Troll and Trylleri

by Joyce Holt

The hulder child inhaled with an expression of delight. "Ooh, sweeter than sweet!"

  Ooh, ranker than rank! Jorunn wanted to say, wrinkling her nose at the stench. She wouldn't ask what was in the vat. She looked all around.

  Doors with hinges and lock plates. Shelves and ladders and boxes and jars. Bronze pot on a table, filled with sweet something. She'd always thought trolls lived like animals in their dens. She'd never dreamed their world might mirror her own.

  "Help me drag ladder. I snitch some. We share."

  "Not yet," Jorunn said. "Let's go find the white-skin. Before your Mor comes back."

  The hulder child ignored her and hoisted the ladder all by herself. "You not help me, so I give you none."

  Jorunn shot her guide a sidewise glance. Best to be wary of one you mistrust, she thought, recalling the old saying about a crafty fellow. Depending on this young hulder might not be such a good idea. She tiptoed away while the troll-child scrambled up to table-top for a stolen treat.

  The key showed Jorunn where Gyda was, but not the twists and turns of the wide passageways. Before long she had muddled her path, gotten further from her goal, and had no idea how to get out again. The cavernous rooms echoed with other footfalls besides her own, but in the dim light of the lichen lamps she could make nothing out in the shadows.

  The place reeked. At every turn, every cross passage, she gagged at foul odors and hurried her pace, seeking fresh air.

  And then she found her quarry. In another huge larder, the key's view came into focus only when she craned her head back. There, high on a shelf, the key-sight piercing through stone and wood, she saw a pale form huddled inside a wagon-sized bowl.

  Jorunn sagged back a step. She nearly dropped her hold on the bundle of twigs. How would she get up there? The tallest two-story loft she'd ever seen wouldn't even reach to the second shelf up. Gyda lay on the fourth.

  She scouted around in the gloom, found a monstrous basket, leaned against it with all her might and shoved it out from the wall. She tied her bundle of rowan sprigs to her belt, then shifted the waterskin around to her back. With one more glance overhead, she climbed up the basket's wickerwork – woven from the trunks of saplings – and made it to the first shelf.

  She heard a distant cry: "Valka-friend! White-skin! Where you go?" The hulder child had discovered her gone.

  Jorunn found boxes of spices – boxes the size of chests. She stacked them in a pyramid, scrambled to the top, and hauled herself onto the next shelf.

  She heard a snuffling down below and peered over the edge. A wolverine nosed about. From this perspective, it looked like a rat in a byre.

  The boxes here were too big to shove around, let alone stack. Jorunn managed to scrabble on top of the largest one, but couldn't reach the shelf above. She dropped down again and wandered the length of the huge plank. At the far end it butted against another wall. A wall of pitted granite. This vault had been hacked out of the mountainside, without any fine finishing work.

  A jagged surface, offering many toeholds and handholds. "No worse than cliffs back home," she muttered, thinking of all the times she'd hunted nests to rob. "No worse, no worse." No worse than a nesting cliff, indeed, though she'd never climbed in twilight such as this.

  She made it halfway up before her fears clamped her muscles tight. She froze for a moment, panting. Gritting her teeth, she tamped down her terror, and clawed her way up to the third shelf where she collapsed, chest heaving.

  "White-skin!" The cry sounded closer.

  "Go steal more sweet-yums," Jorunn muttered. She drew a deep breath and tackled the last stretch.

  Her groping hand met fur and leather, a quivering mass that burst from the wall and flapped past her ear. A bat. A huge bat. She squawked and nearly lost her hold.

  She clung, shaking, teeth chattering, listening to another whir, and another. She didn't dare look around to see where they had gone or if there were more of them. Her last glimpse of the floor had made her head swim. At last she dragged herself up and onto Gyda's shelf. She rolled over to lie there panting.

  "Nei, I not let it loose! I not touch it!" the hulder child's voice protested out in the corridor.

  A deep voice rattled the shelves. "Then why you searching all around, calling for white-skin? No fibs now or I bite off your head, Dimplekin."

  "You not dare. And I be looking for other one."

  "What other one?" the other troll thundered, even louder, even closer.

  Jorunn scrambled to her feet and glanced wildly around. Where could she hide?

  "Other white-skin, smells like Valka," Dimplekin yelled. "Mine! I find it first! So don't you dare eat it. I wanna tie it to my bed and feed scraps from supper."

