After being changed back into a princess, Margaret sets off on a new adventure, across the sea in Norway. Here are two bits of that story.

The path went on a long way, through open woods showing a few spring flowers, then turned rocky along a cliff. She was thinking she might be lost when she saw a girl in the path ahead of her, crouching and looking at something on the ground. The girl had brown hair and was wearing a red-brown skirt, a white blouse with embroidered bands on the long full sleeves, and a black vest. Margaret quickened her steps and was soon close enough to see the bird in the path, chirping away. It seemed the girl was chirping too; could that be? Then she was there, and the girl looked up.

“Hello,” said Margaret.

“Hello,” said the girl. “This mother bird’s baby has fallen out of the nest.” She stood and pointed. “It’s up there, that outcropping in the cliff. It looks too steep to climb.”

“I’ll do it,” said Margaret, “but how do you know what the bird wants?”

“A woman I helped in Finland gave me the gift of languages,” the girl explained. “Birds, people, anything that has a language.”

“Ah, that’s why you know English.”

“Yes. I can’t usually understand a new tongue right away. I have to listen for a while, and then the words come clear. I have to catch the rhythm, I think, and the rise and fall. Finnish was hard, but after I got Swedish and Norwegian, English came easily enough, listening to the sailors in the ports. Birds are easy because they are chirping and singing all the time.”            

“How did the woman give you the gift?”

“She just told me she was giving it to me, and then I had it. She just...I don’t know. She was speaking Russian to me because she had the gift, and then she talked to me in Finnish for a while, and I began to understand her.”

“You are from Rus?”

“Yes,” said the girl, “but please help this bird now.”

“Of course,” said Margaret. She scrambled up the cliff.

The girl Margaret met was Annika. Later in their journey, they rescue a dog. Annika was not raised by trolls.

As Margaret and Annika were walking through a forest of birches, the summer sun gleaming on the white trunks, they heard a dog howling and yipping. “Oh, the poor dog!” cried Annika. “Trolls have tied it up, and they hit it and yell at it. Poor scared dog.” They made their way through the woods to the edge of a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a tall, bare rock, as high as the trees, and there, tied to a post in front of the rock, was a brown and white dog, scruffy and thin and howling.

“Careful of the trolls,” said Margaret. “They are big and mean. I hear they are easily tricked, though, if you speak their language.”

Annika crept towards the dog to free him. Just as she snicked the rope with her knife, a troll poked his head out of the rock and looked out. Annika and the dog ran. The troll was slow, but he had great long legs and great long arms, and he grabbed Annika by the back of her blouse and held on. The dog ran to Margaret, who was still back in the trees, jumped on her, bowled her over, and started licking her face. When she got up, Annika and the troll were gone.

As the troll dragged Annika toward the rock, she twisted around but could not see any door or cave opening. The troll just went into the rock as though it were water. Annika froze with fright but she, too, went through the rock like water.

In the dim cave inside the rock, the troll still hung on to Annika and yelled to his wife, “Go get the dog!”

“You go get the dog,” she yelled back. “I’m going to get a switch to beat that girl. Show her not to be a dog-stealer.”

“No, no, first we get the dog back, then we beat the girl!”

 Annika listened until she understood every word. Then she said, “I didn’t steal your dog. I helped it escape from your beatings. If you had been kind to it I would have left it alone.”

“You speak Trollish!” cried both the trolls. “How can this be?”

“I was adopted by trolls when I was little,” said Annika, “and if my mother and father find you have mistreated me, they will make you regret it.”

Under the trees, Margaret was looking for stones. She found a few, took out her sling, and aimed at the top of the rock, thinking to distract the trolls so Annika could escape.

“Dog,” she whispered, “be quiet, whatever happens.”

“What’s that?” cried the trolls when they heard a stone hit the rock above them.

“It must be my ma and pa, come to save me,” said Annika. “They are much bigger than you are.” Another stone hit the rock. The trolls let go of Annika and ran outside. Annika didn’t know if the rock would let her out, but it did. Perhaps it, too, thought she had been raised by trolls and was therefore family. She followed the trolls, calling out in English “Shake the trees!” and in Trollish, “Ma! Pa! I’m over here!” Margaret took hold of a couple of young trees and shook them.

“Oh, nooo!” cried the trolls. “They are coming after us.” They ran away from the shaking trees. Annika ran to Margaret.

“Down!” said Margaret to the dog before it jumped on Annika. They ran as fast as they could through the woods to the path and started down it, all three of them panting. When they had their breath back, Annika asked the dog its name.

“Gurgy,” said the dog, licking Annika’s hand, then Margaret’s.

 “Would you like to come with us?” asked Annika.

“Oh, yes yes yes!” said Gurgy, in yips and wiggles.