Astrid the Unstoppable

by Maria Parr

  “Calm down,” said Gunnvald, hushing her. He got up and grabbed his fiddle. With the snus under his lip, he tucked his precious instrument under his chin and performed an entire concert just for Astrid.

  Every once in a while, Liv, the church minister, would manage to cajole Gunnvald into playing in church. Astrid would usually go along too. She would sit in the gallery watching Gunnvald, in his creased white shirt and his suit trousers that were too short, as he closed his eyes and sent his miraculous music floating out above the people listening, up to the church rafters and all the way to heaven. Astrid felt so proud of Gunnvald then, but she thought it was almost just as nice listening to him play in the kitchen when it was only the two of them, Gunnvald wearing his woollen socks full of holes and with his hair all scruffy. Actually, it was almost better.

  Astrid’s dad had said that when Gunnvald was young, he used to play in a symphony orchestra in Oslo, but then he must have got tired of the whole symphony orchestra thing, because he moved home to Glimmerdal to take over the farm. Since then, Gunnvald had only played in the other villages in the area. Whenever Astrid went with Gunnvald to Barkvika or into town, people came over to him to talk about his fiddle music.

  “Music’s my heart,” Gunnvald had once told Astrid. “Without my fiddle, I’d already be stone dead.”

  On days like this, Astrid knew what Gunnvald meant. It was as if the sound of his fiddle crept into her heart, making her feel a bit better. Then, at the end, just as Astrid always hoped he would, Gunnvald closed his eyes and drew the bow softly and carefully over the strings, filling his warm kitchen with the notes of an old goat-herding lullaby. The tune made Astrid start crying again, because it was the most beautiful she knew and so wonderfully sad that it made her stomach turn blue.

  What did you need other children for when you had Gunnvald?

  When the music had finished and Gunnvald had sat down, Astrid remembered something important that she’d forgotten in all the confusion.

  “Who’s Anna Zimmermann?”

  Gunnvald looked as if he’d just had an electric shock. He gaped at Astrid, aghast. “How did, uh…” he spluttered. “Anna Zimmermann is dead.”

  “Yes, but who was she?”

  Had it not been for the fight, and had Gunnvald not still been feeling a little sorry for Astrid, then he might never have answered.

  “Many, many years ago, Anna Zimmermann was my girlfriend.”

  It seemed to take all of Gunnvald’s strength to say it.

  “You had a girlfriend?”

  Astrid looked at Gunnvald’s shabby jumper, at his wild hair, and at the rest of him. Had he had a girlfriend? Yes, imagine that, he had actually, he told her angrily.

  “Is it lovesickness you’ve got, then?” she asked cautiously.

  Astrid had great respect for lovesickness. She’d never had it herself, but her Auntie Eira had once. Auntie Eira’s lovesickness was so bad that it had made the whole of the old house creak and groan. She’d stayed in bed for an entire week, refusing to get up until all the men in the world had died of the plague. If it was something similar that Gunnvald was suffering from, then that explained why he’d been sitting in the summerhouse in the middle of winter.

  “Lovesickness, you little troll? Let’s be very clear: I’m not lovesick,” Gunnvald roared.

  Still, something was wrong: that much was easy to see. And if truth be told, Astrid was quite down herself.

  “Right, Gunnvald,” she said, getting up from her chair. “You’re going to go into the workshop and get started on the sledges again, and I’m going to cheer us up by telling the tale of the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff.”

  “The teeny-tiniest…?” Gunnvald grunted irritably.

  “Yes. Not many people have heard of the teeny-tiniest one. He never made his way into the normal version of the story,” Astrid explained. “His brothers, the other three billy goats Gruff, left him before they reached the river and the troll.”

  “Oh?” Gunnvald muttered, getting up reluctantly.

  “The other three billy goats were always mean to the teeny-tiniest one,” Astrid said as they entered the workshop. “They bullied him because he was small, and they ignored him when he wanted to play. They even ate his food. That’s why he was the teeny-tiniest one. Now he was really looking forward to reaching the hillside and making himself fat.”

