Astrid the Unstoppable

by Maria Parr

  “And we’re doing our veeeeery best,” shouted Ola, practically singing the word “veeeeery” in a high-pitched voice. Then he stopped, his eyes wide. “Astrid, there’s a lady spying on us!”

  Before Astrid could stop him, Ola had made a snowball and sent it flying at top speed towards Sally’s windowpane. It struck, and Astrid saw Sally’s perm drop behind her pot plant.

  Sally was just getting up from the floor when Astrid came rushing in, Ola hot on her heels.

  “Are you alive?” Astrid asked worriedly, stomping across the floor without taking off her shoes, tracking snow across the carpet.

  “Who’s that with you?” Sally asked weakly, as Astrid picked up her glasses and put them back on her face.

  “His name’s Ola. He thought you were some kind of spy,” said Astrid. “Actually, come to think of it, I suppose that’s what you are.”

  Sally said hello to Ola, and he obligingly answered all of her questions. He told her that he came from town, he lived in a block of flats, and he’d quite recently turned eight. Sally kept on asking questions.

  “There are another two out in the snow,” Astrid explained, “so we’ll have to get going.”

  “Do you want some squash?” Sally asked them.

  Astrid shook her head. Auntie Eira once told her that only a very generous person would say that Sally’s squash was squash at all. It looks more like water that something suspect has happened to, or at least that’s what Auntie Eira thinks. But really Sally’s squash is all right, maybe just a little weak. It’s more that Gunnvald’s squash is so good it’s ungodly, as Auntie Idun says.

  Astrid usually hangs around with Gunnvald in his kitchen towards the end of the summer when he has his big squash-making extravaganzas. He boils and strains the fruit, tastes it and smacks his lips, and then conjures up bottle after bottle of bilberry squash; blackcurrant squash; his secret unsweetened crowberry cordial; and Astrid’s favourite squash, which is made out of raspberries and sun-ripened redcurrants. Actually, Astrid thinks the best thing about Gunnvald’s squash-making extravaganzas is the pulp he scoops out of his bubbling pots of berries. It’s really supposed to be thrown away, but Astrid spreads it on slices of bread, stuffing it all down until her stomach’s like a beach ball. Sitting perched on Gunnvald’s kitchen worktop, eating bread with lukewarm pink pulp on top, while the whole house smells of berries, is practically heaven.

  “We’ll have squash at Gunnvald’s place,” Astrid whispered to Ola as she dragged him away.

  Gunnvald was just coming out of the barn when the small procession appeared in his farmyard.

  “Look what I’ve found!” Astrid announced, gesturing at her three guests like a circus ringmaster.

  “Which one of you mowed Astrid down yesterday?” Gunnvald thundered, the earflaps on his hat fluttering like flags in the wind.

  Ola took a step back. “I did,” he said softly.

  “Do you normally mow down people you’ve just met?” Gunnvald asked him.

  “Yes…”

  “But he doesn’t do it on purpose,” his curly-haired brother quickly added.

  “All we mow down here in Glimmerdal is the grass,” said Gunnvald. He’d been waiting for Astrid, he added, as he had a marble cake baking in the oven.

  Ola, Broder and Birgitte had never tried marble cake before. They hadn’t thought huge men like Gunnvald baked cakes either. At first they sat quietly round Gunnvald’s enormous kitchen table, eating cake and drinking squash.

  “Maaaaw?” said Birgitte when she’d finished, pushing her empty plate across the table.

  Ola wriggled in his chair, and then he got up and ran off through the many rooms in Gunnvald’s house.

  “Sugar gives him quite a lot of energy,” Broder explained as they listened to Ola running through the house. “Mum says we should get him a hamster wheel. That was a very tasty cake, by the way.”

  “Energy?” said Gunnvald.

  As he gulped down the last swig of his coffee, Astrid knew this meant it was time to do some more sledge testing in Glimmerdal.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In which Sledge Test Run No. 2

  is launched, and Gunnvald

  makes venison stew

  It’s a good thing Astrid showed up at Hagen’s Wellness Retreat that day. It wasn’t easy being a child there, as the others had been finding out. Ola, the restless one, had been trying so hard to be seen and not heard that he practically had smoke coming out of his ears. He was the one who’d been getting told off by Mr Hagen that Friday when Astrid drove her sledge into Finn’s cloud of letters. Birgitte had been spending the whole time whining and upset. Broder, meanwhile, had been feeling anxious in the way only a big brother with curly blond hair and kind eyes can.

