by Joyce Holt
"So I have time. To find her. To get her out. Please help me, Valka! I must get in!"
"Fool! They put you in pot, too!"
"Please help me cross the threshold, Valka, please!"
"Nei, not go close, not me. Maybe they hide there, all this a trap, catch me, make marry."
The hulder-maid was no help. No time to waste running down to the hall at Kvien. Warriors and weapons would be no use in finding an opening into the mountain. Jorunn turned aside, hands pressed to her temples, racking her memory. Ways a-plenty she knew to ward from trolls, dwarves, and tusse-folk, to keep them away – but how to follow after?
"Flying rowan," she cried. She set off at a run downhill. She needed to search among large, aged trees in the thick of the woods. Sometimes rowan saplings took root in the branches of oaks and elms.
Valka came clumping after. "Wait, wait, foolish plan!"
Jorunn faltered in her dash. "A flying rowan won't do it?"
"Jo, it will, but not wise to go there, to Svartalfheim. You end up in pot, too!"
Jorunn shook her head and pushed on. She found an everyday, ground-rooted rowan, and snapped herself an armload of twigs.
"Fool, fool, fool," Valka grumbled. "Turn around. Look up."
Jorunn followed the order, searched the branches of a twisted oak, saw in the crook of a heavy bough a red-skinned sprig with glossy green foliage. A young rowan, reaching with twin spines toward the sky like a twiggy crane about to take flight.
Jorunn squeaked with joy, dropped her armload, scrambled up the gnarled trunk. "Flying rowan," she murmured, gently dislodging its roots from the crumble of leaf mould in the crook. "Lend me your aid, I beg."
She dropped back to the ground, where Valka stood with arms crossed, one foot tapping the ground.
"Take all," the hulder-maid muttered, jerking her chin toward the pile of rowan twigs. "You need all you can carry."
"My thanks, Valka. Many, many thanks!"
"Soon you not be thanking. You be wishing I sit on you, hold you here."
Jorunn set off again, striking at an angle that would lead to her back-trail. She had run with abandon. Her spoor would be easy to follow.
Valka followed along, still muttering.
"I thought you didn't want to go anywhere near the threshold," Jorunn called over her shoulder.
"Won't. You still need help. One thing more." She said nothing else until they crested a rise in the high terrain. "Tie them in bundle," she ordered. "Sit down. Quiet. I call help."
Jorunn hunkered down among the heather and bound up all the rowan sprigs but the live sapling, while Valka drew out her flute and piped a thin, high melody. Calling for help? Jorunn wondered. They had left the goats far behind. She looked this way and that over the mounding moorland. So the magical flute could summon as well as drive away?
No goats came gamboling, nor any other creature. Birdsong quieted until there was nothing to hear but the flute's trill and the hush of the high mountain breeze. The sweet scent of sun-warmed spruce wafted up the slopes from the forest below.
Why oh why could they not have had sun last evening? The troll would not have ventured out before full dark, and she would have had a fire blazing by then.
Jorunn took up her bundle and the forked sapling. She felt the wind in her hair as she stood and turned about. No creature moved anywhere in sight.
The song cut off. Valka gave a cry of glee and plunged a hand into the heather. She came up with a white-skinned snake, gripped lightly behind the head. The pale body whipped about.
"See how I hold?" Valka asked. "You do same. Here."
"Ah," Jorunn said as she tucked her bundle under an arm and took the flailing serpent, "what do I do with it?"
"You get in? Drop snake." Valka stepped close and slung her own waterskin by its strap over Jorunn's shoulder. "One more thing." She spat in her hands, and before Jorunn could dodge, smeared the spittle down both arms. "Cover up man-smell. Now go, fool." The hulder-maid flapped hands at her. "Remember always: Eat not, drink not, nothing but water you take from own world."
"My thanks, Valka. All my thanks!"
"When you swimming in pot, not so many thanks then." The hulder-maid turned and stomped away over the heather. The tip of her tufted tail twitched like that of a forest cat stalking after prey.
As Jorunn hurried along, she gave many a glance to the snake. She held it right behind the dark V-shape that marked its crown like the rune for rain. It wrapped the rest of its length around her wrist and squeezed as if she were a mouse. "I'm sorry," she told it. "But I have great need."
