Troll Mill

by Katherine Langrish

  Ralf told me to look after them. And I will. He slipped his free hand into his pocket. It was half full of wet silt, but the carved comb was still there.

  “Here, Hilde. I made this for you. Sorry it’s got a bit dirty—but you’d better have it now. When I tell you, open the door.” He cupped a hand around his mouth and yelled. “Uncle Baldur! Can you hear me? Who’s the Miller of Troll Fell? You—or me?”

  He nodded to Hilde. “Now!”

  She flung herself at the door. As soon as it was wide enough, Peer slipped out. As it slammed behind him, he charged through the assembled trolls, waving his torch so fiercely that they fell back.

  “UNCLE BALDUR!” he yelled again. “COME AND GET ME!” He turned and looked, poised to run.

  The Grimsson brothers were outlined against the sky, monstrous riders sitting astride the ridge and kicking great wounds in the turf roof. But now they saw him. They both rose, towering against the stars.

  “COME AND GET ME!” Peer taunted once more, and waited till he saw both his uncles run down the slant of the roof and leap into the crowd of trolls. Then he took to his heels.

  Back in the farmhouse, Gudrun swung the troll baby out of the cradle. It eyed her with alarm, flattening its ears. “Don’t squirm,” she told it grimly. “I’m going to have a word with your mother!”

  “No, Ma!” said Hilde.

  “Well? Surely you don’t want to keep it?”

  “No, but—”

  “And you’ll agree that the trolls didn’t steal the twins? Or Ran, or Eirik?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then this time, we’re at fault, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Lift the bar!”

  “But …” The words died on Hilde’s lips. She did as she was told.

  “Stand back!” commanded Gudrun grandly, and threw the door open. She marched forward with the troll baby in her arms.

  A shout went up from the trolls. Looking over her mother’s shoulder, Hilde saw them swarming around the doorway, thick as angry bees. In front of Gudrun stood the troll princess, her wild hair floating out, a coronet of leaves slipping from her head, her slanted eyes flashing. “Aha!” she hissed.

  “Mommy!” said the troll baby feebly.

  “My precious princeling!” the troll princess screamed. She snatched her child from Gudrun and squashed it against her bosom. “My little king!” She glared at Gudrun. “How dare you steal him from me?”

  “Mmmf. Mmmf.” The troll baby struggled to turn its face sideways and breathe. It bit. Squealing, the princess loosened her clutch.

  “Mommy, don’t fuss,” it complained. “Anyway, it wasn’t her that took me. It was her boy and girl. No, stop it—get off …”

  It disappeared into another stifling embrace. The princess stepped forward, snarling, “Your children stole my baby!”

  “They didn’t hurt him!” Gudrun cried. “He’s been perfectly safe. They meant no harm. They took your—your son—because they thought the trolls had stolen their own little brother and sister. Believe me, I’ve been as upset as you have.”

  A muffled howl came from the troll baby. It popped out its head, tousled and breathless, with crumpled ears. “Let go! I want that boy and girl, mommy. I wanna—I wanna—I wanna play with them!” It bared its teeth and bit her again.

  “Ouch!” The troll princess snatched her fingers away. “Naughty little—precious! It’s all in fun,” she added hastily to Gudrun. “He doesn’t mean it.”

  “Just high spirits,” Gudrun agreed with an odd smile. The crowd of trolls pressed closer to the door, buzzing. The princess lashed her tail suspiciously, breathing hard, staring at Gudrun. Gudrun maintained her smile. The troll baby crossed its eyes, sticking out a long purple tongue.

  Then the princess sprang forward. Gudrun recoiled, stepping on Hilde’s toes. But the princess threw herself into Gudrun’s arms, crying dramatically, “I was wrong! My baby needs you. Your children shall be his little playmates. We must be friends. Who but a mother can understand a mother’s heart? Ah, the little ones. What a trial they are! How one suffers!”

  Openmouthed, Hilde watched her mother patting the troll princess on the back, the troll baby awkwardly squished between them.

  “It’s your first, isn’t it?” Gudrun was asking. “Of course. Now don’t you worry, my dear, it’s—he’s—fine. Never mind his tantrums. He’s been fed, so he can’t be hungry. He’s, um, he’s very advanced for his age!”

