Astrid the Unstoppable

by Maria Parr

  “Oops,” she said, as she heard the tinkling of broken glass.

  She cycled home at top speed and fetched all the pocket money she’d been saving. The money was in a beautiful small wooden box she’d made at Gunnvald’s. She took the box to Mr Hagen and solemnly said a big sorry.

  But Mr Hagen didn’t want the box. He took out the money and gave her back the box with a grunt. “What would I want that for?” he asked, irritated.

  What kind of a question was that? A rich man like him could keep it and put money in it, of course, Astrid thought. But Mr Hagen snorted and closed the door.

  That was the day Astrid gave up trying to be friends with Mr Hagen. In fact, she gave up on Mr Hagen altogether, from his topmost wisp of hair to his smallest toenail. How could anybody on earth say no to a box like that? She’d spent a whole Saturday with the wood-burning pen drawing two birds on the lid.

  “That man knows nothing about art,” Gunnvald said when she told him what had happened.

  “He knows nothing about anything!” Astrid said angrily.

  “That campsite is a sorry sight,” Astrid said, back in the kitchen. “Not a single child on holiday. It’s a good job you’ve got me to liven things up, Gunnvald, otherwise you’d be stuck sitting here, eating your dinner all alone.”

  Gunnvald bent his long body as he sat down on a kitchen chair, his knees and the wooden chair creaking together. “You’re right there,” he muttered.

  They tucked into some fried potato dumplings, meat and turnips. Astrid wondered what it was that always made Gunnvald’s cooking tastier than any other food she had tried.

  “Do you know what’s ready for testing in there?” Gunnvald suddenly asked while he chewed, nodding in the direction of the workshop.

  Silently Astrid put down her fork. “The sledges?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  In which Sledge Test Run No. 1 is

  launched, and Astrid is threatened

  with a call to the police

  Astrid and Gunnvald always have new projects on the go. But the one they were working on that winter really was the bee’s knees. At least that’s what Astrid and Gunnvald thought. They were designing the perfect steerable sledge. They were going to make one that was as stable as a ferry, as fast as a motorbike, and as beautiful as Gunnvald’s late grandmother. If they could pull it off, they were planning to start full production of steerable sledges before next Christmas, which would make them as stinking rich as Mr Hagen.

  They’d had the idea one day when Astrid had been out with her toboggan.

  “Rusty reindeer, toboggans don’t have much oomph these days,” she’d complained to Gunnvald.

  “Pfft, toboggans!” Gunnvald had said. “What you need is a sledge with runners that you can steer.”

  “Where can you get hold of one of those, then?” Astrid had asked.

  “You can’t get hold of proper steerable sledges any more.”

  They’d have to get hold of one somehow, Astrid insisted, if it really was true that they were the best.

  She was as sharp as a starling, Gunnvald thought, and she was right.

  The next day he drove into town and came back with his pickup full of sledge runners. Since then, Gunnvald had been welding, bending and hammering away with gusto. They had a lot of things to test out if they were going to find what worked best. The sledge they were going to make wouldn’t be some shoddy piece of work; they were going to call it the Glimborghini. Astrid went from house to house, collecting all the wrecked sledges in the glen. Gunnvald said it was important to learn from previous manufacturers’ mistakes.

  “How’s the sledge-making going?” people often asked.

  “Oh, not too badly,” Astrid and Gunnvald replied, trying not to let the cat out of the bag.

  But now it had been several days since Astrid had last been in the workshop. She’d been busy with other things. She almost fainted with joy when Gunnvald opened the door, and there were three nearly finished sledges sitting on the floor in front of the sanding machine.

  “What we need now is a test pilot. Preferably a child,” Gunnvald murmured, looking across at Astrid, the only child in all of Glimmerdal.

  Three steerable sledges at the top of a slope several kilometres long: it was such a glorious sight that it deserved to have an opera written about it. Gunnvald paced excitedly while Astrid tightened her cycling helmet.

