Troll Bridge (18 page)

Selvi and Trigvi looked to Botvi who was picking herself up off the floor. She shook herself once all over, and then said, “Get him, girls.”

Aenmarr's eyes widened in astonishment.

Selvi hit him high, and Trigvi low, riding him to the floor. Screaming, Botvi leapt on his arm, wrestling the cleaver from his grasp. Aenmarr roared and threw the three troll women off, but they were back in seconds, scratching and biting and clawing and digging at his eyes.

Aenmarr came to his feet, troll wives hanging from his arms and legs. He pummeled them, swatted at them, fists like sacks of coal. Still, Jakob could see they were hurting him. Green blood oozed from dozens of claw and teeth marks, and he was grimacing with each new wound.

“Enough, women!” he roared, but to no avail. Their fury had no end. They kept attacking, coming at him nonstop, even though their eyes began to swell shut, their faces bleed. Selvi's arm was hanging crooked and useless at her side, obviously broken.

Aenmarr threw them off a tenth time. A twentieth. Jakob lost count. But finally the old troll was done fighting. Turning his back on the larder, he stomped into the main room, his three wives screaming behind him. From where he was hanging in the larder, Jakob could just see the front door. He watched as Aenmarr pushed it open, trying to get out of the house, trying to escape his wives' wrath. But strangely, he didn't step outside.

He stopped cold in the doorway, and said, simply, “Oh, no.”

Then Selvi, Trigvi, and Botvi all pushed him hard at the very same time, Botvi swinging a frying pan at his head with her other hand, and he tumbled out of the house. The troll women quickly moved away from the doorway, and Jakob could suddenly see outside, where the morning sun, a perfect blood-red half circle, was just peeking over the horizon.

Leaping up, his face panic-stricken, Aenmarr tried to run back inside. But as he lifted his right leg, a single ray of sunlight touched his knee.

Jakob heard a terrible grinding sound, like a hasp on marble. As he watched, Aenmarr's leg turned hard and gray and motionless.

Stone,
Jakob thought.
He's turning to stone. The old tales are true!

Staring at his stone leg, Aenmarr tried to take a hop-step with the other. But sunlight now shone on that one, too, and in less than an eyeblink, it was stone, as well. Aenmarr could only watch in horror as light began creeping up his body, turning his torso slowly to granite as the sun crested the horizon. Then he looked into the house to where Jakob was hanging upside down, and laughed.

“Well, you be my doom after all,” the troll called. “You be succeeding where thousands tried and failed. You be defeating Aenmarr of Austraegir, slayer of heroes, killer of kings.” His voice was getting softer as the sun reached his arms and shoulders, as it kept climbing, transforming everything it touched to cold, gray, stone. “But beware the Fossegrim, Little Doom. For I would only eat your flesh.” Aenmarr coughed feebly as daylight hit his neck and his throat began to petrify. “That one be taking your very soul.” Then bright sunlight hit the troll full in the face and the last of his green skin turned gray.

Selvi shut the door, and she and her two sisters collapsed against it, all of them bleeding onto the rough floorboards.

23

Moira

“Mama, Mama!” cried the troll boys, picking themselves off the larder floor and racing over to their mothers who lay against the front door. They held their mothers' hands, weeping piteously.

“Arri, Buri…” Jakob called. “Come here. Cut us down.”

Erik joined him, shouting. “Here, boys, come here.”

Galen added, “Come on, you silly buggers.…”

The troll boys were too overcome with their own weeping to listen.

Moira forced herself to wriggle until she spun about, bumping into first Galen, then Erik.

“Ow.”

“Quit banging into me.”

“This time I'm doing it on purpose.”

“My head hurts.”

“Shut up and listen.”

“Why? It's one troll down and five to go, but only if they cut us down first.”

“Sing,” Moira said to them.

“What?” they asked together.

Jakob had spun around, too, and now all four of them were facing inward, staring at one another.

Like four hams in a butcher shop,
Moira thought, almost giggling.
And that's what we really need now
—
to be hams and overact.
She shook her head.
Okay, so now I'm officially hysterical.

