Troll Bridge Read online

  Moira gasped. How had he known? She hadn’t actually played a bowed instrument since elementary school where she’d taken two years of Suzuki lessons on a quarter-size violin.

  Ignoring her reverie, the fox continued his instructions. “Do not rely on the bow overmuch. The hardanger is different from anything you have played before. And the Fossegrim hardanger even more so.” He finally stopped circling and stood before them. “I will put the song in your mind. You have only to let it out through your fingers.”

  Moira’s eyes widened. That’s exactly how she felt at times, reading a new piece, or playing an old familiar one—as if the songs filled her to bursting, and shot out of her fingers on to the strings.

  “Ah,” said Foss, “you begin to understand.”

  Moira nodded.

  “Then let us play. This is ‘Fille Vern,’ a simple dance tune.” He bared his teeth. “I am sure your trolls will enjoy it.”

  Just like that, she and Jakob began playing. And as Foss had said, there was a song in their minds, and now they were releasing it onto the fiddle.

  Moira’s right hand with the bow sawed back and forth in two-four time. Jakob’s fingers moved confidently over the strings. The rhythm was contagious, and Moira began tapping her foot in time. When she found she had some small control over her right arm, she leaned into it on the nearly atonal bridge, adding some accents that were all her own.

  Foss raised an eyebrow at her.

  Grinning her defiance at him, she thought: You may call the tune, but we still play it our way.

  Then Jakob played a trill that Moira was certain Foss hadn’t put in their minds, and the fox’s other eyebrow went up, too.

  Moira laughed out loud then, laughed for the sheer joy of playing, for the pure sound of music and the feeling it gave her. And Jakob laughed with her, their limbs moving in concert, the music flowing as if they were one person.

  The song ended too soon. Staring at the back of Jakob’s head, Moira thought, Maybe I judged him too quickly. And when he twisted back again to look at her, she shot him a smile so bright it made his cheeks blossom red. Sorry, she thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.

  Sitting on his haunches, Foss stared at them. The seconds stretched into minutes and the fox’s eyes got darker and his nose twitched. Suddenly he reminded Moira of the Maestro who often waited like that, stretching the agony out, before finally commenting on the section just played.

  “Well,” he said finally, “it seems that the two of you are more ready than I had imagined.”

  Moira was pleased and she felt Jakob’s shoulders relax.

  Standing, Foss balanced himself awkwardly on his hind feet. “Let us begin again.”

  Moira smiled to herself. That was just what Maestro liked to say: Let us begin again.

  This time the song that crept into her mind seemed much more subtle and complex than the dance number they’d just played. Its time signature was some bizarre compound of prime numbers. The melody was haunting and insistent, and the tones that rang from the fiddle’s understrings accented it in odd and unfamiliar ways.

  She watched Foss carefully as they played, as if he were a conductor. And in two ways he was, she realized, not only leading them in the music but also soon he’d be conducting them home.

  But then she noticed something truly odd. Unlike a human orchestra conductor who beats out the time, who cues the musicians in, who works for the good of the music, the fox was paying absolutely no attention to them. Instead, he was focused on himself. As the music swelled, he began to change. His red hair disappeared, receding like a tide into his hide. His nose and ears shrank. His back legs grew bigger, longer, developed knees, flexible ankles. When his paws turned into hands, he let out a gasp and flexed his fingers reverently. Only his eyes remained the same, unreadable black orbs. The changes came slowly at first, then faster and faster as the tune continued.

  As her bow and Jakob’s fingers danced over the fiddle and its strings, strange scenes leaped into Moira’s head: a long wooden boat crashing into heavy dark seas, rows of burly men heaving at the oars; a lone figure capering around a bonfire, fiddle in hand; a waterfall with a cave behind it. She recognized the last spot. It was the cave Foss lived in, but there was no worn path leading to it, only a scruff of grass. The trees surrounding the river, another painted backdrop, barely saplings.