  “By the time winter’s over, we’ll have a sledge that can slide all the way down to the shoreline. I bet my snus tin on it,” Gunnvald announced, his voice booming.

  Astrid stood gaping. She hated snus, but besides that, it was four kilometres down to the shoreline, with flat parts, uphill stretches and everything. Was it possible to go so far on a sledge? Yes, Gunnvald thought it was, but not yet. First they had to do some testing and a few calculations.

  There were two types of brakes: a lever on one of the sledges, which Astrid was to pull with her hand, and a footbrake on one of the others.

  “What about the third sledge?” Astrid asked, looking at the one that had just a steering wheel, and no brakes.

  “When we’ve found out which braking system works best, we’ll install it on that one. Its runners are real corkers,” Gunnvald said excitedly, rubbing his hands together.

  He led her over and up onto the first sledge. “This one might not turn as much as it should, but it’s the brakes I’m most interested in to start with,” he explained.

  Astrid grabbed onto the steering wheel, and Gunnvald held up his walkie-talkie. They had to contact Peter before she set off, so that he could stop the traffic.

  Peter lives in the house with the digger outside. He’s a friend of theirs, and he’s in love with Auntie Idun. Auntie Eira told Astrid. But Peter’s so shy that he never does anything about it – he just carries on the same, year in, year out. Watching it’s enough to drive you daft, according to Gunnvald.

  “Test pilot ready. Over,” Gunnvald grumbled into his walkie-talkie.

  After some crackling and scratching, Astrid heard Peter’s voice. “Traffic stopped. Over.”

  “Roger!” Gunnvald shouted, and before Astrid could gather her thoughts, the old man gave her a push with considerable force down the hillside.

  Compared with tobogganing, this was something else. Astrid was down by the bridge before she could even think of the word “bridge”. She searched frantically with her foot for the brakes. There was the pedal! She put her foot on it as hard as she could – too hard. The sledge flew into a massive skid as it zipped across the bridge, sliding on only one runner. When she tried to come out of the skid, the sledge tipped over onto the other runner. It was impossible to stay in control.

  “Woo-hoo!” Astrid shouted, and then, just as she was really getting going, she and the sledge flew through the air like two strange birds and landed with a great whomp in the powdery snow.

  For the second time that day, Astrid Glimmerdal found herself lying in deep snow, wondering whether or not she was still alive. Then she felt something scratching her face.

  I’m still alive, she thought, struggling to lift her head out of the snow.

  Blocking out the daylight was a pair of narrow legs, and Astrid suddenly realized what it was that felt prickly against her face. Sally’s poor rose bush. There it had been lying under the snow, all unsuspecting, when along flew Astrid Glimmerdal, waking it up from its winter slumber. Astrid lifted her gaze from Sally’s legs up to Sally herself. She was standing with her box of pills in one hand, looking suspiciously at the sledge, now separated from its pilot.

  “What in heaven’s name are you up to now?” she asked.

  “Gunnvald and I are testing sledges,” Astrid explained, lifting her vehicle out of the snowdrift. “It’s not dangerous.”

  “You think I believe that!” Sally exclaimed. “Just be careful you don’t break your neck.”

  Astrid promised to do her best to avoid that. “Bye, Sally!”

  “What a rubbish sledge,” Astrid compla
ined, once she was back up at the top with Gunnvald.

  “What a rubbish driver,” Gunnvald retorted.

  “Teach me, then!” she shouted angrily.

  So, as the sun approached Storr Peak, Gunnvald explained all he knew about the noble art of sledge steering. He knew quite a lot.

  A voice suddenly crackled out of the walkie-talkie. “Where’s the test pilot? Over.”

  “She’s in training!” Astrid yelled.

  “Over,” Gunnvald added.

  Communications fell silent for a moment, but then: “Should I start the traffic again, or what? Over.”

  “No way! Over and out,” Gunnvald announced, plonking Astrid down onto the second sledge, which was a shorter version of the first. “This one’s better,” he promised. “And so are you, now.”

  Astrid just had time to make a note of where the brake was before he gave her another massive push.