“She's right, you know. If we sing to them, they'll do anything for us.”

“Sing?” Erik said. “What should we sing?”

Jakob shrugged. “Hey—we're the Griffson Brothers. We can control fifty thousand people at a stadium concert with our music. What's two troll boys?”

Erik growled, “The crowd doesn't want to serve us for supper. That's what.” His purpled eye glared at Jakob.

But Galen said smoothly, “Let's start with ‘Luv U,' and then segue right into ‘E-mail' and then ‘After Me, Deluge De-love.'” He nodded at Jakob. “Give us the beat.”

“One, two, one, two, three…” Jakob began. And then, a bit raggedly—because they had no instruments and were hanging upside down and their throats were raw from shouting—the three boys began to sing.

Suddenly, Moira realized that she'd heard those songs before. On the radio, as she fiddled with the dial, looking for a classical station when she was on the road. And when the Dairy Princesses were practicing their walks, books on their heads. And in the van going from photo op to photo op, because Caitlinn always had that music blaring from her iPod.

The Griffson Brothers.
She would have hit her head with her hand if she'd been able to move her arms at all.
I suppose I should have recognized the name.
She shook her head.
But it's pop music!
And she shuddered.

First Arri, then Buri looked over at them, Buri scrubbing at his runny nose with the back of his hand. Then, almost as if mesmerized, the troll boys got up, walked over, and stood in the larder listening.

When the third song ended, Buri said, “That be a lot of notes.”

“And I can teach all of them to you,” Jakob said, wriggling around until he was facing them. “And more.”

“More?” Buri and Arri stood beneath the hanging humans, their mouths gaping open. “There be more?”

“Only,” Moira added, doing her own wriggling, “you have to get us all down, first.”

“All right,” Arri said, still glazed from the music.

Buri picked up the cleaver and swung it so wildly near Galen's feet, it nearly took off his shoe.

“Careful,” Moira cried. Then she added, “Maybe a knife would be safer.”

“Yeah,” Galen said, “don't want to be like your father.”

Buri rubbed his head, which might have been bruised from Aenmarr's blows, but with the green skin it was hard to tell. “I not be like my father,” he said.

“Not at all,” Moira told him softly. “Now the knife…”

Buri dropped the cleaver with a clatter and picked up a knife, sawing away until Galen dropped onto the table.

“Ow!” Galen complained. “How about a softer landing?”

“I do not be knowing that. Be it a song?” Buri asked.

“Yah,” Eric said. “It goes…” and he began to sing to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” “Three bound boys, make lots of noise. Cut them down, without a sound. Give them a landing that's soft and is kind. They'll help you all out when you're next in a bind. So get me a knife of my own, and you'll find, we're three unbound boys.”

“Be singing more notes,” Buri said, sawing through the rope holding Galen's wrists.

Arri got another knife from the pegs and cut down Jakob, who kept singing “You Are My Sunshine” at the top of his lungs.

*   *   *

AT THE SAME TIME, GALEN
managed to get both Moira and Erik onto the table without dropping them from the height, then sawed through the ropes binding them. When the four were free, they sat on the table's edge, swinging their feet, and rubbing their wrists and shoulders.

Moira hopped down first. “Arri, Buri, get me some washcloths and soak them in water.”

The boys rushed to do her bidding, coming back with dripping cloths, which Moira had to wring out on the floor since she couldn't reach the sink. It was no easy task since the cloths were as large as bath towels.

“I'll take care of your mothers. You take the princes to the other houses and carry all the Dairy Princesses here. Be careful not to hurt them.”

“But Moira, they can't go out until dark,” Jakob reminded her.

“Then you're on your own, Griffsons.”

“We usually are,” Galen said. “Come on, guys.” They went toward the back door, which Arri and Buri swung open, careful not to let a bit of the sunlight touch their own hands.

Moira headed, instead, toward the front door where the troll wives still lay, stunned and bleeding. She knelt down to tend them.

“Going somewhere?” The familiar voice slid into her head.

She looked up. “Foss!”

