From one of his many pockets Nolin Sometimes produced a small lantern, and Feathering obliged by puffing a tiny bit of fire into it. Through the flames they saw that they were not alone after all.
Someone was crying. A rather big someone who looked to be made of stone, except for the part of it that had very red hair in two long plaits down its back.
They approached very cautiously.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Willow, kneeling beside what looked a bit like an enormous stone ear the size of a small dinner plate.
The figure snuffled and turned a very large, very wide face towards Willow; it was marked by two long tracks of tears. It blinked enormous green eyes that were filled with water, which spilled over and splashed Willow’s shoes.
‘I-I thought I was alone up here,’ said the stone-like figure.
‘Is that why you were crying?’ asked Willow, realising that it wasn’t a person made of stone; it was a troll. She’d never seen one up close before. In fact, the only time she’d ever seen one was on a ‘Beware of the Troll’ sign, which usually showed a big figure with wild matted red hair, sloping shoulders, missing teeth and a club. But the troll crying in front of Willow had all its teeth, very neat red hair and didn’t seem to have a club. Still. It was a troll. Definitely a troll.
The creature shook its head. ‘No … I was crying because, well … I can’t remember what happened. And I can’t go back until I do.’
Willow handed the troll her horseshoe scarf to mop up her tears, which the troll took gratefully in its big stony fingers, dabbing rather delicately at its eyes.
‘Can’t go back where?’ asked Willow.
‘Home,’ said the troll.
‘And why can’t you go home?’ continued Willow, jumping aside as more tears rained down.
The troll sniffed. ‘Well, I was meant to fight the great Verushka.’ She paused for emphasis, then stared at their blank faces. ‘You know who she is?’
The friends shook their heads. This seemed to stop the troll’s crying temporarily at least.
‘Well, Verushka is the greatest warrior in all the troll tribes.’
‘Wot, and yew were meant to fight this warrior?’ blurted Oswin, who was eyeing the proceedings as usual from a hole in the hairy bag. At the troll’s look the bag started to shake a little. ‘It’s jes, I means, well …’
The troll sniffed, then hung her head. ‘No, you’re right. I don’t look like a warrior, do I?’ she said. Willow noted her neat hair and rather clean and fresh scent, like limestone, and couldn’t help nodding in agreement.
‘Well, surely that’s not the end of the world?’ asked Willow.
The troll shook her head. ‘You see, you may not know this, but most trolls aren’t very sensitive.’
‘Really?’ said Willow, giving the bag a small shake as the kobold started to giggle.
The troll continued. ‘Well, in my family “Fierce” is the family motto. All my brothers have necklaces made out of human bones that spell F-E-E-R-S.’ The troll gave a woeful smile. ‘They aren’t good spellers either,’ she said with a grin.
‘My father was the chief, my mother was his general, but that was before she defeated him and made him her slave,’ she said with a bit of a nostalgic sigh.
At their shocked expressions she shook her head. ‘Oh, that’s normal in troll marriages. She built him a cage that she keeps right under her throne, which is also built out of bones. It’s something of a theme, bones. She lets him out every few months when she’s feeling a little sentimental …’
At their gasps she continued. ‘That’s considered quite a healthy troll relationship. Most troll wives eat their mates when they get too disagreeable, generally sometime within the first year of marriage … See, troll females are often the strongest and most vicious. They’re quite a lot bigger and hairier than the males, so they are much more valued. Well, usually. I’m the only girl in my family. As the chief’s daughter I was the pride of the clan … until I became their biggest calamity … which is funny, really, because that’s actually my name,’ she said with a deep sigh.
‘Anyway, my mother tried her best, but I just didn’t take to being a troll. Trolls live by the maxim, “Club everything that moves once and club things that don’t twice.” Only, of course, I didn’t like clubbing things. I was meant to go out every day and learn how to use my club. Which seemed like a monumental waste of time. You pick it up, you conk somebody – it’s not hard to grasp.’ She sighed.
Suddenly Sometimes keeled over backwards in a dead faint.
‘Oh no, not again!’ cried Essential and Willow at the same time.
‘What’s happened?’ asked the troll, peering into the gloom.
But before Willow could explain properly Sometimes sat up, his eyes white. ‘You used to hide away from your family pretending that you were practising the club but you actually went to the woods beyond this cave, where you kept a garden no one knew about … and had a rabbit,’ he whispered.
The troll’s eyes widened, and she gasped. ‘How does he know that?’
‘He sees the past,’ explained Willow.
The troll looked away, her face twisted in shame. She nodded. ‘He’s right. I did. He wasn’t even, you know, for food … I just liked him. I even gave him a name. But when my mother found out it was the worst day of my life,’ she said, hanging her head.
‘Trolls don’t have pets?’ guessed Essential, pushing up her glasses.
Calamity frowned. ‘Well, no. I mean, I suppose Dad is a kind of pet … but no troll has ever kept a pet rabbit before or grown daisies just because they were pretty. But my mother … she did try to understand in her way, after she sent my brothers to destroy the garden … and Jawbone.’
‘Jawbone?’ asked Feathering.
‘The rabbit.’
Feathering gasped. ‘The beasts!’
Calamity nodded. ‘He ran away thankfully. But that’s when the crying started, because I thought they’d killed him at first. The crying was the last straw, my mother said. I didn’t know what was happening to me; no one else did either. They had to send for the dwarf from across the valley. Dwarfs are wise, you know. Anyway, he explained that crying was something that humans did.’ She looked mortified.
‘Don’t trolls cry?’ asked Sometimes.
‘No,’ said Calamity. ‘Well, you can just imagine my family’s reaction. My brothers wanted to build me my own cage … right next to Dad’s. But my mother decided to give me one last chance. She’s a thinker, my mother – rare in trolls – but I think she knew that unless I sorted myself out I’d forever be a scar against her name. So, under my own mother’s guidance, my training began. It was horrid,’ she said with a shudder.
‘But finally she said I was about as ready as I ever would be and last Tuesday I was meant to fight the great Verushka. But I don’t remember it.’
‘You don’t remember anything?’
She shook her head. ‘And neither does anyone else, which some people thought was a bit suspicious. There were some who thought that maybe I had other human traits that I’d used.’