  “Oh, do you think so?” The troll princess drew back and looked at her infant with tearful pride. “I was a little worried—he has only thirty teeth.”

  Gudrun clearly had things under control. Hilde slithered past her mother out of the door and threaded her way through the squeaking, jostling, chattering trolls. She broke into a run. She had to find Peer.

  Peer burst out of the woods and raced down the track to the mill. The wind blew the torch flames shrunken and small: He was afraid it would go out. He was afraid of tripping. He was afraid the Grimssons would catch him. Worst of all, he was afraid that they would give up the chase and go back to the farm.

  He reached the millpond and risked a glance back. Were they behind him? Come on, come on! He jogged anxiously from foot to foot. Young and light as he was, he had outrun his lumbering uncles.

  How to make sure they would still follow? Start the mill! That would bring Uncle Baldur like a wasp to honey. He dashed up to the sluice and sidled along the plank, holding the torch high. He managed to pull up the sluice gate one-handed. It came crookedly, and then jammed open. Water rushed through. With a creaking rumble, the mill clattered to life.

  Angry yells echoed from the edge of the wood. The Grimssons had heard! Peer bounded back to the path and ran to the bridge, where, suddenly inspired, he waved the torch over his head and shouted, “Come on, you fat fools!” They came thundering down the hill toward him. He ran into the yard and stood waiting, head high, heart pounding. The torch drooped in his hand and the flames crept upward, unfurling bright yellow petals.

  Footsteps battered the bridge. Baldur and Grim charged around the end of the mill and into the yard, panting heavily. Baldur yelled with triumph and punched Grim in the shoulder. “We’ve got him, brother! He didn’t even try to hide.” Grim threw back his head and howled. Chests heaving, they moved slowly forward, and Peer retreated, step by step.

  “The mill is mine,” Baldur wheezed. “Mine to use whenever I please. You thought you could steal it from me, you thief, you puppy! Call yourself a miller? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve got you trapped, and in a minute I’m going to break every bone in your body. But before I do, you’ll answer that question you asked me.” He paused, trembling, and glistening with a dark sweat. A vein pulsed in his temple, and his bloodshot eyes glowed in the torchlight, red as a rat’s.

  “Yes, you’ll answer that question,” he repeated, licking his lips, savoring the words. “And you’ll answer it loud and clear. WHO’S THE MILLER OF TROLL FELL, BOY? YOU—OR ME?”

  Peer backed another step. “Neither of us,” he said quietly. The flames streamed from the end of his torch, twining toward his hand.

  “WHAT’S THAT? TELL ME, BOY! WHO IS THE MILLER? WHO?”

  “NO ONE!” Peer lifted his arm and hurled the torch—but not at Uncle Baldur. He sent it spinning up in a fiery arc. End over end it wheeled through the air, dribbling brightness, and plunked down on the roof of the mill among the thatch.

  A column of fire sprang fiercely into the night.

  Uncle Baldur stood speechless, staring up, while the flames lit the yard a glaring orange. “Fire, Grim! Fire! Fetch water! Fetch water, you!” He whirled, flailing a fist at Peer, knocking him to the ground. “Fetch water! Buckets in the barn!” He trampled toward the millpond, yelling.

  While his uncles charged to and fro, Peer dragged himself up on his elbow. He gazed at his handiwork.

  It was beautiful. A tracery of smoke trickled from the edges of the thatch, oozing in coiling, intricate patterns that melted and re-formed
. It was as if the whole roof were slowly breathing out its last, gray breath.

  Then the smoke thickened. It came in dense, billowing clouds that boiled and climbed and doubled, and swallowed one another, and grew monstrous. There was a sudden sucking whoomph. Flames and smoke rushed upward to form a dirty pillar streaked with fire. The whole roof crept and crackled. The eaves dripped glowing straws, which fell to the cobbles and started little fires of their own, or were caught in the updraft and whirled away burning into the night. And still the mill clacked stubbornly away, and under the blazing roof the millstones grumbled around and around.