  Jorunn wormed her way past jars the size of tree trunks.

  "Where it come from, this other white-skin?"

  Jorunn sidled up to the great bowl that held Gyda. She leaped for the rim and missed.

  "I find it in woods. I trick it to come inside. I want a pet."

  "You got a wolverine."

  "Nei, not no more. Klump step on Fuzzy and Fuzzy go squish."

  Jorunn took another leap, the bundle of rowan twigs banging against her rump, and missed again. She panted as rapid as a squirrel caught in a snare. "Gyda!" she hissed. "It's me, Jorunn. Can you hear me?"

  No answer came.

  "Where you lose this white-skin?" growled the great voice.

  Jorunn climbed up the rough granite wall behind the bowl, and hung there, clinging by toe tip and fingertip. Now what?

  "Back there," Dimplekin said, "but it run away. I want it back!"

  Jorunn pushed away from the wall, twisting in midair. She crashed against the rim of the bowl. "Uff da!" she wheezed, the air knocked out of her, but she had it now. Or it had her. She was draped over the rim of the bowl, facing down to the still form of Gyda. She kicked and wriggled and swung her legs to the side, and slid down to crash against her mistress.

  Gyda's only reaction was a long sigh.

  Jorunn held up the key and whispered, "Dimplekin."

  Sure enough, the keybow showed the hulder-child stomping her foot in a passage nearby. Another troll towered over the imp, nigh as large as Klump's father, the ogre that had snatched Gyda. This fellow had feet so big he could have worn rowboats for boots.

  While their rasping voices argued on, Jorunn whispered, "Valka," and cast about, searching until she spotted the goatherd at last, huddled in a dark chamber. Goats close around. In the goat shed. "What is this?" Jorunn mouthed. Did they call everyone home to shelter from rampaging trolls?

  "Gunnarr," she tried. She found him skiing through snow-cloaked forest.

  Jorunn sat back with a gasp. Wintertime! She'd had nothing to eat or drink here in Svartalfheim. She hadn't even taken a slurp from Valka's waterskin. Time was slipping past anyway.

  It must be the air. The foul, reeking air. She stifled a cough. How much of Svartalfheim had crept into her body simply through breathing? She must hurry!

  But first, a quick look for Svana.

  Shivering outside their father's hut, leaning close to Oddleif, whispering in his ear, glancing about with fear on her face. Snow whisked them both. He put his arms around her.

  Where was the hero the Norns promised to send? Jorunn's teeth clenched in dismay. She couldn't leave Svana dangling, waiting for a hero who never came. I must hurry, I must get back!

  47 – Begging at the Byre

  Oddleif took apart the woodpile, quiet as a thief. He rebuilt the stack in two piles up against her father's hut, leaving just enough room between for Svana, and roofed it with several spruce boughs.

  "I wish you'd come away with me," he hissed at her as she crawled into the crude shelter.

  "There's nowhere to go," she whispered. "He'd hunt me down and beat me senseless. You heard how he raged after Jorunn got away." She gulped. "He burned my snowshoes."

  "I'll make you a set," Oddleif vowed. "I'll find a way."

  Svana shook her head. "When he wakes a
nd leaves, I'll hear. I'll dash in and clean up his mess, put all to rights. He'll come back and find all as it should be, and me puttering around as always. He'll forget his fury. That's how it goes every time."

  "It shouldn't," Oddleif muttered. "Here, take my cloak."

  "When the snow covers all the chinks, I'll be warm enough."

  "Take it!" He shoved it into her crevice.

  "But you'll need it."

  "I'll go begging at Dondstad. At the byre. There's a stableman or two who might be talked out of an old horse blanket." He propped another spruce bough across the opening. "Don't forget to prod yourself an air hole if it gets that deep," he hissed through the sprays of needles.

  Oddleif strapped on his snowshoes, shouldered his pack, and plodded off toward Dondstad, shaking snow from his hair and cap. If it fell any thicker, he'd be in trouble. The world swirled in grey and white. And deepened to darker greys on the forest path. He picked up his pace. He still shuddered every time he passed the three-trunked spruce where he and Jorunn had cowered under the troll's attack.

  Oddleif was shaking with cold by the time he arrived at Dondstad. He let himself into the byre and stood there slapping his arms, jaw juddering, eyes stinging at the waft of warm dungy air.

