Boots and the Seven Leaguers

Little mischievous piskies and pixies were the first comers, buying up as many of the cheap seats as they could. They chittered and chattered and did quite a bit of shoving, but it was more playful than anything.

  Hunched knockers and bowed boggarts were right behind them, and their shoving was a bit more frantic and dangerous.

  The night folk would be along later.

  The Queen of the sidhe and her seelie court were sure to arrive last, of course, riding in on their jeweled horses just before showtime, and making a big entrance. But that’s how they are. The horses’ bells would jingle and jangle, the court would gossip loudly about the latest dances and talk about folk no one but they knew about. They would take up the entire front row, too. And they never have to wait on any lines.

  Not like us workaday Fey.

  But as Mom always reminds me, trolls are meant for hard work and we take great pride in it. The sidhe are meant for pleasure, and there’s no pride in that at all.

  So why they always seem so proud and standoffish has always been a puzzle to me.

  I didn’t see any of the greenmen. Not down where Pook and I were. But they would surely be working outside the gates until the very last—selling, trading, bargaining.

  Cheating.

  Someone—a lot of someones—was going to get skinned in a trade today. Boots’s show was the biggest thing to hit the Kingdom this year, and the greenmen knew it.

  The hill was now heavy with hubbub, and a couple of helpful hobs had set up stands selling cups of nectar and flower bread spread with gobs of fresh clover honey. There were gallons of milk, too, and from each carton the wispy smile of little missing Windling stared out.

  The hive folk must have been working overtime to get all of that ready. We’d been so busy with the setup, Pook and I, that we’d never even heard them arrive.

  I took a big sniff of air alive with the smell of the food. I was hungry enough to eat a centaur. I’d even have tried some of the green stuff in Mom’s stew. But I was ready to settle for whatever we could find at the stands.

  We picked up a couple of pieces of bread with the few copper coins Pook had in his pocket, and headed for the place where we’d left Magog to see how the kid was doing.

  He wasn’t there.

  The strands of the holdspell were twisted and broken, the ends glittering in the afternoon sun.

  “That little nuisance …” I began. Sometimes he makes me so angry.

  But Pook stopped me. “Look,” he said, pointing. The glamour had begun to fade on his face and when I stared hard enough, I could distinguish his dog teeth. They were bared in a fierce growl.

  So, I looked closely where he pointed and saw what was troubling him.

  Magog’s glasses were lying to one side of the spell, all twisted. My jerkin was tossed aside. The silvery strands of the spell weren’t broken from the inside out.

  They had been torn apart from the outside in.

  Come to the Kingdom,

  Kingdom come,

  The will to magic will be done.

  —“Kingdom Come,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MISSING

  I was stunned. I mean, Magog can be a major pain in the astrolabe some times. He can whine and whinge with the worst of them. But he is my brother.

  No one messes with a troll’s brother—and lives to boast of it. Trolls are clan folk. We are family folk.

  Powers! Magog was just a little guy!

  I could feel the rush of power to my hands and feet that we trolls call the Surge, like lightning shocking its way into my fingers. Some surges begin in anger. Some begin in heartache. Worst of all is when the two combine.

  Suddenly I had the strength of ten. Or at least I felt like I had the strength of ten.

  And I had the brain power of zero.

  We trolls are total mindless berserkers when the Surge hits. As the power rushes to our muscles, it leaves our heads. Mass may be mastery, as Grandpa said. But the Surge is plain misery.

  Except … except the glamour confused the Surge, and besides, there was no one to vent my anger on except Pook, which wouldn’t have helped. Or the pan, who was working away on the soundboard, making hundreds of connections. Or the humans laboring under the watchful dark eye of Jesse Feldman. Or the gathering crowd.

  Since none of them was actually the focus of my anger, the Surge faded away as quickly as it had come.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Wow!” Pook said, his hands up to his mouth. “I never saw you taken that way before.”

  I couldn’t speak yet.