  Ola and Broder didn’t quite know how it had happened, but each boy now suddenly found himself sitting on his own steerable sledge, preparing for a test run as if they were two ordinary children on an ordinary winter holiday. Astrid had even been home to fetch Auntie Eira’s and Auntie Idun’s moped helmets for them. They looked like Formula One drivers.

  “Speed and self-confidence, they’re the key,” the little thunderbolt of Glimmerdal explained, rubbing her mittens together.

  What a day it turned out to be! A day of laughter and shouting. Gunnvald had made even more prototype sledges, and the mountains smiled at each other as they threw screams and shouts back and forth between them all the way down the glen. Astrid sang her sledging song at the top of her voice almost non-stop and it wasn’t long before Ola and Broder joined in. Especially Ola, who was a great singer. He could really make some noise. Birgitte stood next to Gunnvald, shouting “Go, go!” as loud as she could. They raced each other one on one; they crashed; they tipped over; they flew out into the snow; they got wet bottoms and red cheeks. They swapped sledges, comparing notes, getting lifts in Peter’s car, giving reports to Gunnvald. They tightened their helmets and did it all over again. At one point, Ola and Astrid collided, sending Ola flying all the way up into the second branch of a spruce tree by the side of the road. Another time it was Broder who flew head first into the ditch, landing on some dog mess. Astrid thought she would die laughing. And poor Sally! Her dinner went cold before she had a chance to eat it. She kept having to dash to her living-room window to watch them speed past on their sledges.

  But when the sun descended behind Storr Peak, things quietened down. They were absolutely worn out.

  “All troops return to base. Over,” Gunnvald commanded. He’d promised to make venison stew for the whole gang, and that was a good thing too, as they were as famished as young hyenas.

  Every autumn, Auntie Eira and Auntie Idun come home to join in the deer hunt. Astrid thinks deer hunting is like an adventure: scary and exciting at the same time. Last year, she’d been handed down some old camouflage gear and been allowed to sit under Auntie Idun’s secret hunting tree.

  “Now, you’ve got to be quiet,” Auntie Idun had said.

  Auntie Idun telling you to be quiet is quite different from Mr Hagen telling you. Astrid sat there under the tree with Auntie Idun for three hours without saying a single word. They listened to the river rushing by and the trees whispering. The branches around them were decked in fiery red and gold. The air was as clear as can be, beneath a light blue autumn sky. Astrid remembers those hours spent with Auntie Idun as some of the best in her life. Auntie Idun sat with her gun over her leg while she kept watch. Every now and then, she looked at Astrid and smiled. Astrid started wishing she had a little sister again, one she could be kind to, one she could take along to a tree and wait with for the deer to come.

  Eventually one emerged from the forest. A tall, handsome stag, strolling peacefully out into the clearing. Astrid still remembers how she stopped breathing while Auntie Idun took aim and fired. It happened so quickly that she almost didn’t realize what was going on. The shot was the loudest thing she had ever heard, and the stag died instantly.

  “He’s four years old. Can you see
?” said Auntie Idun, showing Astrid how you could tell from the antlers.

  Astrid stroked the deer while Auntie Idun took out her knife. Just imagine, that lad had been running around Glimmerdal Forest all his life. Maybe he had fawns. For a moment, Astrid felt sad. But then Auntie Eira came crashing through the undergrowth, more or less the same way the deer had come.

  “Wow-ee! That’s our Sunday dinners at Gunnvald’s sorted for the next hundred years,” she shouted.