  Suddenly, Moira realized she was seeing through Foss’s eyes. Or at least, through his memories. Somehow, to give him back his old form, they were playing his entire history.

  Jakob turned his head and stared wide-eyed back at her. Moira guessed he’d experienced the same burst of history. She tried to speak aloud to him but she found she couldn’t. Ride it out, she thought.

  Jakob looked away.

  Then she saw that Foss’s change was nearly complete. Though small pieces of red fur still stood out on his pale skin—a beard, a mustache, patches at his wrist—they were fading fast. He looked almost like a normal person, Normal, except for those eyes.

  Moira expected the song to end when the transformation ended. But she and Jakob kept playing, even as Foss stood, now an alarmingly naked young man of maybe twenty, with long teeth and rust-red hair.

  Why? Moira thought before answering her own question: Because we’re not done.

  With a nod from Foss the conductor, the tune’s tempo doubled, and Moira suddenly felt something pouring out of her. Energy, life force, something. Whatever it was, she didn’t like that it was leaving her—and apparently entering Foss. She looked up into his dark eyes and he smiled the same toothy grin he had when he’d been a fox.

  Oh no, she thought, horrified. He’s tricked us! He never once intended to let us go.

  As they fiddled, their tune more frantic than before, the scenes from Foss’ early life rushed through Moira’s brain. She saw him turning from fox to man and back again. Watched a young tree-tall Aenmarr knock the fiddle from Foss’s grip mid-transformation. Saw Foss swearing eternal revenge on the troll and all his kind as Aenmarr capered away, laughing uproariously.

  “Yes,” Foss said, able to speak aloud for now he once again had a human mouth and human vocal chords. “You will never leave this place. And I am truly sorry. You are both very talented musicians.”

  Hearing this, Erik lunged at the fox.

  With a sweep of his arm, Foss hurled a wave of sound that caught Erik in the chest, sending him flying into the wall. His head hit with a thud and he crumpled to the ground.

  Foss spoke louder now for the fiddle was practically screaming in its quest for higher notes. “I could have taught you music such as you have never heard. Music to sway the minds of kings and change the hearts of queens. Music to command armies and set foes to flight. Music to make graybeards dance and the lame to walk.”

  He’d hardly finished, when Galen jumped at him, aiming a sloppy overhand blow for his chin. Foss shouted a single syllable. It seemed to stop Galen in his tracks and he looked at his chest for a moment, then collapsed.

  “Blood and music flow much the same,” Foss said. “And I need a fair amount of both to complete my change.”

  The troll women stirred and Foss simply growled at them. Selvi shot Moira a look full of resignation and just a touch of I told you so, before clutching her boy to her bosom and subsiding with the other two wives.

  No! Moira thought. We have to stop him. I have to stop him.

  She tried to move independently, tried to change the song as she had with the dance tune. Tried to change keys, meter, time signature. Anything. But the song had her fully in its grip, and she couldn’t substitute a single note or phrase. She looked at Jakob, saw him gritting his teeth and grimacing at his left hand as if he were trying the same thing.

  And having no more luck than I.

  “Child of man,” Foss said. Then grinned. “And woman. It will all be over in moments. And I do thank you for all your help.” He bowed low, like a courtier in an ancient court. “I quite literally could not have done it without y
ou.”

  Moira raged and screamed internally, all the while, her right arm bowing the notes that would soon bring about the end of her life and those around her.

  Notes! She kept her face clear of her excitement. That’s it! She’d suddenly remembered how annoyed Foss had been when she’d whistled off key. As if the merest nonmusical sound didn’t just bother him. It caused him actual discomfort.

  She abandoned her attempt to control her arm. In fact, she gave it even more fully to the Fossegrim, thinking: Let him have it.

  Relaxing, she threw herself into the music completely. Well, almost completely. She let Foss have her arms, her legs, her body. Let him have everything but one thing. And she concentrated on that thing, concentrated harder than she ever had over a difficult piece of music, or a tricky fingering on the harp. Harder than she ever had for any test or practice or performance. Concentrated every part of her being solely on her own mouth.

