The Sea of Trolls

On a frigid day in February, 793, an 11-year-old boy named Jack goes about his morning routine with his father Giles, his mother, and his five-year-old sister, Lucy. Despite his wife’s protests about giving their daughter fanciful ideas, Giles tells Lucy that she was a lost princess who was abducted by trolls before he found her “lying under a rose tree with a gold coin in [her] hand” (2). When Giles was a child, he developed a limb difference after an accident, and he went to the Holy Isle in the hope that the monks there could help him. However, they were unable to, and his dreams of becoming a priest were dashed because his family was too poor to pay the abbey’s fee.

Two years ago, a Druid known as the Bard sailed to Jack’s village in a coracle and moved into a deserted ancient Roman house on a cliff near the sea. The local families take turns bringing the elderly man food, and they believe he possesses magical powers, such as shapeshifting and the ability to speak with animals. When Jack delivers food to the Bard that morning, the old man tells him that six ewes have given birth.