West of the Moon (13 page)

If we could get that treasure back, we'd be able to buy our passage and our food and all the things we need for the journey to America. But I can't imagine that we have time to go looking all over the place for the goatman—maybe all the way back to the goat farm—before the ship sails! Especially, I think, glancing at Spinning Girl, considering how slowly we move. The only way to get the treasure back is with a pair of seven-league boots.

As I puzzle over this, I become aware of the sounds of a farm at full daylight: a rooster crowing, the baaing of sheep, the whinny of horses. And that gives me an idea.

“Well,” says the farmwife, “I've promised you eggs, haven't I?” And off she trundles across the farmyard with a basket over her arm.

As soon as she's gone, here comes the lad. “Off to America, then?” says he.

“Aye, that we are,” I tell him, glancing around the room for my shoes.

“What about your cook pots and your food? You have to bring food for the voyage, you know. Bread and cheese and meat and herring—everything! It seems you haven't got a thing.”

“Why, as to that, I have it all thought out. All we really need right now is a pair of seven-league boots,” I tell him, snagging one of my shoes from under the table. “You haven't a pair of those, have you?”

He laughs and says no, he hasn't.

“That's too bad,” I say, “because if I had a pair of seven-league boots, I could catch up with the old man and get the treasure back, I shouldn't wonder. Then I'd have so much gold I wouldn't know what to do with it all.”

“Is that so?” the boy says. “You wouldn't know what to do with it?”

“I wouldn't be able to carry it, even,” I say, hopping on one foot while sliding my shoe on the other. “But since I don't have any of those boots, I don't suppose there's any way to catch up with him. Maybe if I had a horse. Maybe just. Oh, but I haven't got a horse, have I? What a foolish thing to think about.”

“
We
have horses!” cries the boy.

“Have you?” I respond, though I can see them well enough out the window, flicking flies off their flanks with their long, glossy tails.

“I'll tell you what,” says the boy. He glances out the door as his mother disappears into the henhouse. “You can ride our Dapple to the man's house, get the treasure, bring it back here, pick up the two girls, and off you go. Whatever portion of the
treasure you don't want to carry, you can leave with me for safekeeping.”

“Hmm,” I say. “Well, it's not exactly a pair of seven-league boots, is it? But it's better than nothing. Still, what would your ma say about you lending out her horse like that?”

“She won't even notice,” says the lad. “'Tis I who tends to the horses. Just make sure you bring him back straightaway, you know, once you've got the treasure.”

“That's a fine offer, indeed,” I say, nabbing my other shoe from behind a chair, “but I don't know … I'm terribly fearful of horses.”

“I'm not!” Greta pipes up, as I knew she would.

“Aye, that's so,” I agree, “but you're far too small to carry the treasure by yourself.”

“You shall come with me, then!” she sings and claps her hands. “And that will be jolly!”

I turn to look at the boy, but he's already walking to the pasture gate to fetch the horse.

In the meantime, I turn to Spinning Girl. “We're off on an errand,” I tell her.

She reaches for a length of yarn that is looped around her neck. At the end of the loop, I see now, dangles a key, shiny and pretty as a bit of jewelry. She takes it from her neck and hangs it around mine, where I feel its coolness against my skin.

A key! I've never had a key to anything. Never had anything worth locking up, in fact. Except Mama's brooch, of course.

Well. Here comes the boy returning with the horse, all saddled and bridled and ready to go.

Quickly, without letting myself think about it, I unpin Mama's brooch from my dress and pin it on Spinning Girl's. By the look on her face, I'll wager she's never been given anything like it. Or any gift at all, most like. Still, somehow, I feel that it's I who have been given the greater gift.

The Seven-Headed Troll

horse is a far better thing to have than a pair of seven-league boots, any day,” I tell Greta. I am pleased with Dapple, who is healthy and not old either, and with the well-tooled saddle and the nice bridle with silver buckles. And with just me and Greta on his back, it's a comfortable ride.

Clip clop
, go Dapple's hooves over the bridge, along the rushing river, back into the gloomy gorge.

“Oh, it's lovely to ride a horse instead of walking, and now we can get the treasure, and then we shall be rich as kings!” Greta says. “But, sister, I have been thinking. Wouldn't it be stealing, to take that treasure from Mr. Svaalberd?”

“No, it wouldn't, because old Svaalberd stole it from the trolls. That's nearly the only way you can get troll gold these days, and it isn't stealing to take something that's stolen already, is it?”

It has started to rain, and perhaps the ticking of the leaves or the
tap tap tap
of rain on the branches makes Dapple nervous, for he seems skittish, throwing his head back at the trembling of a leaf. He snorts, his breath a white cloud in the cool, damp air.

“I think something is moving in the trees,” Greta whispers.

