The Sea of Trolls

ancient bilgewater. Jack couldn’t begin to describe it. He had all he could do to keep from bolting from the room.

Lotti danced in with a bowl. “I opened a fresh keg,” she warbled.

Fresh? thought Jack. The bowl was full of purplish lumps floating in a slimy gray liquid. It looked every bit as horrible as it smelled.

“Graffisk!” said Olaf. He smeared some onto a chunk of bread and gobbled it down. A smile of contentment creased his beard. “Have some.” He held out the bowl.

“I—I’m not hungry,” Jack said.

“HAVE SOME.”

So Jack took a morsel of bread and dipped the tiniest corner of it in the liquid. He put it into his mouth. He swallowed quickly, but not quickly enough. The taste coated the inside of his mouth like the mud coated his legs when he mucked out the barn. Jack ran for the door, bent down, and retched for all he was worth.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Brjostabarn!” Olaf said, guffawing. His wives and children joined in with merry peals of laughter. After a while Heide took pity on him and brought him a cup of water.

“That’s hiss favorite joke with outsiders,” she said. Jack stumbled after her, back into the room. He’d finally figured out what graffisk meant: “grave fish”, as in dead, as in rotten.

“Graffisk is what we make when we have no salt,” explained Olaf, who was mopping up the nauseous stuff with his bread. He really did like it! “Sometimes we find a herring run—thousands and thousands of herring!—so many, the sea is thick with them. You can lay an axe on the water and it will not sink. So! We bring the herring home. What then? We can only eat so many. If it’s raining, we can’t dry the rest.

“So we put the fish into barrels and bury them in the earth. For months we wait. The fish ripen like fine cheese. They turn purple. They get a delicious smell. The longer we wait, the better they taste.”

“Why don’t they poison you?” said Jack, thinking, I wish they would poison you.

Olaf grinned and slapped his stomach. “We Northmen are strong. Not like Saxons.” All this while Lump and She-Lump had been stoking up the sauna. Lump came to the door. The giant stood up, brushed the crumbs from his beard, and followed the glum slave.

Jack went over to sit by Lucy. She was watching the fire in the middle of the room with rapt attention. “Lucy?”

No answer.

“Lucy?” He took her hand. She seemed strange, almost as if she wasn’t there.

“It’s so pretty,” she said, staring at the fire. One of Olaf’s girls came over and shoved her off the bench.

“Hey!” Jack yelled.

“Toad Face,” said the girl. “I think that’s what I’ll call you. Toad Face. It’s my turn to name a thrall.”

“Leave him,” said Heide, who had come up behind them as silently as a wolf. The girl fled. Jack put Lucy back on the bench. She stared at the fire as though nothing had happened.

“What’s wrong with her? Is she sick?” Jack cried. Inside, he thought, Is she insane?

“Her spirit hass fled,” said Heide. “It iss wandering in a strange place—a nice place, I think.”

“Father used to tell her she was a lost princess,” Jack said, somewhat reassured. “He said that someday knights would find her and take her back to the castle. I’m afraid Lucy believed him.”

“I haff seen thiss before,” said the dark woman. “In my land the winters are long and dark. People’s spirits wander sso that they do not go mad. When spring comes, they return.”

“I hope spring returns for Lucy.”

“It may with your help. You are a special boy. I know. I haff looked inside.”

“Are you a wise woman?” Jack asked.

Heide laughed, a sound as smoky as her voice. The other people in the house stopped what they were doing. It seemed everybody walked carefully around Heide. “Thank you for not calling me a witch,” she said. “That iss what they think.” She indicated the others in the room. “But yess, I practice sei?er.”

“Isn’t that… witchcraft?” said Jack.

“It iss woman’s magic. What skalds do iss man’s magic. It iss only witchcraft iff the two are mixed up.”

Jack wasn’t sure he understood, but it relieved his mind. He was a skald, and so the magic he did was all right. Thorgil wouldn’t be able to accuse him. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Olaf won me in Finnmark. My father wass the headman uff a village, and Olaf wass trading for furs.”

So the giant doesn’t always kill people and steal things, Jack thought.

“I had many suitors. Many. A wise woman iss very valuable. But my spirit chose Olaf. I should haff married one uff the others, but”—Heide shrugged—“he wass so big and beautiful. I am not like them.” She frowned at Dotti and Lotti, who were examining their children for head lice. “I only stay iff big ox-brain treats me right. Iff he insults me, I will go.”

Heide went back to her pots of medicine and herbs. Jack stayed with Lucy. The little girl seemed happy enough, staring into the flames. When Jack brought her the wooden toys Olaf had carved, she set about playing with them. Jack asked Lotti for bread and cheese. He didn’t really understand his status—perhaps thralls got beaten if they asked for food—but Lotti gave him what he wanted and a cup of buttermilk besides. Jack fed the milk to Lucy.

One thing resulted from Heide’s interest in him: Jack and Lucy were left alone. No one pushed her off the bench again, and no one threatened to name him Toad Face.

Late in the day Thorgil showed up, and Jack was horrified to learn that she lived with Olaf’s family. She burst into the house, glowing and sweaty from her romp with the dogs. Heide ordered her to the sauna. Rune arrived for dinner, and Jack learned that he, too, was part of the household. “My wife died years ago, and none of our children lived past infancy,” he whispered. “Olaf’s hall is always as warm and friendly as a summer afternoon. It’s like a great light in the midst of a wilderness.”

Jack shivered. He’d heard those words before. “You mean it’s like Hrothgar’s hall before Grendel got to it.”

“Did I quote that poem? Yes, I suppose I did. It was Dragon Tongue’s finest work.” Rune stretched his feet toward the fire pit in the middle of the room. “I have lived long enough to know that nothing lasts forever. Such joy as Olaf’s will sooner or later attract its destruction. But I also know that to ignore joy while it lasts, in favor of lamenting one’s fate, is a great crime.”

Heide brought him a steaming cup of medicine to sooth his ravaged throat. They smiled at each other, and Jack felt the air tremble between the ancient warrior and the wise woman.

The evening meal was spectacular. Olaf’s wives and servants had toiled all day to make it memorable. The giant’s chair was dragged to the upper end of the fire pit. Tables set with wooden platters, spoons, and cups were lined up on either side. Each diner was expected to supply his or her own knife, but Jack was given one since his own was long gone.

Fine wheat bread, rounds of cheese, salmon baked in fennel, geese oozing delicious fat, stews wafting the seductive odors of cumin and garlic—all these and more were carted in by the servants. Buttermilk, cider, beer, and mead were there for the asking. Bowls of apples sat on every table. Jack had never seen so much food. It made up for the ghastly graffisk earlier.

Olaf sat in his great chair at the head of the fire pit. Rune and Jack were to one side of him, while his sons brawled for the best cuts of meat on the other. The wives and daughters, when they weren’t fetching things from the outlying kitchens, dined in a more orderly way farther down the hall. Heide looked after Lucy. Even the thralls were given a place near the door. As far as Jack could tell, they got the same food as everyone else.

It was a joyous gathering with much impromptu singing. Only one person sat apart and did not join in the festivities. Thorgil was placed midway between the male and female family members. Olaf had relented on his threat of placing her with the thralls. Yet she was not in the place of honor and Jack was. She sat alone, a little patch of misery, in the noisy celebration. Where is her family? Jack wondered.

“You can help with the clearing up,” said Heide to the sullen girl.