  "It's a snow-troll, look there!" a stableman jibed. "What you want, boy?"

  "C-came to b-barter," Oddleif answered. "Need a b-blanket."

  "What you got to offer?" another fellow asked. "You're the lad with the furs, aren't you?"

  "G-got something else here. Not p-pelts this time." Oddleif shrugged out of his pack, brushed it off, took out the leather case. "A song to d-drive away the doldrums."

  "You can sing, if you want, but it's not likely to earn you much more than a hand rag."

  The stablemen jeered and went back to their work.

  Oddleif tightened the horsehair of the bow. He plucked his three strings, and twisted one peg. Then he launched into a threshing song followed by a halling dance tune of furious pace.

  He finished, to find the stablemen grouped silently in a half-circle hemming him in at the byre door. No one spoke. Several shook their heads. One fellow left, then returned with two new blankets. "Still some doldrums here, need driving away," another man said.

  Oddleif grinned. The fiddling had warmed him up. He played the old ditty about the troll seeking for his wandering goats, and the one about the shoemaker who always mended a sole too small.

  The door creaked open behind him. "Uff da! What trylleri are you spinning out here in the byre?" The voice rang with authority, but cracked high on the word "here."

  Oddleif spun about to find a beardless youth not much older than himself, but much more finely dressed.

  "Master Bjørn," the stablemen said in greeting and went back to their work.

  Oddleif gulped. Bjørn, the son of Roald, lord of Dondstad. He clutched the lute to his chest and bent an awkward bow. "Meant no trouble. Needed a blanket. Earned it in fair trade. A song or two."

  Bjørn pushed on in, gazing at Oddleif, then at the two blankets set beside his tattered old pack. "Why here?" he asked. The commanding tone had vanished, replaced by simple curiosity.

  Oddleif shuffled. "Why not here?"

  "Music like that, you should come into the hall. My father and uncle should hear this!"

  "I can't. I'm not, vel, not fit for grand folk."

  "The music is. They won't give your rags a glance once they hear you play!"

  "Go on, boy," one of the stablemen said. "They don't bite. And you'll come away with a prize more fitting than a horse blanket, or I'm a fool."

  "Hei, Fugli," another fellow pitched in, "loan the lad your tunic. You're of a size."

  A third snatched Oddleif's shapeless, mottled green cap, batted it against a post, plucked off a few shreds of bark from his labors at the woodpile, and plunked it back on his head. "Ask for a new hat," he suggested.

  Bjørn helped him on with the borrowed tunic. "You'll fit just fine, skaldling." He grinned, threw an arm over Oddleif's shoulders, and hustled him off to the mead-hall – where he did indeed earn a new hat and a gold arm-ring besides.

  48 – Down from the Shelf

  Out in the corridor, Dimplekin's voice rang with fury. "My white-skin run away. Get it for me! Now!"

  Jorunn untied the bundle of twigs from her belt. She twined most of them into a wreath and placed it on Gyda's head.

  Gyda's eyelids fluttered and she struggled to sit. "What? Where am I?"

  Jorunn clapped a hand over Gyda's mouth. "Hush!" she hissed. "Trolls! Be quiet!"

  Gyda whimpered and stared wildly about. Her eyes finally focused on Jorunn, then pinched in a quizzical expression.

  Jorunn put a finger to her own lips. "Shh—"

  "I want my white-skin!" The hulder child pattered along the passageway nearby. "It run away. I want it back."

  A heavier tread sent echoes reverberating. "Now, now, if it be lost indoors, someone will find it."

  "By stepping on it!" the hulder child warbled in complaint. "Tell everyone keep it safe for me."

  "Ooh, you want it safe, do you?" The shelf shook and the jars clinked and rattled as somebody rather large hopped around out in the hallway.

  "Mor! Mor! Nasty Raspy going to squash my white-skin!" By the sound of it, the hulder child ran away hunting for her mother. But there were no loud heavy footfalls. Only a suspicious snuffling sound.

  Gyda sat upright and reached for the large bucket of water at her feet.

  "Nei!" Jorunn grabbed her hand and went on in a whisper. "Remember your folklore. Drink that, and you'll return to find Harald an old man, or long buried. Here, this is safe." She unslung the water bag and handed it over. She stood and peered over the edge of the bowl.

