Troll Bridge Read online

  Shut up, Moira! she thought. The last thing she needed to do now was alert the monster that she was hanging on to him. And what, in the name of Bach, Brahms, and Bartok, am I doing dangling dangerously on the back end of a giant creature like some crazed movie hero, way above a rushing river, when I should be back in my car, calling the police on my cell phone?

  She glanced down.

  Mistake. Big mistake. Way below her, the river not only rushed, it hurtled, churned, tumbled, roared.

  Lucky I’m not afraid of heights, she told herself. But, I think I’m scared spitless of giant monsters.

  And it was too late—way too late—to let go.

  * * *

  THE MONSTER ALIEN CREATURE THING walked for minutes, hours, days. Moira had no idea how long. She simply held on to his shirttails with her strong fingers, fingers that practiced harp three to five hours a day. She clutched the sloppy wet material and prayed.

  But after a while, she could feel herself starting to slip down the shirttails, fingers so cold and cramped, she couldn’t hold on any longer. Her hands were strong, but not that strong.

  Don’t scream, she warned herself. Don’t make a sound. But the breath rushed out of her as she fell, screaming. She landed with an awful crunch, not in the river as she had feared, but on stone.

  Ouch, she thought. It was the last thought she had for quite some time.

  * * *

  SHE HEARD A VOICE.

  “Do not move or Aenmarr will return.”

  “Aenmarr? What’s an Aenmarr?” She was crumpled up on her side with her eyes closed. She was afraid to open them, her head hurt so bad. Any sort of light and her skull might explode.

  “Shhhhhh, child of man.”

  She lay still but muttered, “Child of man and woman actually.”

  The voice sighed wearily. “If you value your life, be quiet.”

  Shut up, Moira! she told herself and was quiet, but she groaned inwardly, What have I gotten myself into?

  “Trouble, human child. Trouble.”

  It’s in my head! The voice was in her head. It knew what she was thinking. Gasping, Moira tried to sit up.

  “Shhhh!”

  Something warm and soft pressed against her side, holding her down.

  Closing her mouth, she let the warm thing push her back down. Shut up, Moira, she warned herself again.

  “Now you understand.”

  But she didn’t understand, not really. She didn’t understand who Aenmarr was, or where it came from, or who the voice was, or what—she thought in a rush—she was doing lying on stone.

  Maybe she’d drowned in that wall of water and this was the afterlife. Only it seemed very hard for Heaven and too cool for Hell.

  “Not what, but who. When Aenmarr passes, I will tell you all,” the voice assured her. “Now, hush.”

  Oh, she thought, Aenmarr is the alien monster.

  She put her head back down and waited. Till Aenmarr passed, got in his spaceship, and went back to Mars, or fairyland or wherever. “When Aenmarr passes.” It sounded like a title of one of Daniel Berlin’s pieces, and she thought—a bit hysterically—I’ll have to tell him. Though as she thought this, a traitor part of her was afraid she was never going to get to tell anyone anything again.

  * * *

  AFTER A WHILE—A LONG while in which she didn’t dare move, even to check her watch—the voice in her head said, “Rise human child. Follow me.”

  She stood gingerly, felt for broken bones, found none, though she bet she’d find bruises soon enough. It was now dark, a deep and relentless dark, darker than night should have been, and she wondered briefly how she was going to be able to follow what she couldn’t see. She also wondered about finding the girls, wondered how to go about rescuing them. She guessed—she knew—that the photographer was beyond help.

  Something slightly lighter than the dark moved ahead of her. She put out a hand to touch it. Felt fur. Heard a growl.

  Withdrawing her hand quickly, she whispered, “Sorry,” to the creature, the dog, whatever.

  “Follow,” it said, “but do not touch me again.”

  “Sorry,” she repeated, and followed.

  * * *

  AFTER A TIME, SHE REALIZED that though she hadn’t actually broken any bones, she ached everywhere. Her fingers were stiff, her back was sore, her arms felt as if they’d been pulled from their sockets and then been replaced badly. Her head was hammering away as if someone were beating out the four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth on her skull over and over and over again.

