by Rena Rocford
Beth rolled her eyes at me. “Can’t you use your super dragon hearing and listen for the tumblers to click or something?”
I rubbed my finger along the rolling combinations. I could hear them click, even over the wind, but the clicks sounded exactly the same. “Not over the wind.” I put my ear to the rolling door and listened for anything. The faint rhythmic sound of breathing drifted to me. “There’s someone inside.”
“Fine, move over.” Beth stepped up and grabbed the lock. She twisted it savagely, and the metal gave way with a pop. The sound echoed through the gas station, and the scent of metal rose up, sharp and fresh, like mown grass. Mown metal?
“Hurry up,” I hissed.
Beth pulled away the broken lock, but the door latch was bent. “Damn it. Could today get any worse?” She pounded on the door latch, and the handle broke off and clattered to the ground.
“That did not improve things.”
“You think I don’t know that? I’m going to break open the door.”
The troll pumping gas walked around the corner of the van, then stood behind Beth.
I froze, eyes wide. My chest itched with that now familiar burn.
Beth rolled her eyes at me. “What, it’s not like I haven’t ripped doors off their hinges before.”
I pointed behind her, unable to speak past the burning sensation in my lungs.
She swallowed, blinking a few times, then turned around slowly, coming face to face with the troll.
He just watched her, not moving a muscle, which was exactly what he did the last time we ran into this particular individual. I think his name was John. I checked around the side of the van for Baldy and Flame Eater, but they were still inside.
“What are you doing here?” John asked Beth.
“We were just, ah, admiring your truck,” I answered.
The troll looked from Beth to me. “Could I have a word with her, alone?”
I met Beth’s gaze, but she shook her head and shrugged. I widened my eyes and looked at John then back to her. She nodded, but I hesitated. These guys tried to grab us at the mall, what would he do now? I’d be crazy to leave Beth alone with him. Still, he seemed different from the other two trolls. Beth gave me another curt nod, and I stepped away from the truck. Moving slowly, I sank into the shadows of the self-service propane tank and kept an eye on Beth. I picked up a rock in case I needed to draw some attention to us.
The troll took Beth around to the side of the van farthest from the convenience store, and I watched carefully, trying to focus on the movement of their lips, to no avail. I tried to eavesdrop, but the wind renewed its howling. I caught maybe one word in five, and those words made no sense at all. Something about windswept fires, and blossoming irises. Whatever they were discussing, it didn’t sound much like Beth was trying to talk him out of his victim.
The other trolls left the convenience store, and I threw a rock at the van. It pegged off the side of the truck, but they didn’t notice. I picked up a second rock and got closer, keeping a car between myself and the other trolls. The second rock hit Beth. She jumped, rubbing her shoulder where the rock hit. Beth searched me out in the darkness, and I pointed frantically at the convenience store. She nodded and said something to John, who then walked around the front and called to his companions. While they were distracted, Beth flew across the pavement to my hiding place.
She slid into the shadows like a baseball player sliding into home, her cheeks flushed pink.
“Sorry, Bob, I forgot the combination again,” John said to the bald troll, pitching his voice much louder than when he was talking to Beth. Baldy rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“We aren’t going to check on them in public places, John. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Bob. I’ll try not to think so much.” John did a great impersonation of supremely dumb troll.
The third troll slapped John with a folded up map. “That’s right. No one pays you to think. And you’re supposed to be the smart one.”
John made a show of struggling with the door handle, and if I could see through it, I couldn’t imagine how the others couldn’t. But then again, there aren’t many stories about cunning trolls.
The abusive troll looked at Bob and shook his head. “Why did we bring this moron with us?”
“Button it up, Gary. He’s just young, now let’s get moving. I want to make the valley by tomorrow night.”
They piled into the van, then drove away, spinning the tires in the gravel. We watched them leave, frozen in place. Even after they were gone, we stayed crouched like statues until Beth sighed.
“Do they have Steve?”
“He didn’t know any names, but he described someone about right for Steve.”
Irises and windswept fires didn’t seem like the kinds of things used to describe Steve. “What else did he say?”
She smiled–not the indestructible grin she’d rehearsed for so long. No, this was a real smile. “He said I’m cute.”
eth craned her neck to follow the van as it drove off. A dreamy smile pulled her lips into a lopsided expression to match John’s features.
“Uh, Earth to Beth: he’s a kidnapping troll,” I said.
“Only to pay the bills.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And you know this how?”
“He told me.” She met my gaze. “Anyhow, he gave me a map. Apparently, their boss doesn’t expect them to make it from point A to point B without losing a few, so they each get their own map.” She produced a crumpled bit of paper.
“Should we follow them?”
“Nah, he said they’re going to camp at Goblin Valley tomorrow night, so we just have to beat them there.” She blinked then focused on me. “Besides, there’ll be fewer people at a campground, and maybe more cover.” She waved the map.
“Let’s take a look at that inside.” I pointed to the convenience store; my stomach growled, and Beth’s answered. “We need some real food.”