Jorunn made her way back to the cairn at cliff's foot. The sun stood high in the sky. She hoped the midpoint of day would work, for she didn't dare wait until the magical in-between time of dusk. She hoped, how she hoped she wasn't already too late.
The snake had stopped writhing. Now it hugged her wrist and seemed to thrum against her skin. Bundle still tucked under her arm, Jorunn held out the forked sapling and murmured, "Flying rowan, show me the unseen way." She walked along the base of the cliff, waving her divining rod from side to side. Along the whole face of the rock wall, there was only one site that tugged at her grip.
The sheer wall looked no different than the other rough reaches of stone. Jorunn studied the spot for several long heartbeats. With her feet she scraped up two small gravel cairns, one on either side. She took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The mountain melted around her.
45 – Realm of Trolls
Jorunn could see nothing. The gloom hung deeper than a starless night in midwinter. She stumbled about, crashing into stone walls, tripping over humps and hurdles in the mountain's gut.
She put down her rowan bundle and the sapling, and tried looking through the key while murmuring her mistress' name. She saw swirling, hazy, muted colors, but no glimpse of Gyda. It was too late, it must be too late.
Panic rose to choke in her throat. If she were wise, she'd back right out again and flee for home. She tried looking back to Kvien. Was the steading in a turmoil at the absence of her mistress? Were there strangers in the byre, young men set to go viking? Was Ketill wandering around, asking her whereabouts?
Her hand shook. She couldn't sight in on Kvien. She was lost, in-between worlds. Horror churned in her belly, her heart, her throat. She took one step backward. "Oh, Mistress Gyda—" she moaned in farewell.
At the lady's name, the snake twisted free, dropped to the ground, and wriggled ahead.
Jorunn gasped. It glowed in the dark, and its slither against the stone floor seemed to hiss, "Gyda! Gyda!"
There was still hope for her mistress, hope as slim as the slender body beckoning on the path ahead. One tiny spark of hope. Jorunn scooped up the rowan twigs, braced her shoulders and set off after the snake.
Tunnels branched right and left. The snake's pathway rose and fell and dipped and swung. At last a different light appeared ahead – pale, dim, cheerless. Jorunn squeezed through a crack into the open. Heavy-bodied trees loomed all around, darkened the air above. The snake reared its head, blinked its golden eyes at Jorunn, flicked its tongue once, and whispered, "Danger!" It darted into a crevice between boulders at the foot of the cliff they had just exited.
"Wait!" Jorunn cried. "Don't leave me!"
But it was gone.
She looked all around. Nothing moved. The cliff wall vanished upward into mist. The mouth of this tunnel looked like many other cracks splitting the stones. She piled up a cairn to mark the spot, and planted the flying rowan in the midst for good measure. As she straightened she came eye to eye with a wolverine that had crept silently out upon a ledge.
Beady eyes like Valka's. Long, curved, wicked claws backed by a low powerful body fringed with heavy fur. Jorunn lurched a step away, holding her bundle of rowan twigs like a shield. Her heart clamored against her ribs. These fragile sticks, what defense could they provide? She fumbled with her other hand for the little broken-bladed knife that hung from her belt. But the c
reature stared at the rowan sprigs, cocking its head and furrowing its nose. "Wise human beastie," it snarled. "But have you wisdom enough?"
Her legs itched to flee, but she fought the impulse. She knew enough about predators not to be so foolish. Instead she stepped forward. "Wit and wisdom alone won't win," she blurted, grabbing the first words that popped to mind, and jabbed with her twiggy weapon.
The wolverine hunched backward, baring its teeth. "Enough you do have, perhaps," it rasped. With a ripple of fur it melted back into the shadows.
In Svartalfheim, do all animals speak? Jorunn wondered, glancing on every side. First the snake, and now a wolverine. She pulled out the key and again called the name of her mistress once, twice, thrice, as she turned in an arc.
A glimpse, just a glimpse, but there was Gyda, slumped against a curved wall. Her mouth drooped slack and her eyes seemed glazed, but Jorunn saw her blink. Still alive. She set off in the direction the key had shown.
