Troll Mill (8 page)

Hilde groaned.

“As for Peer—” Gudrun lowered her voice. “—he’s upset about this. I don’t want him going down to the shore. Imagine if they find her, drowned! And I don’t want him to hang about brooding. Better if he has a different sort of day. He can take the cows up the fell and keep an eye on the twins if he can. And the sheepfold wall needs mending.”

“All right,” said Hilde in resignation. “I’ll go and tell him.”

She wandered back into the dark farmhouse. Peer was still staring into the fire. She sat down beside him.

“Ma wants you to take the cows up the fell, and look after the twins, and patch up the sheepfold.”

“I think I should go down to the shore,” said Peer gloomily.

Hilde hesitated. “Don’t you think there’s enough people searching already? In any case, if Bjorn’s story is true, they won’t find her, will they?”

“You were right, Hilde. I didn’t believe
Bjorn could have done it—but I was wrong. He trapped Kersten!”

“Yes,” said Hilde carefully, “but I’ve just been asking Ma, and she seems to think it’s more complicated than that.”

“I messed everything up last night.”

“No, you didn’t!” Hilde began to feel annoyed with him. “What more could you have done? Ma’s right, nobody could have found Kersten in the dark.”

“I ought to have grabbed her,” he said furiously. “I’m taller and stronger than Kersten. I could see she was upset. I should have grabbed her and hung onto her. But first I was holding that stupid fish. And then the baby. I should have put the baby down and run after her….”

“That’s just silly,” said Hilde. “Nobody in their right mind would put a little baby down in the sand dunes!”

“And I dropped the fish,” he added morosely. “It’s probably still there.”

“The gulls will have eaten it,” Hilde said without thinking. Peer winced, and she could see him imagining what else the gulls might be eating.
Why does he have to torture himself so?

“Hilde.” Peer put a shy arm around her shoulders. Sighing irritably, Hilde returned him a sisterly squeeze. Next moment, to her astonishment, Peer turned toward her, put both his arms around her, and dropped a damp, fumbled kiss somewhere near her right ear.

“Peer!”
she shrieked, shoving him away.

He sprang up in alarm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped, scarlet-faced. “Don’t be angry! I didn’t mean to. Oh, Hilde!”

“For goodness’ sake!” Hilde didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry. He stared at her dolefully, tall and thin and gangly, with hunched shoulders and drooping neck. She burst out laughing. “Oh, stop it, Peer. You look exactly like a heron!”

Peer’s head came up. “Fine, make fun of me! I suppose it’s true, then, what Sigrid says.”

“What does Sigrid say?”

“That you like—” Peer gulped. “That you’re always thinking of Arnë Egilsson!”

Hilde’s eyes narrowed.
“For your information
, Peer Ulfsson, I’m not
always thinking
of anyone, but if I were, it certainly wouldn’t be a little boy like you!”

Peer’s mouth straightened, and his face went pale. “I’m very sorry to have bothered you, Hilde. I won’t do it again. And now I’m going down to the shore.”

“But Mother said—” Hilde started rashly.

“I don’t care what she said!” Peer yelled. “I’m going where I’m needed!” He blundered past and stormed out into the yard.

Hilde put a hand over her eyes.

Gudrun looked around the door. “What’s the matter with Peer? He’s gone tearing off downhill with Loki, looking like death. Have you been teasing him?”

Hilde exploded. “Me, teasing
him?
He just tried to kiss me and got all upset when I told him off. I said he looked like a heron. And he does!”

“That was rather unkind,” said Gudrun mildly.

“Mother!”

“Well, he’s a good boy, and he’s fond of you.”

“I know he is! That’s not the point,” Hilde spluttered. “Why can’t he be more—more
sensible?”

“He worries too much,” Gudrun agreed.

“I mean, I’m fond of him—I suppose—but not like that! And now I’ve hurt his feelings.”

“I should think he’ll get over it. So … do you have your eye on anyone else?”

Hilde flushed. “No!” she growled, grabbing the wooden handle of the hand mill and turning it energetically. The sound of the small millstone drowned out further conversation.