  Hairy hedgehogs, this was something else! Astrid suddenly had full control. The sledge was obeying her orders just like that. When she reached the bridge, she braked elegantly with her legs, like Gunnvald had just taught her, and stopped herself from skidding. Sally had come all the way down to the road, and Astrid went past so fast that she made Sally’s skirt flutter.

  “Yoo-hoo, Sally. This is pretty dangerous!” Astrid shouted, leaning forward.

  Onto the scrapheap with the toboggans! She was jet-powered now! As she zoomed through the enchanted forest, she was showered with clumps of snow that couldn’t cling to the trees any more, but Astrid’s sledge drove straight on through them all. The words to a new sledging song came to her, all by themselves:

  “O-aaaah, here comes a sledge a-rushing fast,

  O-aaaah, here comes a sledge a-whizzing past.”

  She was approaching Hagen’s Wellness Retreat now, so she sang even more loudly.

  “O-aaaah, it’s going at a mile a minute.

  Make way, a sledge in the middle of the rooo-aaad!”

  She caught a glimpse of Mr Hagen between the campsite reception and one of the cabins.

  “In the middle, in the middle of the road – o-aaaah.”

  She went on singing as she sped by. Soon she spotted Peter in the distance.

  “O-aaaah, here comes a sledge a-braking,

  O-aaaah, here comes a sledge a-snaking.”

  With a beautiful skid that made the snow crystals dance in the last sunbeams of the day, Astrid Glimmerdal came to a halt one centimetre from Peter’s black safety boots.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, getting up. Her legs ached from sitting in the same position for so long.

  Peter ushered her carefully over to the bank of snow at the side of the road. There was a long queue of cars behind him. They’d been stopped there since she started her first sledge run. Which was some time ago.

  “Luckily I actually look like somebody carrying out roadworks,” Peter said, nodding towards his digger. “They’re all heading up to Hagen’s Wellness Retreat.”

  Of course, it was Friday, Astrid remembered. She took a good look at each car. Old couples ready to go cross-country skiing, as far as the eye could see. She sighed. Just think: despite all the snow and sledging that Glimmerdal had to offer, there still wasn’t a single child visiting on their holidays. It was a disgrace.

  When they were rattling back up the glen in Peter’s brown Volvo, Astrid told him that Gunnvald thought they could make a sledge that would run all the way down to the shoreline.

  “He’s already got one with really good runners,” she explained, as she watched the snowdrifts rushing past the window. Then she stopped and closed her mouth, because there was Mr Hagen, in the middle of the road, looking like a deranged musk ox.

  Peter slowed down and stopped. The car window’s winding handle was broken, so he had to open the door. It hit Mr Hagen in the stomach.

  “What’s this I hear about roadworks?” Mr Hagen snarled. “My guests are saying they had to wait for an hour before they could get past.”

  Peter cleared his throat.

  “Do you want me to report you to the police, you idiot?” Mr Hagen shouted.

  Astrid leant forward in her seat. “You mustn’t call people idiots,” she scolded, giving Mr Hagen her sternest look.

  “You can when it’s true!” Mr Hagen shouted. “The same goes for you, Asny, and even more so. If I see you on that sledge in the middle of the road one more time, I’m calling the police.”

  Before Astrid could say that her name wasn’t Asny, Mr Hagen stuck his flushed head into the car. “It’s impossible to develop any proper tourism around here while you’re on the loose! Did you know that? If I were your father, I wouldn’t let you out!”

  Astrid’s eyes narrowed. What a horrible thing to say! “Mr Hagen, you’re a—”

  Peter shut the door. “You mustn’t call people idiots,” he said nicely, stepping on it as they drove into the enchanted forest.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which Astrid doesn’t worry

  about what Mr Hagen says

  and letters fall from the sky like snow

  It’s typical for people like Mr Hagen to always ruin anything good or fun. Astrid was so worked up that she was pacing back and forth in Gunnvald’s farmyard, waving her arms.

