Troll Mill Read Free Page B

his ears, barking eagerly.
    “Don’t tease him!” said Hilde. Sigurd threw himself down beside Loki, laughing and tussling.
    Fierce sunlight blazed through a gap in the clouds. The wide hillside turned an unearthlygreen. Long drifts of tired snow, still lying in every dip and hollow, woke into blinding sparkles, and the crooked thorn trees sprang out, every mossy twig a shrill yellow. Hilde’s eyes watered. Two figures came over the skyline and started descending: a tall man in a plaid cloak, holding hands with a little fair-haired girl whose red hood glowed like a jewel. Shadows like stick men streamed up the slope behind them.
    Sigurd pushed Loki aside and jumped to his feet, waving to his twin sister. “Sigrid, come and look! We can see Bjorn’s boat.”
    The little girl broke free from her father and came running. “Where?”
    Sigurd pointed. “Lucky things,” he complained. “They get to go fishing, and we have to count sheep. Why can’t Sigrid and I have some fun?”
    “You can when you’re older,” said Hilde. “And I didn’t go fishing, did I?”
    “You didn’t want to,” Sigurd muttered.
    “I know who she wants to go fishing with,” said Sigrid slyly. “With Bjorn’s brother, Arnë! She likes him—don’t you, Hilde?”
    “Don’t be silly,” said Hilde sharply. “Youknow perfectly well that Arnë doesn’t even live in the village anymore. Not since last summer. He works a fishing boat out of Hammerhaven—”
    “Yes, and it’s bigger than Bjorn’s,” Sigurd interrupted. “Bjorn’s boat is a faering, with a mast but only two sets of oars. Arnë’s boat is a six-oarer!”
    “That’s right, and he has a partner to help him sail it,” Hilde said.
    “You do know a lot about him.” Sigrid giggled.
    “That’s not funny, Sigrid. Arnë is twenty-two; he’s a grown-up man.”
    “So? You’re fifteen, you’re grown-up, too. When he came to say good-bye to you, he held your hand. You went all pink.”
    Hilde gave her little sister a withering glance, and then wrapped her arms around herself with a shiver. A swift shadow came gliding down the fell, and the sunlight vanished. Out to sea, the clouds had eaten up the sun.
    “It’s going to rain, Pa,” she said as Ralf joined them.
    “We can see Peer,” Sigrid squeaked, pointingat the boat. “Look, Pa, look!”
    “Aha!” Ralf peered down the slope, scanning every rock and boulder. “Now I wonder if our missing sheep have gone over this edge. I don’t see any. But they wouldn’t show up against all the gray stones. Anything falling down there would break every bone in its body. Sigurd! That means you, too, d’you hear?”
    “How many are lost?” Hilde asked.
    “Let’s see.” Grimly, Ralf ticked them off on his fingers: “The old ewe with the bell around her neck, two of the black sheep, the lame one, the speckled one, and the one with the broken horn. And their lambs, too. It’s a puzzle, Hilde. It can’t be wolves or foxes. They’d leave traces.”
    “Stolen?” asked Hilde. “By the trolls?”
    “That thought does worry me,” Ralf admitted.
    A chilly wind gusted through Hilde’s clothes. She rubbed goose bumps from her arms as she looked around. The fjord below was a brooding gulf of shadows. She glanced up at the skyline. Troll Fell loomed over them, wearing a scowl of cloud.
    Sigrid tugged at Hilde’s sleeve. “The boat’s gone. Where is it?”
    “Don’t worry, Siggy. It’ll be coming in to land. We can’t see the shore from here; the hillside gets in the way. Pa, we really should go. Those clouds are coming up fast.”
    “Yes.” Ralf was gazing out to sea. “The old sea-wife is brewing up some dirty weather in that cookpot of hers!” He caught their puzzled looks and laughed. “Did Grandpa never tell you that story? It’s a sailor’s yarn. The old sea-wife, Ran, sits in her kitchen at the bottom of the sea, brewing up storms in her big black pot. Oh, yes! All the drowned sailors go down to sit in