The Prodigal Troll (27 page)

He sagged against the darkest corner and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to forget the woman. But an ache in his heart worse than the pain in his groin made him toss and stay awake.

Daylight cracked open the sky.

Maggot rolled over and stretched his tired limbs. Dusty sunlight penetrated the room, illuminating the scattered bones of maybe two people. And a tiny, cracked skull that clearly belonged to a troll. Maggot jerked upright.

The bones were partly hidden by a beam where the roof had fallen in. He braced his shoulder under the rotting wood and heaved it aside-leaves and dust showered over him. A little stripe-back ground squirrel scampered across Maggot's foot, then zagged back into the safe cover of the collapsed wall.

A baby troll's bones were nested against a human skeleton. A troll and a man, together.

It disturbed him that light should fall on this child's bones and prevent the soul that once wore them from finding its way back into the comforting darkness. He looked up-this was a poor imitation of a cave. Eventually it must collapse, and that might leave the bones completely exposed.

He probed the dirt with his fingers, loosening a thin layer of decaying leaves and dead vines. Beneath that he found it packed hard. He saw stones in one of the corners. He pried several up out of the ground until he found a large, flat one with a sharp edge. If he scraped a hole and buried the bones then they should stay in darkness long after the logs all fell and rotted.

Raising the stone high above his head, he plunged it into the dirt. The edge bit the soil. He worked mindlessly, forgetting himself in the good pain of muscle and bone bent to a purpose, until he'd finished a shallow pit.

He picked up the skull, his thumb fitting in the bony ridge of the brow. His other hand took the tiny lower jaw.

"Who are you?" he asked aloud. He was thinking how Windy had found him, adopted him-here a human mother must have found and adopted this baby troll. "How did you get here?"

He held the skull and jaw together, opening and closing the mouth. The teeth clicked against each other, but his little counterpart said nothing to him.

Gently placing the skull in the pit, Maggot turned to gather the long bones of the arms and legs, glad that no big scavengers had cracked them open for their marrow. The knobby backbones were easy to scoop up, but the ribs and the small bones of the hands and feet were scattered either by smaller vermin or the vagaries of time. Maggot dug through the humus and roots, determined to gather them all if he could. Strands of long red hair were tangled in some of the bones. No troll had hair that long or that color, so he plucked them free before placing the bones in the pit.

The longer he worked, the longer he avoided any thought of the woman. He didn't know what to do. He still desired her. But he didn't understand people, didn't know how to be one, didn't know why he'd expected it to be so easy to get her to show interest in him.

He kicked the dirt into the trench, nudged the flat stone over it with his toe to cover the bones, and sighed.

He let himself look at the other skeletons. Being creatures of the day, perhaps they wanted their souls to bask in sunlight. He didn't know. He decided to leave them as they were, not knowing the proper way to show respect.

Something glinted inside one rib cage. He bent to look. Two tiny gemlike shapes, as smooth as pebbles from a stream but shining with some inner light, were strung on tarnished strands of silver about the neck. Maggot thought at once of the woman and the blue gem that dangled from her throat. He palmed the skull, snapping it to one side so that he could lift the two strands out of the body. Untangling them from the ribs, he draped them around his own neck, slipping them under the sheath that held his knife. The chains felt cold around his skin, but the lucent stones pulsed with faint heat against his naked chest. Now he had something that made him more like the woman and connected him to her.

He squeezed the stones in his fist. He could never go back to being a troll or even to living among them. Just because he hadn't impressed the first woman he met didn't mean he would never find his mate. He would have to learn their ways.

Sunlight no longer drifted into the den, but it was too soon to be night again already. He crawled out through the hole, looking up and sniffing the air. Dark clouds scudded across the sky. Trees shook in a wind that smelled like thunderstorms.

Branches fell from the treetops. Maggot spied one lying on the ground that was mostly straight and about the length of a spear. He lifted it, aimed it at a distant trunk, and threw. It sailed wide in the wind.

As the first fat drops of water slapped his shoulders, Maggot ran to pick up the stick and try again.

The sky broke open, releasing a sudden downpour. Lightning veined the skies like pulses of pain, chased by stampedes of thunder that started far away, galloped overhead, and faded many heartbeats later in the distance. It grew darker than night, impossible to see, even the air squeezing him. He turned toward the den for shelter, thought of the little troll he'd just buried. He felt too sad to stay here tonight.

He climbed the hillside and gazed across the dim, gray shapes of the sodden landscape. He had been on the right track the night before. The cave where he had stashed the skin-covered log was nearby. The entrance, when he found it, had filled with water. He lay on his belly in the puddle and peered inside. Drops of water reared down the stone walls, but it was dry compared to the world outside, and it was his alone. He cast the log out into the rain to make more room for himself, crawled inside, and curled up to nap.

He awoke in total dark, dizzy and light-headed-the hole had collapsed, thick with mud. He dug in the mud with his fingers, scooping out handfuls and flinging them aside. One hand groped naked air, and he almost cried out, expecting his mother to grip it and pull him free the way she had whenever he had become trapped in some tight passage of a cave. But she wasn't there for him, nor was anyone else, so his hand flailed around until it gripped the rough stone, while he kicked his legs hard, shoving, swimming through the muck.

Curled on his side, slick with mud, Maggot lifted his head to the sky, swallowed a gulp of air, and stared into the glaucous eye of the clouded moon.

He staggered upright, wanting to pound out a "happy" tattoo on his chest. He grabbed the log, but soaked, cracked, and half-f of mud, it made a poor noise. No matter-he was people now, and people did not pound their chests like trolls.

