Troll Mill Read Free

cursedit, the doorlatch clicked and Einar poked his head out. “Who’s there?” he quavered.
    “It’s me,” began Peer, but he couldn’t go on. Kersten had thrown herself into the sea. Bjorn’s house had been robbed. He was holding their baby. He could never explain. Face burning, he turned and fled, leaving Einar puzzled on the doorstep.
    Feeling like a thief, Peer slunk out of the village, and the wind blustered after him up the hill. He cupped the baby’s head against his throat with one rain-chilled hand and felt a tickle of warmth against his skin as it breathed.
    He trudged up the path. The cloak kept unwrapping and tangling around his legs: He had nothing to pin it with and needed both arms for the baby. Every gust of wind blew it open, and rain soaked into him. But he hardly noticed. His mind was back on the shore, reliving the moments when Kersten had rushed down the shingle.
If only I’d grabbed her
, he thought,
surely I could have stopped her! But I was holding the baby. Why did she do it? Why?
    The baby shrank in his arms as if curlingup. Afraid it would slip, he stopped and tried to find a dry edge of cloak to wrap around it, but the woolen fabric was all muddy or sodden, and he gave up in despair. The baby’s head tipped back. There were those dark eyes staring at him again. Uneasily he returned their stare. Something was wrong. This baby was too good, too quiet.
Little Eirik would be screaming his head off by now
, he thought. What did that mean? Was the baby too cold to cry? Too weak?
    Frightened, he plunged on up the path. He had to get it to Gudrun. She could give it warmth and milk. But at the moment the rain was beating down out of the black night; he could hardly see where to put his feet, and there were a couple of miles of rough track to go, past the old mill and up through the wood. The trees overhanging the path were not in leaf yet, and gave no shelter.
    Ahead of him the black roofline of the mill appeared between the trees, the thatch twisted into crooked horns above narrow gables. Peer tripped over the hem of the cloak, ripping it. His pace slowed. The mill … It was on such a wild night that he’d first seen it, three yearsago. His half uncle Baldur had brought him jolting all the way over Troll Fell in an oxcart, through thunder and drenching rain. He’d caught his first glimpse of the mill in a flash of lightning. Peer remembered huddling in the bottom of the cart, staring fearfully up at the mean windows like leering eyes and at the rotting thatch and patched shutters.
    He still hated going past there after dark, even now that it was empty. The yard was choked with dead leaves, the sheds crumbling. The walls reeked.
    True, his uncles had long gone. They had tried to sell him to the trolls, but their brutish greed had led them to quarrel over a cupful of the trolls’ dark beer. Gulping down the strange brew, they had changed into trollish creatures themselves, tusks sprouting from their faces. Although Peer and his friends had escaped, Baldur and Grim Grimsson had remained under Troll Fell. No one had ever seen them again.
    But the mill had a bad name still. Who could say if it was really empty? Odd creatures were said to loiter in its dark rooms and squint from behind the broken shutters. Asullen splash from the millpond might be Granny Green-teeth, lurking under the weed-clogged surface, waiting to drag down anyone who strayed.
    Peer clutched the baby tighter. There was no way of avoiding the place: The road led right up to it, before bending to cross the stream over an old wooden bridge. As he passed he glanced up, feeling like a mouse scuttling along past some gigantic cat. The walls leaned over him, cold and silent.
    He hurried on to the bridge. The wind snatched and pushed him, and he grabbed at the handrail. The noise of the river rose around him, snarling over the weir in white froth. As he crossed, he looked upstream toward the water wheel, in the darkness hardly more