  “My dad says to stay out of the way when a troll goes splah,” Pook said.

  “Yah.”

  “But you didn’t rave like I expected. Your eyes got red, though. Red as your hair.”

  “Yah.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “Yah.” Then I took another deep breath. “Surge. Comes quick. Goes slow. My first.”

  “Your first? Wow!” Pook said. Then he added, “It’s scary.”

  “Yah.”

  “So now you’ve completely come of age?” Pook said.

  “Yah.”

  “You look almost normal again,” Pook said.

  I nodded. “Yah.”

  “I mean, the glamour has gone, too.”

  I glanced down at my hands. Normal size.

  Glanced at my feet. Normal size.

  Glanced again at Pook. He grinned his wolf grin at me. The glamour was gone from him, too.

  “This isn’t a smiling matter,” I said. “My little brother’s missing. I mean—really missing.”

  Pook nodded.

  “My brother,” I said again for emphasis.

  “The nose knows,” said Pook, pointing to his canine snout.

  “Knows what?”

  “Where the kid’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “I can smell greenman,” Pook said. “All around the holdspell. All around the ground.” He gestured down at the area where Magog had been. An imprint of his little body was still held by the bent grass. The milk carton lay on its side, the picture of the missing fairy gazing up at me, her wispy Fey smile suddenly looking an awful lot like a warning.

  The air grew hazy, as if bad magic were about.

  And then I realized—it wasn’t magic at all. I had tears in my eyes.

  “A greenman?” I said, unsure. “But what would he want with a hairless, bridge-bound, nearsighted little troll? Is the greenman looking for a trade?” My hands made fists. I knew what kind of trade I’d make.

  Pook shrugged.

  “And did Magog get snatched awake or asleep?”

  Pook shrugged again.

  “Was the glamour still on him, or was it already gone?”

  Pook shrugged a third time and his face suddenly closed down, as if he had a secret he couldn’t tell me.

  I thought about being a roadie and seeing the concert. Just a moment before, it had seemed the most important thing in the entire Kingdom.

  Then I thought about Magog, maybe cold and scared. I thought about him trying to see without his glasses. I thought he might be hungry and hurt.

  Suddenly the concert wasn’t so important anymore.

  “We have to find him,” I said. “We have to get him back.”

  “But …” Pook said, “… we’re just kids, too. Even if you did just come of age. We need to tell the Queen’s Men. Give them the facts and—”

  “We don’t have time,” I pointed out. “Look—the grass is already springing back. How long do you suppose it’ll hold a scent?”

  “Greenman’s?” he said. “Not long.”

  “Pook, you have the nose right now. And I have the troll strength. That’s at least strength enough to fight a greenman. We could be trackers for real.”

  Pook put his head to one side, and for a moment I thought he was going to quit on me. “What about seeing the show? What about being roadies?”

  “After we get Magog back,” I said.
“After …”

  It seemed a safer word than if.

  Going out to the wood,

  If I dare, if I could,

  If I want, if I can,

  Going out to meet the man.

  —“Meeting the Man,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE DARK FOREST

  The real question was—which way to start?

  Pook’s nose was the deciding factor.

  I shrugged back into my jerkin, stuffing Magog’s glasses into a pocket. Then we headed up and over the hill, past the grimy goblins and the raggedy bogeys and the little tricksy pucks all lining up for tickets.

  “Gog—hey, Gog!” someone yelled.

  I turned to see who was calling me, and there, hands on his hips, looking cocky and sure of himself, was Robin Goodfellow, who I knew from school. As always, his grass green hat sat at a jaunty angle and his golden hair hung down to his shoulders.

  “Need a place in the queue, Gog?” he asked.

  “No cuts! No cuts!” a couple of brownies behind him shrilled, waving their hands about.

  Behind them a group of beetle-browed ogres began to growl.

  I brushed a hand through my hair. We didn’t dare stop to chat in case the scent ran out before we found Magog.

