Troll and Trylleri

by Joyce Holt

  Jorunn managed a weak, "Shoo!"

  "Shoe? Old leather and foul feet—" The goat considered the rubbish underfoot, then snorted. "Thanks, but nei. There are some things even I-I-I won't eat. Now, as I was saying—"

  Jorunn dashed across the houseyard and back to the cookhouse. "Only when alone," she muttered as she eased back inside the busy chamber. "He comes upon me only when I'm alone. So I must stay near others if I don't want him trailing me about."

  Chest still heaving, she sank back against the doorpost. Cooks and drudges a-plenty bustled about, enough company to keep otherworldly creatures away, enough to keep a lonely outcast warm through the freezing night, but not a one of them caring about the hammer blows her soul had taken this day.

  She gulped. Tomorrow she would set off alone, and how long a trek might it be? Trolls and Asgardian goats in the wilds. That Rimhildr-wolf at the steading. Her brute of a father at home. No safety anywhere. "Worry all night, weary in the morn," she chided herself, and stepped out of the shadows.

  The same cook set Jorunn to grinding meal. She settled beside a stone quern, poured a handful of barley down its hole, and began cranking. "Pardon me," she asked as the cook swept past again. "Where would I find the closest steading? Other than at Morgedal, I mean. I'm seeking a place—"

  The woman whirled about, plunked fist on hip and glared. "You want me to help you leave your mistress while she's sheltering here under our roof?"

  "I'm not—"

  "If you have her blessing for leaving her service, then surely she'll seek out a place for you. Don't go asking me to aid you in abandoning your duties to one of our honored guests!"

  "But that's not—"

  The cook waved her down and bustled on her way.

  One of the other drudges sidled over. "She thinks you're one of ours?" she asked, brows arched high over her gaze. "Why would she think that? I've never seen you before."

  "Vel, she's not ours," said Yrsa from the flatbread table beyond the hearth. "She came last eve with all your folk."

  "I didn't come with," Jorunn said. "I came before, and after."

  "Before and after? What riddle is this?" Yrsa put down her roller and joined them.

  Jorunn hunched her shoulders, sheepish at the attention. "I was coming before they came, but they overtook me on the trail." She went back to grinding.

  "You didn't say so at supper," Yrsa scolded, but her tiny mouth quirked a smile.

  "I started to tell, but it was so noisy at table."

  "Where do you come from?" asked the housegirl who belonged with the traveling folk. Faded embroidery ran about the edges of her peaked brown cap. "Wandering on your own in the depths of winter, you must be either most brave or most foolish."

  Most desperate, Jorunn could have said.

  The cook swept up and shoved the other two maidens back to their work. "Not one of our guests, are you? What trickery is this, to come on their heels?" She leaned close and scowled in Jorunn's face. "How dare you slide in here, eat our food, then ask about other steadings. Hopping about like a magpie. Lies and thievery!"

  "I'm not a thief!" Jorunn cried, flinching at the pain of that same accusation that had doomed her mother. "I've had no chance yet—"

  "No chance to steal?" The cook grabbed Jorunn's arm and hauled her to her feet. "Good thing I caught you, then!"

  "No chance to ask for shelter overnight!" she squeaked. "You set me to work, remember?"

  "After you ate our food."

  "Which was after I carried a dozen baskets from sleigh to loft. Their contents untouched. And Yrsa asked me to table."

  The cook threw Yrsa a glance, took in the housemaid's jerky nod, then flung Jorunn's arm free. She folded her arms and glared. "Shelter overnight, hmm?"

  "Ja. That's all I ask. I'll be on my way in the morning."

  "Going where?"

  "Wherever I can find a steading to take in a hard worker."

  "Been turned down here already?"

  "Not asking here."

  "Why not? You'll find no finer place to serve than at Dondstad."

  "Ja, perhaps too fine for such as I."

  The cook tapped her foot. "There's something shifty about you."

  Jorunn felt her skin flush. "I speak the truth!"

  "What is it you're not telling me? Come, girl, I've had dozens of dithering maidens working under my eye. I can tell guilt when I see it."

  "Lady Rimhildr won't want me here," she blurted.

  "Why not? Why should she care about a mere housegirl? It shouldn't matter to her." Her eyes narrowed. "But I can tell you're guilty of something, the way you slink."