Beth gave the convenience store a skeptical glare. “You think they’ll have real food in there?”
“You know what I mean.”
It was a convenience store with a burger joint from the seventies, complete with checkered flooring and covered in thirty years of insufficient cleaning. The food was dubious, but my stomach wasn’t picky. We ordered hot dogs and fries and pretended everything was normal.
“What now?” Beth asked.
I unfolded the map, exposing the destinations circled with dates next to them. Today’s destination was Farmington. Tomorrow’s was indeed labeled Goblin Valley. “We camp, and get a nice early start in the morning. We beat them here,” I said, pointing to the map. “Then we’ll have the lay of the land. That should give us an advantage.”
It sounded nice when I said it, but I was faking. I didn’t know how we were going to steal back the kidnap victim. And really, I wanted to get to Ely, Nevada. Maybe it was a key to some safety deposit box full of jewels. If I were rich enough, I could protect Beth from that crazy pack of monohorns.
We got directions to a KOA campground, and set up camp as the temperature dropped.
The phone in the glove box rang, and I jumped to answer it. I hit the talk button without checking the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Oh, thank god. Agnes! They have her,” my mother said.
“Mom?”
“Allyson? Where are you? Where’s your aunt?”
My stomach sank into oblivion. I left home, and I hadn’t written her a note. I was dead meat. She was going to reach through the phone and strangle me where I sat.
“No, I’m–”
“What are you doing? Where are you? Is your aunt there?”
“Mom, I’m just–”
“You tell me this instant. What’s going on, young lady?”
“Mom, I’m helping Beth,” I said, finally getting a full sentence through the maternal freak out.
“Beth? Honey, she’s being charged with kidnapping.
I want you to come home right now. You shouldn’t even be with someone like that.”
I scoffed. “Who have you been talking to?” The police didn’t charge people without cause. Even I knew that. I’d seen Law and Order for crying out loud.
“Beth’s doctor. He says she has special needs. Beth is unstable. Do you need to hear it from him? Dr. Targyne is right here, I can put him on the phone.”
“Ah, no thanks, Mom. We don’t exactly get along.” The image of the unicorn horn crashing through a closet door flooded my mind, except, in my imagination, the horn gored my mother. I swallowed a giant lump in my throat.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m helping Beth prove she’s innocent.”
She took a breath and covered the receiver on her end. A man’s muffled voice came through. I clenched my fist. They were plotting, and they didn’t think I was smart enough to figure out what they were up to. My mom had to know I wasn’t that dumb, right?
“Just tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.” The sugar in my mother’s voice was sweeter than a lollipop.
“Is that what Dr. Murdering Bastard asked you to say?”
So much for the adult approach, and right into name-calling. Way to prove you’re taking the moral high ground, Allyson.
“Allyson! What is the matter with you?”
“You really want to know what’s the matter with me?”
She tsked. “Yes. I do.”
“You! You’re trying to run away from the only place I’ve ever had a friend. So I’m helping the one person who’s ever been nice to me, Mom. I’m helping my friend. And if you can’t understand how important that is, then maybe you aren’t a very good mother.”
Silence.
“And another thing, Mom? Tell Dr. Targyne I’m not that stupid. I’m not telling you where we are, but we are going to rescue Steve. You can count on it.” I flipped the phone shut and resisted the urge to throw it across the campground into the desert.
Beth’s bright eyes stood out among the murky shadows of the tent. “Um, that sounded bad.”
“Yup.” I put the phone in my pocket. It buzzed again, but I ignored it.
“You, uh, wanna talk about it?” She didn’t know what to say, but I appreciated the attempt.
“The unicorns are trying to use my mother to figure out where you are.”
“Crap, I hadn’t thought about that.”
I nodded. The phone stopped buzzing. And where was my aunt in all of this?
Beth scanned the campground. We weren’t the only crazy people in the freezing cold wilderness; an RV parked on the far side had grease smears down the sides, like someone had driven it through a grease storm before it stopped for the night.
I pulled on my dorky hat and wrapped the bomber jacket tight around me.
I had no change of clothes. Beth, on the other hand, had brought her freshly laundered clothes. I had my American Institutions book in my backpack, and that key. I rubbed my fingers across metal in my pocket.
“Come inside,” Beth said. “It’s warmer in here.”
The wind caught the tent, rattling the zippers as I stepped through the door. We didn’t talk as we got ready for bed, which, for me, meant I climbed into my sleeping bag. Beth got into some pajamas and slipped inside her sleeping bag, then zipped it up.
“We’ll need to get you some clothes or something soon,” she said.
“I guess.”
“You guess? I’m not sitting in the same car as you after three days without fresh clothes and a shower.”
I smiled. “But it’s a convertible.”
Beth threw her pillow–a wadded up t-shirt–at me. “You’re funny, Drake.”
“Tell me about being half,” I said, quietly.
“What’s to know?”
