Troll Bridge Page 8

  “Okay. Why…” Jakob gulped, then remembered how easy it had been to fool Oddi. He knew what to say. “Why don’t you come a little closer. I can’t really see you from here.”

  The troll chuckled. It sounded like the throttling rumble of a big motorcycle. “I be quite fine here. Now tell me,” the troll said, scratching his belly and then his behind, “in what way be you my doom?”

  Something’s very wrong here, Jakob thought. Trolls were supposed to be dumb. But this one just sounded … well … crafty. He bit his lip, and wondered how he might be crafty back. Then he had it. “You’ll just have to catch me to find out!” he called.

  “I be too old and too tired to be running after you, Little Doom,” Aenmarr sighed. “You must be coming here to kill me.”

  What a predicament. Jakob had been running away from trolls all night. And now, when he actually wanted one to chase him, the stubborn creature refused. It just didn’t make any sense.

  “Well?” Aenmarr asked. “Be you coming to me, my Little Doom?”

  Any suggestions? Jakob hoped the fox could hear his thoughts.

  The reply was immediate. “Yes, human child. Hurry. Aenmarr is the only troll left in the house. I do not know when the others will return.”

  The only one left? Jakob thought. I wonder where the …

  Just then, he heard something behind him and spun to face whatever it was. A huge shape reared up from the darkness, a long blade clutched in its hand. Jakob leaped backward, almost tripping over his own feet in his hurry to escape. And almost ran right into another, slightly less huge shape coming at him from the other side.

  Suddenly, Jakob came to a terrible realization: Trolls weren’t entirely stupid. While Aenmarr had been keeping him busy, the troll’s wife and child had sneaked out the back door, skinning knives in their hands, to circle around behind Jakob.

  “Away, human child!” cried the fox urgently.

  But Jakob didn’t need any urging. He did a forward roll between the smaller troll’s legs.

  Wheeesst! came the sound of a knife blade slicing through the air far too close to his back. Then he was up and running, sparing only a single glance over his shoulder.

  Aenmarr was already out of the doorway and loping after him, tree trunk legs eating up the ground between them at a horrifying rate, and yelling “Doom! Come back, Doom!”

  Jakob paid no attention to the troll, and just kept on running.

  13

  Moira

  Foss … Foss, Moira called silently. What’s happening? The house had suddenly become quiet. Too quiet. She tried to sit up, to peek over the side of the box, but fear, like an old habit, clamped her limbs and she couldn’t move.

  “Get up, child of man.”

  Child of man and woman, Moira answered automatically, wondering if she could sit up now.

  “Get up, child of man and woman.” The fox’s voice had the same tone as her harp teacher when Moira had made the same mistake three times in a row: slightly sharp and slightly tired.

  Get up and go where?

  “To the larder.”

  The larder was the last place she wanted to go. She’d never actually seen a dead body. A dead, chopped-up body. She and her parents were vegetarians, for gosh sakes.

  “He is not dead, human child. Listen.”

  Listening was something she was good at. So she lay in the box and listened to the soft, almost imperceptible breaths of the girls in the box with her. To the snap of the fire in the hearth. To a soft pain-filled groan coming from … the larder.

  “The larder!” Sitting up, Moira whispered, “Foss, he’s not dead.”

  “I told you, human child. You must get up quickly and go into the larder and save him.”

  She got up, stepping over the four girls, who didn’t even flutter a lash at her.

  “My limbs still work!” She felt as if she hadn’t moved in a week. “But…” She hesitated. “What about them?” She pointed to the girls who lay as still as dolls. Four here, seven more elsewhere.

  “Leave them. I told you, this is only Thor’s Day. We have till tomorrow.”

  “Today would be better than tomorrow.” She stretched out her arms, worked her stiff fingers, wondered if she’d ever be able to play the harp again.

  “The princesses are under an enchantment. You could not move them by yourself. Help is here.”

  She gazed speculatively around the room. “Help is where?”

  “In the larder.”

  Oh!