  Then with one massive effort, she managed to croak out one word.

  “Notes.”

  Foss arched an eyebrow. “Notes? I do not understand you, human child.” He shrugged. “Not that it will matter.”

  Moira could feel herself fading, disappearing even as she kept bowing. As for Jakob, she could hear his breath rattling in his chest. But his fingers still flew over the guts and bone of the fiddle’s neck.

  Foss stretched his new arms, hunched his sinewy shoulders. “It feels good to wear my true skin once more.”

  Moira ignored him. Ignored the pain in her chest and her arms, and the fading, sinking feeling. She ignored everything but the need to send that one word across the room. Across to the troll boys nestled in their mother’s arms.

  “Notes,” she rasped.

  Buri looked up at her. She tried to encourage him, make him understand. But that effort made her concentration lapse, and she lost control of her mouth. She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to try again.

  I never even got to play the new Berlin piece. Even as she had the thought, she realized what a stupid thing it was to regret. What about all the other things she’d never get to do? I’ll never graduate, never move to New York and join a big symphony, never get married, never … She would have sobbed if she’d had control of her tear ducts.

  Just then Jakob—who must have understood her—spoke up. He’d saved up his energy for three whole words. “Arri. Buri. Notes!”

  The troll boys looked up at him, then back at their mothers.

  “Sing!” Selvi encouraged them.

  “Be singing your notes,” Trigvi added.

  “I do not be knowing why, boys,” Botvi said, “but sing!”

  And grinning widely, Arri and Buri burst into glorious song, their astonishing lack of pitch topped only by their truly horrific timbre. It was awful and terrific at the same time.

  Foss flinched and Moira felt a rip in the web of music that held her.

  The fox shook a fist at the trolls and Arri went flying, but the spell missed Buri, and he sang louder to make up for his fallen brother.

  That moment gave Moira an opening. She managed to twitch her bow arm, skipping the note that should have been there.

  Jakob, too, was loosed for that moment, and he played an octave and two, where a fifth was called for. It was truly awful.

  Screaming, Foss glared at them, but the three troll women suddenly lent their horrendous screeching to the cacophony and Foss dropped to one knee as if punched in the stomach.

  “Oh, by Frigg and Freya,” he groaned. “That is horrible.”

  And it is, Moira thought. Horrible and wonderful.

  Arri stood, shook himself off, and began singing “Hang down, Drool, hang down Drool,” over and over at the top of his lungs.

  The troll women chanted the “Little Doom Song,” while young Buri just howled one long note until he collapsed unconscious, having forgotten to take a breath.

  Blood ran out of Foss’ ears and he clamped his hands over them to staunch the flow. Then standing, he shuffled backward toward the larder. On the way he slipped on the water that Moira had wrung from the cloths and this time went down on both knees. When he tried to stand again, all the energy he had stolen from Moira and Jakob rushed out of him like a river in spate, and flowed back into them. He only made it to one hairy knee before Galen and Erik scraped themselves off the floor and knocked him over with a double-flying tackle.

  Then the troll women jumped on him as well, and the sound that he made as he went down under them was something like a tire deflating.

  In seconds it was over. Foss was gagged and hog-tied with two troll boys sitting on him for good measure. He was not fully human but not fully fox, either, just somewhere in between.

  “Hey, girl—what’s going on?”

  Moira looked over in surprise. Helena was sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Her crown had fallen off and her dreads were all askew. “Moira?” she asked tremulously. “Where in God’s green world are we?”

  The Dairy Princesses had begun to awaken.

  26

  Jakob

  It was chaos. Eleven startled girls, muzzy and fuzzy from days of sleep, all talking at once; Moira trying to raise her voice above them to explain; Trigvi and Botvi bustling about preparing a meal for their many guests; and the troll boys busy competing with Jakob’s brothers, each trying to outdo the other in their efforts to impress the beautiful girls.

