Boots and the Seven Leaguers

  And there at last was the stream, winding its lazy way through the New Forest. Tiny shards of sunlight sneaking through the green canopy of leaves sparkled on the surface of the water.

  Safety!

  I slid down the embankment and into the cold stream.

  Trolls are always happiest in water. We don’t swim, of course. We’re not merfolk, after all, not selchies. But when that water swirls—“high at the hips and low at the curls,” as Boots sings—we do feel at home.

  I waded in up to my boot tops and was thankful when the water went no higher. Oh—I could have kept going all the way to my chin if I’d needed to. But water in the boots would have slowed me down considerably. And time was going far too quickly already.

  I plowed into the middle of the stream, then walked along there for a good couple of ells to cover my scent. If the Huntsman used dogs, it would throw them off. And if he went by tracks, I’d leave none in the water.

  All the while, I was scanning the banks, keeping a lookout for a hollow log. When at last I spotted one, I climbed out carefully, walking only on stone so as not to leave footprints.

  The log was perfect.

  I untied Pook from my back and stuffed him, feet first, well inside it. He looked up at me mistily.

  “Going to have to leave you here,” I said. “Soon as I fix up your arm.”

  “What do you know about broken arms?” he murmured.

  “Only what I’ve read in stories.”

  Even through his pain he looked surprised. “I didn’t know you were a story reader, Gog.”

  I blushed. Reading fiction is not something trolls normally do. We read manuals. But Magog, with his sidhe blood, is a great story lover and he got me started. I hadn’t even trusted Pook with my secret before. But he’d told me one of his secrets, about pookahs and their popping. By the Law of Harmonious Balance, I had to give him one in return.

  So, I said, “I read a lot, actually. Especially adventure stories.”

  “I won’t tell,” he said, then passed out again.

  I found a good strong stick and, using the vine, splinted his broken arm straight. Then I shoved him the rest of the way into the log.

  Straightening up, I unrolled the map.

  The gilded × on the Great White Wyrm’s lair seemed to be pulsing. And near it now was a blue squiggly line that was the stream I had just waded through. Between the × and the blue line, about four inches from the lair, was a round brown column lying on its side.

  The hollow log, I thought. I don’t remember it being on the map before. Don’t remember the squiggly line either.

  “Thank you,” I whispered into the green air.

  All about me, birds suddenly burst into song. A brown thrush began, and a blackbird took up the melody. Then the tune was carried by a little rising lark. I didn’t need to understand the language of birds to know they’d carry my message back—back to the Weed King and the little woodwife.

  “Thank you,” I said again, this time directly to the birds.

  So, now I knew where I was, where I had been—and where I was going. The map was clear about that. I straightened my shoulders and took my bearings.

  Due north from the hollow log where my best friend lay in pain.

  Due north to where my little brother was imprisoned or hurt or …

  Due north to the place where the awful Great White Wyrm waited.

  I couldn’t feel even a bit of the Surge inside me—no berserker rage to help me on my way. Just a determination that I would rescue Magog and come back for Pook.

  Somehow.

  And next year—if there was a next year for us—we would hear the band play rock-and-troll under the bridge.

  Next year, with all this scary stuff behind us.

  Little mab little fire,

  Touched by dreams and deep desire,

  Grant me wishes, give me light—

  Take me home with you tonight.

  —“Wild Mab,” from TROLLGATE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OLD MAN OF THE STREAM

  I stepped back into the stream and started northward, feeling lighter and—strangely—happier than I’d been since entering the forest.

  As I strode through the water, I could feel the currents around me, rippling and curling. When I came to a still pool, I took a moment to breathe deeply.

  Trolls are renewed by water. No matter how bad a day, how difficult the trouble, if we put our feet in the water, we feel better.

  I could sense the water washing away my cares.

  An ancient one-eyed grey trout lay under the shadow of an overhang. He winked his eye at me and I winked back. Trout and trolls are companions from long ago. We share the rivers without so much as a quarrel.

  “Hello, old man,” I whispered. Such a great fish needed extra courtesy. My mom had taught me that.

  Just then something skated over the surface of the water, a long-legged insect with green-and-gold wings. It slid along, entirely without fear.

  Shedding light, the trout knifed up through the water and leaped after the insect. In a single fluid movement, he was airborne for a moment, then dove back below his ledge again, swallowing his late-afternoon meal.

  What a marvel. He hadn’t made a single false move.

  I smiled and nodded at him, and he blinked back at me.

  Trolls and trout.

  I was about to walk on when I saw another flickering near the surface of the water. Not willing to disturb the old trout’s supper, I waited patiently. It would only be a moment more.

  The flickering came closer, playfully skimming across the river, as if unaware of any danger.

  The old trout began to rise once again.

  But this time, seeing what it was the old trout was going to eat, I moved even quicker than he. Thrusting out my hand, I grabbed up the flicker and pulled it out of his way.

  The trout snapped at air and, flipping over, dived back down below his ledge, but not before giving me an awful, cold glare with his one eye.

  “Sorry, old man,” I whispered to him.

  But I wasn’t.