  “Humph,” said Gunnvald.

  “But then they went off ahead of him, those stupid billy goats Gruff,” Astrid continued. “When the teeny-tiniest billy goat finally got to the bridge, it was almost night. Under the bridge lay the troll, who wasn’t feeling very well because the big billy goat Gruff had crushed him to bits, body and bones, as the story goes, when he’d tossed him out into the river earlier that day.”

  Yes, Gunnvald remembered that part, he grumbled as he turned one of the sledges upside down.

  “But the special thing about trolls, which very few people know,” Astrid said, “is that when someone’s sad, and especially if they’re small, then trolls are kinder than usual. Now, for example, the troll heard the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff’s sad bleating and returned to his senses. ‘Who’s that crying on my bridge?’ the troll asked cautiously.

  “‘It’s only me, the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff, who would really like to go up to the hillside to get fat, but I’m so hungry that I don’t have the strength,’ said the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff, sinking to his knees. The troll knew only too well how the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff was feeling. The troll wasn’t really bad; he was just very undernourished and lonely. That’s usually the problem with trolls,” she explained.

  Gunnvald nodded.

  “Then the troll said in his deep voice: ‘Now I’m coming to—’

  “‘Yes, come on then,’ whimpered the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff, as he was so lonely too. Even though he was badly injured, the troll dragged himself up onto the bridge and sat down on the railings, which began to bend quite a bit. The teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff used the last of his strength to jump up onto the railings too,” said Astrid. “So there he was, in the middle of the bending bridge, listening to the troll, who was telling him about his awful meeting with the three billy goats Gruff and especially about how the biggest one had charged him and tossed him into the river. ‘Did it hurt?’ the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff asked him worriedly.

  “‘Did it hurt?’ roared the troll. ‘It hurt so much it gave the whole kingdom rheumatism!’”

  Astrid took a break to think for a moment. Gunnvald wondered if the story had finished, and he looked up from the sledge, but then she went on:

  “The teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff felt very sorry for the troll and said, ‘When the three billy goats Gruff come home from the hillside, they’ll all be twice as fat. Then you can eat them, and be twice as full!’ The troll thought this was a brilliant idea, yet the more he considered it, the more he realized that right now, just thinking about billy goats made his stomach ache. The troll decided he would rather have a chat instead, since now his troll heart was beating as warmly and kindly as ever, as he sat there together with the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff.”

  “How’s this going to end?” Gunnvald asked impatiently.

  “Don’t get me all stressed, you old duffer,” said Astrid. “Otherwise it’ll be a bad story. Anyway, when troll hearts beat long enough, then trolls become less and less troll-like, and more and more like people. Eventually their hearts turn into completely normal human ones. If you absolutely must deal with a troll, then it’s much better to change it into a person than to crush it to bits, body and bones. This troll here, for example, spent so long sitting on the rail and having a nice chat with the teeny-tiniest billy goat Gruff that the troll was completely transformed into…”

  Astrid paused for effect, giving Gunnvald a dramatic look.

  “…into a gigantic man with tousled grey hair.”

  “Ha!” he shouted, pointing a menacing finger at her. “I know what you’
re getting at!”

  Astrid chuckled with satisfaction as she sat there on the woodworking lathe.

  “The gigantic man found himself a farm and a workshop at the top of a glen, not so far from the bridge and the river. Eventually, as the years went by, people forgot that he was really the troll from the story about the billy goats Gruff and thought he was a perfectly normal man. It’s only when he plays the fiddle that they realize he must have grown up under Glimmerdal Bridge, because he plays so beautifully that the water kelpie must have taught him.”

  “Ha!” said Gunnvald again.

  Astrid smiled. “And ickny-nacky-nory, that’s the end of the story.”

  Gunnvald told her it was the most deranged fairy tale he’d ever heard, but then he turned all serious and stared out of the window.

  “How did you know I’m really a troll, Astrid?”

  “You aren’t a troll any more. You used to be a troll,” she corrected him. “There’s a big difference.”