  "I'm not guilty! But she thinks my mother is. Was."

  "And who is your mother?"

  Jorunn swallowed, looked down. "Was. My mother was Ingebjorg."

  "Uff-da." The cook stepped back and stared all the harder. "You have her jawline, and her lips, and her brow. You're right. Rimhildr may not be glad to see you here."

  Jorunn felt herself wilt. "I'll be off in the morn."

  "Your mother was the best flatbread baker I've had. Did she teach you?"

  "She tried."

  The cook gave a jerk of her head toward the flatbread table. "Show me what you can do."

  Jorunn stared up at her.

  The woman's thin lips pressed into a line that hooked up at one corner. "Go on."

  "Not everyone has the knack, you know," Jorunn said as she got to her feet. "She did her best, and I tried my hardest, but— Øy." She went to the flatbread table, already white with barley flour. Lumps of dough sat ready in a trough to the side. Yrsa handed her the heavy dowel they used for a roller. "She did her best," Jorunn said again, and took up a lump.

  She rolled, and whisked it around, and rolled, working the round thinner and thinner. To flip it over she used a peel stick much smoother than any her mother had whittled. "Perhaps if we'd had a good, even table like this," she said under her breath, thinking of the rough slab back home.

  Yrsa hummed and swayed foot to foot as she watched. "I've never heard tell of any Ingebjorg in service here."

  "For good reason," the cook snapped. "You go flinging that name about, and you'll wake the lady's temper."

  Yrsa's mouth pursed. She edged away.

  The flatbread yawned a gaping hole where Jorunn rolled too thin. She pinched the edges together in a puckered seam, grimacing at the mistake, and used two peel-slats to lift the round. It stuck to the table and tore a ragged hem. She winced, turned to the hearth and unrolled the flatbread onto the iron griddle already resting on a grate over the coals.

  "Vel, you're not another Ingebjorg, that's for sure," the cook said. "What became of her?"

  Jorunn swallowed. "She died. In childbirth." This very morn, she could have said if her throat hadn't choked up on the memory still so raw.

  "You're her firstborn?"

  "Ja." Though not her only, and as eldest she ought to—

  "Dwelled in Morgedal?"

  "Ja." As eldest, she ought to keep the youngest under her wing. Oh Svana—

  "Look at me when I speak to you, girl."

  "I can't, or the flatbread will burn."

  The cook chuckled. "Very good. More important than a perfect rolling. What did she call you, daughter of Ingebjorg?"

  Jorunn gave her name and flipped the flatbread. The seam had seared, but the bubbles in the rest of the round hadn't burned. They left big brown patches like a spotted cow hide.

  "You may look somewhat like your mother, but you don't have her easy bearing. Slinking and shifty, and whatever happened to your nose? Ah, don't worry about Rimhildr. If she asks, I'll tell her I needed another hand in the cookhouse. But she won't ask."

  "Thousand thanks for your kindness, but—"

  "But what?" A steely note rang in the cook's voice.

  "I can't bear to stay," Jorunn whispered. "She didn't do it. She didn't steal Rimhildr's brooch."

  "Øy, so now you're going to tell me some rascal garbed in black did the d
eed."

  Jorunn couldn't answer, not to that scornful remark. Her hands didn't tremble, not much, as she lifted the flatbread from the griddle with those lovely, polished wooden peels, and set it on the stack beside the table.

  "Why don't you have the next round ready to go?" the cook asked, her voice brisk again. "You'll get nowhere waiting for one to finish before starting the next."

  Jorunn forced the tremor out of her voice. "Every griddle is different. Every bed of coals is different. I needed to learn the dance of this fire first. So my mother taught me."

  "But she couldn't teach you the feel for the dough. Yrsa, we'll leave it your task." The cook swept off to tongue-lash other lazy drudges.

  The housegirl gave a rueful smile as she took over the table.

  Jorunn felt her cheeks heat as she went back to the quern, a chore fitting for a child. She wasn't suited to serve the fine folk of Dondstad, the noble rulers Roald and Hadd, their tyrant of a mother Rimhildr, their feeble grandfather, the Prince. Her skills sprang from the rude, rough lifestyle of her past. She must keep looking for shelter, some other steading where they didn't mind ragged-edged flatbreads, poor folk who could use the meager skills of a woods-wise forager.