  Gunnvald makes such good venison stew that rumours of it reach as far as Barkvika. While Peter drank his coffee by the window, and Birgitte fell asleep on the sofa, Gunnvald browned the venison with some butter in a large pan. Astrid fetched the tin of juniper berries and let Ola crush some with a rolling pin. They mixed the crushed berries with some pepper and sprinkled it all over the sizzling meat. The smell was so good that Ola thought it might drive him crazy. It was almost unbearable standing there smelling the food without being able to eat it. Gunnvald let Ola chop up a lettuce with the kitchen knife while he was waiting. It could be turned into some kind of salad when he’d finished. Broder measured out the rice. Then Gunnvald put the venison on a plate and started to make some sauce. Onions, stock, cream, mushrooms that Astrid’s mum had picked for him last autumn, a piece of traditional Norwegian brown cheese, lingonberry jam, salt and a little water. Gunnvald mixed it, tasted it and made an odd grunting noise now and then, as he usually does when he cooks.

  Suddenly Ola said, “Our dad knows how to make venison stew too.”

  “Oh?” Gunnvald tipped the meat into the sauce without letting a single bit fall out of the pot.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Broder, on the other side of Gunnvald.

  “Yes, he does!” Ola shouted stubbornly.

  “Dad doesn’t know how to make venison stew, Ola. Dad’s a twerp.” Broder’s voice took on a harsh tone.

  “You take that back!” Ola yelled.

  But Broder wasn’t about to take anything back. “Dad is a twerp. He doesn’t know how to make venison stew; he never calls; he’s—”

  “He called on my birthday!” Ola’s face was so red it looked like he was about to explode.

  “It’s a whole month since your birthday!” Broder was shouting now too. “He doesn’t care about us any more! If he cared about us, then we wouldn’t be down at that stupid holiday camp. We’d be in Denmark! But he always says it’s not convenient; he never visits us; he never writes; he—”

  It was as if Ola and Broder didn’t even notice that there were still other people in the kitchen.

  Ola took a ladle and threw it at the wall, splattering sauce everywhere. “You’re a berk!” he shouted, running out into the wintry weather. The door slammed shut behind him, shaking the whole house.

  Astrid sat on the kitchen worktop, waiting for Gunnvald to sort it all out. But Gunnvald just stood there, as if he’d turned to stone.

  “Sorry,” Broder said softly.

  Wasn’t Gunnvald going to say something? Wasn’t Gunnvald going to reassure Broder and tell him it was all right, then fetch Ola and sort everything out? Astrid sat on the worktop for a little longer before realizing that Gunnvald wasn’t going to do anything.

  It was Astrid who had to comfort Broder, and Peter who had to go out into the barn and find Ola behind some sacks of wool. Birgitte woke up and got everybody smiling again when she said “Good morning.” Gunnvald, on the other hand, didn’t say a word. He just finished making the stew and served it.

  Gunnvald didn’t say anything while they were eating, either. It was as quiet as if they were far up on the mountain plateau. Birgitte was the only one talking.

  “You help?” she said to Peter, getting him to cut up the venison on her plate into smaller pieces.

  Every now and then, Astrid glanced over at the two red-eyed brothers with a twerp for a father, and then at Gunnvald, who had suddenly gone all silent. When everyone’s plates were empty, it was still quiet, so Astrid climbed up on the sofa and fetched Gunnvald’s fiddle down from the wall. She plonked it in his lap. Then she stood on her chair and started singing the first verse of the old goat-herding lullaby, in the heartfelt way that only Astrid could sing:

  “Bluey, billy goat of mine,

  Please tonight give me a sign,

  Or the bristly bear just might

  Come and capture you tonight.”

  Astrid’s singing carried through the walls, floating out into the wintry Glimmerdal air.

  “Old Lucky, your mother true,

  Came home late looking for you.

  Her bell ringing round about,

  Danger, fear, there seemed no doubt.”

  A smallish lady was, at that very moment, coming up through the farmyard in the evening gloom, and she recognized the voice. She’d heard it all day from the holiday camp. Cautiously she climbed up the big stone steps to Gunnvald’s house. She raised a hand to knock on the door, but then the fiddle finally joined in at the third verse:

  “Has the bear on you then fed?

  Are you lying out there dead?

  You used to dance here and there,

  While I shared my every care.”

  The lady stood there, her hand poised to knock, while Astrid sang the next verses about how much the goatherd loved Bluey, and how much Bluey loved the goatherd, all while the notes from Gunnvald’s fiddle wrapped warmly around the words. The lady had never heard anything so beautiful, and the very same thing happened to her as happens to everybody when Gunnvald plays his fiddle. She fell completely still. Astrid had come to the last verse, which she always sings a little out of tune, because it’s so sad.