  “Maybe later!” I called back. Which quieted the brownies but not the ogres, who continued growling. Once started on bad temper, they were not an easy lot to stop.

  “Come on,” Pook urged, before dropping to run on all fours across the brow of the hill.

  I turned my back on the line of Folk and followed him, my heart beginning to hammer with fear.

  We’re coming, Magog, I thought.

  We’re coming, little brother. It was not quite a prayer.

  We’re going to find you. An entire promise.

  Pook and I made our way down the other side of that hill and up another, across short grass, through tall grass, and around a knot of daisies. We were careful not to disturb anything that could not bend itself back. Once away from the river and this far into the Kingdom, the Law of Harmonious Balance applies.

  And if Mom’s told me once, she’s told me a hundred times, “Do unto everything as you would have it done unto you.”

  It’s hard for a troll to be that careful. Especially a troll going at top speed. But I was. Because it was bad enough for Magog to have gone missing. Worse still if I did bad to someone—or something—good: grass, trees, flowers, or any of the Folk of the Air. That bad would come back on me. Harmonious Balance is not a law to tamper with. Or trample on.

  Pook ran nose to the ground, and I followed. Once or twice he hesitated, looked around, and then—with a puzzled expression—started his search again. He didn’t speak to me as he worked, and I was afraid to disturb him.

  By the third small hill, I was tired and cranky.

  By the fifth, ready to rest.

  When we reached the crest of the seventh hill, I was breathing hard trying to keep up with Pook’s steady trot. My legs were already trembling with fatigue. We trolls are built for strength, not speed.

  Pook was still head down, and heading down the hill. But I saw what lay before us.

  The New Forest!

  Though why it is called so when it’s the oldest forest in the Kingdom is a puzzle. The New Forest has borders with the Out on three sides, but the fourth side runs into the Kingdom. Deep into Faerie. Deep into the dark, untrammeled place where only the night folk live. Where wild magic still rules. Where the laws of eat-or-be-eaten still apply.

  That scared me, and it takes a lot to scare a troll.

  I called out, “Pook—come back! See where we’re headed.”

  He slowed.

  Looked up.

  Stopped.

  Sat down on his haunches.

  Howled.

  I caught up with him, and he was still howling.

  Dad has told Magog and me many stories about the New Forest: about the laced-over branches that keep out all sunlight, about the souls of the lost sidhe who wander beneath the elms. He has entertained us with stories about the woodwives, who slip mysteriously through the trees on errands of their own; about the Weed King, who dwells in the inhospitable places on the edges of the woods. He has spoken of the shadow folk, the half-dead, the undead. He has warned about the wyrds and the damned. The tales Dad tells most, though, are about the Great White Wyrm, who lives in a lair in the very heart of the forest.

  “There is nothing the Great White Wyrm loves to eat better,” Dad always says at the end of these stories, “than half-grown trolls. So watch out!” He always shouts the last and pounces on us, which makes us scream, of course.

  Are any of his stories true?

  I don’t know.

  I’ve never asked.

  Still, the New Forest was not a place I wanted to visit. Not now. Not ever.

  “Are you sure we want to go this way?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice, trying to be casual about it. And not succeeding. “It’s a scary woods.”

  Pook stopped howling. “It scares you?” he asked. “I thought it took a lot to scare trolls.”

  I nodded.

  “My dad says the Great White Wyrm loves to eat half-grown pookahs,” he added.

  That made me laugh out loud. And when he started to get angry with me, I told him what my father had said. “He doesn’t eat pookahs. He eats trolls.”

  Pook shook his head. “Pookahs, trolls—whatever. I just don’t want to meet up with that carnivorous beast.”

  I agreed. Oh, how I agreed. “No White Wyrm, then.”

  “No middle of the forest, then,” Pook said back. He got up off his haunches.

  “What about the edges of the forest?” I asked.

