The Sea of Trolls

Chapter Forty-one LUCY’S RETURN

Jack lifted Lucy from the cart. She was smaller and lighter than he remembered. She sagged in his arms. “Lucy, it’s me,” whispered the boy. “You’re safe now. We can go home.” But she didn’t respond.

“Her mind iss far away,” said Heide, climbing down. “It may be a good thing. She wass not made to endure such as Frith.”

One of Ivar’s warriors offered to carry the little girl, and Jack walked at his side, holding her hand. King Ivar was loaded onto the cart—he was much too heavy to carry. A pair of Northmen pulled it along. The king seemed bewildered by what had happened, even when it was explained to him several times.

“My little troll-flower should be here,” he complained as the cart creaked along. “She doesn’t like being out so late. She needs her beauty sleep, does Frith.”

“There iss someone else whose mind iss traveling,” said Heide.

Skakki and Rune shouted for joy when they returned, and as the news of Frith’s disappearance spread, Jack heard cheering from the crowd gathered outside Ivar’s hall. He was too wrung out to feel much joy. He was glad when they left the hall and turned toward Olaf’s home.

Dotti and Lotti took Lucy from the warrior’s arms and immediately set about cleaning her up. Her dress was so filthy that they had to burn it, and her hair was in such a wretched state that they had to cut it off. She looked even more woeful then, like a little drowned mouse.

“Will she ever come back?” Jack said as Heide wrapped her in a blanket and placed her near the fire.

“She may iff you call her,” the wise woman replied. “I could try, but my voice would not reach as far. It iss you she wants to hear.” Heide placed a tray of food and drink by them. Then she and the others left them alone.

Jack watched his sister’s face in the flickering light. He talked to her for what seemed like hours. Now and then he felt her face to be certain it was still warm. She was so still, he sometimes feared she had died. “We’re going home,” he said again and again. “Mother and Father are waiting for us. They’ll be so happy! Do you remember the footstool Father carved? You used to sit on it by the fire, and Mother heated cider for your breakfast.” He brought out memory after memory, trying to reach the place where Lucy had hidden herself, but nothing worked.

Jack got up and walked around the hall. His body was stiff, and in spite of the fire, he was cold. Bold Heart stirred in the rafters, where he’d been sleeping, so it must have been nearly dawn. Jack stumbled over a litter of toys Olaf’s children had left behind and saw four little wooden figures in a heap: a cow, a horse, a man, a woman. They were the toys Olaf had made for Lucy so long ago. Jack gathered them up and knelt by the little girl. He folded Lucy’s fingers around the horse and put the other three in her arms. “Do you remember playing with these on the beach, dearest? You made a fence out of sticks and you drew a house in the sand. You used shells for chickens because Olaf hadn’t made you any.”

Bold Heart swooped down and landed on the floor. He watched the toys intently. “Yes, you stole them, didn’t you?” Jack said to the crow. “I could never figure out whether you were really playing a game. It seemed too clever for a bird.” The crow darted forward and plucked the horse from Lucy’s hand. “Stop that!” Jack yelled. Bold Heart dropped the horse and chuckled, deep in his throat.

“How could you take something from a helpless child?” Jack cried. He put the horse back in Lucy’s hand. Bold Heart made off with the cow.

“Come back, you thief!” shrieked Lucy. She sat up in her blanket and clutched the other three toys. Jack could only stare. His heart was too full to speak. Bold Heart hopped back and insolently dropped the cow out of Lucy’s reach. She lunged forward and grabbed it. The crow bobbed up and down, warbling and chuckling.

“Oh, Lucy,” said Jack.

“He thinks he can get away with it, but I’m watching,” the little girl said.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Of course!” Lucy said scornfully. “You’re Jack and that’s Bold Heart. He came to us from the Islands of the Blessed. When are we going home? I’m getting tired of this adventure.”

“Soon,” Jack said, his throat threatening to close. He drew Lucy’s attention to the tray of food. She immediately grabbed a bowl of cold stew and began eating, scooping it out with her fingers. Jack tore bread into bits for her and cut up an apple. Lucy ate and ate and ate. She finished with a cup of buttermilk.

“I was so hungry!” she cried. “Oh, my! My stomach hurts, but it feels so good!” Then she keeled over and went back to sleep. Jack looked up in alarm at Heide, who had just entered.