Huge yew trees towered on every side, their rough, ribbed trunks as big around as the girth of a storage loft. Branches thick with matted needle-like leaves met overhead. Through rare breaks in the canopy she saw more mist overhead. The yews soon gave way to spruce, dark and dense in this world of black and gray.
As she headed away from the cliffs, the land sloped down-wards, rumpling with knolls and ravines. There was little underbrush, but fallen trees and deadwood blocked the view beneath the lowering branches. A mournful cry sounded in the distance. Jorunn heard scrabblings behind her no matter which way she faced but caught sight of no creature.
In one low damp spot, great toadstools crowded, big as cheeses, their pale gray-green flesh streaked with purple. Jorunn leaped across, crushing one on the far side. A cloud of foul stink arose, a stink she'd smelled before. The toadstools Valka loved, that Klump had stewed and laced with drowsy-herbs to lure his reluctant bride.
Jorunn hurried past. On the banks of a dark cold stream she found the footprints of trolls and the beginnings of a path.
She pressed on. According to the key, this trail led toward Gyda, climbing once more toward great walls of rock. Jorunn guessed that if the mist parted she would find a giant of a mountain rising sheer into an empty sky.
Heavy voices grumbled from a cave that appeared up and ahead to the left. No warm firelight flickered. These jotun-folk hungered for the dark. She kept going, for the key led onwards along the foot of the berg.
Ponderous footfalls sounded. Jorunn slid behind the trunk of a huge gnarly spruce. Three great figures tromped down the trail toward the stream. One sniffed as they passed, as loud as a bull's snort. "Human beastie," it muttered. "Smell it?"
"Been smelling, since they drag it to larder. They better share." There came the sound of smacking lips.
Jorunn clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. Was it her breath they smelled? Or her body? She could do nothing to stifle that scent. Her own nose twitched at the over-riding stench of crushed toadstool and Valka's spittle.
Once the trolls had passed she pushed on, trembling. More caverns gutted the cliff wall. Foul odors arose. How could they smell her through all this? It stank like a midden.
Voices rose in anger not far ahead, sounding like a thunderstorm. The ground shook and something smashed. Jorunn hid again as two hulking forms rolled into sight like giant bears wrestling. They hurtled against one of the towering spruce trees, and it shuddered, sending down a rain of musty needles. When they crashed into an outcropping of granite, they broke apart and staggered to their feet. They reeled towards each other again, clapped each other on the back, and roared with laughter.
Jorunn gawked. She waited while their thundering footsteps pounded up the slope to a cave. She had just stepped back on the path when an owl swooped past her head. "Whoo? What you do?"
She leaped to the side, hefting her bundle like a shield. Valka's waterskin thumped against her side. The owl settled onto a branch and stared without blinking.
Jorunn looked forward and back, to every side and in the branches above, all the while trying to stifle her panic. She pulled out the key again. "Gyda!" she whispered. "Where are you in all this horrible place?"
Still ahead. She pushed on.
The trail drew closer now to the cliff face and the dark dwellings of the ogres. On the threshold of one cavern a wolverine lolled, for all the world like a watchdog. Its beady eyes followed Jorunn's progress. As she came even, it held one paw up to its mouth, spreading the toes, extending those knife-blade claws, and licked them one by one.
The cliff wall curved into a great stony bay, and there in the crook of the mountain gaped an opening larger than any before. This is where the trail led, and this is where the key pointed. And this is where many hulking boulders beside the path proved not to be boulders at all but trolls sitting out in the open and rumbling the ground with heavy banter.
Jorunn gazed in despair at her goal. Trolls could see like forest cats in the dark, and would catch her scent if she crept any closer.
"You smell like Valka," gurgled a voice from behind.
46 – Troll-Child
Jorunn whirled to face a hulder child with a wide dimpled face, a mop of black hair, and a tufted tail that twitched and twirled.
"Why you smell like Valka?" the creature asked, hopping off a boulder and circling Jorunn, long nose twitching with sniffs. Shorter than Svana – it must be quite young.
Jorunn warily answered, "Valka is my friend."
"I missing her."
