day, last year, when Arnë had made a special visit to the farm. He’d come to say goodbye; he was moving his fine new boat to Hammerhaven, where he could sell his catch for a better price. And just as he was leaving, he’d taken her hand and earnestly asked her not to forget him. Surely that must mean something!
But I never blushed, whatever Sigrid says, the little wretch. I wonder how he is. I wish I could see him. I wish—
She tripped over a rock. It was nearly dark now. Scraping the wet hair from her eyes, she glanced upwards, flinching. The storm leaned inland like a blind giant, black arms outspread over Troll Fell.
“I think we left it a little late,” shouted Ralf, half turning. “Sigrid, Sigurd–keep close!” He caught Sigrid’s hand and they hurried on together, the wind tugging their cloaks. Hilde’s sodden skirt clung to her ankles.
A bird called high up on the hillside, the eerie whooping cry of a curlew. Hilde wiped the rain from her eyes. On her left, the wet grassy slope plunged away. To the right, scattered with stones, the land tilted sharply up to the base of a long, low crag. Shadowy thorn trees craned over the edge like a row of spiteful old women.
Another bird screamed from somewhere on top of the crag, a long liquid call that seemed to end in syllables: “Huuuuututututu!” Immediately an answering cry floated up from the hidden slope to their left, and a third, more distant and quavering, from far below.
With a quick stride Hilde reached Ralf and grabbed his arm, dragging him to a halt. “Did you hear that? Those aren’t birds. Trolls, Pa! On both sides of us.”
With a gasp, Sigrid shrank close to her father, and Hilde cursed herself for speaking without thinking. Sigrid was terrified of trolls.
Ralf cocked his head, listening. The bubbling cries began again, relayed up the hill like a series of signals. “You’re right,” he muttered. “My fault. I should have got us home earlier. Never mind, Sigrid, the trolls won’t hurt us. It’s just the sort of night they like, you see–dark and wet and windy. Let them prance around if they want–they can’t scare us.”
“Are they stealing sheep?” Sigurd asked.
“I don’t know, son,” said Ralf slowly. “It sounds as though there’s a line of them strung out up and down the hillside.”
“Can’t we get home?” Sigrid’s voice was thin.
“Of course we can,” said Hilde.
“We’ll slip past,” said Ralf. “They won’t bother us.”
“They will!” Sigrid clutched him with cold hands. “They stole Sigurd and me; they wanted to keep us for ever!”
“No, no, the Grimsson brothers stole you,” Hilde tried to reassure her,“and the trolls kept them instead, and serve them right. Don’t worry, Siggy. Pa’s here–and me. You’re safe with us.”
There was a blast of wind, strong enough to send them staggering forwards. Rain lashed the hillside.
“Come on!” shouted Ralf. “Nothing can see us in this. Let’s go!” Swept along by wind and weather, they stumbled half-blind down a sudden slope into a narrow gully. At the bottom, a thin stream rattled downhill over pebbles. Something ran across their path out of the dense curtains of drifting rain. The whooping calls faltered. Sigrid shrieked.
Trolls were all around them: tails, snouts, glow-worm eyes. Dim lines of trolls louping and leaping from the raincloud. A pair of thin, thin legs that raked like a cockerel’s, and a round hairless body on top. Ralf and the children skidded to a halt, appalled. Hilde grabbed the twins and tried to bundle them back the way they had come.
I’ve seen this before!
