Troll Bridge (2 page)

“Call when you get to Vanderby,” her mother replied, the moment Moira took a breath.

“I will.” And she would, too, or there went her driving privileges. “Love you.”

Next she called Helena, the chief Dairy Princess, to tell her that she was just leaving the city. Helena made rude noises on the phone in return, adding she'd stall everyone when they got to Vanderby. “But get here before it's dark. And don't dawdle.”
Dawdle
was Helena's favorite word.

“I never dawdle,” Moira said, meaning it. Then she turned off the phone. There was no time to lose if she was going to make the photo shoot.

She made a face at the thought, though: another photo op. What a waste of good practice time. She'd only tried out for Dairy Princess in the first place because her parents thought the exposure would help her career. The whole thing was supposed to take only a few days of smiling competition, interviews, crowning, a few parades. The event itself had been a bit silly, and a bit sweet. She liked the girls. Well, some of them. Especially Helena, who had a smart mouth. And Kimberleigh, who was a black belt in karate but looked as if she'd never done anything more strenuous than file her nails. The rest of them were pleasant enough, and very serious, or at least serious about being Dairy Princesses. However, not a one of them knew anything about classical music, which was a drag. Their musical tastes ranged from sugary pop to dance, with one—Chantelle—going for rap. Which, in Moira's opinion, was as close to music as ad copy was to poetry.

But a week of being a DP was about as much as she was willing to invest, with her busy schedule. And here, six days after the last of it, the local paper suddenly wanted to do a full spread in their weekend edition about the controversy boiling up around the new Vanderby mayor, a Mr. McGuigan. Which the princesses were somehow part of, though she wasn't sure how. Since the princesses had each signed a contract to do appearances for a full year—though no more than one a month—Moira had been stuck. Besides, the dairy people had been so accommodating, working the shoot around her schedule of rehearsals, she had nothing left to complain about except that she had to do it.

Shut up, Moira!
she scolded herself, as she often did.

*   *   *

BY SEVEN FIFTEEN, DRIVING LEAD-FOOTED
all the way, Moira was beyond Duluth and heading toward Vanderby and its Trollholm bridge. Her mother's typed instructions had been perfect so far.

“Thanks, Mom,” she called out the window, as though her mother could hear her all the way in St. Paul.

Moira was glad she hadn't driven with the other girls anyway. The time alone had given her a good start on listening to a tape of what would be her newest solo, a piece called “Waiting on the Princess,” written especially for her by Daniel Berlin, Minnesota's most famous composer, world famous, in fact. He'd never written for harp before, which made the piece very difficult, and it would be a good stretch for her. She was about to play the tape again when a green sign announced the turn for Vanderby.

She pulled off the main road and onto a dirt drive her mother had marked as “Very rural.”

“That's an understatement,” Moira said aloud, looking at the pine trees that threatened to crowd her off the road. She almost missed the smaller path that her mother had marked in large letters: “DON'T OVERSHOOT.”

It was bumpy, so she slowed down to fifteen miles an hour and when that seemed too fast, she downshifted to about eight. Then the trees opened up a bit and there, ahead of her, were several cars and a van parked near a gray stone bridge.

Moira breathed deeply.
Made it!

Pulling between Helena's blood-red Acura and the newspaper's gray van, she stopped the car and popped the trunk where her princess dress, crown, and shoes were carefully placed. She leaped out, waving at the other girls who'd draped themselves in various positions along the bridge's low stone walls.

The photographer was already set up and taking some early shots of individuals. Behind them the sun was just starting down behind two towering pines.

“I'm here!” Moira shouted. “I made it.”

Helena stood, putting her hands on her hips and looking every inch a royal. Her Dairy Princess crown glittered red in the sun's rays. “For goodness sakes, girl, stop dawdling and get dressed in your gear!”

“I'll be quick.”