  The voice in her head told her, “Come straight, now left, step over the rock, now left again.”

  She might as well have been blind in that deep dark. She stopped and looked around. Rescue the girls? First I have to rescue myself.

  “How,” came the answer, “will you even rescue yourself if you do not listen?”

  She who always had an answer, had none.

  At last the voice said, “Duck,” only she didn’t duck fast enough and banged the top of her head on what she later realized was the entrance to a low cave. It set her headache clanging again. She had to drop to her knees and crawl in.

  “That wasn’t funny,” she whispered to the creature ahead of her.

  “It was not meant to be.”

  The cave opening was narrow in the beginning but widened quickly.

  “You can stand now if you wish.”

  Moira stood slowly, her hands above her just in case. Relieved, she stretched to her full height. The cavern was lit with a strange phosphorescent light. As her vision adjusted to it, she began to make out the softly rounded cave walls. Turning, she saw the light reflected in a pair of dark eyes. The creature who’d guided her to the cave was smaller than she expected, and to her surprise was neither alien nor dog, but a fox, male, with two jaunty ears and a long furry tail.

  “Who are you?” she asked, hands on her hips. “More important—where am I?”

  “Sit, child of man … and woman … and I will reveal all.” The fox’s shoulders moved up and down. He seemed to be chuckling.

  Moira sat. In such a short time, she’d learned a kind of obedience. The stone floor was not as cold as she’d feared.

  The fox sat, too, and curled his bushy tail around his feet. “You are in Trollholm. And that creature who captured your friends was Aenmarr the troll, whose bridge you came over at sunset.”

  “A troll? You have got to be kidding!” Moira wondered if the whole thing was some sort of dream. Had she fallen asleep while driving? “You mean like trit-trot, trit-trot … the three billy goats going over a bridge and…”

  “This is no fairy story,” the fox said, his pink tongue suddenly slipping out between his teeth.

  Remembering the troll’s awful protruding teeth and the photographer ground between them, Moira shivered. “No happily ever after?” she asked.

  “Not for everyone,” the fox told her. “Perhaps not for anyone.”

  Tears suddenly filled Moira’s eyes. She didn’t know if she was crying for herself, or for the captured girls, or for the poor photographer she’d last seen in Aenmarr the troll’s mouth. But she couldn’t stop the tears from coming, and soon sobs racked her body sending fat sloppy tears to splash onto the stone cave floor.

  The fox licked its fur and watched her impassively, his eyes like obsidian.

  3

  Moira

  Moira hadn’t meant to sleep. But the long rehearsal and long drive, and then everything after, all combined to knock her out.

  Or else it was magic. She couldn’t be sure.

  When she awoke, her eyes were crusted as if she’d been sleeping for days with a fever. An oddly muffled booming sounded behind her. Waterfall? she wondered. But when she turned to look, she couldn’t see a thing.

  Turning over on her side, she noticed a half circle of light about a hundred feet away, slowly growing in intensity. Underneath her was stone. It took her a minute to remember where she was.

  Only,
of course, she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. It had to be a dream or a nightmare or, she thought, a coma.

  That was it. She’d fallen asleep in the car somewhere after Duluth or even right before turning into Vanderby, and driven off the road. Probably she was now in a hospital. Her mother and dad had certainly been called, because she had a who-to-call card in her wallet and another in her glove compartment. Her mom had insisted on it. So they were probably already in the hospital room, weeping over her, waiting for her to wake up.

  “Mom…” she whispered. “Dad…” She closed her eyes and tears seeped onto her cheeks.

  Then she opened them again and looked at the half circle of light once more. She’d read about such a thing. Soon someone from her past, someone dead—maybe her grandmother Darr, or her first harp teacher, Mr. Mikelson—would appear and call to her. And she would go toward the light. She would go—and die.

  I don’t want to die, she thought. I’m only sixteen. I only just got my license.

  Suddenly she saw a figure filling the half circle of light and she began to shiver, though not from being cold. The figure was the fox.

