by Ruth Nickle
After their wedding, when they’d returned to her kingdom, Tatterhood had given Trygve a ring as a sort of late wedding present. She had helped the goldsmith forge it, spent hours learning how to set in the emerald. She focused on the ring, remembered the feel of it in her fingers and the way it slid onto the prince’s hand. She continued rubbing her wooden spoon, thinking only about the ring, until she felt a slight tug on her body.
She nudged Storm, and they rode into the forest, following the direction of the tug. There was no path before her, no trail or map, yet she traveled toward the ring on the prince’s hand. For three days she followed this guide. Sometimes they went at the pace of a goat, and sometimes, when she held the wooden spoon just right and the wind touched the tattered hood over her hair, the forest sped by in a blur.
The sun had set at the end of the third day when she arrived at a clearing next to a large lake. The ring tugged at her more strongly now, like a rope wrapped around her middle. The last two nights she had gone to sleep at this time—it must be close to midnight—but the twilight would linger for a while, and she was close now. As she walked around the lake, leading Storm beside her, she felt pulled toward the water itself. Then, in the rushes, she saw a form floating in the water, one arm outstretched.
“Trygve! Trygve!” she yelled as she dashed into the lake.
The cold water shocked her legs. A tree branch cut into her face. Tatterhood tripped, soaking her dress up to her chest. She forced herself through the murky, muddy water and then stopped.
It was not a body. It was a man-sized log, floating in the water. And what she thought an arm was just a branch.
Tatterhood climbed out of the lake, shivering as her wet dress clung to her skin. There was still a bit of light in the sky, but not enough to search for a body. She picked up a rock from the ground and focused on the candlestick next to her bed, willing it to switch places with the rock. It did. She tried using her fire striker, but while she managed to create a few sparks, her hands kept shaking and she could not light the wick.
She cursed the sun and its decision to sleep.
Who would be awake in the castle at this time? Surely a light would be left in the kitchen for the scullery maids. She imagined herself walking into the kitchen at night, tried to remember where the lights were placed and what they looked like. She had not paid enough attention. But then she thought of Cook’s face, pock-marked and wise. Cook always held a lantern to make sure no dirt or crumbs were left in the kitchen for mice to find.
Tatterhood focused on the lantern, willing it to switch with the useless candle. She had to think not only of the object, but also its location: the magic only worked if she thought of the item within a few paces of its actual position. She imagined the lantern in various spots around the kitchen. In a moment, she held it in her hand. The sudden brightness made her close her eyes. She would apologize to Cook later.
She continued her trek around the lake, using the lantern to look for Trygve’s body. Time and time again she waded into the water, her search growing more and more desperate as the tug continued.
“Trygve! Trygve!” she called until her voice was hoarse. But no one responded.
Finally, she returned to the clearing where she’d started. She had completed a full circuit around the lake and there had been no sign of Trygve, no sign but the tug toward the water.
She collapsed on the shore, covered her face with her dirty, cold hands, tried to accept the evidence before her. Somehow, the prince had made it to this lake, and somehow, he had died. She did not want to believe it, but what else could she do?
Her dress was muddy—much muddier than normal—her body cold, and her stomach empty, but the thought of food made her sick. She lay flat on the ground with her face on the soil, still feeling the tug of the ring. But the sky was black now. The stars and the sliver of moonlight mocked her. She could not hope to find her husband’s body in the lake; it would wait until the sun returned.
Storm pushed her horns against Tatterhood’s back until she sat up. Storm grabbed a chunk of her dress in her teeth and pulled her toward the water, but Tatterhood did not follow: there was nothing she could do—nothing at all. Storm bit off a chunk of Tatterhood’s dress, chewed, swallowed, and walked ankle-deep in the water.
“You want me to go in the lake?” Tatterhood asked.
The goat did not respond. But perhaps, after so many days following the ring, she also felt the tug.
Tatterhood left the lantern on the ground and stepped into the water, holding her wooden spoon. Storm pushed her deeper in, causing her to stumble toward the center of the lake.
“Come with me?”
Storm made a guttural sound that from a human would be a snort.
“Wait for me?”
The goat climbed out of the lake and chewed on a plant.
“Very well.”
The water rose from her ankles to her knees, from her knees to her waist, and still she walked toward the center of the lake, almost blind in the darkness. Her purpose calmed her. Her goat said she should go into the lake, and so she would go. Fish and other creatures brushed past her body, but she had no fear of them.
The water reached her shoulders, and Tatterhood began to swim, slowly, steadily, until she reached the center of the lake, or as close as she could tell in this darkness. The tug of the ring continued, but the direction changed. It pulled her down.
Dead bodies floated—that she knew. Perhaps the ring had fallen off in the center of the lake and Trygve still lived.
With that hope inside her, Tatterhood took a deep breath and dove, kicking herself deep, deep, deeper into the water. Below, she saw a yellow-green glow, so she swam toward it. Something clear pressed against her spoon and her face, but she kicked herself through it. Suddenly, she found herself falling through the air. Her body hit the ground. She instantly leapt up, her wooden spoon at the ready.