The photographer turned and growled at her, “
Mighty
quick, honey. Before the light goes, please.” He moved onto the bridge with the girls, leaning in for close-ups. She could hear him talking rapidly to them, cozening them, getting them to smile. “Like the princesses you are,” he said. “Not cheese, caviar.”

“Caviar…” they replied dutifully, smiling prettily and opening their eyes wide, though Moira doubted any of them had ever actually tasted caviar. She had, at her first symphony gala. The stuff was fishy-tasting and awful.

Moira had just started to turn back toward her car to get into her princess clothes, when she heard an odd, rushing sound, like the timpani in Stravinsky's “Rites of Spring,” loud, insistent, pounding. She listened more carefully. No, it sounded more like a train.

But we're nowhere near any train,
she thought, looking over her shoulder toward the sound.

And then she saw it, a wall of water rushing down the river, almost as high as the trees. It was heading right toward the bridge—toward the girls and the photographer—traveling with the mindlessness of any natural phenomenon.

Moira spun around and ran toward them. “Get off the bridge,” she screamed. “Now!” She pointed to the water galloping their way.

For a moment everything seemed in motion, the girls and the photographer looking up, seeing Moira, hearing her, following her pointing finger. And then, like deer in the headlights, they stopped. None of them moved, not an arm, not a leg, not one step off the Trollholm Bridge.

The roaring water rolled over them—and they were gone.

2

Moira

For a long moment Moira couldn't move, either. Only her heart, which was beating frantically, kept going. She stared at the wall of water, blue, white, green, the top waves tipped with red from the rays of the setting sun.

And then—she couldn't quite figure out how—she looked right into the water in front of her, and realized with a gasp that there was a figure inside it.

Impossible! Yet there it was, in the middle of all that rushing water. A huge figure, greenish, human. Well, human-ish, anyway, but big as a house. It was wearing some sort of trousers and a kind of shirt, which hung outside the pants.

Oh God!
Moira thought.

For a second Moira closed her eyes, but what she'd already seen was still imprinted on the inside of her lids: the giant man-thing turning away from her, with the eleven girls clutched in its hands and the photographer … the photographer was in the creature's mouth, held there between enormous protruding teeth.

“Let them go!” Moira screamed at it. But her cry was obscured by the rush of water and by the screams of the other girls.

It was Moira's own scream that gave her momentum. Her body knew before her brain that she had to save them. If she'd actually given it any thought, she'd never have tried. But she raced to the bridge, leapt one-footed onto the low wall, and then launched herself at the creature's back. She caught the end of its shirttails and hung on.

“You … You…” She couldn't think of a curse strong enough. “You monster.”

Shut up, Moira!
she thought. The last thing she needed to do now was alert the monster that she was hanging on to him.
And what, in the name of Bach, Brahms, and Bartok, am I doing dangling dangerously on the back end of a giant creature like some crazed movie hero, way above a rushing river, when I should be back in my car, calling the police on my cell phone?

She glanced down.

Mistake.
Big
mistake. Way below her, the river not only rushed, it hurtled, churned, tumbled, roared.

Lucky I'm not afraid of heights,
she told herself.
But, I think I'm scared spitless of giant monsters.

And it was too late—way too late—to let go.

*   *   *

THE MONSTER ALIEN CREATURE THING
walked for minutes, hours, days. Moira had no idea how long. She simply held on to his shirttails with her strong fingers, fingers that practiced harp three to five hours a day. She clutched the sloppy wet material and prayed.

But after a while, she could feel herself starting to slip down the shirttails, fingers so cold and cramped, she couldn't hold on any longer. Her hands were strong, but not
that
strong.

Don't scream,
she warned herself.
Don't make a sound
. But the breath rushed out of her as she fell, screaming. She landed with an awful crunch, not in the river as she had feared, but on stone.

Ouch,
she thought. It was the last thought she had for quite some time.

*   *   *

SHE HEARD A VOICE.

“Do not move or Aenmarr will return.”