  “Hungry, human child?” he called out, his voice breathy in her head.

  And she was. Though frightened, stunned, numb, freezing, and weepy, she discovered with astonishment, she was also enormously hungry.

  “Famished,” she said, starting to crawl toward the cave opening.

  The fox trotted over to her, opened his mouth, and dropped a dozen or so beetles in front of her. They looked dead, except for one that was still waggling its front feet feebly.

  Stomach acid rose up and pooled in Moira’s mouth. I’d rather starve, she thought.

  “If that is your wish,” said the fox. He put his head to one side quizzically and stared at her till she was forced to look down. The almost-dead beetle had stopped moving.

  Maybe, she thought, maybe I should think of this as a survival show. She’d never actually watched one, but the Dairy Princesses talked about them at rehearsals incessantly. Evidently, people had to eat the oddest things on those shows. And she was awfully hungry. Picking up one of the beetles, she popped it into her mouth quickly, before she could think too much about it. But the beetle scrabbled sluggishly on her tongue, which made her gag. She spit it out, scrubbed her hand over her lips, and shuddered violently.

  The fox gave a short, sharp laugh, more like a yip. “There are always worms.…”

  “Starvation is sounding better and better,” Moira told him. “Besides, we need to find my friends. I can’t believe I slept all night.” The light at the cave’s entrance was, if anything, brighter. She stood up slowly, being careful not to hit her head.

  “There is no rush,” the fox said calmly.

  “No rush? That monster, that…”

  “The princesses are to be troll brides, not troll dinner.”

  “That’s a lot of brides,” she mused. Then she thought a minute. “I suppose that’s…” she looked for a word, “… preferable to being dinner.”

  “Very preferable.”

  Moira wasn’t so sure of that. Then she had another thought. “But the photographer … the man. He can’t be a bride.”

  The fox looked away and for a long moment said nothing.

  Moira squatted down and willed the fox to look back at her. Unbelievably, he did.

  “What…” she said slowly, spacing out her words for emphasis, as if talking to a slightly stupid child, or a foreigner. “… Happened … to … the … man … the photographer?”

  The fox’s black eyes bore into hers. “You do not want to know, human child.”

  “I do.”

  “You do not.” The fox turned his head away.

  Ignoring the fox’s warning about being touched, Moira reached out and—as she did with her dog Wolfgang—took his snout in her hand, pulling his head back toward her. “Tell me.” No animal, even a talking animal, was going to get the better of her.

  He growled and ripped his face away from her grasp. Moira flinched, thinking he would bite her. But he didn’t.

  “He was eaten,” the fox said. Moira paled. “And trolls are notoriously messy eaters.”

  “Erp,” Moira said. Or something like it. A bad taste flooded into her mouth. “I think I’m going to be—”

  “Throw up in my cave,” the fox said tonelessly, “and I will deliver you to the troll myself.”

  She gulped back what had already risen into her mouth, and then began to sob.

  “Trolls,” the fox went on relentlessly, “crave meat. Fresh meat. And human meat most of all. But Aenmarr hasn’t had an opportunity to savor any since he made a pact with the humans a long time ago.” He bared his teeth. “But you humans broke the pact. Aenmarr must have eaten this meal with gusto.”

  Sputtering through her tears, Moira cried, “Stop it. I don’t want to hear any more.”

  The fox relented. “I am sorry, child of man. But you did insist on hearing.”

  “I know. I … needed to know.” Moira tried to collect her thoughts, but all she could think about was the poor photographer—who she hadn’t even known, hadn’t even spoken to—stewed or roasted or baked or … It was too awful. “I’m a harpist,” she managed to say. “Not a hero. And I don’t … I don’t … know what … I don’t know what to do.”

  The fox smiled and showed too many teeth. “But perhaps,” he said, suddenly stretching his head up and licking the tears from her cheeks, an action that was both intimate and frightening, “perhaps I do.”

  Moira sat down heavily at the fox’s feet. “Tell me.”

  “The first thing you must know,” the fox told her, “is that I am a musician, too.”

