Troll Blood (23 page)

“Because we’ve come south,” said Peer.

“I thought we’d come west,” Astrid complained.

Hilde rolled her eyes. “And south, too. How can you not know that, Astrid?”

“I leave all that sort of thing to the men,” said Astrid, unperturbed. She released Peer’s arm. “I think I’ll go and sit on that rock.”

She wandered off. Peer looked sideways at Hilde, who was staring at the softly splashing sea. “Are you upset?” he asked again.

“A bit.” She crossed her arms. “
I leave all that sort of thing to
the men
. Astrid doesn’t care about anything, does she? She leaves nearly everything to someone else. Cleaning to the Nis. Cooking and fetching and carrying to me.”

“She looks after Gunnar,” said Peer.

“I thought Vinland would be a wonderful adventure. Remember Pa first telling us about the Skraelings? People with brown skin, he said, and black hair. I’ve tried to imagine them ever since.” She shivered. “And now I’m imagining blood.”

Peer was silent.

“I’ll never get to see them now, will I? Anyway,” she added bitterly, “I was stupid to expect adventures. I’m only here to keep Astrid company. I’m a girl: I belong in the house.”

Peer almost laughed. “That’s not how I think of you.”

“Isn’t it?” Hilde asked. “Then how do you think of me?”

“How can you ask? I think you could do anything. I think you’re braver than I am.”

She gave him a grateful smile, and he glowed. At last, at last, he’d said part of what he wanted.

“I’m not so brave,” Hilde said. “These days I’m almost

afraid of going to bed at night. …” Side by side they walked on, and he listened, entranced by her closeness, her pale flyaway hair silver in the moonlight, her smooth skin and clear eyes.”… You don’t know what it’s like sharing that little room with them. Gunnar has terrible dreams. I hear him waking, and crying out, and Astrid trying to calm him.” She stopped and turned. “And there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for
ages, only we’ve never been on our own, I’ve never had the chance …”

His heart kicked. His blood leaped. Hilde loved him. She was about to tell him so—

Then he heard what she was saying: “…and Astrid was working
seidr
. She hid Gunnar’s soul to keep it safe. She has a bone box with a little voice inside that tells her things. I’ve heard it humming.” She stared at him, waiting for a reaction. “Peer, are you listening?”

He drew a hand across his eyes. “Tell me that again.”

She did so, with dogged patience. “And Astrid does have troll blood. I was supposed to keep it a secret, but Halfdan and Magnus and Floki all seem to know; it’s just that they daren’t tell Gunnar. You and I know what trolls are like, Peer. I don’t know whether to believe anything she says.”

The letdown had been severe. Peer’s voice shook as he sought for some kind of answer. “Aren’t you rather hard on Astrid?”

Hilde choked. “If you’d been there—if you’d heard her telling Gunnar to stick needles in a corpse’s feet …”

“Yes, it sounds bad.” Since they had to talk about Astrid, Peer set his mind to it. “But what about Gunnar? He’s not Harald’s father for nothing. What has Astrid done that’s so wrong? We know what Gunnar did: killed somebody—him and Harald together. And the way they did it must have been pretty dreadful, or why is he so afraid?”

Hilde began to speak, and stopped.

“And you know,” said Peer slowly, “the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether Thorolf left because Gunnar and Harald quarreled with him. We’ve only Gunnar’s word for it that Thorolf ever meant to settle here. He might have decided that living with Gunnar and Harald wasn’t worth the trouble.”

“Do you think he won’t come back?” said Hilde quietly.

“I wonder. And I’ve noticed something else. I’ve noticed that when we talk about Thorolf, it’s always you and me, or sometimes Arnë or Tjorvi. The others, Magnus and Floki and Halfdan, who sailed with Gunnar before—they don’t say anything. Maybe they know something we don’t.”

Hilde thought about it, and shook her head. “Oh, Peer, that can’t be right. Why would it be a big secret? Look at Floki, he can’t keep his mouth shut about anything. If Gunnar and Thorolf had fallen out, we’d have heard all about it by now.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Peer. “I hope so. I want to see Thorolf as much as you do.”

Hilde started. Something galloped past them, kicking up splatters of wet gravel. “It’s only the Nis,” said Peer. He could just see it, careering across the beach in happy circles. “Out for a run.”