“Aenmarr? What's an Aenmarr?” She was crumpled up on her side with her eyes closed. She was afraid to open them, her head hurt so bad. Any sort of light and her skull might explode.

“Shhhhhh, child of man.”

She lay still but muttered, “Child of man and woman actually.”

The voice sighed wearily. “If you value your life, be quiet.”

Shut up, Moira!
she told herself and was quiet, but she groaned inwardly,
What have I gotten myself into?

“Trouble, human child. Trouble.”

It's in my head!
The voice was in her head. It knew what she was thinking. Gasping, Moira tried to sit up.

“Shhhh!”

Something warm and soft pressed against her side, holding her down.

Closing her mouth, she let the warm thing push her back down.
Shut up, Moira,
she warned herself again.

“Now you understand.”

But she didn't understand, not really. She didn't understand who Aenmarr was, or where it came from, or who the voice was, or what—she thought in a rush—she was doing lying on stone.

Maybe she'd drowned in that wall of water and this was the afterlife. Only it seemed very hard for Heaven and too cool for Hell.

“Not what, but who. When Aenmarr passes, I will tell you all,” the voice assured her. “Now, hush.”

Oh,
she thought,
Aenmarr
is
the alien monster.

She put her head back down and waited. Till Aenmarr passed, got in his spaceship, and went back to Mars, or fairyland or wherever. “When Aenmarr passes.” It sounded like a title of one of Daniel Berlin's pieces, and she thought—a bit hysterically—
I'll have to tell him
. Though as she thought this, a traitor part of her was afraid she was never going to get to tell anyone anything again.

*   *   *

AFTER A WHILE—A LONG
while in which she didn't dare move, even to check her watch—the voice in her head said, “Rise human child. Follow me.”

She stood gingerly, felt for broken bones, found none, though she bet she'd find bruises soon enough. It was now dark, a deep and relentless dark, darker than night should have been, and she wondered briefly how she was going to be able to follow what she couldn't see. She also wondered about finding the girls, wondered how to go about rescuing them. She guessed—she knew—that the photographer was beyond help.

Something slightly lighter than the dark moved ahead of her. She put out a hand to touch it. Felt fur. Heard a growl.

Withdrawing her hand quickly, she whispered, “Sorry,” to the creature, the dog, whatever.

“Follow,” it said, “but do
not
touch me again.”

“Sorry,” she repeated, and followed.

*   *   *

AFTER A TIME, SHE REALIZED
that though she hadn't actually broken any bones, she ached everywhere. Her fingers were stiff, her back was sore, her arms felt as if they'd been pulled from their sockets and then been replaced badly. Her head was hammering away as if someone were beating out the four opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth on her skull over and over and over again.

The voice in her head told her, “Come straight, now left, step over the rock, now left again.”

She might as well have been blind in that deep dark. She stopped and looked around.
Rescue the girls? First I have to rescue myself.

“How,” came the answer, “will you even rescue yourself if you do not listen?”

She who always had an answer, had none.

At last the voice said, “Duck,” only she didn't duck fast enough and banged the top of her head on what she later realized was the entrance to a low cave. It set her headache clanging again. She had to drop to her knees and crawl in.

“That wasn't funny,” she whispered to the creature ahead of her.

“It was not meant to be.”

The cave opening was narrow in the beginning but widened quickly.

“You can stand now if you wish.”

Moira stood slowly, her hands above her just in case. Relieved, she stretched to her full height. The cavern was lit with a strange phosphorescent light. As her vision adjusted to it, she began to make out the softly rounded cave walls. Turning, she saw the light reflected in a pair of dark eyes. The creature who'd guided her to the cave was smaller than she expected, and to her surprise was neither alien nor dog, but a fox, male, with two jaunty ears and a long furry tail.

“Who
are
you?” she asked, hands on her hips. “More important—where am I?”

“Sit, child of man … and woman … and I will reveal all.” The fox's shoulders moved up and down. He seemed to be chuckling.