"Right now, I missing her, too." Jorunn threw a glance over her shoulder at the gathering of trolls. They hadn't seemed to notice anything yet.
"She coming home soon?"
Jorunn shrugged. "She hides from her betrothed. He hates music."
The child grumbled. "Want Valka come home! She play tunes, make wolverines to dance."
Dancing wolverines? Jorunn arched her brows. That would be a sight.
The creature still circled, snuffling at her, licking its lips. "You another white-skin. Yummy-smelling white-skin."
Jorunn drew a sharp breath. "Another white-skin?"
"First one not smell like Valka. I eat that one, if they let me. But won't let." She stuck out a bottom lip that looked like trout carcass, and stomped about, tail lashing. "I make them sorry they not let me!"
"You know about other white-skin? Still alive?" Jorunn held her breath.
"Oh, ja. Still soft and juicy. And stinky. Mor grumps about stink whenever she take food to white-skin."
Jorunn stifled a gasp at that dire news. "She feeds the white-skin?"
"She try. I think sleepy spell too strong. Klump grumps that stinky white-skin gonna dry out if don't drink a slurp or two." The child bared jagged teeth that looked too large for her mouth. "Dry out, no good for him, throw it out, I get it. Yum!"
Jorunn stepped back, braced a shaky hand against a tree and tried to slow her thumping heart. Gyda had neither eaten or drunk. Nor been eaten. There was still hope of a rescue. And the mention of the "sleepy spell" triggered memory of a folk tale. She clutched the rowan twig bundle to her chest. It held the key to Gyda's rescue.
"You want see it?" the small troll asked. "I like to poke, make it squeak."
"I'm afraid – I'm afraid your family will put a sleepy spell on me, and poke me and try to make me squeak."
The child grinned, its fangs gleaming in the gloom. "They would, they would!"
Jorunn bent over, hands on knees. "Listen, little lump," she said, forcing out the term of endearment that Valka had used for her goats. "I'll take a message to Valka for you, but I can't do that if they put a sleepy spell on me. What would you like me to tell her?"
"Come home! Come home! I punch that old Klump if he don't leave her alone." The little hulder danced around in glee, her tail lashing again.
Jorunn glanced at the other trolls uphill, but they kept on rumbling to each other.
The troll-child grabbed Jorunn's hand and pulled. "I get you in to see white-skin, Valka-friend. But firs
t you help me sneak sweet-yums. Then I take you to white-skin."
"Are you sure the big folk won't see me? Or smell me?"
The troll-child snickered. "I a dee-vee-ous little thing. That's what Mor says, so must be true. Come, this way."
Jorunn followed the little hulder away from the trail, winding uphill at a slant through the forest then into a gully. Behind a boulder at the base of the cliff the troll-child wormed her way into a crack and disappeared.
Jorunn drew a deep breath and went after.
She tripped and stumbled through the dark. How much easier it had been to follow the white snake, its glimmering body showing every rise and bump. All she got here was a flash of glowing eyes as the troll-child turned to urge her on.
"Is Valka your sister?" Jorunn asked in a low voice.
There came a stifled giggle. "Nei, my Mor and Mormor be cooks for her olde-olde-mama. They sneak me bites from Queen's dish, before goes to table," the hulder boasted. "I make them."
Jorunn shuddered at the talk about eating and cooks. When you swimming in pot, not so many thanks then, Valka had said.
They emerged in what must have been a storeroom, for Jorunn barked her shin on a crate and stumbled against a stack of chests. She saw the silhouette of the child peering around the edge of the doorway and beckoning her on.
In the room beyond, bowls of softly glowing lichen served as lamps.
"I think all go outside," said the child, "savoring dew. Come."
This was a pantry, a pantry for a giant. Whole tree trunks must have gone into the making of the shelves. A rickety ladder leaned against one rank of shelving – for the use of smaller-sized hulder-folk, Jorunn guessed.
The carcass of some huge animal hung from a hook in the high stone ceiling. Jorunn sidestepped a puddle on the floor. Blood. Drops plinked. She shuddered and hurried on, following to another cavernous room.
"There be sweet-yums." The hulder child pointed. On a table taller than Jorunn stood a huge bronze pot.
"Ah, ja, I can smell it."