He'd insinuated himself past the gray stone Aenmarr and through the open door, his ears pricked up, his long tail fluffed out. Sunlight made his coat gleam.

“Where
were
you? Why didn't you help us?” Moira asked.

“I was recovering. You seem to have done just fine without me.”

“It was a close thing, Foss,” Jakob said. Moira could hear the suspicion in his voice. “We could have used a distraction or three.”

Arri hid himself behind Jakob. “Papa be saying not to trust…”

“Papa is dead,” the fox said bluntly. “He's a big rock in your front yard. You can use him for a climbing stone.”

One of the troll wives behind Moira groaned.

Foss trotted over somewhat daintily, stared down at them, and growled.

“Don't you growl at them,” Moira said, shaking her finger in his face. “Without them we'd be lunch.”

“Take the cleaver and cut off their heads,” Foss told her.

“Will not.”

Tilting his head to one side, Foss blinked up at her, his dark eyes giving nothing away. “No matter. Fetch my fiddle.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Foss yipped. “It is time to go home, child.”

Home!
A single tear sprang up in Moira's eye, and she angrily wiped it away. “All right,” she told him, “I'd love to get out of here.” Turning to Jakob, she said, “I'm going back to the cave for the fiddle.”

He nodded. “Good. We'll get the princesses.”

Selvi groaned from the front door. “Do not be leaving us with the Fossegrim.”

Foss growled at her, the hair on his back bristling, and Moira snapped at him, “Foss! Enough. Just let us go home. Settle your own problems after we leave.”

With a low whine, Foss lay down in the corner by the fire and commenced licking his front paw. “Very well, child. Get the fiddle.”

“I'm going, I'm going.” She thought a minute. There was something in his casual acceptance that felt wrong. She turned to Jakob. “I think you'd better stay here and watch him.”

He shrugged, nodded. Looked puzzled, head to one side. But she didn't say any more. She didn't dare. Then she turned back and tried to give a reassuring smile to the troll wives. “Foss can't hurt you.” She hoped she was right.

Without waiting for an answer, she went bounding outside just as if she hadn't spent the night leaping through fires and hanging upside down in a troll's larder. She spared a quick glance to the mound of gray stone next to the front door, then ran down the path toward the cave.

First the fiddle. Then
—
home!

24

Jakob

With Galen and Erik out collecting princesses, and the trolls eyeing Foss warily, the cottage was suddenly quiet. Jakob crawled up into one of the giant chairs, the smallest one. Leaning back against the rough wood, he waited for his head to stop pounding.

It didn't. His head ached, his back burned, his right leg felt like it was going to break in half.

I just want to get home,
he thought.
To Mom. To Dad. I'll sleep for a week.
Even after the longest road trip he'd never felt this tired. Of course, even after the longest road trip, he'd never been almost burned alive and nearly eaten by trolls.

“Soon,” Foss said in his head. “Soon.”

Jakob eyed the fox lying in the corner. Aenmarr had seemed so sure that Foss was not to be trusted.
And he
did
trick us into coming here to Trollholm.
But he'd saved Jakob's life after that. And Erik's. And he probably would have saved Galen's, too, if he'd known Gale was alive.

And besides,
Jakob thought,
why should I trust the word of a troll who'd been trying to kill me for days?

He bit his lower lip, remembering that the troll wives were afraid of Foss. And Moira had seemed odd about him, too. And … there was something else, something that Jakob couldn't quite get.

“Hey, Foss,” he said.

“Hmm?” the fox answered, opening one dark eye and looking at Jakob.

“How's that fiddle going to get us home?”

Foss opened his other eye. “I am going to teach you and the girl child how to play it.”

Jakob chuckled. “I don't think either of us can learn to play the fiddle in an afternoon.”

“It is a magic fiddle.” Lifting his head up off his paws, Foss stared at Jakob with his dark eyes. It was like staring into black fathomless pools. “A magic fiddle—and
you
are a musician.”

“Yes, but…”

“Tell me, child of man, do you not hear music all the time? Music such that you cannot keep your toes from tapping, your lips from whistling, your fingers from tracing the lines of your chosen instrument in the air?”