She turned in a circle, making sure there was no imminent danger. She lowered her spoon slightly. She was standing in a strange bubble of air, twice her height, and extending several paces in each direction. Above her and on the sides of the bubble she could see the lake. On one side of the bubble was a rock face, and in the rock face stood a large wooden door, covered with troll carvings, and glowing with a strange yellow-green magic.
She rubbed the carvings on the door, which depicted trolls, some with two heads or three eyes or five arms. For trolls, the stranger they looked, the more successful they tended to be. How peculiar that trolls had taken her husband—trolls always left a trace. They despised the sun and preferred to bother humans during the long, cold nights of winter. After retrieving Ingridr’s head from a band of trolls, she had been certain the creatures would leave her family alone.
Tatterhood tucked her wet gray hair back into her tattered hood. The first moment with trolls was vital, for it was then that they were most likely to rip off your head or a leg, or even bash your skull. She took a deep breath, raised her wooden spoon with her right hand, opened the wooden door a crack, and slipped inside.
The trolls were eating a feast. For humans, a meal is a civilized affair, but for trolls it is a savage dance. To avoid becoming part of the meal, Tatterhood immediately joined in. Three trolls were ripping apart a deer, so she screamed a fierce battle cry, grabbed onto a leg, and pulled with all her might. The deer came apart with large amounts of blood.
Tatterhood had eaten raw meat with trolls before, but today the idea made her nauseous. It would not be good for the baby. She swung around her wooden spoon in her right hand, the deer leg in her left, weaving in and out of the trolls, roaring when they roared at her, ducking and twisting when they punched. A particularly nasty three-headed troll came at her so she whacked it in the groin with her spoon and threw the deer leg into one of its mouths.
After several hours, the feast died down and the trolls collapsed on the floor. Tatterhood
sat on the ground with them. After a minute, the troll she’d hit in the groin noticed her. “You—not a troll. What are you?”
She stood, her spoon raised. She kept most of her attention on the three-headed troll, but stayed aware of the others. “My name is Tatterhood. I’m human.”
“Hmpff,” said one of the troll’s other heads. “You sure? You don’t look a human.”
Another troll came up to her and sniffed her hair. “She don’t smell a human.”
Tatterhood chuckled. Trolls always thought that humans smelled so fresh and clean, but with a few days of travel, any human could smell as bad as a troll.
The trolls began to argue amongst themselves about what sort of creature she was. She knew that if their discussion continued for too long, it would pivot to whether she was edible, and trolls had a favorite way of answering that question. So she yelled, “Yaaaaah!”
The trolls stopped talking and stared at her.
“I’m looking for a human. A man-human.”
“No humans here,” several trolls muttered.
“There’s humans a walk south of the lake,” said another.
Tatterhood felt the tug of the ring, but with all the commotion, she couldn’t track its exact location. But Trygve was close, she knew it.
“Have any humans been here the last few days?” asked Tatterhood, hoping none of them had eaten Trygve. “Any of you seen a human at all?”
A three-armed troll in the back stood. Tatterhood thought it was a female troll, but could not be sure without closer inspection. “I saw a human. In the woods at night.”
“Did you eat it?” another troll asked.
“No,” said the troll. “But I got a human hand.”
The troll raised one of her arms. The troll’s hand was missing. Attached to the troll’s arm was Trygve’s hand—the hand Tatterhood had taken in marriage, the hand that had held hers just a few days ago, the hand that had caressed her in bed. The troll used Trygve’s hand to scratch her warty green nose. Trygve’s ring was still attached to the finger.
Chapter 5
Tatterhood marched through the trolls, whacking her spoon at the ones who tried to grab her. “That hand belongs to me!” she roared at the troll.
A puzzled look covered the troll’s face. “Humans have two hands.”
“Is she a human?” the trolls once again began to debate.
“It’s not for my arms,” yelled Tatterhood. “That hand was promised to me, and by no right could be given to you.” With a certainty, Tatterhood knew Trygve would not give up his hand willingly, no more than her sister had wanted to lose her head.
“The man wanted it,” admitted the troll. “But the lhoosh said I could take it, as long as I kept the ring on.”
At the word “lhoosh” the trolls reached for their clubs. If Tatterhood wasn’t mistaken, they feared the creature.
Tatterhood wondered at the type of creature who would get rid of the ring. Had the lhoosh known Tatterhood could track it? There was no magic in the ring, though perhaps there was a part of her in it, since she’d helped make it. Or maybe the lhoosh had sensed Tatterhood following, but it would take a deep magic to do that. And what sort of creature would cut off Trygve’s hand rather than simply remove the ring? And why give it to a troll?
Tatterhood could feel the unrest growing in the room. A fight could erupt at any moment, and she needed to get all the information she could before it did.
“What is the lhoosh?” she asked. “Does it live around here?”
“Not here, not here at all,” the trolls seemed to rumble.
“Is it big?” asked Tatterhood.
“Not big,” said the troll with Trygve’s hand. “Your size.”
“Is it a witch? An animal? A spirit?”
“Yes.”
“Yes to which question?” asked Tatterhood.
“Just yes,” the troll roared.