  When Astrid went to bed that evening, a lone light could be seen shining out from Gunnvald’s summerhouse. Fiddle music came trickling down across the glen. It sounded so beautiful and sad that it made her feel quite strange.

  Very solemnly she put her hands together. “Dear God, please take care of everybody who’s lovesick, especially Gunnvald, because now he’s playing his fiddle in the summerhouse in the middle of winter. Amen. And, by the way,” she added, “those boys… Pfft, no, just forget it; I couldn’t care less about them. Amen.”

  Then Astrid lay down, but she didn’t fall asleep. It was impossible to sleep after days like this when everything had been turned upside down.

  People were awake throughout Glimmerdal that night. Over in the summerhouse, an old troll was playing his fiddle because he’d received a letter. Across the river from him lay Astrid, with her lion’s mane of curls, listening and thinking about the fight and the boys and Anna Zimmermann. Meanwhile, down at Hagen’s Wellness Retreat, far away from all the music, two young lads lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

  Astrid had no way of knowing that the brothers had actually been there in the road because they’d gone out especially to look for her. She had no way of knowing that a young boy was lying in his bed down at Hagen’s Wellness Retreat, biting back tears because, for some compulsive reason or another, he couldn’t help fighting people when he really only meant to say hello. Neither did she have any way of knowing that, luckily, the boy in the other bed was trying to cheer him up by telling him that, in spite of everything, it had been quite a short and well-mannered fight, and that life was full of ups and downs, even if things had mostly been down recently.

  There are so many things we have no way of knowing, unfortunately. That’s just the way things are.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In which Astrid makes

  three new friends

  The next morning, Astrid was pacing around the living room in circles, with Snorri the Seagull hot on her heels.

  “Go and look for them,” her dad said after a while.

  Astrid paced around a little longer, before suddenly breaking off and stomping outside.

  She could go skiing. She could jump from the Little Hammer. She could follow the fresh fox tracks in the field. She could go and see Gunnvald. Astrid’s whole Sunday was free and empty and she could do whatever she wanted; but all she could think about were the two boys down at Hagen’s Wellness Retreat. Even though she didn’t want to think about them. She didn’t like spending time thinking about anyone who attacked innocent people for no reason.

  “I couldn’t care less about them!” she shouted up at the sky, sending the nearest falling snowflakes swirling back up towards the clouds.

  It was just that it was absolutely impossible not to think about them. What in heaven’s name were they doing down at that holiday camp anyway? Children weren’t allowed there.

  “Oh, good grief,” Astrid said eventually. She set off past Sally’s house, through the enchanted forest and all the way down to the holiday camp.

  She stopped outside the gate and saw them straight away. The boy she wasn’t supposed to touch was standing beneath the whirligig washing line, and the younger boy was swinging as he dangled from one of its metal bars. Before Astrid even knew what she was doing, she’d rolled a snowball and sent it flying. It hit its target, and the boy fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He leapt back up, furious, but when he saw who it was, he stopped dead.

  There they stood, the three of them: Astrid, the young boy, and the one she wasn’t supposed to touch. It was as if time stood still for a moment.

  “If you’d swung there much longer,” Astrid said eventually, “Mr Hagen would’ve clipped clothes pegs on you and you’d have been left dangling for ever.”

  The boy cautiously approached. Soon he was standing by the gate. His hair was sleek and brown under his bandana.

  “My name’s Astrid,” said Astrid.

  The boy drew a breath. Then he looked straight at her with his brown eyes and told her his name was Ola. “I’m eight years old. That’s Broder over there. He’s ten.” He nodded to the other boy, who was still standing under the washing line.

  “What’s his name?” Astrid asked.

  “Broder. His name’s Broder.”

  “I thought you were saying ‘Brother’. What sort of a name is that?”

  “A Danish one,” Ola barked.

  “Why doesn’t he come over here?”

  “He’s looking after Birgitte.”

