Peer clutched the baby tighter. There was no way of avoiding the place; the road led right up to it, before bending to cross the stream over an old wooden bridge. As he passed he glanced up, feeling like a mouse scuttling along past some gigantic cat. The walls leaned over him, cold and silent.
He hurried on to the bridge. The wind snatched and pushed him, and he grabbed at the handrail. The noise of the river rose around him, snarling over the weir in white froth. As he crossed, he looked upstream towards the water wheel, in the darkness hardly more than a tall, looming bulk. Through three long years it had never stirred. Perhaps it was already rotting away.
There was a gust of dank, cold air, and a surge of water. The bridge trembled. Clinging to the rail, Peer looked again at the wheel, and was instantly giddy. It’s moving! But it can’t be. Surely it was only the water tearing past underneath…or were those black, dripping blades really lifting, one after another, rolling upwards, picking up speed? His skin prickled. The wheel was turning. He could hear the slash of its paddles striking the water.
An unearthly squeal skewered the night. Peer shot off the bridge. The anguished noise went on and on without stopping, far too long for anything with lungs. It came from deep within the mill. Peer fought for his wits. The machinery! It was the sound of swollen wooden axles twisting into tortured life. Then the motion eased, the squealing stopped, but the mill went on rumbling like some monstrous stomach. Muffled by wind and rain, the millstones grumbled round, the clapper rattled.
Eyes fixed on the mill, Peer stumbled backwards, half expecting the lopsided windows to blink alive with yellow light. He slithered and almost fell. The shock cleared his head. It’s just a building. It can’t start working by itself. There’s someone here. Someone’s opened the sluice, started the wheel. But who?
He stared along the overgrown path that led to the dam through a wilderness of whispering bushes. Anything might be crouching there, hiding…or watching. He listened, afraid to move, but heard no footstep, no voice. No light glimmered from the walls of the mill. Bare branches shook in the wind over the damaged roof. The wheel creaked round in the thrashing stream. And from high up on the fell came the distant shriek of some bird, a sound broken into pieces by the gale.
He drew a deep, careful breath.
With all this rain, perhaps the sluicegate’s collapsed and the water’s escaping under the wheel.
That’ll be it.
He turned hastily, striding on between the cart tracks. The steep path slanted uphill into the woods. Often, as he went, he heard stones clatter on the path behind him, dislodged perhaps by rain. And, all the way, he had the feeling that someone or something was following him, climbing out of the dark pocket where the mill sat in its narrow valley. He tried looking over his shoulder, but that made him stumble, and it was too dark to see.
CHAPTER 2 A Brush with the Trolls
A few hours earlier, just before sunset, Peer’s best friend Hilde stood high on the seaward shoulder of Troll Fell, looking out over a huge gulf of air. In front of her feet, the ground dropped away in fans of unstable scree. Far, far below, the fjord flashed trembling silver between headlands half-drowned in shadow. On the simmering brightness, a tiny dark boat crept deliberately along like an insect.
She flung out her arms as if she might soar away like an eagle. A strong wind blew back the hair from her face and slapped at her skirts. She closed her eyes, leaning on the wind, feeling its cold buoyant pressure. She heard it hiss in the thorn trees that clung to the slopes, and she heard the sheep bleating–the dark, complaining voices of the ewes and the shrill baby cries of the lambs.
“Hiillde!” A long drawn-out yell floated from the skyline. She turned quickly to see her little brother racing down towards her, a small brown dog running at his heels. Bracing herself for the crash, she caught him and swung him round.
“Oof! Don’t keep doing that, Sigurd. You’re pretty heavy for an eight year old! Where’s Pa and Sigrid?”
“They’re coming. What are you looking at?”
“The view.”
“The view?” Sigurd echoed in scorn. “What’s so special about that?”
Hilde laughed and ruffled his hair. “Nothing, I suppose. But see that boat down there? That’s Peer and Bjørn.”
Sigurd craned his neck. “So it is. Hey, Loki, it’s Peer! Where’s Peer?” Loki pricked his ears, barking eagerly.
“Don’t tease him!” said Hilde. Sigurd threw himself down beside Loki, laughing and tussling.
Fierce sunlight blazed through a gap in the clouds. The wide hillside turned an unearthly green. Long drifts of tired snow, still lying in every dip and hollow, woke into blinding sparkles, and the crooked thorn trees sprang out, every mossy twig a shrill yellow. Hilde’s eyes watered. Two figures came over the skyline and started descending: a tall man in a plaid cloak, holding hands with a little fair-haired girl whose red hood glowed like a jewel. Shadows like stick men streamed up the slope behind them.
Sigurd pushed Loki aside and jumped to his feet, waving to his twin sister. “Sigrid, come and look! We can see Bjørn’s boat.”
The little girl broke free from her father and came running. “Where?”
Sigurd pointed. “Lucky things,” he complained. “They get to go fishing, and we have to count sheep. Why can’t Sigrid and I have some fun?”
“You can when you’re older,” said Hilde. “And I didn’t go fishing, did I?”
“You didn’t want to,” Sigurd muttered.
“I know who she wants to go fishing with,” said Sigrid slyly. “With Bjørn’s brother,Arnë! She likes him–don’t you, Hilde?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Hilde sharply. “You know perfectly well that Arnë doesn’t even live in the village any more. Not since last summer. He works a fishing boat out of Hammerhaven—”
“Yes, and it’s bigger than Bjørn’s,” Sigurd interrupted. “Bjørn’s boat is a faering, with a mast but only two sets of oars. Arnë’s boat is a six-oarer!”
“That’s right, and he has a partner to help him sail it,” Hilde said.
“You do know a lot about him,” Sigrid giggled.
“That’s not funny, Sigrid. Arnë is twenty-two; he’s a grown-up man.”
“So? You’re fifteen, you’re grown-up, too. When he came to say goodbye to you, he held your hand. You went all pink.”
Hilde gave her little sister a withering glance, and then wrapped her arms around herself with a shiver. A swift shadow came gliding down the fell, and the sunlight vanished. Out to sea, the clouds had eaten up the sun.
“It’s going to rain, Pa,” she said as Ralf joined them.
“We can see Peer,” Sigrid squeaked, pointing at the boat. “Look, Pa, look!”
“Aha!” Ralf peered down the slope, scanning every rock and boulder. “Now I wonder if our missing sheep have gone over this edge. I don’t see any. But they wouldn’t show up against all the grey stones. Anything falling down there would break every bone in its body. Sigurd! That means you, too, d’you hear?”
“How many are lost?” Hilde asked.
“Let’s see.” Grimly, Ralf ticked them off on his fingers:“The old ewe with the bell round her neck, two of the black sheep, the lame one, the speckled one, and the one with the broken horn. And their lambs, too. It’s a puzzle, Hilde. It can’t be wolves or foxes. They’d leave traces.”
“Stolen?”