  I opened my hand and the little mab looked up at me, her tiny perfect face alarmed. Her translucent wings beat so quickly, they made a rainbow between us.

  Trolls are big, and to a mab we must be mountains.

  I smiled.

  A mountain that smiled.

  This seemed to alarm her even more, and she began to cry out in a tiny voice, so high pitched, so fast, and so foreign that I couldn’t begin to understand what she was saying.

  “Slow down,” I whispered, keeping my voice soft so as not to add to her alarm.

  But she kept on shouting at me and shaking her perfect fist and stomping her perfect feet. Then she opened her fist and began making signs.

  Afraid the hand signs might be spells, I bit my lip. I had no time to be ensorceled in the woods by some furious mab. I needed to rescue my brother—now!

  “I’ve just saved you from being eaten alive, you all-but-extinct piece of Faerie!” I cried.

  She ranted on some more. Made some more signs. Light motes flickered around her head like a halo.

  “Trout meal,” I countered, pointing to the water.

  She shook her fist at me.

  “Look!” I said hoarsely. “Down there. In the water.”

  I could see the old trout watching. But the little mab never even blinked down at him.

  Desperate, I put my face close to her and blew.

  Hard.

  She tumbled end over end through the air, then at last straightened up and flew off across the stream, making rainbows as she went. She never looked back.

  I breathed out again, carefully, a long, slow sigh of relief.

  Only then did I look down into the river. The old man of the stream, the grey trout, lay motionless below the overhang. His cold eye refused to wink at me.

  “I’m truly sorry, old man,” I said.

  And this time I was.

  I have walked
through brush and briar,

  I have slogged through muck and mire,

  I have braved both ice and fire,

  To make my way back home to you.

  —“I Have Walked,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE HUNT

  I slogged on a bit more through the water, putting as much distance between me and the trout as I could. Word travels quickly by water, and I wanted no trouble from his kin.

  The stream turned right, going east as far as I could see. There was no help for it, then. I’d have to get out and plunge on north through the forest.

  I found a low place to wade out and, just as an added trickery—some of Pook must have rubbed off on me—I walked backward out of the stream. If anyone saw my tracks, they might think I’d gone in here, not come out.

  Now the woods on either side of the stream began to darken. Overhead, the sun looked like a strange smoky orange ball. I glimpsed it through occasional openings in the canopy of leaves. But smoky as it was, the sun gave little heat and less light.

  I took out the map again. There, as if colored in by a pencil, was a grey swirl that began below the left leg of the × and then swirled halfway down to the brown column.

  When I looked up from the map, that same greyness swirled around me, like smoke.

  Does the Great White Wyrm breathe fire? I wondered.

  I knew dragons did. I knew fire lizards lived amongst the coals.

  But does the Great White Wyrm?

  My father had never talked of any such thing.

  Trolls don’t like fire. We’re not afraid of it; we just don’t like it. Fire and water are enemies, and so trolls—being water kin—dislike fire. But if Magog was captive in the White Wyrm’s lair, then I would go there and brave smoke … fire … burning.

  However, no one said I had to like it!

  Rolling up the map, I jammed it back inside my jerkin and started off again along a deer track.

  The way got darker still. In the smoky gloom I thought I could see the forms of fair ladies struggling to lean out of their trees.

  Dryads!

  Father’s stories had warned me about them, too. They look lovely but have strong teeth and nails. They eat what they catch. They eat it raw. I’d make a big meal for any of them.

  I ducked away from their snatching hands, crying out the old spell: “Fair folks, stay in your oaks!” Though in fact some of them were in elms and some in alders.

  Still, the verse seemed to work, even when spoken by a troll, for the dryads left me alone after that, only gazed at me longingly, hungrily, from their trees.

  I walked farther along the track, scanning for what-I-did-not-know. This was scarier than the alley where Mr. Bones had been lying. Scarier than the Weed King’s underground home. Scarier than the pit and log traps that had been set by the Huntsman.

  I had a bad feeling about the dark smoky part of the woods.

  But I had a worse feeling about what was happening to my baby brother.

  So I walked on.

  Suddenly onto the track bounded a shaggy lob, looking a bit like the pan who ran the band’s sound system, only older, greyer, wilder. His little goat legs pumped madly, his scraggly locks shook, and he kept looking frantically over his shoulder as he ran.

  Worried about what might be chasing him, I ducked off the path and stood as still as stone behind a sycamore. My skin was grey now instead of pink-gold—it doesn’t take much sun to grey out a troll—and I blended easily with the tree. Since it wasn’t a particularly large sycamore, my head was almost in the top branches.

  I heard an awful baying and guessed it was a pack of dogs.

  What pack would be this far in the woods? I wondered. And who owns the dogs?

  These weren’t comforting questions, so instead I concentrated on the sound.

  After a bit I could identify individual yelps and yowls and yips and howls that blended into one long song of pursuit.

  Like Boots and Booger and Armstrong, I thought. Three very different voices and three different notes, but all somehow perfect together.

  Above that sound was another: a sharp shock, a crack like lightning striking.

  The thicket on the far side of the track trembled and out burst the baying pack. There were wolfhounds and brachets, foxhounds and harriers, whippets and bassets, mastiffs and greys.