  Then Astrid noticed a pink woolly hat sticking out of the snow, a short distance away from the boy who she now knew was called Broder. A little sister? Astrid’s heart did a somersault. There were so many things in life she wanted – an accordion, some rabbits, her own chainsaw, and some new twin-tip skis like her aunts had. She wanted Auntie Idun and Peter to get together, wellness retreats to be banned, and peace on earth. She wanted a rope swing over the swimming hole by the bridge at the mountain pasture, a four-poster bed like her classmate Andrea had, and she wanted the ice in Greenland to stop melting so her mum wouldn’t be so busy. But more than any of that, more than anything in the whole world, Astrid wanted a little sister.

  “What good would a little sister be to you?” Gunnvald had asked her once.

  “I’d teach her.”

  “Teach her how to get into trouble?”

  “Yup, that too.”

  Astrid, who had been forbidden from setting foot in Hagen’s Wellness Retreat, slipped through the gate undaunted. She walked straight up to the boy under the washing line and smiled at little Birgitte in the snow. She was a tiny, round thing and couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. Astrid reached out a hand to the boy looking after her.

  “My name’s Astrid.”

  “Broder,” said the boy, shaking her hand warily.

  He looked friendly, this big brother. His blond hair was slightly curly, reminding Astrid of a picture of one of the angels in Sally’s old Bible.

  “Welcome to Glimmerdal,” Astrid announced in her own unique way.

  Just as she was saying it, Mr Hagen came round the corner of one of the cabins.

  Auntie Eira had once told Astrid that if she ever met a bear, she should lie down and play dead. Then the bear would leave her alone. Before the other children could draw breath, Astrid swallow-dived into the fresh snow.

  Mr Hagen let out a roar. “Asny!”

  Astrid lay in the snow, playing dead with all her might, even though she was very keen to turn round and yell at him once and for all that her name was Astrid, not Asny, and if he called her the wrong name one more time, she would really go berserk. But she played dead. She even held her breath. Nobody can do anything wrong when they’re dead. Not even Astrid Glimmerdal.

  “Get out of here, Asny.”

  He was right above her. Astrid would have preferred to encounter a bear, if she were honest. Luckily, just then somebody rang the bell in reception, so Mr Hagen had to go.

  “Get
out of here!” he warned her as he left. “There are too many of you as it is!”

  Astrid lay still until Birgitte poked her with her plastic spade and said, “Good morning.” Then she rolled over and smiled.

  “Do you lot want to come and meet Gunnvald?”

  “Yes,” said Birgitte, who didn’t know who Gunnvald was, but surely anywhere was better than Hagen’s Wellness Retreat, with that angry man. Broder popped into one of the cabins to say where they were going, and then Astrid led the whole gang out through the gate to safety.

  Broder walked in the middle, holding Birgitte’s hand. Ola threw snowballs and jumped up onto the banks of snow.

  “Is that man cross with you?” Broder asked.

  “You could say that, yes,” Astrid admitted.

  “I think he’s cross with us, too. Why is he so angry?”

  “He’d prefer us to stay indoors until we’ve grown out of being children,” Astrid explained. “But we shouldn’t worry about what he says,” she added, as sure of those words as if Gunnvald himself had just said them.

  “Are you two mortal enemies?” Ola asked from the snow bank just above them, bending back a snow pole, then letting it go with a terrific twang.

  Astrid had to think about it for a moment. “I don’t know about mortal enemies,” she said. That might be taking it a bit far. Then she was struck by a terrible thought. “You’re not related to Mr Hagen, are you? If you’re allowed to stay at the holiday camp?”

  “Related to him? No! Are you totally deranged?” Ola shouted.

  “Mum was going to come here for one of those wellness breaks, and we were supposed to go to our dad’s place in Denmark,” Broder explained.

  “We used to live there when Mum and Dad were still married,” Ola added.

  “Demmak,” said Birgitte.

  “But then Dad said it wasn’t convenient for us to visit after all,” Broder mumbled. “It was a bit of a drama. Mum had to arrange for us to come here with her, even though it’s not allowed. We have to be as good as gold.”