“She iss only sleeping it off,” the wise woman assured him. She wrapped the little girl in the blanket again and placed her in a corner behind the loom. “No one will step on her here,” she said as Dotti, Lotti, and a dozen children streamed in to get warm by the fire.

The year was growing old, and Jack and Lucy had to be returned to their village before the winter storms set in. Skakki checked over his father’s ship. It would be his first voyage as captain, but as he was only sixteen, he enlisted the help of such experienced sailors as Rune, Sven the Vengeful, and Eric Pretty-Face. For the most part, he asked ordinary warriors to join his expedition, not berserkers. This was a trading voyage, not a raid.

Jack didn’t have to return to Ivar’s hall, for which he was grateful. Skakki said it was being scrubbed from top to bottom, though it would take many months to remove all trace of Frith’s presence. She’d had a habit of stashing bones in little crevices to gnaw on later. It accounted for the rank smell in the hall.

Skakki proudly brought home Cloud Mane. King Ivar said he rightfully belonged to Olaf’s heir, and the horse certainly liked the boy. He trotted up to him willingly and nuzzled his hand. “His sire came from Elfland,” said Heide after she studied the animal’s fine lines. “Elf-horses are small, swift, and loyal, and they do not throw their masters.”

“Have you seen elves?” Jack asked.

Heide only smiled and did not answer.

King Ivar also returned the wealth-hoard Olaf had gifted him with, and Skakki gave some of it to Jack. “It’s little enough for what we owe you,” he said. “Ridding us of Frith has brought life back into this kingdom.” Jack accepted the silver coins gravely. There was no telling where they had come from. Silver flowed back and forth like water in the lands of the Northmen.

They sailed on a sunny morning with a breeze behind them and a cheering crowd on the docks. Jack watched Heide, Dotti, and Lotti grow smaller and smaller until they faded into the shimmer over the water. The warriors plied the oars with Thorgil at the rudder, and Bold Heart sat on the prow cawing his defiance at the seagulls. The smelly sea serpent’s head had been removed to Eric Pretty-Face’s house.

We’re really going home, thought Jack, and he worried that they would meet storms and be blown away. But the weather was perfect. They didn’t follow the same route—the Northmen weren’t as good sailors as they led everyone to believe. They simply aimed themselves in the right direction and went on until they bumped into land. Most of the time it worked.

So Jack didn’t see again the coastlines of Magnus the Mauler’s and Einar the Ear-Hoarder’s lands, nor the ashes of Gizur Thumb-Crusher’s village. He and Thorgil played Wolves and Sheep, and they tried to teach Lucy, but she was too young. She kept trying to change the rules to save the sheep. When she was told this was impossible, she flew into a snit and knocked all the pieces into the bilge.

At night Jack sang to the little girl and told her tales he’d learned from Rune and some he made up about the Jotuns. Gradually, very gradually, Jack drew out the story of what had happened to her while he’d been gone.

It was a terrible tale of hiding behind curtains and under benches, of stealing morsels of food from Freya’s cats. When the cats caught her, they dragged her in front of Frith. The queen screamed and pulled her hair. But because Lucy never responded, Frith lost interest and left her alone.

Lucy crept around in the background for weeks. She watched Frith and Ivar sink into madness while the filth in the hall piled up. At night the little girl slept in a heap of flea-infested straw, and during the day she amused herself by pulling strings from the tapestries on the walls. When the cats were asleep, she tied these around their tails. If you did it right, the cats went wild, trying to claw them off.

Finally, Frith caught her at it and ordered her penned in Freya’s cart. There things became slightly better. At least the priest of Freya fed her regularly. But long days went by without anything happening at all, and so Lucy slipped away.

“Where did you go?” Jack asked, holding her in the darkness.

“To the real queen. She was good to me because she loved me. She gave me a beautiful room. There was a tree covered with honey cakes, and a little dog, too. It had a green collar with silver bells. I could hear it running through the castle.” On and on Lucy went, spinning out the tale Father had told her over and over ever since she was born.

Jack didn’t try to argue with her. In Heide’s land the winters were long and dark. People’s spirits wandered so that they did not go mad, but when spring came, their spirits returned. As had Lucy’s.