  Poor folk who already had little enough to last the winter and none to spare for a pair of cast-off ragamuffins. Jorunn cranked the quern, milling more barley flour for Yrsa to knead into flatbread, grinding her hopes along with the grain.

  5 – Kennings and Churnings

  Jorunn woke with a start in the middle of the night. Curled up against her back, the brown-capped housegirl grumbled and tugged on the blanket they shared.

  Jorunn craned her neck to peer about in the gloom. A beam of moonlight shone down through the cookhouse smoke hole. Something glinted, sparking gold in that silver light. The ridged, gilded horn of a goat.

  She sucked in a breath, and coughed at the odor of half-chewed cud.

  "Ninety and nine pieces of good advice," the Asgardian goat said. "I tried to spread it out, once a week. But now Loki the Trickster hunts me up every day, asking for a wise word."

  Why didn't the other drudges wake at the bleating? Jorunn prodded the housegirls on either side, but they hardly stirred in their sleep. She hunched up to sit crab-wise and scooted back, staring at the pony-sized buck. How had it gotten into the cookhouse? The door was still shut.

  "Loki doesn't need the silver, oh nei, he just likes to see me hack. Pestering the goats, as if the Vanir have nothing better to do. Why can't he go tease Fenris or the Serpent? I tried hiding out in one world after another, but he always tracks me down. That's why I've come to you."

  The twist in the tale loosened Jorunn's tongue. "M-m-me? What do you want with me?"

  "Just look through your key and tell me which world he's in, that's all I ask."

  "What key? Do I look rich?" Baffled, Jorunn plucked at her tattered gown. "Only high-born ladies carry keys. I'm just a drudge!"

  "Not an everyday key, your ma-a-agic key. One glance through the bow and you can see wherever you desire."

  Confusion overrode her fear. "Where would I get a magic key? I'm not the one you're looking for."

  "Jo, you are the one. I'm sure of it. A reedy girl, they said, with dusty-brown hair and nimble fingers. Quiet and quick, they said, with big brown eyes. A sparrow of a girl."

  "Sparrow?" Jorunn sat up taller.

  "Born under the shadow of a twisted fir by the giant's gravemound. That told me where in the world to look."

  "Who says all this?"

  "The Norns who spin the fate of men, and of other creatures, too. They were very helpful to a poor old goat. They said you-ou-ou have the key, Sparrow Maid."

  The Norns! Jorunn shivered and wrapped her arms around herself in bewilderment. "But it's not true!"

  "Norns don't lie." The buck coughed up cud and chewed in thought. "Come to think now, it wasn't Urda the Past who said it. She told me where you were born. It wasn't Verdandi the Present. She told me to search along the troll's trail in the 'now' of this world. It was Skuld."

  "The Future!" Jorunn squeaked.

  "So you don't have the key! Not yet, at any rate." The goat swallowed his cud and blinked. "Vel, I'll be shorn!"

  "The Norns – speaking of me – I don't understand."

  "Ah ja, I was forgetting. They send you a message." The buck waggled his beard. "Trudge east, and your trek will stall. Wend west, and you'll go far. For the longest leap of all, stand still right where you are."

  Jorunn gaped. Kennings of some kind. To go east, to go home to Morgedal, her quest would come to an end – a bad end, no doubt. Then west over the ridge was the way she must turn.

  "Someday you'll have a magic key," said the goat, "but Loki will track me down before noon. This does me no good at all."

  "Give me your piece of advice for the day," Jorunn blurted. "Then you'll be under no obligation to – to Loki." She gulped with immediate regret for her words. She ought not get entangled in matters so great. Ill-famed Loki the Trickster, the plague of Asgard—

  "The curse still holds," Thor's chariot-goat growled, more wolf-like than goat-like. "If I don't answer in skaldic form, I'll have to cough up an ingot of silver, for you-ou-ou instead of him. Do you know how much slag I have to swallow to make an ingot? My bellies knot just to think of it." The buck chomped on the edge of her blanket, his teeth gnashing like gears in a water mill. The racket ought to have woken every drudge in the cookhouse. All it did was jar awake a memory, a fragment of saga. Thor had two chariot-goats, and the sagas gave their names.

