Tami and the Nakesh Troll

  ***

  Tami walked toward home, keeping a careful lookout for Kasha and her friends. After nearly being eaten by a troll, Tami was in no mood for those three again. When she came to the stream, Tami removed her shoes and stockings and waded in, sluicing herself and thoroughly wetting her clothes to try and get off the layers of thick, dried troll snot. When she was done, she was dripping wet and still looked terrible, but she felt cleaner. Her mother was still certain to chastise her for the filthy condition of her clothes, but Tami could live with that, while she could not live with being a troll’s supper.

  Sure enough, as soon as Tami entered her family’s modest dwelling, her mother swooped down on her and began to berate Tami for her generally deplorable state.

  “Ahh! What happened to you? You’re dripping filth all over the floor!” her mother said. “Disgraceful! That is what you are, a disgrace!”

  “It isn’t my fault. Kasha and her friends were throwing rocks at me and I fell into the stream,” Tami said.

  Concern briefly broke through Tami’s mother’s expression of anger. Her attitude softened.

  “You’re not hurt, are you?” her mother asked.

  “No, but I should change and wash these dirty things,” Tami said.

  “Yes, and wash yourself while you’re at it. You’ve leaves stuck in your hair,” her mother said before turning back to her task at hand—peeling potatoes.

  Tami had an idea.

  “Mother, could you make your chicken soup tonight? I think I might have caught a cold from falling into the stream.”

  Tami feigned a sneeze. Her mother looked at her.

  “You do look a little flush. You’re warm too. All right, but you’ll have to go out and prepare a chicken. I’ll make it when the stew is done.”

  Relieved, Tami grabbed some clean clothes and went outside. Before she cleaned up it made sense to attend to the chicken. She took a plump one from the coop and carried it to the stump. The stump was stained dark rust and bore the imprint of hundreds of cuts. She took up a cleaver and painlessly decapitated the bird. She plucked it quickly and removed the innards, keeping only the heart and liver, which her mother used in the soup. Then Tami got a bucket of water from the trough and washed away the worst of the blood. She saved a little of the water and used it to wash the chicken.

  With that unpleasant task done, Tami pumped clean water into the washing bucket, took a lump of soap, and went behind the barn where there was some privacy. She stripped off her dirty things and soaped away all of the accumulated filth of the day. Then she put on her new dress and set about restoring her dirty one to something that resembled cleanliness.

  For the rest of the night, Tami had to remember to act like she might be coming down with a cold. She remembered the troll sneezing on her and hoped that people couldn’t catch troll colds. She actually felt quite good and fell asleep to the reassuring aroma of her mother’s chicken soup slow cooking overnight.