As he started down the hill for the valley, a new rain began to pour like gravel coming down a steep slope. Maggot's skin felt bruised and sore from the constant pelting, but there was no place to hide. The wind whipped the rain around the backs of trees. By the time he reached the narrow river, the plain alongside it resembled a marsh. The water churned brown and muddy, thrashing at its banks like a bison wallowing in a mudhole. The palisade stood halfsubmerged beside the river's curve-

The tents had disappeared. The camp was gone.

His feet kicked up sprays of water as he ran across the rain-soaked meadow. Inside the log wall he found nothing-no sign of the people, no trail. The rain had washed away all marks of their passage. Emptiness shot through him-he had no idea which direction they'd gone or where the woman came from!

He walked toward the rise with the trees. Water swirled around their roots, ripping at the bank, but he could climb them for a quick view.

A sudden rich scent of wet soil filled his nose.

Behind him, a roar shook the air, above the din of the rain, as though a bigtooth as large as a mountain pounced upon the valley.

Looking over his shoulder, Maggot saw a cliff face of water, dark as scabbing blood, appear behind him, rushing down the river's course. He sprinted up the slope for the trees.

The wall of water hit the palisade and shattered it in a shower of splinters, slamming into him just before he reached the grove. The wave lifted him up and knocked him into one of the new-hewn stumps, then dragged him under the water before he could snatch a breath.

He banged into another trunk, swallowed a throatful of muddy water, and burst to the surface, gagging and spewing, gasping for air and grasping at branches. His hand closed on one, and it snapped as he swept past. Just before the water washed him away from the trees he flung an arm around a trunk.

Troll-sized boulders trundled through the flood. Maggot wrapped his arms around the trunk and held on tight as several slammed in quick succession into the roots of the tree, shaking it and Maggot to the tip of their limbs before rounding the bend and disappearing downstream.

Still choking out the water he'd swallowed, he pulled himself up onto a limb that sagged beneath his weight. He leaned there, panting, his face against the rough bark.

With the passing of the first wall of flood came a steady and bewildering array of debris. Every fallen branch and dead tree in the forest flowed past him. He saw the damp brown body of some animal gone too quickly to identify. It might have been him.

The tree listed slightly, like a tooth loose in a jaw after being punched, as the water gnawed away the bank that held its roots. Maggot shifted position, preparing to leap to another refuge. He scarcely noticed the uprooted tree flowing swiftly toward him until he heard the voice.

An arm crooked over the trunk, and a head tilted back just barely above the surface of the water.

Maggot forgot escape. He clambered quickly out on the branch until it dipped toward the water. It swayed under the burden of his weight, creaking. He'd have maybe one chance to grab the man. He edged out farther, wrapping his legs tightly around the limb and holding on with one arm to hang as low as he possibly could.

The drifting tree must have been nearly sixty feet long, wider than the river had been before it flooded. It appeared to speed up as it came close, and the nearly submerged ball of roots smashed into the base of Maggot's sanctuary, throwing loose a hail of dirt and stones that splattered in the water. With a loud pop, the branch cracked under his weight, plunging him headfirst into the river.

He held on tight with his left hand as he fell, hoping for something to keep him afloat, but he bobbed to the surface in the same spot. The branch remained half-attached to the tree.

The other man's fingertips fell short of Maggot's grasp. Cold water sluiced around him. The current shoved and thrust, pivoting the top of the tree downstream and dragging the root-ball free. Maggot kicked his legs, lunged out a second time, and caught the other man's outstretched hand.

The tree drifted into the current, pulling the man away. Maggot held on, but his other hand slid down the rain-slicked branch, tearing him from safety.

The other man struggled to disentangle himself. The tree bucked in the water as it rolled over other debris and shoved both men under. Bark scraped Maggot's side and then the protruding roots buffeted his face, but he held on. The great battering ram finally drifted past, and both men splashed to the surface, their mouths gaping. Maggot still gripped both the branch and the other man.

A sharp crack shot through the air-the trunk split and the branch jumped out farther into the stream. The force of the water threatened to rip them loose, but the current pushed the branch around, swinging them behind the tree, where they were sheltered from the fury of the flood.

Maggot shifted his grip to the man's wrist and dragged him forward until he also clutched the branch.

With his arm around the other man's waist, Maggot pulled them both up the branch with one hand. He could not reach his original perch, but they oscillated near another, and when the current brought them close enough, Maggot reached out and grabbed the new branch and lifted them onto it.

They hung there, arms over the limb, legs trailing behind them in the water. If the flood uprooted this tree, they'd simply have to float with it or drown. Maggot couldn't get the man-or himself-into another tree.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, in the manner one troll greeted another.

The man responded with words that Maggot didn't understand, but Maggot gathered that he was fine. The man looked much like he did-raw red scratches and scrapes covered half his body, mud the rest. His black hair was slick against his head like Maggot's, only much shorter.

Having rested a few moments, Maggot helped the other man climb out of the water into the vee of the tree. Then he pulled himself up, and they scrunched together back to back, each hugging the branch in front of them. Their small cluster of trees was an island-a submerged island, but still a recognizable landmark-in a broad lake of brown water that appeared to fill the valley from one set of hills to the other. It was hard to tell in the darkness.

The man spoke again.

"We'll see our way clear in the morning," Maggot said, thinking morning might comfort a man the way night comforted trolls. The man grunted something that didn't sound comforted.

The sky drizzled.

Vague, shadowy shapes slid by, carried by the river out of darkness, briefly to be glimpsed, and then into darkness once again. One of them bleated mournfully and was gone. Maggot watched for other men to rescue, but as it grew darker he couldn't see much farther than the broken branch. It lashed in the vortex of the current like the tail of some agitated creature.