  If the princesses noticed anything strange about their green-skinned hosts, they were too polite to say. Or too befuddled with sleep and enchantment.

  Jakob watched it all from the wall where he sat next to Selvi. She cradled her broken arm in her lap and had the other curled protectively around Little Doom.

  “Mama Selvi,” Jakob said. “I don’t think we can forge a new Compact.”

  “Why not?” Selvi boomed in her quietest voice. “Be you not trusting me?”

  “I do trust you.” Jakob patted the big green hand that rested on his shoulder. “But without Foss’s help, we’ll never get back to our own world. I’ll still teach your boys to play, but we certainly can’t bring you any butter.”

  Selvi looked down at him, a perplexed look on her face. “Why be you needing the Fossegrim? You already be having his fiddle.”

  Jakob sighed. “Yes, but we don’t really know how to play it. That was all Foss’s doing.”

  Selvi chuckled. It was like the boom of a waterfall. “Silly Little Doom. You be not needing to play it. The fiddle be of both worlds. Whoever holds it can be passing through at will. Foss the fox could be going only to the middle of the bridge, no farther because he not be having the fiddle to hand. As for Aenmarr, he be not knowing the fiddle’s power. Really, troll men be not very smart.” She grinned and winked at him.

  Jakob sat up straight. “Really?”

  “Really,” Selvi answered.

  “Then why did you not take the fiddle and go?”

  She was silent for a long time. Deep thinking, he supposed. “Be looking at me, Little Doom,” she said at last. “Be really looking at me. How could I be making my way, how could my son, in the world of men? They would be knowing me for what I am and be killing me and mine. As long ago, so it be now.”

  He nodded. “There are many humans who would not understand,” he said. “Who would hate you. But some…”

  She smiled at him and shifted beside him. It was like a mountain moving. “Then we be welcoming such ‘somes’ if they be liking to visit us here.”

  But he knew, as she knew, that no one but he and Moira and possibly his brothers would ever come across the bridge into Trollholm. It could be a quiet place, out of the world, when things got too hard for them. But who else could they trust with the secret? He turned and looked deeply into her eyes.

  She looked back. “Now, Little Doom, let us be making our new Compact out of trust, not fear. Out of love, not hate.”

  Jakob beamed. “I’ll write a song about it.”

  “And then be teaching it to us?” Selvi asked.

&
nbsp; Jakob nodded enthusiastically. “And then be teaching it to all of you.”

  He stood and clapped his hands together till he had everyone’s attention, not easy above that hubbub. But at last he managed it. This time even his brothers listened.

  “Hey,” he said. “We be going home.”

  COMPACT

  I give to you,

  A promise made,

  From fate to fate

  The game is played.

  The music slides on

  Note by note,

  We look for love,

  We live on hope.

  The bridge across

  The waters wide

  Cannot hold back

  The surging tide.

  Beneath the falls

  We sit and wait

  To see what love

  Transforms to hate.

  And I will hold out friendship’s hand,

  Heart to heart and land to land.

  The larder’s full,

  The pot is boiled,

  The plan is laid,

  The plot is foiled,

  The fire’s set,

  The flames are high,

  The flag’s unfurled

  Against the sky.

  The war is joined,

  The bullet milled,

  The wound is open,

  Blood is spilled.

  And hate is answered

  Fast by hate,

  The peaceful word

  Is spoke too late.

  Still I will hold out friendship’s hand,

  Heart to heart and land to land.

  Still I will hold out friendship’s hand,

  Across the bridge, from land to land.

  —Words and music by

  Jakob and Erik Griffson

  and Moira Darr,

  from Troll Bridge

  Radio WMSP: 10:00 A.M.

  “So there’s been a huge break in the Dairy Princess case, Jim?”

  “Yes, Katie—everyone is safe. Everyone except Mr. Sjogren the photographer who gave his life for the girls. There will be a memorial service for him Sunday here in Vanderby and next week in the Twin Cities.”