  She pulled the woolen weave out of reach. "Look, give me your piece of advice and that bit of silver, then tell me what you might want to say the next day. I'll help you frame it in proper form. Then we'll both have two days free of worry."

  The buck lowered his head into butting stance and glared, grinding his teeth again, his eyes glinting with more than moonlight. "Is this a trick? Gree-ee-eedy mankind taking advantage of my plight—"

  "Nei, nei! I'll admit the silver would do me a world of good, but like I said, it would win us both two days of peace. I can't have you keep leaping out at me. I have enough troubles as it is, T-toothgnasher."

  "Guessed my name, have you, Sparrow Mai-ai-aid?" The goat flared his nostrils and glared. "Help me frame three, and I'll do it."

  "Two?" Jorunn tried.

  "Three." Toothgnasher lowered his head again, stamped and swelled large as a bull. Those horns looked as long and heavy as a bull's, as well.

  "Three," Jorunn squeaked. Not wise to dicker with a creature from Asgard.

  * * *

  "Up, up, up, you lazy wretches," pealed a strident voice.

  Jorunn rolled over and blinked. A rushlight bobbed about in the darkness.

  "We have a whole host to feed come daybreak. Trout to fry, porridge to simmer, flatbread to butter and drizzle. A dab of honey for each of you if it's all ready when the lady calls."

  Jorunn sat up and rubbed the crick in her neck. What a jumbled dream – Thor's goat talking nonsense about the Norns, and making a bargain about teaching skaldic arts, and the two of them nattering back and forth until he came up with an alliterative kenning to give next time Loki came pestering. "Churning," Toothgnasher called the metaphor.

  In her dream Jorunn kept correcting him. "Not churning. Kenning." Now, shrugging at the odd fancies of sleep, she pulled on her right boot. There was a lump in it. She fished out a sizable stone.

  Nei, not a stone, but a chunk of silver. She gaped, then wrapped her fingers tight around the ingot. It wasn't a dream. "Rise early, to prosper," the goat had declared, then hacked up the lump of silver. Rise early. That was easy counsel to take. When did she ever have the luxury to lie abed? But it hadn't led to any kind of prosperity, not thus far in her hard life.

  If that part of the dream was true, then so must be the message from the Norns. Wend west, and you'll go far. She shivered to realize the Fates had their eyes on her, and shivered again at the unexpected hope. Wend
west.

  But it wasn't yet light, and she might as well earn her meal. Jorunn tucked the ingot into her belt pouch. "The wise wolf wakes early, when prey is easy picking," she chanted under her breath as she tended a porridge pot and kept an eye out for Yrsa.

  "I must be on my way today," Jorunn told the housegirl when she finally appeared. "What steadings lie over the western ridge?"

  "There's a bonde at Moen," Yrsa said, brow knit. "But I've never been. I don't know which way to point you."

  "Who could I ask for directions?"

  "Groa would know. The cook who latched onto you last night. She's been here forever, knows everything. Or you could ask the young men. They're always ranging about on the hunt."

  Jorunn felt uneasy about Groa. She didn't know whether to believe the crinkles of humor or the scowling brow. "Treacherous to trust a smile," she muttered an old saying. "Not all who flatter will fly to your aid."

  Yrsa took her elbow. "But don't go yet. Only two more days till Yule! Prince Dond always calls for a grand feast at the Sun's Turning. We'll have the last of the apples, and butter-bread with honey for everyone, and cinnamon in the porridge. Have you ever tasted cinnamon?"

  Jorunn shook her head, appalled. How could she revel and feast while Svana pined away, hungry and cold and comfortless? "I can't linger."

  "All the menfolk will go hunting today and tomorrow. And you, dressed all in brown, looking like a deer in the deep woods. Arrows will fly. Wait till after Yule."

  All dusty brown like a sparrow, the goat had said of her. "I must leave!" Jorunn insisted.

  Yrsa pursed her mouth in a pout. "Vel, if you must, let me find you a red rag to wear about your head to show you're no prey."

  When dawn tinged the smokehole overhead, Jorunn took the flatbread that was her due and went out to the houseyard – to find snow falling. She bit her lip. A perilous thing, to travel without the sun for a guide.