  Peer’s face scorched: The flames were now almost too bright to look at. And the smoke was treacherous, flattening out in sudden downdrafts that spread across the yard, choking and blinding. He struggled to his knees and then to his feet. Uncle Baldur had hit him hard, and when Peer put his hand to his forehead it came away dark with blood. He stood unsteadily, awed by the speed with which the mill had gone up in flames. All that dry weather… I can’t stay here … it’s not safe …

  With stinging eyes he staggered toward the bridge.

  Hilde, running down through the wood, smelled the smoke on the air and caught the flicker of flames. She emerged from the trees and stared, transfixed. The mill roof was a bright lozenge of fire. Vast convolutions of smoke twisted up from it, their undersides lit a lurid orange. The trees around the mill seemed to lean away from the blaze, their leaves withering. Sparks fell around her, even this far up the hill.

  The millpond, too, seemed alight, a mirror of black and gold ripples. Figures were dashing about down there. She heard shouts, high and loud against the frantic background roar of the fire. Someone was dipping bucketfuls of water and flinging them at the mill roof. Hilde shook her head in disbelief. Can’t they see it’s hopeless? Dangerous, too. The roof will go soon.

  Where’s Peer?

  She ran on down the hill, stumbling in the ruts, feeling the heat increase, shielding her eyes from the brightness of the burning. Smoke whirled low over her, scattering red embers onto the path like little winking eyes. She coughed and beat them away from her face. Now she was level with the millpond and could see that the two figures were the Grimsson brothers, working like demons to put out the flames. They each had a bucket and were stooping and straightening, chucking arcs of water that vanished into the furnace without so much as a puff of steam.

  And the mill was still working! The sluice was open: Torrents of water rushed uselessly under the blazing walls, and the relentless water wheel chopped the millrace into bloodred foam. Hilde ran faster. Was anyone inside the mill? Was Peer there, trapped? She raced to the bridge. Someone loomed up out of the smoke cloud.

  “Hilde!”

  “Peer, thank goodness. What happened?” she choked, as another gust of smoke swept over them.

  “I set the mill on fire.”

  “You did?”

  “Stop, Hilde—there’s a spark in your hair.” He quickly pinched it out.

  “But, Peer, why?” Hilde stammered. “All that work! Your dream of being a miller!”

  Peer put an arm around her shoulders. He wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing at the mill, and the flames filled his eyes. “It would never have worked,” he said. “I see that now. The mill brings nothing but trouble. Let it go.”

  Hilde yelled and pointed. “The roof!”

  With a sort of exhausted sigh, the center of the roof plunged in. Fresh flames spewed up amid a shower of sparks. Chunks of blazing thatch tumbled into the racing water. One piece fell onto the wheel and was carried around till it plunged into the sluice and was extinguished.

  “Burned! All burned!” There was a scream from the bridge. A wild figure came charging though the clutter of flying sparks and swirls of smoke. Hilde glimpsed the blackened, maddened face of Baldur Grimsson. He seized Peer, sobbing. “You destroyed it! The mill’s finished. I’ll burn you, too. You’ll burn!” He dragged Peer up the path toward the sluice. Peer fought back, punching and kicking. Hilde grabbed Baldur’s arm and bit him as hard as she could. He threw her off, towing Peer forward onto the plank above the weir. It sagged under his weight. At the far end of the plank roared the open sluice. The heat of the burning walls beat on their bodies. Under them raced the hungry water.

  Peer hooked his free arm around one of the posts of the plank bridge, but Baldur jerked him away and dragged him out along the plank, nearer to the flames. They wrestled, struggling for balance right above the open sluice. Baldur was trying to wrench Peer off his feet and pitch him into the burning building. Peer grabbed at the handle of the sluice gate.

  “Hold on, Peer! Hold on!” Hilde screamed.

  Baldur tore Peer loose, lifting him, his muscles bulging with the effort. He flung his head back, his hair and beard spangled with sparks, his tusks gleaming in the flames. Then his mouth opened in a shrill cry. Hilde peeped through her fingers. Peer had done something. He had twisted out of Baldur’s arms like an eel and thrown himself flat along the plank, his arms wrapped around it, almost in the water.

  What was that glistening swirl in the millpond?