The moon was up, clear of the headland, casting sharp shadows. The beach ticked, clicked, pattered, as though thousands of little people were pecking and hammering among the stones. Peer looked harder. The gravel danced in patterns.

The Nis dashed past again, jinking and skipping, making
little rushes here and there, picking up stones. “What are you doing?” Peer called.

“Playing with the
wiklatmu’jk
,” the Nis cried in a high-pitched, reedy little voice like a birdcall.

“What did it say?” said Hilde.

“Look!” Peer pointed. Ahead, on a patch of smooth sand, someone had laid out figures in lines of pebbles. One had legs, one had a triangular skirt. To the side was a comical short-legged animal with a stiff tail. Hilde and Peer bent over them.

“That’s us,” whispered Hilde. “Us and Loki. Did the Nis do it?”

Peer shook his head. He straightened up, his face alive with delight. “Hilde, the whole beach is covered with
tiny
people.”

She stared.

“I’ve been seeing them all along,” he went on. “I just didn’t notice. They’re everywhere. But I can only see them when I’m not looking straight.”

Hilde half shut her eyes and peeped out of the corners. Nothing. Wait, there was something scurrying through the gravel. “It’s crabs,” she said.

“It isn’t,” Peer insisted. “They’re all over the place, knocking and chipping at the pebbles. Don’t try so hard. Try looking at them the way you look at a faint star.”

The moonlit beach didn’t change at all, but something happened behind her eyes. For a second she was doing something
very difficult: seeing the stones alive with hurrying, busy little creatures, all tugging and pushing and rearranging the pebbles, making patterns and scattering them again. She saw their little black shadows, the size of her thumb.

She lost the way to do it, and they were gone. The picture of the girl and the boy and the dog was gone, too. In its place was a serpentine curve, with four little lines descending from it, and one tall line sticking up from the middle.

“A snake with legs?”

“It’s a ship,” Peer said suddenly. “See, the hull and the dragonhead and the mast—and those things that look like legs are the oars. It’s our ship—
Water Snake
. They’re making pictures of what they see.”

“What did the Nis call them? The weeklat something?”

“Wiklatmu’jk.”

“The weeklatmoojig,” Hilde repeated. “How does it know?”

“It comes out playing every night,” Peer said. “It’s made friends.” He swung around, scanning the bay, forest, and stars with shining eyes. “Ralf was right. This is a wonderful country.”

“Let’s ask the Nis about them,” said Hilde. “Where’s it gone?”

They had been slowly walking along the curve of the bay. Ahead of them a line of rocks ran out from the southern headland. The sea had scooped hollows around the bases of the rocks, which the retreating tide had left full of water, almost invisible in the moonlight. The Nis was scrambling
about between the tide pools. Peer could hear distant giggles, and the occasional
clop!
and
splash!
as it tossed pebbles into the water.

“Let’s run!”

He caught her hand. Leaving trouble behind, they pounded across the beach, Loki racing beside them. They clattered over flat stones that slid and clinked like coins, splashed, shockingly, across a flat shining stretch that turned out to be water, so that Hilde shrieked and laughed as the spray flew. Panting, they ran, their lungs pumping, their hearts thumping—tugging each other along by the swinging clasp of their joined hands, till at last Hilde stepped on the hem of her dress and fell over, pulling Peer after her. Loki pounced on them both, play-biting.

Breathless with laughter, they sat up. Hilde brushed gravel off her dress and flicked the bigger bits at Peer, till she saw that he had stopped laughing and was looking at her in a way … a way that made the back of her neck shiver. She got up quickly.
Why am I feeling like this? It’s only Peer
.

“Look, we’re at the rocks,” she said at random. “We’d better turn back. Astrid is miles behind. Let’s call the Nis and go.”

“Hilde.” He was still looking at her. “Please listen to me.”

Hilde suddenly saw two things with perfect clarity. The first was that she’d known all along that Peer still loved her. Only she hadn’t let herself know, because it was easier—because she wasn’t sure how she felt. The second was that Peer was no longer the gawky lad who had kissed her so clumsily
last year. He had changed. No, he hadn’t, he was the same as ever, he had just … grown up. She faced him, twining her fingers into her apron. “All right then—go on.”

She wasn’t used to being shy with Peer. It came out wrong. It sounded petulant and brusque. Then she felt ashamed, and shyer than before. Peer winced. He drew in a deep breath—she saw his chest heave—but before he could speak, the Nis appeared, prancing over the rocks. It leaped onto the beach, prattling excitedly. “Come and see what I has found!”