Peer marched down the hill in huge strides.

So that was that. Hilde despised him.

His mind was sore with anger and hurt. He loved Hilde, he knew he did. He loved her fresh face and clear eyes, her ready laugh and sure step. He loved the decisive way she flicked her long braid back over her shoulders when she did anything. And she did everything well too.

She always knew what she thought. She never seemed to have doubts: She was the most definite person he’d ever come across. And now he knew what she thought of him.

Why did I do it? I shouldn’t have risked it. But she was being so sweet to me, trying to cheer me up.

He clenched his fists and screwed his face
up in agony. What a fool he was! Of course she wouldn’t think of him. Who was he, anyway? Just a homeless, friendless stray the family had taken in. Not much more than a herdboy.

That’s not fair
, he told himself.
Gudrun and Ralf treat me like a son.

But I’m not their son. That’s the point, isn’t it? The farm will go to Sigurd one day. I’m working for nothing.

The thought trickled like cold water down his spine. Seeing him stop, Loki came trotting back. Peer stared blindly down the path, thinking with jealous fury of Arnë Egilsson. He fought against the memory of Arnë’s blue eyes, merry smile, and broad shoulders. Besides all that, Arnë had his own boat. Girls were impressed by that sort of thing.

“Why should she think anything of me, Loki? All I’ve got is you.” Loki wagged his tail.

Peer knew he was being unfair. But it was easier to be angry with Hilde if she despised him for being poor. That just showed how shallow she was. It had been the flash of real laughter in her face that had stung the worst.
You look like a heron.
Impossible to forget.

Hardly looking where he was going, he came stumbling out of the wood and saw the path unfolding down the slope and into the dip by the mill. Between the branches of the willows, the millpond looked like Gudrun’s bronze mirror winking at the sun, brown with sediment from last night’s rain. He could hear the water roaring over the weir.

The mill! With everything else that had happened, he’d forgotten to tell anyone about seeing the water wheel turning. Indeed, on this bright windy morning the events of the night seemed like some strange bad dream. Why had he been so scared? The river had been high, that was all, and the sluice gate had burst.

I’ll go and see.
Grateful for something different to occupy his mind, he ran down the slope to the bridge and squinted across at the huge wheel.

The broad wooden vanes looked slimy and wet, but that wasn’t surprising after such a rainy night. Constellations of bright orange fungus grew on the wood like a disease.
Maybe the wheel’s rotting … but it still looks fairly solid. Anyhow, it was turning last night.
But it isn’t now. And that means …

He frowned. That meant that the sluice gate hadn’t burst. If it had, water would be coursing along the millrace, and the mill would still be working—if the wheel hadn’t shaken itself to pieces first. So last night, while he’d been coming up the track in the wild dark carrying the baby, someone had deliberately opened the sluice gate. And later they had closed it again. There was no other explanation. But who could have done it, and why?

He called Loki and pushed his way along the overgrown path by the side of the dam. As he expected, the sluice gate at the head of the millrace was firmly in position, turning the water aside to frisk and foam over the weir. With the sluice gate shut like that, there was no way that the water wheel could turn.

Peer scratched his head and looked at the swollen millpond. The current had opened a brown channel down the middle, and the green duckweed had been swept to the calm stretch at the far side. Somewhere underneath all that, he knew, lived Granny Green-teeth. What was her dwelling like, down in the cloudy water? He imagined a sort of dark
hole, ringed with snags, and Granny Green-teeth lurking in it like an old eel. She’d drag her prey down there, as once she had dragged his uncles’ savage dog, Grendel. She’d hated the two millers. She used to prowl around the building at nights, dripping on their doorstep. Even Uncle Baldur had been afraid of her.

He remembered the dark figure he’d half seen, half imagined, last night, creeping after him up the hill. Had it been Granny Green-teeth? Could she have opened the sluice?

None the wiser for what he’d seen, he wandered back and stopped halfway across the wooden bridge.