  Looking at the creature’s paws, she found that hard to believe. They were not built to hold an instrument, much less pluck strings or finger notes.

  “Ah, but this is not my true body,” the fox said, for he’d read her mind of course. “In that body I look more like a human than an animal, though I am neither. I am a master musician. And I am called Fossegrim.”

  “Then why be a fox if it is not your true body, Foss?” Moira asked, leaning forward but careful not to touch him again. “It must be hard to play music with … with paws.”

  The fox sighed and gazed wistfully down at his paws, as if recalling a particular lost skill. “Tradition,” he answered.

  Which, Moira thought, is no answer at all. “What do you play?” Really, getting answers out of him was like pulling teeth. She gave a short snort. And he had rather too many teeth.

  This time he ignored her thoughts. “I play the fiddle.”

  Hey-diddle-diddle, the fox and the fiddle. Right! She hated fiddles and country music, that scraping, often off-key sound. Now violins—played with vibrato and passion—that was real music. “Where is your … fiddle, fox?” She wasn’t sure she believed any of this anyway.

  “You must open your mind to the world of the impossible,” the fox said, “and then it becomes the world of the possible.” He shook himself all over. “My fiddle hangs on a wall in Trollholm.”

  “Okay, Foss,” Moira said, a little sharper than she planned. “So you’re a master musician who plays a missing fiddle. This will get me to the other girls how?”

  “It will get you into Aenmarr’s houses. Trolls love music. Well, rather they are transfixed by music. Their taste, however, is execrable and they are never on key.”

  “Scrabble?”

  “Execrable. Bad. Extraordinarily bad.”

  “Oh.” Moira smiled for the first time since arriving at Trollholm. Execrable was a good word. It described country music exactly. But as quickly she turned the smile into a frown. “I don’t want to get into Aenmarr’s house. Not if the troll monster wants me as another of his brides.”

  The fox sighed in aggravation. “The princesses,” he said, speaking slowly in her head as if she—and not he—were the stupid child, “are not to be brides for Aenmarr. He is already married, human child. Do you not kn
ow anything? I expect that is why we are in this predicament. The old ones knew about troll brides and sacrifices and…”

  “Hey!” she interrupted. “You’re the one without a fiddle.”

  He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. Taking a deep breath, he said, “The princesses are for his sons.”

  “He has eleven sons?” That was an awful lot of trolls.

  “Oh no, only three.”

  She thought: Three I can handle. As long as it’s not eleven.

  Foss shook himself all over. “No, child of man, that is three sons too many. One son with each of his wives. Each of whom lives in her own house. Selvi, Trigvi, and Botvi. Aenmarr wants four brides for each son. Troll women only have one child. Not…” he said, almost slyly, “like foxes.” His eyes suddenly glittered as if he were plotting something.

  Moira divided quickly and realized that she was meant to be the fourth bride for one of the troll boys. Had Foss been making more than a simple threat when he said he would deliver her to the troll himself? She let her mind go blank, so as not to broadcast that she guessed this. Foss already knew way too much. Instead, acting innocent, she looked deep into his eyes. “Why me? Why did you save me?”

  Foss shifted uneasily on his haunches. “You are a musician. Like calls to like. It is why we can talk, mind to mind. I cannot speak to the other princesses. They do not have music in their souls. But together you and I will get my fiddle and rescue your friends. And once I have my fiddle…” He looked away.

  Moira waited to hear the rest. But Foss was suddenly and strangely silent on what would happen after.

  4

  Moira

  “Are you ready, human child?” The fox stood.

  “Wait,” Moira cried, “is it safe?”

  Foss stopped, turned his head and said over his shoulder, “Trollholm is never safe. But daylight is less … unsafe.”

  “Oh, great,” she said, but he was already gone.

  Moira left the cave after him. Outside, red fur gleaming in the sun, he looked like an ordinary fox, certainly quite beautiful, but not magical at all. Glancing past him to a wall of sturdy pines where a path ran between the two tallest trees, Moira whispered, “Maybe … maybe we should just go for help. The police. The National Guard. The FBI.”