Jakob
It was chaos. Eleven startled girls, muzzy and fuzzy from days of sleep, all talking at once; Moira trying to raise her voice above them to explain; Trigvi and Botvi bustling about preparing a meal for their many guests; and the troll boys busy competing with Jakob’s brothers, each trying to outdo the other in their efforts to impress the beautiful girls.
If the princesses noticed anything strange about their green-skinned hosts, they were too polite to say. Or too befuddled with sleep and enchantment.
Jakob watched it all from the wall where he sat next to Selvi. She cradled her broken arm in her lap and had the other curled protectively around Little Doom.
“Mama Selvi,” Jakob said. “I don’t think we can forge a new Compact.”
“Why not?” Selvi boomed in her quietest voice. “Be you not trusting me?”
“I do trust you.” Jakob patted the big green hand that rested on his shoulder. “But without Foss’s help, we’ll never get back to our own world. I’ll still teach your boys to play, but we certainly can’t bring you any butter.”
Selvi looked down at him, a perplexed look on her face. “Why be you needing the Fossegrim? You already be having his fiddle.”
Jakob sighed. “Yes, but we don’t really know how to play it. That was all Foss’s doing.”
Selvi chuckled. It was like the boom of a waterfall. “Silly Little Doom. You be not needing to play it. The fiddle be of both worlds. Whoever holds it can be passing through at will. Foss the fox could be going only to the middle of the bridge, no farther because he not be having the fiddle to hand. As for Aenmarr, he be not knowing the fiddle’s power. Really, troll men be not very smart.” She grinned and winked at him.
Jakob sat up straight. “Really?”
“Really,” Selvi answered.
“Then why did you not take the fiddle and go?”
She was silent for a long time. Deep thinking, he supposed. “Be looking at me, Little Doom,” she said at last. “Be really looking at me. How could I be making my way, how could my son, in the world of men? They would be knowing me for what I am and be killing me and mine. As long ago, so it be now.”
He nodded. “There are many humans who would not understand,” he said. “Who would hate you. But some…”
She smiled at him and shifted beside him. It was like a mountain moving. “Then we be welcoming such ‘somes’ if they be liking to visit us here.”
But he knew, as she knew, that no one but he and Moira and possibly his brothers would ever come across the bridge into Trollholm. It could be a quiet place, out of the world, when things got too hard for them. But who else could they trust with the secret? He turned and looked deeply into her eyes.
She looked back. “Now, Little Doom, let us be making our new Compact out of trust, not fear. Out of love, not hate.”
Jakob beamed. “I’ll write a song about it.”
“And then be teaching it to us?” Selvi asked.
Jakob nodded enthusiastically. “And then be teaching it to all of you.”
He stood and clapped his hands together till he had everyone’s attention, not easy above that hubbub. But at last he managed it. This time even his brothers listened.
“Hey,” he said. “We be going home.”
COMPACT
I give to you,
A promise made,
From fate to fate
The game is played.
The music slides on
Note by note,
We look for love,
We live on hope.
The bridge across
The waters wide
Cannot hold back
The surging tide.
Beneath the falls
We sit and wait
To see what love
Transforms to hate.
And I will hold out friendship’s hand,
Heart to heart and land to land.
The larder’s full,
The pot is boiled,
The plan is laid,
The plot is foiled,
The fire’s set,
The flames are high,
The flag’s unfurled
Against the sky.
The war is joined,
The bullet milled,
The wound is open,
Blood is spilled.
And hate is answered
Fast by hate,
The peaceful word
Is spoke too late.
Still I will hold out friendship’s hand,
Heart to heart and land to land.
Still I will hold out friendship’s hand,
Across the bridge, from land to land.
—Words and music by
Jakob and Erik Griffson
and Moira Darr,
from Troll Bridge
Radio WMSP: 10:00 A.M.
“So there’s been a huge break in the Dairy Princess case, Jim?”
“Yes, Katie—everyone is safe. Everyone except Mr. Sjogren the photographer who gave his life for the girls. There will be a memorial service for him Sunday here in Vanderby and next week in the Twin Cities.”
“A hero, Jim?”
“A real hero, according to Moira Darr, the harp prodigy who is the only one of the princesses who actually remembers anything of what happened on the fateful day they were kidnapped by the madman, Grimma Foss.”
“Are the kids okay, Jim?”
“You betcha. Except for a few bumps and lumps. The youngest Griffson boy, Jakob, has some burns, plus a hairline fracture of his right tibia. The middle boy, Erik, has quite a shiner. The oldest, Galen, has marks around his wrists and ankles where he was tied, upside down by his own account, though he’s been very funny and charming about the whole thing. The girls—except for Moira who’d gotten away early—were treated rather better until the end. Administered some kind of knockout drug. The police chief says the doctors are still trying to figure that one out.”
“Still, they must have been frightened.”
“Yah, I can’t even begin to imagine it, Katie. Four days under the thumb of that madman. The Dairy Princess Association has committed to hiring bodyguards for their contestants. It’s a different world we live in now.”
“How did they finally escape, Jim?”
“Somehow they got loose of their bonds, overwhelmed Foss, tied him up, and brought him back over the bridge. There he went stark raving mad. Evidently he was planning to ‘marry’ the girls and kill the boys.”
“He must have been stark raving mad all along, Jim.”
“I agree, Katie. Jakob Griffson told us that Foss said he was a musician down on his luck, which was how he managed to get the boys into his clutches. Seems they’re suckers for such a story.”
“Bet they won’t be such suckers anymore, Jim.”
“Yah, I imagine not. Now I did some interviews I’d like you to hear, the first with young Moira.”
<click>
“Are you relieved to be free, Moira?”
“I’m relieved we’re all free, Mr. Johnson.”
“Of course you are. Now, according to the boys, you were quite the heroine.”
“I think I was just lucky, Mr. Johnson.”
“Lucky?”
“Lucky to have friends like Jakob Griffson.”
<click>
“Well, Jim, that certainly is a composed young woman. Must be all that stage training. Hmmm, do you suppose there’s something going on between…”
“He’s fifteen and a half, Katie, and she’s sixteen going on thirty-five. But here’s what Jakob had to say.”
<click>
“We’d never have escaped that madman without Moira’s help. For a classical musician, she’s quite something.”
<click>
“And the other brothers, Jim?”
“They said almost the same thing.”
“Should that be the last word on the story then?”
“No, Katie, I think that should belong to Mr. Foss.”
<click>
“BLAME IT ON THE TROLLS! AENMARR DID IT. AND NOW HE’S A ROCK. ROCK AND TROLL. AIEEEEEE.”
<click>
“Who is Aenmarr, Jim? An accomplice?”
“A troll, or so Foss says.”
“You mean like … I’m a troll, fol-de-rol, nine feet tall and nine feet wide, mean and green and hungry, Jim?”
“[Laughs.] The police have been all over the area and they’ve found no indication of anyone else involved. The kids swear it was Foss who was behind their disappearance. Foss and no one else. And they have absolutely no reason to lie about it.”
“Thanks, Jim. And now to Bob with the sports. How about those Timberwolves, Bob?”