  “Bluey, Bluey, let us meet;

  Let me hear your friendly bleat!

  Don’t die yet, oh goat of mine.

  Don’t leave me to mourn and pine.”

  “What a beautiful song,” the lady said, once the music had finished.

  They hadn’t noticed her come into the kitchen. In fact, Gunnvald, Astrid and Peter had never seen her before. But Ola, Broder and Birgitte had.

  “Mum!” Ola shouted happily. “We’ve made venison stew!”

  Every now and then you meet a person who you like straight away. This mum was like that. She had kind eyes, and even though she looked tired and worn out, her smile warmed the whole kitchen. Ola and Broder told her all about the sledging, both of them talking at exactly the same time. Peter found an extra chair, and Gunnvald scooped some more venison stew out of the pot for the new guest. Astrid suddenly missed her own mother so much that her stomach hurt. She almost wanted to go and sit right up close to this lady with the kind eyes who she’d never seen before, just to see what it felt like. But she settled for smiling at her from the other side of the table.

  It was a golden evening. Gunnvald opened the door to one of the many sitting rooms in his house and lit the fire. In Gunnvald’s workshop, Astrid found the giant ludo board that she’d started making with Gunnvald the year before but never quite finished. She laid out the board tiles on the floor and found the counters, which were the size of dinner plates. Gunnvald played some more on his fiddle, and it was night-time before they knew it. Eventually everybody shook Gunnvald’s gigantic hand to thank him for the dinner, and for the music, and then Peter drove the little family back down the glen.

  It was so quiet when they’d all left. Astrid started putting on her outdoor gear. She turned to Gunnvald. “Imagine having a father who only calls when it’s your birthday.” She pulled her hat low over her lion curls. The very thought made her angry. “We’ll have to make sure their holiday here is the best ever, Gunnvald,” she said as she opened the door.

  Gunnvald didn’t answer, and she glanced round. He just stood there, looking out of the dark kitchen window.

  “Gunnvald?”

  “Mmm?”

  “It’s a good job you’ve got me.”

  When Astrid had left, Gunnvald stood for a long time in the dimly lit kitchen. He could still hear the harsh, hurt tone in Broder’s voice
when he’d spoken about his father never calling and never writing. Deep inside his troll’s heart, Gunnvald wondered what that dad in Denmark, who he’d never met, could be thinking. After a while, he plodded over to the bookshelf and pulled out a small, brown envelope. It was the letter.

  Gunnvald had already read it so many times that it was frayed at the edges. Now he read it again. He hadn’t written a reply. He never wrote letters.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In which Mr Hagen goes too

  far, and the famous story “Do

  You Remember When Astrid

  Glimmerdal Drove Her Sledge

  onto the Ferry?” is born

  There are many stories about the girls of Glimmerdal. Not least about Auntie Eira and Auntie Idun. But Oskar Glimmerdal, Astrid’s grandpa, isn’t so keen on these stories. Astrid’s grandpa is a very strict and proper man, being a retired head teacher and all. He doesn’t like it one bit when people in the shop tell stories about his daughters. But people still do. For example, they say, “Do you remember when Oskar’s twins paddled down the river in a bathtub?” Then they roar with laughter. The story of Auntie Eira and Auntie Idun’s voyage in a bathtub is definitely the best known, but there are many other stories about the girls of Glimmerdal. Most of them have been about Astrid since her aunts moved away.

  That Monday, when the little thunderbolt of Glimmerdal got up, she had no idea it would be such a historic day. If people knew things like that in advance, then there wouldn’t be many stories worth telling.

  “I’m going down to the holiday camp!” she called to her dad.

  The air was a little less cold that morning. It was perfect snowballing weather. Astrid pushed off from the bottom step outside the house, sending her skating right across the hard-packed ice in the farmyard. The ice was beginning to melt under the sun’s rays, with water gurgling and dripping everywhere. Astrid filled her lungs with the scent of spruce and squinted at the sun. She called days like this “diamond days”. She hummed as she walked through the enchanted forest. It was so slippery underfoot that she almost fell over several times. Sally would have to be careful not to break her leg!