The Sea of Trolls

He sacrificed his voice in the service of his people. And he gave his greatest poem to me.

The Norn was silent. She moved closer to the Tree, and presently, Jack couldn’t see her at all in the deep shadows and fissures in the bark.

“What are you looking at?” called Thorgil.

“The capercaillie,” said Jack, laughing, for the ridiculous bird had marched out of the same shadows with her speckled chicks crowding and hopping behind. She raised her eyebrows at him and strode on. Jack poured the rest of the contents of the bucket onto Yggdrassil’s roots. “All trees need water, even this One,” he said.

He and Thorgil walked through the forest. A golden light hovered over the trees, for sunset was near, and blue shade flowed out of the surrounding hills. They walked until dark, with Thorgil translating the evening chorus of birds. She was right, Jack decided. The birds were awfully featherbrained.

As the boy and girl passed between two beech trees, they came out into a darkened hall surrounded by walls of ice. The braziers of coals were almost out, and the vast white curtains over the windows trembled under the blast of mountain winds. The Mountain Queen herself was snoring on her throne with her mouth open, so you could see her fangs. The fruit and bread in every one of the bowls on the table had turned to slime and dust.

Chapter Thirty-seven THE QUEEN’S GIFTS

“Skkkrrrnnk—wha? What was that?” said Queen Glamdis as she came awake.

“Great Queen, we have returned,” said Jack.

“I’ve told you not to use that ‘Great Queen’ stuff on me,” Glamdis said crossly. “Call me Mother.”

“Yes, Mother,” said both Jack and Thorgil.

“Well? Was it successful? Did you find Mimir’s Well?”

“Yes, Great—er, Mother,” said Jack.

“Good. I never know what the Norns are going to do. Sometimes they send people into a dark wood to wander.”

“Why do you entertain the Norns?” Thorgil asked. “It can’t be interesting, watching them play chess.”

“You’d be surprised,” the Mountain Queen said. “I learn all sorts of things about what’s going to happen. Most of it’s sad, of course. People die. Whole islands disappear under the sea. I feel it gives me a certain control over the future. I saw Olaf’s death long before it happened.”

“You did?” Thorgil’s eyes were wide.

“Such as he could never live to old age.” The Mountain Queen sighed. “He was too grand and too impossibly pigheaded. Well! I see I can’t offer you any food here. Why don’t we go to the harem, and I’ll ask the louts to fix us some snacks.”

They walked down the long room, Queen Glamdis leading and Jack and Thorgil following behind. The golden chess pieces were strewn across the playing board. “Why do you serve the Norns food when they don’t seem to eat?” Jack asked, eyeing the bowls full of dust.

“They like to wither things,” Glamdis replied. “Turning bread to mold and fruit to slime is as good as a feast to them. I gave up trying to understand Norns years ago.”

The meal in the harem was one of the best memories Jack took away from Jotunheim. Bolthorn presided over the festivities, and Golden Bristles and Bold Heart joined in. Two louts sang a wandering, tuneless kind of song while others danced the Jotunheim Reel. It was loud and cheerful, with much stamping. Fonn directed a play about the retreat from Utgard across the breaking ice.

They ate surprisingly good pastries, meat pies, and flummery—the best kind, with nutmeg and cream. Thorgil went into raptures over each new dish. “I had no idea things could taste so good!” she exclaimed. “This is all so delicious!”

“Is she all right?” whispered Queen Glamdis to Jack.

“Just crazy in a new way,” Jack whispered back.

They left early in the morning, as dawn reddened the hall of the Mountain Queen. Glamdis and her family accompanied them down the long tunnels to the bottom of the mountain. For a people who had haunted Jack’s nightmares so long, he was surprisingly sad to leave them. “I can’t believe one of you bit off Tree Foot’s leg,” he said as they came out to the cold, windswept courtyard at the beginning of the U-shaped valley.

“Believe it,” said Fonn. “Humans and trolls have been at war for a long time. We have a truce for the moment, to honor Olaf One-Brow, but we battle for the same lands. When winter ruled the earth, so did we. Now summer comes on and we are weakened. But we will never give up.”

“And neither will we,” Thorgil cried. She was dressed in wolverine fur with smart little boots and a new sword at her belt. “To refuse battle would do neither of us honor.”

“We will meet at Ragnarok,” said Fonn gravely.

“At Ragnarok!” shrilled Thorgil.

Bold Heart, who was perched on Jack’s shoulder, cawed and shook his head.

“I give you these parting gifts,” said the Mountain Queen, signaling to a young lout. He brought out cloaks of a material Jack couldn’t identify. They shimmered like the light off a glacier, and they smelled sharp and sweet at the same time. “They’re made of silk we harvest from the spiders that live in our forests,” the queen said.

How do you get silk from a spider? thought Jack, who only understood how to shear sheep.

“You may have noticed the curtains in our halls. They’re of the same substance, strong enough to withstand the heaviest storm and light enough to wear comfortably. This silk has the property of taking on the colors around it. These cloaks will hide you from the dragon.” Glamdis held up the garments. They were long and roomy. The hoods would easily conceal a face. Jack saw their color shift from ice white to the dark blue of the Mountain Queen’s dress.

“Thank you, Great Queen—I mean, Mother,” said Jack, bowing. “This is indeed generous.”

“I’m deeply honored,” said Thorgil, bowing as well.

“Don’t go near the rocks on either side of the valley. Walk next to the river. Travel by dark. Hide by day. When you reach the forest, go north around the field of flowers. The elk have made trails. You should come out on the fjord and meet your friends.”

Jack was dressed in his marten-fur coat and the cowskin boots that gripped the ice. He carried Olaf’s sun stone for Skakki and the bottle of song-mead from Mimir’s Well for Rune in a bag around his neck. Thorgil wore the little silver hammer she’d been given by Olaf. Both of them had sacks of provisions and various weapons.

Last of all, the queen gestured to Bolthorn, who came out with Jack’s staff wrapped in cloth. “You take it,” Bolthorn said, holding it out as though it were a poisonous snake.

“I thought about casting it into the chasm beneath my window,” said the queen. “Then I thought about keeping it from you. It’s the staff of a fire wizard. I last saw one when Dragon Tongue visited, and I can’t tell you how much trouble he caused. Still, it would be unworthy to steal from a guest. You may take it home with you, but be warned. If you ever return with that in your possession, you’ll find out right away whether we trolls bite off legs.” She grinned, showing her dainty—but businesslike— fangs.

“I promise,” said Jack, bowing again. He hefted the staff. It had turned black, but it wasn’t burned. It had called out flame from the heart of Jotunheim and, in the process, had gone beyond fire to something harder and stronger. Jack felt a faint thrumming in the wood when he put his hand on it.

They said farewell then, thanking the Jotuns again for their generosity. Jack hugged Golden Bristles as best he could, given his short arms and the boar’s huge neck. “Good-bye, piggy,” he said. “I wish you could come along, but you wouldn’t find much welcome in Middle Earth.” The troll-boar whuffled and nuzzled Jack’s hair.

Then Jack, Thorgil, and Bold Heart set off down the U-shaped valley to the distant forest. For a while they could hear Forath singing a farewell whale-song. I wish she wouldn’t do that, Jack thought. It makes me feel so dreadfully sad. They turned after a mile and looked back. The ice mountain seemed unmarked. They couldn’t make out any windows, turrets, walkways, or doors. It was as though the Jotuns had folded themselves inside and all the glaciers and ice crags were deserted.