  “And he still calls me Asny!” she shouted to finish, so that Gunnvald would see just how wrong it all was.

  But Gunnvald merely huffed. “We shouldn’t worry in the slightest about what that stick-in-the-mud says,” he said simply. He invited Peter in for a cup of coffee to thank him for his good work.

  But Astrid stayed sitting outside in a snowdrift, going over and over what Mr Hagen had said until her stomach hurt. Everything fun was bad for tourism! Even sledging. That lousy, wretched, swollen udder of a wellness camp. Shouldn’t people be allowed to live in the glen too? She cast a sly glance at the three sledges. How dare Mr Hagen call Peter an idiot! Peter was so good and kind that his eyes sparkled like lights. How dare Mr Hagen say that her dad shouldn’t let her out! And how dare he say that he’d report her to the police if she went sledging in the middle of the road again! Astrid was so angry that the snow boiled where she sat.

  She could hear Gunnvald playing his fiddle in the kitchen. The notes filtered out through the door, dancing in the blue afternoon sky. The third sledge, the one with the good runners, was gleaming, shining out to her, almost as if it were whispering “speed and self-confidence”. When Gunnvald had told her that they shouldn’t worry about what Mr Hagen said, maybe he’d really meant that she should go for another sledge run. Right down the middle of the road.

  Astrid cast a quick glance over her shoulder and sat down tentatively on the unfinished sledge. It didn’t have brakes, but she’d barely needed to brake on the last run. She could use her legs. The sledge was low and short, and it felt good sitting on it. She turned the steering wheel back and forth a couple of times. It felt very good.

  “Test pilot ready. Over and out,” she muttered to herself, pushing off from the ice-covered farmyard before she had time to think twice.

  When Astrid looked back on it afterwards, what she remembered best was the feeling in her stomach just as she edged off down the slope. The little thunderbolt of Glimmerdal’s curly hair was blown back along the sides of her helmet like go-faster stripes. When she reached the bridge, she had to give it all she had to make the turn. Down by Sally’s place, she brushed against the bank of snow but managed by the skin of her teeth to manoeuvre the sledge back on track. She held on to the wheel as if her life depended on it. Actually, her life probably did depend on it right then. Swoosh, into the woods. Ploff, snow in her face. F-shoom, out of the woods. The air against her face made her eyes water.

  “Ooooh!” cried Astrid, half-excited and half-scared.

  Who would have thought it was possible to buffet and shake like that! Faster, faster, faster. Astrid was so gripped by her speed that she almost didn’t notice she was approaching Hagen’s Wellness Retreat. She even forgot to sing.
<
br />   That was when she saw the post van. It was parked in the middle of the road next to the holiday camp. Finn, the postman, was running late that day; Astrid barely had time to reflect on this before she realized she needed to brake. The only thing was that she didn’t have any brakes. She swung her feet to the ground and pushed her ski boots against the frozen road surface, scraping and rattling enough to make her teeth chatter. Surely she’d never manage to stop in time. Astrid was about to throw herself into the bank of snow when she saw that there was just enough space for a sledge to squeeze past the post van. Her eyes narrowed. She pulled her legs back in tight and aimed the sledge. Then Astrid Glimmerdal rode on between the snowy verge and the van with plenty of speed and self-confidence.

  It would all have gone perfectly, if it hadn’t been for Finn. Suddenly he appeared from behind the post van carrying a whole box full of letters and newspapers.

  “Look out!” Astrid screamed.

  Finn threw his box up in the air and launched himself into the bank of snow, while Astrid Glimmerdal slid straight into a blizzard of bills and letters. An open copy of the local paper smacked into her face, covering her eyes and plunging her into darkness.

  All good things come in threes. Once again she was flung into the deep snow, landing on her head. It’s amazing how many times that can happen over the course of one Friday afternoon. Astrid quickly freed herself from the newspaper and struggled to her feet. Finn sat there, a postman almost run over, his post spread across half of Glimmerdal.

  “Is that one of Gunnvald’s new sledges?” he asked curiously.