Read Online Troll Mill by Katherine Langrish - Free Book Online Page B

later they had closed it again. There was no other explanation. But who could have done it, and why?
    He called Loki and pushed his way along the overgrown path by the side of the dam. As he expected, the sluice gate at the head of the millrace was firmly in position, turning the water aside to frisk and foam over the weir. With the sluice gate shut like that, there was no way that the water wheel could turn.
    Peer scratched his head and looked at the swollen millpond. The current had opened a brown channel down the middle, and the green duckweed had been swept to the calm stretch at the far side. Somewhere underneath all that, he knew, lived Granny Green-teeth. What was her dwelling like, down in the cloudy water? He imagined a sort of darkhole, ringed with snags, and Granny Green-teeth lurking in it like an old eel. She’d drag her prey down there, as once she had dragged his uncles’ savage dog, Grendel. She’d hated the two millers. She used to prowl around the building at nights, dripping on their doorstep. Even Uncle Baldur had been afraid of her.
    He remembered the dark figure he’d half seen, half imagined, last night, creeping after him up the hill. Had it been Granny Green-teeth? Could she have opened the sluice?
    None the wiser for what he’d seen, he wandered back and stopped halfway across the wooden bridge.
    There was nowhere to go. If he joined the search party down on the shore, Bjorn would be there, and Peer didn’t want to meet him again so soon. He couldn’t go back to the farm yet either—he couldn’t face Hilde.
    He stood, restlessly peeling long splinters from the wooden handrail and dropping them into the rushing water.
Why should I help Bjorn look for Kersten? She ran away from him. She doesn’t want to be found.
    The stream babbled away under the bridge,as if arguing with itself in different voices. Listening, he caught a few half-syllables in the rush.
Gone. Lost, gone.
Or maybe,
Long ago …
And was someone sobbing?
    It’s just the water
, Peer thought, as the sounds melted into melancholy chat and murmur. But he shivered suddenly. What if the mill was haunted by the people who had once lived here? None of them had been happy, including his own grandmother. “A thin little worn-out shadow of a woman,” Ralf had once described her. She’d come here after her first husband died, and married the old miller. And the miller had ill-treated her, while her young son Ulf, Peer’s own father, had run away and never come back. And then she’d had two more sons, who had grown up to become his violent, selfish, bullying half uncles, Baldur and Grim.
    Instinctively, Peer twisted the thin silver ring he always wore on his finger, the only thing of his father’s that he still owned.
    As he touched the worn silver, he felt a stab of longing. Ulf had been a thin, quiet man, whose slow, rare smiles could warm you from top to toe.
If only I could talk to him now. He
wouldn’t say much, but he’d listen to me. He’d put his arm around my shoulder and give me a comforting word. He’d …
    I need you, Father. Why did you have to die?
    Peer hit the rail of the bridge as hard as he could.
    What’s wrong with me?
he wondered, rubbing his bruised fist. And realized at once:
I’m angry!
    He considered it, amazed. Peer never lost his temper. For three years now he’d lived with Gudrun and Ralf, grateful to the family, glad to live among decent kindly folk who treated him well. And he’d admired Bjorn. Bjorn was the sort of person Peer wanted to be—cheerful, self-reliant, always willing to help—but with a steely streak that meant nobody pushed him around.
I was proud to be his friend. I’d never have believed he’d be unfair or do anything wrong.
    But Bjorn had been ruthless enough to keep Kersten against her will.
    He’s just selfish after all….
    He swallowed down a lump in his throat and trailed off the bridge toward the entrance to the mill. The mill and the barn faced eachother across the