  “Edges are OK,” Pook said. “The Weed King isn’t much of a threat. And maybe a few hundred paces in, woodwives. And the ghosts of sidhes. But after that …”

  I looked behind us, where the grasses were already erasing the traces of our swift passage. I looked ahead at the dark shape of the forest. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

  “I’ve been following the same scent the whole time, Gog,” he said. “But suddenly the scent’s gone wonky. I’m no longer certain whether it’s greenman or grown man or something else entirely.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, staring at him. Pook is hard to read sometimes, especially when he’s in dog form.

  “There are these strange shifts in the scent,” he said, screwing his face up. “However, the one thing that hasn’t changed is Magog’s signature. Your little brother smells like no one else, Gog. He’s definitely gone this way.”

  “Did he go willingly? Did he come by accident? Or—”

  “There’s fear in his scent, Gog,” Pook said quietly. “Other than that, I can’t really say.” He pointed to the darkling woods below us and shivered. Then he sat again. I was afraid he might start howling once more, but instead he lay down, head on paws.

  “That way?” I bit my lower lip.

  “That way,” Pook said miserably.

  “Then I have no choice.” I paused. “I don’t. He’s my brother. My little brother. But he’s not yours, Pook. You don’t have to come along.”

  Pook stood up, shedding his canine shape for a moment, and looked me square in the face. “Best friends, Gog, don’t get going when the going gets hard.” He put out his hand.

  I took it and shook it. I hoped neither of us would notice how cold and sweaty our palms were.

  “Besides, you need my nose.” He morphed back again into dog.

  “Guess we go together, then,” I said. “Edges and a few hundred paces in only.”

  Our first steps into the edges of the great oak forest took us through a shadowy patch where dark-coated Tamworth pigs were grazing contentedly on acorns.

  When they caught Pook’s scent on the wind, they looked up fearfully, and a few scattered, running away on their little trotters, squealing, “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!”

  But one
huge boar who knew better turned his beady little eyes at us and snorted.

  “Peace, old man,” called Pook.

  “Peace yersel’,” grunted the boar. “Here in the great wood we be under the protection of the Sheel-na-Gig hersel’. Here all creatures be sacred.”

  “Even the Great White Wyrm at the heart of the wood?” I asked.

  “Ain’t ne’er seen any sech beast,” said the old boar shortly. “Round here only the hunter’s to be feared.” He turned back to his food.

  “Pigs can’t see beyond their snouts,” Pook whispered to me. Then he raised his head and sniffed. “Scent goes that way.” And off he went, in that lolloping trot, toward the darker trees.

  “I heard that, ye young sprout,” the old boar called after him. “And there be nae wrong wi’ keeping mysel’ to mysel’ now, be there?”

  “Nothing wrong indeed,” I said, nodding at him. “So you’re saying there’s no such thing as the Great White Wyrm?”

  “Dinna say that.” The old boar’s snout twitched. “Dinna say nowt.” Then he bent back down to the acorns, and the rest was just the sound of crunchings.

  Was there a Great White Wyrm or wasn’t there? And did it really matter? We weren’t planning to go into the heart of the wood anyway.

  Just around the edges.

  And only a little way farther in.

  Then I glanced up and saw the dark running shadow of a wolf way ahead of me, down the hill, about to enter the woods.

  “Wait!” I called out to Pook. “Wait for me!”

  And without saying good-bye to the boar, I dashed after my friend.

  King of the weeds,

  King of the edge,

  King of a kingdom

  Of mallow and sedge …

  —“Weed King,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER NINE

  WEED KING

  Pook didn’t stop and I couldn’t seem to gain on him, even running flat-out down the hill. Even when we go fast, trolls are slow. That’s why one of us had to invent the seven-league boots.

  Soon I had eased off to a trot, then a fast walk, and finally—when I reached the bottom of the hill and was just short of the woods—I just flopped down on a grey stone. My breath came in short gasps and I could feel sweat running down my face.

  Perhaps, I thought, I can rest for just a moment before continuing. Something small and golden flitted by my face and I swatted at it. It laughed at me and flitted away.