  They were onto the lob before he could get off the open path. I heard his cry—shrill and terrible, utterly without hope—above their awful growls.

  The thicket trembled again. Only this time what came bursting through was a man dressed in skins—leather trousers and a leather shirt with fringes. He had a cruel hawk’s face, with a hooked nose and lips like a knife’s slash below. There were gold rings in both his ears. A long dark braid of hair ran all the way down to the small of his back. Great tined antlers grew out of his head.

  The Huntsman! I thought. Who else can it be?

  Crack!

  The Huntsman carried a long black whip, and it snaked across the path to where the pack was worrying the lob. At the touch of the whip, the dogs leaped backward, cringing and cowering and suddenly silent.

  Only the lob’s cries kept going on and on.

  Two of the dogs—a stiff-legged mastiff and a long-eared basset—came crawling back to lick the horned man’s boots. Instead of bending to pet them, he kicked them aside and with his right hand picked up the lob by the scruff of its neck.

  The poor old thing was covered with blood and seemed barely alive. Unmoving, it hung from the Huntsman’s gloved hand, except for a tremor in its right flank and a twitch of one finger. I could see the whites of its frightened eyes.

  Quickly, quietly forming a circle around the Huntsman and the lob, the pack groveled silently, tails curled under.

  “Got you, by the powers!” the Huntsman cried, his hawk face splitting into a toothy grin.

  At his voice the dogs began barking again, this time a great knob of noise.

  Suddenly the Huntsman put his left hand to his head and stripped off his horns.

  For a moment I didn’t understand what I was seeing, and I trembled, which caused the sycamore to tremble, too.

  I willed myself to calm down, counting to myself as I would do for a surge.

  “One … two … three …”

  How could he take off his horns?

  “Four … five … six …”

  Then I realized that he’d been wearing some sort of hat with antlers attached.

  “Seven … eight … nine …”

  Underneath, he was a human.

  And that was the strangest thing of all.

  “Ten.”

  A human. A human had stolen my brother away?

  It made no sense.

  Wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve, the Huntsman put the horns back on. “You’ve led us a merry chase, old thing. But it’s to the Wyrm for you now.”

  The Wyrm! And suddenly it all fit together. In the book about the boy and the vines, humans collected animals for places called zoos. And those animals had to be fed, of course.

  The lob started sobbing, then babbling in a strange tongue.

  “Nyaaaaaah!” it cried.

  Ignoring the lob’s misery, the Hunter trussed it up with a length of rope. He slung it over his back like a piece of meat caught fresh for supper.

  Suddenly, one of the hounds must have caught my scent, for its head went up and it began to howl.

  I held as still as stone. Stiller, even.

  “Quiet!” cried the Huntsman. “We’ve got enough. We’re going home, lads. To the lair. This lob, with what else we’ve caught today, should satisfy the old wriggler.”

  He cracked the whip over their backs, and they ran ahead of him, tails between legs. As I watched, they turned north up the track, away from where I stood, away from where I’d stashed Pook in the hollow tree.

  I pulled myself even farther behind the tree and went back to being still, waiting for a long time, long past the f
rantic beating of my heart, long past any fading sight or sound of them.

  And then I went after.

  Dark as a dungeon,

  Damp as a well,

  Deep as the gateway

  To Heaven or Hell.

  —“Gateway,” from BRIDGE BOUND

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LAIR

  Trolls are big. Almost as big as giants when we’re full grown. We’ve got red hair, pink-gold skin, and lots of sharp teeth. Some folk tremble when we smile. We keep our nails long.

  It takes a lot to scare a troll, but we are not entirely without fear. These things can frighten us. Fire. Drought. Starvation. Solitary confinement. And dead people.

  “Fear,” Dad told me once, “can be caught like a cold, like a fever. And passed on.”

  The woodwife had been afraid.

  The lob had been afraid.

  And now I was afraid.

  In fact, I was terrified.

  More than once on that track—a lot more than once—I thought about turning back. Crying to Mom and Dad. Getting help. Those, of course, were sensible things to do.

  Trolls may not be quick. We may not have magic. But we are sensible.

  But then I thought about time. The lack of it.

  And I thought about Pook, in pain from a broken arm and stuffed into a hollow tree, counting on me.

  And I thought about Magog. Alone. The captive of a carnivorous creature of fire who likes to eat little trolls.

  I thought about the milk carton with the picture of the missing fairy on the side. The poster with the missing pixie. I didn’t want Mom to have a carton with Magog’s picture in our icebox. I’d never be able to drink milk again.

  So, one foot after another, I went on.

  I had to.

  He was my baby brother.

  The farther down the winding track I got, the greyer the air. But the greyer the air, the less grey I got. The sun was not shining at all now. The leaves in the canopy over me were laced tighter than a new pair of shoes. By the time I reached the final curve in the path, I was as rosy as a troll should be.

  But I was feeling very grey within.

  When I made that last turning, the track suddenly widened out onto a road that had brown cobbles as big as my fist. I had to look down so as not to stumble on the cobbles or between them.