The Sea of Trolls - Farmer Nancy (читать книги бесплатно полностью без регистрации сокращений .txt) 📗

“Sounds like a troll trick to me,” said Olaf.

In spite of everything, Jack found the trip exhilarating. The endless sea and sky filled him with joy. He loved the cry of the gulls. Bold Heart wasn’t as fond of gulls. He rose from the ship and drove them away, but the gulls always came back.

Jack learned to play the Wolves and Sheep game with the warriors. He joined them in their songs. Fame never dies!rang out again and again over the waves. Even Thorgil sang until Rune told her she had a sweet voice, causing her to withdraw in a fit of sulks.

They saw fewer villages as they went north along the coast and met fewer ships. After a while they saw nothing at all. The trees towered up and up, and their trunks were so thick, six men could hide behind one of them. You could believe it was a forest made for Jotuns and not men. Giant elk with horns wider than Olaf’s outstretched arms stared out at them from the shadows. Once Jack thought he saw a bear.

One afternoon they met a herring run, and Jack saw what Olaf had meant when he said you could lay an axe on the water and it wouldn’t sink. Thousands upon thousands of the thrashing fish crowded the sea and absolutely stalled the boat. Eric the Rash dipped them out with a net and Bold Heart made off with one in his claws, but you could have taken them out with your hands.

“A shame to waste all this bounty,” said Olaf. “By Thor’s bottomless belly, I wish I could send these home.”

“Thor would be a good companion now,” Sven the Vengeful said. “He knew how to sort out trolls.”

“The Jotuns stole his hammer once, did you know?” Rune said to Jack.

The boy shook his head.

“Thyrm, the king of the trolls, took it while the god was sleeping,” said Olaf. “As you know, Thor’s strength is in his hammer. Thyrm said he’d give it back if Freya would marry him.”

“As if anyone would hand over the goddess of love to a dirty Jotun!” said Sven.

Olaf continued: “Thor put on a dress and veil and went to Jotunheim. ‘Ooh, let me in, you big, strong Jotuns,’ he said in a squeaky voice. ‘I’m Freya, and I think you’re all so cute!’ You can bet they opened the gate fast.

“‘Ooh, I’d like a bite to eat,’ said Thor. They brought him eight salmon, a roast ox, ten chickens, a pig, and a sheep. Thor ate the lot and washed it down with a keg of beer.

“‘Thunder and lightning, this goddess eats a lot,’ said the Jotuns. Thyrm lifted her veil, saw Thor’s burning eyes, and jumped back as though he’d put his hand on a stove. ‘She’s hot!’ he cried. ‘I can tell she’s in love with me.’ The trolls brought out Thor’s hammer to trade for Freya. Thor threw off his veil and grabbed it.” Olaf paused, watching Jack expectantly. The other warriors wriggled in anticipation.

“What happened next?” Jack said at last.

“He bashed out everyone’s brains and went home!” crowed Olaf. The warriors laughed and punched one another with glee.

“That was the end of Thyrm, all right!” Sven cried.

“Bang! Crash! Crunch! Smash!” Thorgil swung an imaginary hammer.

I’ll never understand Northmen,Jack thought.

“THE FISH ARE LEAVING,” said Eric Pretty-Face. Jack saw the seething, shimmering mass move away to the south. The ship trembled and broke free.

“Let’s pull in and eat before we get to Jotun Fjord,” said Rune. “I don’t think we’ll have much time to relax once we’re there.”

Jotun Fjord. The water was dark and deep as they went in. In the distance, towering over the far end of the water, was a mountain covered with ice. The cliffs on either side of the fjord were seething with kittiwakes, auks, puffins, cormorants, and gulls. Thousands of nests clung to the rocks, and the air was full of the crying of birds. Sea eagles soared lazily as they surveyed their prey. The water, too, was teeming with cod, haddock, halibut, and salmon.

“It’s like this at the border between worlds,” Rune said.

“I don’t understand,” said Jack.

“We’re leaving Middle Earth and entering Jotunheim. The life force is strongest here. Yggdrassil encircles the border with one of its branches.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Try harder,” said Rune. So Jack went to the prow and cast his mind out. At first he saw nothing. The noise of the birds distracted him, and Eric Pretty-Face’s humming didn’t help. Jack was afraid he might call up fog by accident or, worse, a downpour. He didn’t really know what he was doing.

Reveal yourselves, living presences of the earth and sky. Show me your pathways in the sea. Uncurl in the leaf, flash in the sun, fill the air with your music.Jack didn’t know where the words came from. They were simply there, shimmering all around. The air thickened like honey; the water began to stir.

It was full of roots. They snaked everywhere, drawing the sun to their green depths. Fish glided in and out of their coils. The roots grew upward and became branches when they reached the air. They unfurled leaves such as were never seen in Middle Earth. Green and gold they shone, and the birds hid their nests among them.

It was too much. The vision was too intense to bear. Jack felt his head swim and then he fell. He woke with Rune holding a skin of water to his lips. Olaf knelt at his side. “What did you just do?”

“I—uh—” Jack choked on the water.

“He called to Yggdrassil,” said Rune.

Jack sat up to see Eric Pretty-Face, Sven the Vengeful, and the others clustered at the other end of the ship. They looked utterly spooked. Bold Heart perched on the mast and warbled joyfully. He, apparently, hadn’t found the presence of Yggdrassil upsetting at all.

“Rune said the life force was strong here and that I should try to see it,” Jack said.

“Don’t do that again,” said Olaf. “We heard you chanting a poem. The air filled with the sound of wings. I thought a dragon had discovered us. Then the sea churned, and Sven thought we were being attacked by a sea serpent. I know you’re used to such things, but the rest of us don’t like them.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“It’s my fault,” said Rune. “He’s untrained and likely to overdo things.”

“Like turning the queen bald. That was a good trick, though.” Olaf smiled. “You’re a fine skald, and if we survive, I expect many poems out of you.”

“I could write poetry too,” said Thorgil. “If I tried.”

“You? Don’t make me laugh,” said Olaf. “Everyone knows women can’t write verses. It’s only for men.”

“I can do anything a man can!” cried Thorgil. Her face turned red.

“You’re a good shield maiden, and you’ll be a great berserker someday. Don’t ask for the moon.”

“I can do it! Don’t laugh at me!”

“Better I laugh than throw you overboard,” said Olaf. His voice had become quiet and dangerous. Thorgil stopped arguing, but she cast poisonous looks at Jack as she plied the rudder.

As they went deeper into Jotun Fjord, the teeming bird-and fish-life disappeared. Jack saw only one salmon rising to snap at a fly. But that salmon was enormous. Jack’s skin tingled, and he heard something—wind in the trees, perhaps—that was too faint to identify. “It feels strange here,” he said.

“That’s because we’re in Jotunheim.” Rune’s voice, always quiet, was even quieter now.

“Already?”

“We’ve crossed the border from our world into theirs. They”—the old warrior indicated the forest, the mountains, the fjord—“belong. We don’t. What you feel is the watching.”

Jack wished Rune hadn’t said that. Now he could feel the attention directed toward the ship. The trees seemed more alert. The mountains loomed closer, and yet they couldn’t have moved—could they? Eyes watched from beneath the spruce and junipers. Jack couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there.

“They don’t like us, do they?” he said.

“We don’t like them either, when they invade our world,” said Rune. “Fortunately, a troll is far weaker in our world than in his. If it weren’t so, Eric Pretty-Face’s teeth would be decorating a Jotun’s chest instead of the other way around. We’d never have captured Golden Bristles on his home ground.”