  In the gloom it was hard to see if anyone lurked out in the hall. The glowing lichen didn't cast light enough to make shadows. Jorunn thought she could hear the sigh of somebody trying to breathe quietly.

  "Where are we?" Gyda whispered near Jorunn's ear. "What is this well? Why are trolls nearby?"

  "One snatched you on the mountainside. Don't you remember?"

  Breath whistled in a sudden intake.

  "We're in Svartalfheim, in the caverns of a troll warren," Jorunn hissed.

  "It caught you, too?"

  Jorunn shook her head. "Came after. Hard to find you."

  Gyda's hand clenched Jorunn's shoulder. "Came after. What courage. Or folly."

  Jorunn grimaced in the dark. Courage or folly indeed. Which was it?

  "How do we get out of this well?" Gyda asked softly.

  "A bowl. One of us boosts the other to the rim. We drop to the shelf and—"

  "You boost. I'm weary. How long have I laid here?"

  "I don't know. Time is twisting like thread on a spindle. Up you go."

  "What?" Gyda hooked her arms over the rim of the bowl and gazed all around. "Where are we?"

  "Give me your hand and pull me up."

  "Don't give me orders, girl."

  Jorunn heaved a sigh. "Please give me your hand, Mistress, and pull me up."

  Gyda muttered but complied. "Now what?" She wobbled on her perch.

  Jorunn swung her legs over and dropped to the shelf. She beckoned for Gyda to do the same.

  "You may be used to climbing and leaping, but I'm not. Bring me a stool."

  Jorunn gritted her teeth. "We'll find no stool on the pantry shelf of a jotun. You'd better hurry, Mistress. I think one is lurking outside the door."

  Gyda's eyes flew wide. She swiveled around onto her belly, slid to her elbows, scrabbled with her feet but found no purchase on the side of the bowl, and lost her grip. Jorunn broke her mistress' fall, but Gyda still yelped as she landed.

  Something scuffed loudly in the hallway.

  Jorunn hauled Gyda to her feet, grabbed her hand, and dragged her into shelter behind the jars. Again she clapped a hand over her mistress' mouth.

  Gyda started to struggle, but turned still as stone at the sound of heavy, nail-scr
atching feet. A head came into view on their level.

  Hair like the thatch of a barn, Jorunn saw. A great plow of a nose. The jotun was looking downward, though, searching the floor. "You vermin," he thundered, and stomped.

  Jorunn could hear the scraping of claws and the snarl of a wolverine.

  "Make yourself useful. Go track down that white-skin Dimplekin let in." he troll went and stood in the doorway, hands on his massive hips, glancing this way and that before he finally trundled off.

  Jorunn listen to his footsteps recede. Gyda was heaving against the wall, gagging and wiping her eyes. "What a stench!" she gasped.

  Jorunn hardly noticed the stink anymore. She looked at the wall she had climbed to get here. It's always harder going down than up. She couldn't picture imperious, pampered Gyda climbing down that route.

  She flopped onto her belly and looked down around the edge of the shelf. She figured she could lower herself to a hand grip and swing her body back and forth and let go at the right moment to land on the next level. ut Gyda couldn't.

  Troll voices sounded down the hall. They weren't coming closer, not yet. "Must hurry," Jorunn muttered.

  On the next shelf sat what a jotun might consider a small lumpy bag tied at the neck with a light cord. A huge bag and heavy rope, to mankind. How long was the rope? she wondered. "Stay here," she told Gyda. She dangled, swung, and landed beside the bag.

  Jorunn pushed the pouch. She could barely move it. Good. She unwound the rope. It wasn't long enough for her needs.

  She prowled along the shelf until she found another cord and tied their ends together. She threw the rope over the side.

  The far end puddled on the floor.

  A hiss came from above. "What are you doing? How are we going to get down? Don't leave me up here."

  Jorunn hauled the rope back up. She made sure the other end was still secure around the neck of the bag, scooted it further along the shelf, glancing up now and then to gauge her position, then pushed the heavy pouch over the edge. The rope burned her hands as she tried to slow the descent. The ballast landed with a thunk.

  "What are you doing? Answer me!"

  "Working on a way to get you down. Here, take the end of the rope." She handed it up. There was still plenty of slack. She trotted to the end of the shelf and climbed up the jagged wall again.