There was nowhere to go. If he joined the search party down on the shore, Bjorn would be there, and Peer didn’t want to meet him again so soon. He couldn’t go back to the farm yet either—he couldn’t face Hilde.

He stood, restlessly peeling long splinters from the wooden handrail and dropping them into the rushing water.
Why should I help Bjorn look for Kersten? She ran away from him. She doesn’t want to be found.

The stream babbled away under the bridge,
as if arguing with itself in different voices. Listening, he caught a few half-syllables in the rush.
Gone. Lost, gone.
Or maybe,
Long ago …
And was someone sobbing?

It’s just the water
, Peer thought, as the sounds melted into melancholy chat and murmur. But he shivered suddenly. What if the mill was haunted by the people who had once lived here? None of them had been happy, including his own grandmother. “A thin little worn-out shadow of a woman,” Ralf had once described her. She’d come here after her first husband died, and married the old miller. And the miller had ill-treated her, while her young son Ulf, Peer’s own father, had run away and never come back. And then she’d had two more sons, who had grown up to become his violent, selfish, bullying half uncles, Baldur and Grim.

Instinctively, Peer twisted the thin silver ring he always wore on his finger, the only thing of his father’s that he still owned.

As he touched the worn silver, he felt a stab of longing. Ulf had been a thin, quiet man, whose slow, rare smiles could warm you from top to toe.
If only I could talk to him now. He
wouldn’t say much, but he’d listen to me. He’d put his arm around my shoulder and give me a comforting word. He’d …

I need you, Father. Why did you have to die?

Peer hit the rail of the bridge as hard as he could.

What’s wrong with me?
he wondered, rubbing his bruised fist. And realized at once:
I’m angry!

He considered it, amazed. Peer never lost his temper. For three years now he’d lived with Gudrun and Ralf, grateful to the family, glad to live among decent kindly folk who treated him well. And he’d admired Bjorn. Bjorn was the sort of person Peer wanted to be—cheerful, self-reliant, always willing to help—but with a steely streak that meant nobody pushed him around.
I was proud to be his friend. I’d never have believed he’d be unfair or do anything wrong.

But Bjorn had been ruthless enough to keep Kersten against her will.

He’s just selfish after all….

He swallowed down a lump in his throat and trailed off the bridge toward the entrance to the mill. The mill and the barn faced each
other across the narrow yard, with a line of rough sheds and a pigsty to the north, backing up to the millpond. A cluster of trees grew around the buildings: bare brown brooms just softening into green. Above the dilapidated thatch of the mill roof, the high bulk of Troll Fell rose, clean-edged against the sky.

Go on. Go in.

Peer hesitated. It was all so very quiet, and he was by himself.

Scared? In broad daylight? Oh, come on. It won’t take a minute!

He walked slowly into the yard, his feet sinking into soft, untrodden leaf mold and moss. Underneath were cobblestones, buried by years of neglect. Peer padded warily toward the barn and looked in. There was a choking smell of damp, mildewed straw, a litter of bird droppings and old nests, and a breathless, dusty silence. He backed out and went to stand in the center of the yard, trying to look over both shoulders at once.

Something bitter rose in his throat. A rush of memories swept over him. For a moment he was twelve years old again, cringing half
defensively, half defiantly, under the harsh hand of Uncle Baldur.

Here, there was nothing to be proud of. Here, he’d been weak, starved, humiliated. He’d slept in that dusty barn, in the straw with the hens. Over there by the mill door, Uncle Baldur had knocked him down. Peer remembered every inch of the yard. One hot summer’s day, Baldur’s twin brother, Uncle Grim, had made him sweep it twice over, first with a broom and then on his knees with a hand brush. He could still see his uncle’s gloating face, red, oozing with little beads of sweat, hanging over him like an evil sunset as he pointed out tiny bits of twig and chicken feathers that Peer had missed.

Get the yard clean, boy! No supper until you do….

Peer’s head jerked up, almost as if he heard that grating voice. A fresh wave of anger rolled over him like a sickness. His fists were clenched, the nails digging into his palms.

Nobody,
nobody
, was going to treat him like that again!

EXPLORING THE MILL