  She ran into the larder. In it stood a troll-sized oak table and three troll chairs, two at the ends and a smaller one snugged in on the side closest to the larder door.

  A boy about her age with sandy-colored hair hung upside down from the ceiling, a heavy beige rope knotted around his ankles. The far end was tied to an iron hook on the wall. Another rope was wrapped tightly around the boy’s body, keeping his arms against his side. He was moaning.

  “Stop moaning. The trolls will hear you,” she warned.

  He stopped moaning and turned his head toward the sound of her voice. The left side of his face was already purpling where the troll must have hit him earlier to shut him up. The right eye was a startling blue. Even in the dim candlelight of the larder she could see that.

  “Trolls?” he whispered. “They were trolls? Like in fairy tales—trolls?”

  “What did you think they were?”

  “Huge. But then lots of folk in Minnesota are huge. Viking stock. I thought they were … kidnappers. Wanting ransom.”

  “Ransom?”

  He sighed. “You know. For giving me back.”

  “They don’t give back people. They eat people.” She said it matter-of-factly.

  “Cannibals?” He moaned again. “I thought you said they were trolls. Can you get me out of here?” His voice rose. “Now?”

  “Shhh.” She came closer, stared up at him. He was hanging about a foot and a half above her.

  He stared back. “Are you a troll, too?”

  She laughed, a short sharp bark, like the fox. “Do I look like a troll?”

  He gulped. “You look like a…”

  “I’m a musician. And…”

  “Let me guess,” he said. “A Dairy Princess.”

  She gawked at him as, all unaccountably, he broke into song. His voice was a pleasant tenor, and he was on key, the more surprising since he was upside down.

  And he was singing:

  What’s better than a butter girl?

  Badder than my better girl.

  Best when I’m not buttered up as well …

  He began coughing so strongly, he bounced up and down on the rope.

  “I’m going to try to get you down,” she told him, keeping her voice low and sensible.

  He stopped coughing. Closed his good eye and opened it again. “Ready when you are. Just do it.”

  She spotted six wooden-handled knives hanging from pegs on the whitewashed wall. Each knife looked as large as a sword. Two had serrated edges and one had a hammer-like thing on the bottom of the handle. But they were far too high up for her to reach.

  Then she noticed a honing strap and a seventh knife on a three-legged chopping block by the side of the dining table. The chopping block was also above her head, but she thought she might be able to push it over if she could get a good run at it. Three legs were not as steady as four.

  “Hold on,” she told the boy.

  “Is that a joke?”

  She ignored him and, backing up till she felt the far wall behind her, she pushed off. Hands straight ahead of her, she ran full tilt at the nearest leg of the chopping block. Striking it hard, she got it teetering. Quickly, she gave a half turn and shoved her shoulder into the front legs and the stocky chopping block fell over, clattering onto the floor.

  “So much for being quiet,” he called down to her.

  Her shoulder hurt. “Best I could do,” she muttered, and picked up the knife that was as big as a broadsword. All the while she was thinkin
g, Stupid, ungrateful boy, quickly followed by, Shut up, Moira. Because of course he was scared and saying the first thing that came to mind. At least he’d stopped moaning.

  Foss’ voice came sharply into her head. “What was that unholy racket?”

  “Hero at work,” she shot back at him. “Why aren’t you in here helping?”

  “Who are you talking to?” the boy asked.

  “Foss.” As if that told him anything.

  “Who is he? Another troll?”

  “He’s … he’s another musician,” she said.

  “That makes three of us,” the boy said.

  But if he’s a musician, too, Moira wondered, why doesn’t he hear Foss?

  The fox didn’t answer, nor did she expect him to. He was very good at giving orders and being tricky. But when it came to the actual hard work, he was never around.

  Lugging the heavy knife back to the hanging boy, Moira swung it with all her might at the rope attached to the iron hook.

  The knife bounced off, making no impression on the rope. None at all.

  “Well,” Moira said, huffing with effort, “that was fun.” Her arms ached from the blow.

  “Saw…” the boy said to her, his voice a raspy whisper. “Use it like a saw.”

