“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?” asked Hilde. “By the trolls?”
“That thought does worry me,” Ralf admitted.
A chilly wind gusted through Hilde’s clothes. She rubbed goose bumps from her arms as she looked around. The fjord below was a brooding gulf of shadows. She glanced up at the skyline. Troll Fell loomed over them, wearing a scowl of cloud.
Sigrid tugged at Hilde’s sleeve. “The boat’s gone. Where is it?”
“Don’t worry, Siggy. It’ll be coming in to land. We can’t see the shore from here; the hillside gets in the way. Pa, we really should go. Those clouds are coming up fast.”
“Yes.” Ralf was gazing out to sea. “The old sea-wife is brewing up some dirty weather in that cookpot of hers!” He caught their puzzled looks, and laughed. “Did Grandpa never tell you that story? It’s a sailor’s yarn. The old sea-wife, Ran, sits in her kitchen at the bottom of the sea, brewing up storms in her big black pot. Oh, yes! All the drowned sailors go down to sit in rows on the benches in Ran’s kitchen.”
Hilde gave an appreciative shudder. “That’s like a story that Bjørn told us–about the draug, who sails the seas in half a boat and screams on the wind when people are going to drown. Brrr!”
“I remember it. That’s a good one,” said Sigurd. “You think it’s just an ordinary boat, but then it gets closer and you see that the sailors are all dead and rotten. And the boat can sail against the wind and catch you anywhere. And the draug steers it, and he hasn’t got a face. And then you hear this terrible scream—”
“Well, Peer and Bjørn are safe tonight,” said Ralf. “Let him scream! But we won’t see Peer this evening. He’ll stay with Bjørn and Kersten, snug and dry. Now let’s go, before we all get soaked.” But he stood for a moment, still staring west, as if straining to see something far away, though all that Hilde could see was a line of advancing clouds like inky mountains. Drops of rain flew in on the wind and struck like hailstones.
“Hurry up, Pa. It’s nearly dark and I’m hungry.” Sigurd hopped from foot to foot. “What are you looking at?”
“Oh…” Reluctantly, Ralf turned away. “Only trying to catch a glimpse of the islands, but it’s too murky now.” Sigurd and Sigrid dashed ahead with Loki.
“I passed those islands once, you know,” Ralf said to Hilde, following the twins inland around the steep fellside. “In the longship, the summer I went to sea.”
“I know you did, Pa.” Hilde wasn’t really listening. Rain was hissing all around them now. The only path was a sheep track twisting down between outcrops of rock, so she had to watch where she put her feet. The ground slanted at a forbidding angle. Hilde felt exposed, unsafe–as though Troll Fell might suddenly shrug its vast turf-clad shoulders and send them tumbling helplessly down into the fjord…
“I’d never seen them so close before,” Ralf called over his shoulder. “Never been so far from home. Some of them are big, with steep cliffs where seagulls nest. A wild sort of people live there. Fishermen, not farmers. They climb on the cliffs for gulls’ eggs, and gather seaweed and shellfish—”
“Yes, you’ve told me.” She’d heard the story many times, and just now she wished he’d be quiet and hurry up. In the rain and early darkness, it was hard to see what was what. Grey boulders scrambled up as they approached, trotted away bleating, and were sheep. And some were really rocks, but with movement around the edges. There! Hadn’t something just dodged behind that big one?
Ralf was still talking. “—But many of the islands are just rocks, skerries, with the sea swilling over them and no room for anyone but seals. They’d lie there, lazily basking in the sun, watching us. It’s tricky sailing. The tides come boiling up through the channels, sweeping the boat along, and there’s rocks everywhere just waiting to take a bite.
“But we got through. And further out, and beyond the horizon–many days’ sailing–well, you know what we found, Hilde. The land at the other end of the world!”
Hilde pulled herself together. “East of the sun and west of the moon,” she joked. “Like a fairy tale.”
“Just west,” said Ralf quietly. “And no fairy tale. To think I’ve been so far away! Why, by the time I passed the islands again on my way home, they seemed like old friends. How I’d love to…but I’ve promised your mother…and there’s the baby. Ah, well!”
He strode on. Hilde squelched after him, looking affectionately at the back of his head. She knew how part of him longed to go off again–to sail away to that wonderful land, adventurous and free. He’ll never be quite contented here, she thought. That worries Ma, but I understand it. I’d like to see new places too. Why, even Peer’s seen more of the world than I have. He used to live