  It looked for all the world as though a green hand reached out of the scummy water and closed around Baldur’s ankle. There was a sharp splash, and Baldur was toppling forward. Like a blackened oak, struck by lightning—like a stone tower falling, he crashed over into the sluice. The dripping vanes of the millwheel caught him. They struck him down, shuddering. Hilde rushed onto the plank. Peer pushed himself up, trying to scramble to his feet. There was nothing they could do. The wheel drove Baldur Grimsson down into the cold boiling depths, and he rose no more.

  CHAPTER 21

  KERSTEN

  IN THE SMALL, cold hours before dawn, Hilde woke.

  They had gotten back to the farmhouse to find the babies asleep, the trolls gone, and Gudrun tucking the exhausted twins into bed. She listened wide-eyed to their story.

  “Baldur Grimsson, drowned? And what about his brother? Didn’t Grim try to help?”

  “We yelled and shouted,” said Peer wearily. “But I think Grim’s more like an animal now. He came across the bridge, but he didn’t seem to understand what we were telling him. He just howled and ran off up the hill.”

  “And the mill’s still burning,” Hilde told her. “There’ll be nothing left by morning.”

  “Oh, Peer!” said Gudrun. “Your mill! That was very brave.”

  Peer sat down and buried his head in his hands.

  Hilde cleared her throat and turned to Gudrun. “What happened here? I left you gossiping with the troll princess, for all the world like a couple of neighbors chatting over a fence.”

  “Well,” Gudrun said defensively, “she’s not very old. I just gave her a few tips about bringing up children.”

  “I knew it! Early to bed and early to rise—that means late for trolls, of course—and the importance of settling them into a good routine,” Hilde teased.

  “She was quite grateful,” said Gudrun with dignity. “And the little prince spoke up and said what fun he’d had with the twins. Still, I felt that the twins didn’t have as much fun as he did.”

  Sigurd sat up in bed. “Fun? It was awful. And then she invited us to come to his naming feast.”

  “Very gracious, I dare say,” said Gudrun, “but it wouldn’t have been wise to accept … so I simply said that they’d have to make do with the sheep they’d taken. That made her blush!” She yawned. “And then the Nis came back, as happy as a dog with two tails, and lapped up its groute.”

  A spatter of rain struck the shutters, and a gust of wind drove the smoke back down through the ravaged smoke hole. Gudrun cast an anxious eye at the rattling door.

  “The weather’s worsening. Oh, I do wish Ralf was here!”

  Peer lifted his head. “Don’t worry, Bjorn and Ralf and Arnë know what they’re doing. They won’t set out unless it’s safe.”

  So that had been that, and they had all gone to bed and slept like the dead—although i
n that case, Hilde thought, the dead must dream very strange dreams….

  The wind blustered and whined outside, like some big animal trying to get in. Was that why she’d woken? Then she felt something move on the bed, something light that pattered quickly across her legs. One of the cats? She opened her eyes.

  The Nis was so shy of being seen, Hilde had never more than glimpsed it. Now it crouched beside her, its pinprick eyes gleaming, trembling as though all its bones had come loose. There was a faint clattering sound as its teeth rattled.

  “What’s the matter?” Hilde breathed, enchanted but concerned. “Here, come in!” She lifted the bedclothes, and the Nis crept under them and burrowed down into the darkness. It went right to the bottom of the bed: She could feel it somewhere near her toes, shivering as continuously as a cat purrs.

  Hilde lay stiff, unwilling to look into the room. What could possibly frighten the Nis so much? There was something there, she could feel it.

  There was a sound, too. Now she was listening. It was a sort of eerie, wordless singing that mingled with the rushing wind outside. With it came a slow creaking that Hilde recognized. Someone was rocking the cradle.

  It was too scary not to look. Hilde eased herself up and peered around the panel of her bed. The house was drafty and cool: The fire was well banked down. The door thudded quietly against its bar. Everyone else slept.

  At the end of the hearth, Hilde saw the outline of a woman, rimmed in pale flickers. Granny Green-teeth? Her back was to Hilde as she bent over the cradle, crooning some mournful, unearthly lullaby. The hairs rose on the back of Hilde’s neck. At the bottom of her bed, the small hump under the blankets went on shaking.

  The crooning ceased. The woman turned to Hilde, tall and dripping wet. Her face was dark, shrouded in tangles of long hair. A cloak trailed to the floor from her naked shoulders, and the seawater ran from her in rivulets of blue fire.