The breath left Peer in a defeated whoosh. The Nis skipped about, bright-eyed, cracking its knuckles. It darted back to the rocks. “A present for you, Peer Ulfsson! Come see, come see!” it cried impatiently, springing over a strip of water and frisking away.

“Shall we?” asked Hilde in a small voice. Without a word, Peer followed it. Hilde rubbed her hot face with both hands, and went after them both.

Almost immediately, she wished she hadn’t. The rocks were full of inky shadows and unexpected holes. Some were loose, tipping alarmingly. She scraped her palms on barnacles, and snatched her fingers from cold, blobby anemones. There was a reek of salt and seaweed and all the nameless things that the sea swept up and dumped. She cracked her knee and muttered a bad word.

Peer looked back. “Can you manage?” he asked curtly.

“Yes.” The last thing she wanted was for him to help her. She hoisted her skirts and clambered grimly on.

Cheeping with excitement, the Nis led them farther along till they reached a long pool. Repeated tides had pushed up sand and gravel into a ridge blocking the entrance, so that although waves broke against the rocks a few yards away, only a few ripples ran in over the sandbar to disturb the pool itself. An old black log was jammed there too, half buried.

The Nis stopped, its gray wispy hair blowing in the wind, pointing with one long finger. “For you!” it announced proudly. “Nithing the Seafarer found it!”

Hilde heard Peer say softly, “Oh, no”

“What is it?” she asked, bewildered. “What—Peer, what are you doing?”

She scrambled after him as he flung himself recklessly down the sharp rocks and jumped into the water. It came up to his thighs; he waded madly through it, arms flailing, thrashing up spray. He stumbled up the slope where the bottom rose toward the sandbank, and threw himself upon the old black log, digging the silt away from it with his hands.

“What’s the matter?” gasped Hilde, really frightened, though she didn’t know why. Had Peer gone mad? There was a bitter taste on her tongue, her heart thudded.

Peer stopped digging. He put both his arms around the log, and heaved. It came out of the silt with a rush, streaming water, and he hugged it to his chest. He turned to face Hilde, holding it. His face was dark against the opal sky, his eyes glittered. She stared, knowing what she was seeing before she could frame it in words.

The black log glistened, slimy as a snail; it was horned like a snail, with two rootlike stumps. It had a savage look, a mockery of life: a twist to it like a neck, a gaping maw like some snarling animal.

“Burned!”

The word burst from Peer. He staggered back through the water and laid the thing on the edge of the rocks. He covered his face.

Hilde crouched. With a finger she gently traced the blackened carvings: the crisscross scales, the round, charred eye.

“A dragonhead.”

“It’s the
Long Serpent
,” said Peer from behind his hands.

“Oh, Peer!” Hilde’s voice shook on a sob. She reached out and awkwardly patted his hair. “Oh, Peer!”

“Thorolf’s not coming back.” Peer looked up. His eyes were dark; his mouth was a white line. A tear fell down his face and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

Hilde didn’t know what to say. “Don’t stand there in the water. Come on, get out.” She gave him a hand and he clumsily struggled onto the rocks and stood dripping and shivering.

From the peak of a rock higher above the pool, the Nis looked down, its face crinkling anxiously in an effort to understand. “Doesn’t you like it, Peer Ulfsson?”

Peer tried to speak. The Nis scuttled down the rocks and laid a knobbly hand lightly against his knee. “Doesn’t you want my present?”

Peer bent down. “Yes, Nis, I do. It was very clever of you to
find it. Thank you for showing us. Do you know who made this? My father made it.”

“Good!” Satisfied, the Nis hopped away.

Peer said to Hilde, “I suppose it’s stupid, but I feel as if my father was on the ship, too. I feel as though I just lost him all over again.”

He picked up the burned dragonhead and said bleakly, “Let’s go.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Take it back, of course. Show it to the others. Now we know.”

“Know what?” Hilde felt slow and clumsy. “What do we know?”

He turned fiercely. “The ship
burned
, Hilde. It wasn’t wrecked—it burned. And how do you suppose that happened?”

She hurried after him, fear pecking at her heart. “I—I don’t know. How?”

Peer jumped off the rocks. Loki greeted him in relieved delight. “Down!” Peer snapped, striding past.