“That's just the bending of the boughs in the wind,” I tell her. “Or the fluttering of birds.”

The key that hangs from my neck taps against my chest, and I lift it up and look at it. What is it for, this key? Not to any of the outbuildings. Not to Svaalberd's precious chest. So small, it is. What, then?

“Sister,” Greta says, after a while, “do you ever think that maybe Papa just hasn't been able to earn enough money to send for us yet? Maybe we should go back and wait a bit longer.”

“We can't go back,” I tell her, “either to the goat farm or to Aunt and Uncle's. So, then, where would we go?” I don't tell her of the farmwife's invitation.

“Astri,” she says, “do you ever think Papa might be dead?”

“No!” I tell her. “I would know if he were dead.”

“How?” Greta asks. “How would you know?”

I pull back on the reins, and Dapple stops. We've moved away from the rushing river and now follow a placid stream. Behind the murmur of the brook and the pattering of rain, I can hear the general hum of the world. I can feel it. And there is not an essential part of it missing, so Papa must be alive. But I don't know how to explain this to Greta, so I urge Dapple on while I tell Greta a story.

“One time, when I was little, younger even than you are now, Papa took me with him into the forest where he went to
cut wood for charcoal. He set me in a little spot where the sun came down through the pine boughs and made a flickering patch of light.

“Suddenly, a dark shadow passed over me. I tipped my head back, like this, and what was standing over me but the most horrifying, most terrible, ugliest old
troll
you ever did see!”

“A troll!” Greta cries.
“Nie!”

“Aye, a troll. The likes of which you wouldn't ever want to meet. And he picked me up, tucked me under his arm, and carried me off.”

“Did you scream?”

“I screamed so loud there are valleys where you can hear me screaming still.”

“What happened then?”

“He carried me off to his castle, where he made me sit all the day long and scratch his many heads.” As I say this, it seems to me that I can even remember the smell of him, sour as a dozen old billy goats.

“How many heads did he have?”

“Oh, six or seven, I'd say.”

“What happened?”

“Papa came to rescue me, of course.”

“No!” Greta cries. “But how could he fight a troll?”

“That's just what I said! ‘You'd better go home,' I said, ‘for
there's a troll here, and he will gobble you alive!' But Papa, he said he would stay and fight.

“‘If that's to be the case,' I said, ‘you had better use the troll's sword that's hanging over there on the wall.' Papa went to lift it, but he couldn't—it was far too heavy for any mortal to heft. So I told him that he'd better take a long pull from the troll's flask, for that was what the troll did every time he went to use the sword.”

Dapple's ears twitch and turn. Are those footsteps I hear? It could just be the steady
tick tick tick
of rain on the leaves or the hammering of a woodpecker, some ways distant. Or maybe it's the beating of my heart against the key Spinning Girl gave me.

“What happened next, Astri?” Greta asks.

“Oh, well,” I go on, “Papa took a long drink from the troll's flask, and in the twinkling of an eye, he could brandish the sword like nothing. And what should happen then but up came the troll, puffing and blowing.

“‘
Hutetu,
' said the troll. ‘What a stink there is of Christian blood!'

“‘Don't you worry,' Papa said, ‘you won't be bothered by that smell for long!' And with that, he hewed off all seven of the troll's heads, and the troll fell dead.”

As I say this, it's as if I remember the dim halls of that
castle, the torches glimmering and the smudgelike shadows on the walls, the look of that great, gleaming sword and the leather drinking flask, and the rancid, old-man smell of the troll and his many greasy heads.

Dapple turns his head; his nostrils tremble. Perhaps he smells it, too, or maybe we are smelling last year's moldy leaves, the scent of them rising with each stamp of his hooves.

Greta clings to me, and all three of us fall silent as we ride through the tall trees, their trunks slick from the rain. It comes to me, steady and sure as the rain, that Svaalberd is here somewhere, in this forest, watching us.

A
nd then, there, lying in the middle of the path in front of us is a dirty-looking lump of something.

I pull back on the reins, and Dapple comes to a stop.

“It's a sack!” Greta cries. “Your gunnysack, isn't it? I'll go see!” She begins to slide off the horse's back, but I throw an arm behind me to stop her.

“Wait,” I tell her.

Dapple throws back his head, nickers, stamps at the ground.

Where is Svaalberd? I wonder as I peer into the forest. All I see among the trees is an old stump weathered into a pale gray, a lump of dirty snow, a boulder. And no sign of the goatman.

Dapple is quiet now, and the only sound is the rain on the leaves.

I reach up and break two twigs off a rowan tree, one for me and one for Greta. “Put that sprig in your dress,” I tell her, and slip a twig into the bodice of my own. “For protection.”

We dismount and, with me holding the reins in one hand and Greta's hand in the other, creep slowly toward the sack.