One side of the man’s mouth rose in a snarl. But he shoved some bread and cheese into Linnea’s hands. “Here.”
Gunther ate all the smoked herring without sharing. Then he wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down by the dying fire to sleep. Linnea got out her own little blanket from the knapsack and lay down on the opposite side of the fire.
She fell asleep almost immediately.
But in the middle of the night, Linnea woke up. Somebody was talking quietly in her ear.
It was the dala horse. “You must be extremely careful with Gunther,” the dala horse whispered. “He is not a good man.”
“Is he a troll?” Linnea whispered back.
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
“But I’ll do my best to protect you.”
“Thank you.”
Linnea rolled over and went back to sleep.
In the morning, troll Gunther kicked apart the fire, slung his pack over his shoulder, and started up the road. He didn’t offer Linnea any food, but there was still some bread and cheese from last night which she had stuffed in a pocket of her coat, so she ate that.
Gunther walked faster than Linnea did, but whenever he got too far ahead, he’d stop and wait for her. Sometimes the knapsack carried Linnea. But because it only had enough energy to do so for a day, usually she carried it instead.
When she was bored, Linnea sang the song she had learned the previous day.
At first, she wondered why the troll always waited for her when she lagged behind. But then, one of the times he was far ahead, she asked the dala horse and it said, “He’s afraid and he’s superstitious. He thinks that a little girl who walks through the wilderness by herself must be lucky.”
“Why is he afraid?”
“He’s being hunted by something even worse than he is.”
At noon they stopped for lunch. Because Linnea’s food was gone, Gunther brought out food from his own supplies. It wasn’t as good as what Linnea’s mother had made. But when Linnea said so, Gunther snorted. “You’re lucky I’m sharing at all.” He stared off into the empty woods in silence for a long time. Then he said, “You’re not the first girl I’ve encountered on my journey, you know. There was another whom I met in what remained of Hamburg. When I left, she came with me. Even knowing what I’d done, she…” He fished out a locket and thrust it at Linnea. “Look!”
Inside the locket was a picture of a woman. She was an ordinary pretty woman. Just that and nothing more. “What happened to her?” Linnea asked.
The troll grimaced, showing his teeth.
“I know,” Linnea said. Trolls were like that. She was familiar with the stories. They’d eat anything. They’d even eat people. They’d even eat other trolls. Her books said so. Then, because he hadn’t told her yet, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Someplace safe.”
“I’m going to Godastor. My map knows the way.”
For a very long time Gunther mulled that over. At last, almost reluctantly, he said, “Is it safe there, do you think?”
Linnea nodded her head emphatically. “Yes.”
Pulling the map from her knapsack, Gunther said, “How far is it to Godastor?”
“It’s on the other side of the mountain, a day’s walk if you stay on the road, and twice, maybe three times that if you cut through the woods.”
“Why the hell would I want to cut through the woods?” He stuffed the map back in the knapsack. “Okay, kid, we’re going to Godastor.”
That afternoon, a great darkness rose up behind them, intensifying the shadows between the trees and billowing up high above until half the sky was black as chimney soot. Linnea had never seen a sky like that. An icy wind blew down upon them so cold that it made her cry and then froze the tears on her cheeks. Little whirlwinds of snow lifted off of the drifts and danced over the empty black road. They gathered in one place, still swirling, in the ghostly white form of a woman. It raised an arm to point at them. A dark vortex appeared in its head, like a mouth opening to speak.
With a cry of terror, Gunther bolted from the road and went running uphill between the trees. Where the snow was deep, he bulled his way through it.
Clumsily, Linnea ran after him.
She couldn’t run very fast and at first it looked like the troll would leave her behind. But halfway up the slope Gunther glanced over his shoulder and stopped. He hesitated, then ran back to her. Snatching up Linnea, he placed her on his shoulders. Holding onto her legs so she wouldn’t fall, he shambled uphill. Linnea clutched his head to hold herself steady.
The snow lady didn’t follow.
The farther from the road Gunther fled, the warmer it became. By the time he crested the ridge, it was merely cold. But as he did so, the wind suddenly howled so loud behind them that it sounded like a woman screaming.
It was slow going without a road underfoot. After an hour or so, Gunther stumbled to a stop in the middle of a stand of spruce and put Linnea down. “We’re not out of this yet,” he rumbled. “She knows we’re out here somewhere, and she’ll find us. Never doubt it, she’ll find us.” He stamped an open circle of snow flat. Then he ripped boughs from the spruce trees and threw them in a big heap to make a kind of mattress. After which, he snapped limbs from a dead tree and built a fire in the center of the circle.
When the fire was ready, instead of getting out flint and steel, he tapped a big ring on one finger and then jabbed his fist at the wood. It burst into flames.
Linnea laughed and clapped her hands. “Do it again!”
Grimly, he ignored her.
As the woods grew darker and darker, Gunther gathered and stacked enough wood to last the night. Meanwhile, Linnea played with the dala horse. She made a forest out of spruce twigs stuck in the snow. Gallop, gallop, gallop, went the horse all the way around the forest and then hop, hop, hop to a little clearing she had left in the center. It reared up on its hind legs and looked at her.
“What’s that you have?” Gunther demanded, dropping a thunderous armload of branches onto the woodpile.
“Nothing.” Linnea hid the horse inside her sleeve.
“It better be nothing.” Gunther got out the last of her mother’s food, divided it in two, and gave her the smaller half. They ate. Afterward, he emptied the knapsack of her blanket and map and hoisted it in his hand. “This is where we made our mistake,” he said. “First we taught things how to talk and think. Then we let them inside our heads. And finally we told them to invent new thoughts for us.” Tears running down his cheeks, he stood and cocked his arm. “Well, we’re done with this one at any rate.”
“Please don’t throw me away,” the knapsack said. “I can still be useful carrying things.”
“We have nothing that needs carrying. You would only slow us down.” Gunther flung the knapsack into the fire. Then he turned his glittering eye on the map.
“At least keep me,” the map said. “So you’ll always know where you are and where you’re going.”
“I’m right here and I’m going as far from here as I can get.” The troll threw the map after the knapsack. With a small cry, like that of a seabird, it went up in flames.
Gunther sat back down. Then he leaned back on his elbows, staring up into the sky. “Look at that,” he
