A sixteen-year-old girl has long been living in a holiday home on the Baltic coast, near Riga. She is ill and begins to leave the house only on the fourth day. She likes pine forests and the sea frozen off the coast. Like everyone recovering, the girl is unreasonably happy. She walks for a long time, and everything around her seems fabulous.
Once a young, lean skier notices a girl. She timidly hurries to go, and the skier stares after her for a long time. Then he often comes to the place of their meeting, but he no longer sees her.
At night, in a dream, the girl flies over the hills to the quiet music, and her heart skips a beat with fear and delight. Something strange and unusual happens to her. She enjoys being alone and barely responding to letters.
In the evenings, a fireplace is fired in the lounge of the holiday home. The girl likes to sit there while everyone is relaxing in the dining room, look at the fire and pick up the dream melody on the piano.
Recently, a girl has been attracted to an empty house with a mezzanine, standing nearby. Its plot is especially large, it is surrounded by a particularly high fence. The window on the mezzanine is not covered by shutters, and underneath the deer horns are nailed to the wall. The girl calls this house "Deer Horns", comes to him every day, "sits on a stump and freezes."
She imagines his empty, echoing, gloomy rooms, silence at night, thin moon needles breaking through the shutters.
Once a girl sees a window on a mezzanine open, a little man crawls out of it and clutches tightly at the sprout of deer horns. A long and thin staircase protrudes right out of the window, a little man sets it up and goes down to the porch.
Following the first man, the second comes down. Both are dressed in antique clothes - short pants, stockings, long camisoles, red caps - and look like fabulous long-bearded trolls. They sit on the porch for a long time and smoke pipes, then dig up some roots in the garden, play with fluffy balls of willow and return to the house.
When the window behind the trolls slams, the girl returns to the rest house. She no longer believes that she actually sees trolls. At night, she goes to the “Deer Horns”, crawls through a hole in the fence, goes to the house and hears that the music she dreams about is playing inside.
Through a gap in the shutter, the girl sees a large room, lit by a blazing fireplace and candles. In the middle of the room is a huge table with a barrel of wine, tin mugs and cheese heads. Serious bearded trolls are sitting at the table and playing cards. By the fireplace, a group of trolls plays old stringed instruments, the rest dance slowly and importantly.
A girl enters the trolls room. They get scared, but soon calm down, looking at her radiant face. However, "the secret of their life is broken." The trolls open the hatch and go under the floor, taking turns bowing to the uninvited guest. The oldest troll with good eyes remains in the room.
He says something to her with his eyes, his thousand-year-old wise face, his prophetic knowledge of the sorrows and joys of life, but she does not understand him, and she is in pain from this.
The girl understands that trolls cannot talk to people. She becomes sad, she goes to the porch and notices that the old troll is following her. He calls the girl to the gap in the shutter and makes him look.
The girl sees not a dark room, but a sunny day and the hills that a thin skier glides on. Peering, she discovers that the troll has disappeared.
The next day, the girl again goes to the "Deer Horns." To her surprise, there was no trace of the house, the window on the mezzanine was closed, and even the gap in the shutter disappeared, as if there were no trolls and music.
Then a skier appears at the house. The girl hides around the corner, and then runs to check: suddenly he, too, leaves no traces. Climbing the hill, she sees the area that the old troll showed her. The girl again begins to believe in fairy tales and screams loudly with joy.
Hearing a scream, the skier turns back, and the girl stands and waits. Why does she fly in a dream to music and meets trolls? What does she expect so confidently and passionately? And who guesses what she expects?
