Troll Mill (26 page)

“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.

KERSTEN

I
N 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 in 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.

“Kersten?” Hilde whispered.

The woman nodded. “My name was Kersten.”

Cold air gusted across the floor, smelling of salt and seaweed, and there was a hushing sound in the room, quiet as the tide creeping up the beach, or the sea in a shell. Perhaps it was only the blood rushing in Hilde’s ears.

“But …” Hilde remembered the seal in the water, strong and happy in its own element. She knew without being told that the old Kersten was gone forever.

Why did you leave Bjorn, Kersten? Why did you leave your baby? What happened to the girl who used to laugh and dance and cook the fish
Bjorn caught and joke with me in the summer evenings?

“Why …?” Hilde began, and couldn’t finish. There was something hard in her throat, and salty tears stung the back of her nose.

“Everything ends as it must, and then begins again, like the waves,” the seal-woman whispered. “But get up quickly, Hilde, and come with me, if you want to save your father.”

“What?”

“Get up and come! The black seal has tempted them out to the skerries. He will sink the boat. Come now. Wake Peer. Leave your bed.”

“The black seal! Who is he? What is he to you?”

“My husband, Hilde, my seal-husband. I had a mate and children in the sea before ever I married Bjorn the fisherman.” For a moment she wrung her hands, flung back her head.
“Aiee!
Seven long years they were lost to me, seven long years I loved a mortal man. But the sea called me home. Never again for me the cradle and the hearth. Never again
will I take my little child in my arms.
Aiee!”
She leaned over the cradle, and her hair fell across it in a loose curtain. “Farewell, my sweeting, my mortal darling. Look after her well, Hilde.