  He was right, and she immediately began sawing at the rope, the heavy knife held high over her head. It was a very uncomfortable position but, she supposed, comfort was hardly something heroes ever worried about. “This is a very tough rope,” she told him, “so I’ll have to do it strand by strand.”

  She sawed until she thought her arms would fall off her shoulder. Back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly the strand parted with a loud pop!

  “There … that’s the first one. Now for the second.” The rope was braided, which made it extra strong. Good for hanging up dinner. Bad for cutting through. It took some time.

  “A third…”

  “Just let me know when it’s all gone through,” he interrupted, “so I’ll be expecting the fall.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need to be prepared. I was a Boy Scout, you know. Not for very long. Hated the uniform.”

  He was babbling now. Just as well, Moira thought. It will keep his mind off the trolls. She sawed through a fourth strand, without answering him back. Then a fifth.

  “Child of man, the trolls…” came Foss’s voice.

  “And woman,” Moira whispered, as the last strand began to part.

  “Last one,” she said, to alert the boy, before placing the knife on the floor so as to be ready to help him.

  But this strand didn’t burst apart as the others had. Rather it unraveled, slow enough that she had time to catch him as he fell. They both went over backward, though she managed to cradle him against her body. It turned out he couldn’t stand up on his own.

  She scrambled out from under him and pulled him to his feet.

  “Cut them. Cut the ropes.…”

  “How about saying thanks?” she asked huffily.

  “Hurry, child of…” Foss began.

  “Oh shut up,” Moira cut him off. “We’re almost out of here!”

  “I don’t want to shut up,” the boy said.

  “Not you—Foss.” But explaining would take too much time. “Trolls coming,” she said. “Not going to cut the rest of the ropes here.” She grabbed up the heavy knife and pushed the boy out the back door ahead of her.

  He didn’t argue, just stumbled out soundlessly.

  14

  Jakob

  Jakob raced headlong into the gloom, the thunderous footsteps of the pursuing trolls spurring him on.

  “Doom!” Aenmarr laughed as if it were all just a game. “Why be you running? It only toughens the meat.”

  Desperately, Jakob ran on.

  There was no moon in Trollholm, but Jakob’s eyes were now fully adjusted to the dark. To his left, patches of luminescent moss clung to pale, sketchy birches. On his right, an odiferous fog rose, green and glowing from a nearby swamp. Will-o’-the-wisps, like demented, oversized fireflies, darted all around.

  Jakob kept sprinting over the uneven ground.

  “Doom, Doom, Doom,” Aenmarr chanted in time with his footsteps. A big bass drum of a voice.

  He sounds closer, Jakob thought, pushing himself to go faster. His breath came out in rasping, wheezing gasps. But he was already running as fast as he could. The trolls’ huge legs carried them along with much greater speed. He thought: What can I do? Put on a sudden growth spurt?

  “Doom, Doom, Doom, you be making a lovely dinner,” called Aenmarr’s wife.

  “Doom, Doom, Doom,” added Aenmarr’s son. “I be glad you are not thinner.”

  Aenmarr roared with laughter. “That be it my lovelies! What else?”

  “Doom, Doom, Doom, do not run away in fright!”

  “Doom, Doom, Doom, come dine with us tonight!”

  The three trolls hooted and howled, but Jakob’s stomach flipped over. He couldn’t outrun them; he’d have to find somewhere to hide. There was that swamp, but he didn’t want to escape the trolls just to drown in some sinkhole.

  Has to be the forest, he thought, angling left toward a strange awkward stand of trees. Maybe I can find a stick to fight them off with. This thought did little to cheer him. It would have to be a very big stick. Tree-sized.

  He imagined he could feel the trolls’ hot breath on his back as they continued to chant behind him.

  “Doom! Doom! Doom!”

  Brambly branches slapped him in the face. Tree roots seemed to reach up and coil around his ankles. Seem to? he thought, now in full panic. In this forest, maybe they actually can!