The other trolls stood up and began punching and hitting each other. Trolls never gave useful information—she should not have pressed them.
Tatterhood withdrew a metal chain from her pocket. She focused on a small bag of gold coins in her closet, and the bag switched with the chain.
Tatterhood opened the bag of gold for a moment—just long enough to let the troll see its contents—then cinched it tight. The troll leaned toward her greedily.
“Oh, you want this?” said Tatterhood. “Well, I’ll trade you for it. Say this for . . . for”—she pretended to ponder—“for that human hand.”
The troll growled. “But then I miss a hand.”
“You have two other hands. But you don’t have a bag of gold. And you can always get a new third hand.” Tatterhood thought of the village to the south of the lake. She did not want to send the trolls upon them—they likely had enough trouble as it was. “Human hands are small and weak. A bear paw would be much better.”
The troll nodded and reached with one of its troll hands toward the bag of gold. Tatterhood whacked the hand with her wooden spoon.
“Give me the hand first,” she said. “Then you’ll get your gold.”
“Gold first.” The troll grunted and tried to grab Tatterhood, but she once again used the wooden spoon to knock the arm aside. If she gave up the gold first, it might take hours of fighting to retrieve the hand.
Tatterhood made the gold disappear by switching it again with the chain. “It’s gone, unless you give me the hand.”
The troll roared. Tatterhood again switched the chain with the gold. “It’s back,” she said. “Now give me the hand.”
The troll spit on Tatterhood, but she did not flinch. Instead, she spat back at the troll.
“You are not human,” the troll declared, then used one of her other hands to rip Trygve’s hand off her own arm.
Tatterhood snatched Trygve’s hand and dropped the bag of gold on the ground. “I am a human,” she said. “Just a very ugly one.” Magic had played a hand in her birth—if her mother had not eaten the ugly flower she would probably not exist—and while it had certainly impacted her appearance and abilities, her core being, her values, and her concerns were all human.
While the troll stooped down for the bag of gold, Tatterhood sprinted toward the door to the bottom of the lake. “Look! That troll has gold!” she yelled, pointing back at the creature. The other trolls rushed toward the gold and began savagely bashing each other with their clubs and ripping each other’s hair.
Tatterhood felt a twitch of sympathy for the troll with the gold, but she pushed it aside. Trolls always found some excuse to fight, and she needed to make a quick escape so she could find Trygve.
She slipped out the door and closed it tight. She tucked Trygve’s hand in her pocket—it barely fit—and jumped through the magical bubble into the water. She swam as fast as she was able to the edge of the lake, where her goat slept next to the lantern. The silly animal hadn’t even stayed awake to keep watch for her.
She plunged her fingers into Storm’s soft, thick hair, needing its familiar comfort. The hair was a bit patchy right now, as the goat had shed some for the summer, but in a few months, it would all grow back. Storm lifted her head and bleated at her, then fell back asleep. Tatterhood had gotten Trygve’s hand, but she was no closer to finding Trygve himself. Her body shook with cold, starting with her hands and moving to her teeth. The sun’s early morning rays did nothing to warm her; it was hours before she normally woke, and the air was chill.
She took everything out of her wet pockets, trembling as she did so. She set the hand in the bowl of the wooden spoon.
With a bit of concentration, she switched her dress and tattered hood for a warm, dry set from her rooms. It felt much better to be out of the wet, muddy clothes, but still cold possessed her body. She stumbled through the forest, gathering sticks and branches, which she piled together.
As Tatterhoo
d used the lantern to light a fire, she almost burnt her hand. She threw more small branches in the fire than necessary, impatient to add larger wood. She looked at her husband’s hand, sitting limply on the spoon. How could he have been so foolish? If Trygve had told her about the letter, they could’ve prevented this entire mess, done something to protect him. And even if the lhoosh had still managed to capture him, at least she would know something about the creature and its whereabouts.
Tatterhood rubbed her arms and shuffled her feet back and forth. She was still cold. She took three larger pieces of wood and leaned them against each other. She put the final piece in with a little too much force and they all toppled over. One landed on the tiny flames, threatening to put them out.
She pushed at the pieces with a stick, repositioning them to give the fire some air. The flames licked the larger pieces of wood until they caught hold on them. The fire reached upward, growing. Tatterhood had hoped, with time, that the way she and the prince felt about each other would grow. In some ways it had. She felt fond of him, and thought he felt at least a bit fond of her. She ran her fingers through her wet hair, remembering how it had turned red. Of course he would find other women more beautiful than her—every woman in the land possessed more beauty, and yet for the most part, it had never bothered her. What bothered her was the way he only desired her if she was not herself, and the way, on their wedding day, he refused to even look at her gray face until she changed it.
The fire’s warmth finally penetrated her body, but it couldn’t reach her heart. She added more logs. She dried her wet hair, leaning it as close to the fire as she could without letting it burn. It would smell thick with smoke tomorrow, but she rather liked the smell.
Maybe she would find Trygve, but maybe she would not. She had no leads, no clues left to follow, only the word “lhoosh.” She tucked her mostly dry hair back into her hood. While she sought her husband, a part of her hoped she would not find him. Her life had been much simpler before she married him.