  Pressing deeper into the woods, he dodged bushes and trees, sidestepped rocks and fallen limbs, leapt over a narrow stream, twisted his ankle, stumbled, recovered … and ran smack into the thick trunk of an old oak. His vision went white, and the breath flew out of him in a painful rush.

  I’m dead, he thought as he fell back onto the mossy ground, lying there trying to get his breath back. The trolls will come crashing in here any second.

  Staggering to his feet, Jakob began running again. His head swam and he collapsed once more. Crawling to a tree, hoping to hide, he was suddenly struck with the silence around him. The drum of footsteps behind him had stopped. So had the chanting. Jakob lay still, listening, trying to figure out what was going on. Or not going on.

  Just then he heard a strange whooshing accompanied by a crackle of branches. He threw himself sideways and it was lucky he did, because at that very moment an uprooted tree came crashing through the canopy of the forest, landing where he’d been lying just seconds before. A gout of dirt and dead leaves sprayed over him.

  “Did you hit him, Papa?”

  “No.” Jakob heard Aenmarr sigh. “Luck of the very Devil our Little Doom has.”

  Desperately, Jakob started crawling again, listening intently for another flying tree, or for the booming footsteps to start up again.

  There was nothing.

  Why aren’t they chasing me?

  Slowly it came to him: Moving through the forest was easier for him than for the trolls. He could squeeze between the trees; the bigger trolls had to go around, or stomp through, or simply—as Aenmarr had—pull the trees from the ground and toss them.

  This realization gave Jakob strength and he pushed himself to his feet. He’d found his way into the trees by accident—but it might be the one bit of terrain in this awful place where he could outpace the trolls.

  “Come, my lovelies,” Aenmarr said. “This chase be boring me. I be too hungry to continue. After dinner, I be sniffing Doom out. He not be getting far. He bleeds.”

  I do? Jakob put his hand to his face where he could still feel the sting from the branches. It came away wet. I guess I do.

  “There be no place in Trollholm he can hide from Aenmarr for long.” The trolls’ footsteps started up again, but receding this time.

  Jakob sighed gratefully and staggered in the opposite direction,
wondering if he had done anything more than buy himself a few hours. And wondering as well if any of his running and bleeding and terror had helped save either of his brothers.

  * * *

  JAKOB WALKED FOR WHAT FELT like hours, through what seemed to be the same thick dark. Suddenly, he stumbled upon a stream at the far edge of the woods. Barely a trickle really. He followed it, thinking it should bring him eventually to the river, and from there—maybe—home. He no longer believed he could help his brothers by fighting the trolls, or by leading the trolls away. He doubted he could help the fox, for that matter. All he could think of was to get as far from the trolls as possible.

  He walked beside the stream and, every few steps, bent down to splash cold water onto his face to stop the small cuts from bleeding. When the brush got too thick for him to keep the stream in sight, he followed it by the sound of its burbling.

  A little farther on, the dark now more of a deep gray, he found a muddy game trail—Hopefully a herbivore, he thought. He recognized the trail from the once-a-year hunting trips his father and uncles took them on. Griffson Greenhorns they called themselves. Galen was especially good at it. Jakob had never been keen on hunting. Who would have thought those three-day adventures might one day come in handy for escaping a pack of murderous trolls.

  For that matter, who would ever have thought of murderous trolls?

  But thinking back on those hunting trips brought tears to Jakob’s eyes. The Griffsons would never again be able to …

  He gave a quick swipe to his eyes with his sleeve. No time to get misty. He had to be strong. Someone needed to alert the police to what was going on here.

  Trotting down the game trail, he found the stream again. Here it widened, now five feet across, with smooth rocks jutting out of the flowing water like stepping stones. Jakob didn’t think the water was deep, but just in case, he hopped from rock to rock instead of wading. It was certainly easier going that way than pushing through the thick undergrowth.

  * * *

  AFTER LONG MINUTES OF TRAVELING over the stepping stones—it was light enough now to see that much—Jakob decided he could no longer call the flowing water a stream. It was now a full river, wide and swift, the stones too far apart for safe jumping. He made his way to a rocky shingle that jutted out from the right hand bank and continued on.