The tent lurched in the wind. “I just want to know more so I can plan. Like what can those trolls do? And are they full blooded or halves?”
Beth pushed up to her elbow. “Well, John is at least three quarters.”
I smiled. “You like him.”
She blushed. “He did say I was cute. It’s not like I have to beat them off with a stick, you know? Too many guys at our school are part of the monohorn commune. They wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. They tell their friends, their friends tell their friends. It’s a vicious circle.”
“I’m familiar with having a reputation,” I said.
“Well, you’ve never had to live with one for more than a few months. I’ve been the pariah for as long as I can remember. Kindergarten, even. It’d be nice not to be judged is all.”
“Yeah, too bad he works for the bad guys.”
“Yeah.”
The tent shook in the wind.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what it’s like to be constantly hated by the same group of people. It’s never been that way for me.” I waited for my apology to sink in before asking, “So, what do you know about manifesting, and all of that?”
Air whistled between her teeth. “Some of the monohorns don’t manifest. The ones who do are considered more important. They have arranged marriages just to increase the likelihood of manifesting.”
“And what does manifesting mean exactly?”
“It means that they can actually turn into unicorns. They shapeshift. They can use their horns to do things like heal and clean poison from water, that sort of thing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, why do you think there are so many in Albuquerque? The water from the aquifer is completely tainted. I suspect the old Manhattan project, but they won’t talk about it. The only reason half a million people have drinking water is because the monohorns clean it.”
“How humanitarian of them. That’s not what I would have expected from the same people who routinely attempt to disembowel you.”
Beth snorted. She snorted a lot when talking about the unicorns. “Yeah, well, they are constantly under threat of attack. I watched them take out a whole herd of manticores who were getting too close to their territory. They brought out the whole clan. It was a blood bath.”
“What’s a manticore?”
“According to the monohorns–and I can’t confirm or deny this–they are man-sized cats with tails of a scorpion. They can go crazy and kill people. Well, eat them, actually, but you get the picture. There are things worse than unicorns.”
“And trolls?” I asked. “They don’t really eat goats who try to cross bridges, do they?”
A laugh puffed through her lips. “No, trolls will find somewhere comfortable and stay put. Interrupt their food supply and they can get cranky, but other than that, mostly harmless.”
It was my turn to laugh. “And by mostly harmless, you mean strong enough to rip apart metal with their bare hands?”
“Don’t forget the diminished IQ.” Beth fussed with the zipper of her sleeping bag. “Trolls actually make really good soldiers, because of the healing thing. You won’t find too many in the actual army though. Too big. They’ll only take people up to six foot six or so.”
I chewed that thought over. “So, how many trolls does John work with?”
“He said there were about a hundred others.”
An army. Great. Whoever was stealing unicorns had an army of trolls. “Hey, Beth?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got a plan. Let’s make sure to steal Steve back before we have to face down all one hundred trolls, hmm?”
“Sounds like a solid plan, Drake.”
Four Days Before
woke long before the sun rose, stiff, cranky, and tired. Truth be told, Beth snored. Who’da thunk? A troll snored. I’d have to put out a bulletin.
I popped the top off the driver’s side of the MGB and pulled out my backpack. No one was moving about in the campground, so I fished out the Hollywood horror makeup and peeled off the bandage. Shiny scales winked back. I painted the liquid latex on, layer by layer. It gave me plenty of time to really feel guilty about hanging up on my mom. After the th
ird layer, I fished around in my backpack for some notebook paper. I never imagined I’d write a letter–possibly the last letter I ever wrote, if things went badly–on homework paper. Before I found the notebook paper, the knick-knack my aunt gave me poked my hand. I pulled it out of my bag and set it down next to me before finding the paper I wanted to use.
I tried to write, but my words came out angry. If things didn’t go well, I might be dead from tangling with trolls. I didn’t want my last words to my mother to be angry, so I threw out that page and started fresh. I made peace. I used ‘I’ statements. I wanted to point fingers, but the image of her reading my letter in about a week, with a coroner arranging to have my body released kept bumping into my head. And even if I didn’t die, I wasn’t completely sure I was going back. After all, what if there was something too good to leave in Ely?
All my life had been dictated, and for once, I just wanted to do something I chose. I’d never been a cheerleader; I’d never been in the chess club; I played guitar, but I couldn’t take music classes at school because I never started at the beginning of a semester. I needed to do something just for me. More than that, though, I wanted to find out what was at that address in Ely. Was it a house, or maybe a deposit box? A mailbox? I turned the little key around in my pocket and imagined the lock that might go with it.
What I wanted was a home, and I wanted more than anything for that home to be waiting for me in Ely, Nevada. I just had to get there.
After the last layer of latex, I dumped some emergency pancake from my school kit over the wound, and critiqued my face. It looked like I was covering zits. Scales disguised as zits masquerading as healthy skin was way better than the alternative.
I folded up the letter and went to the building at the front of the KOA. A nice old man sold me a box of envelopes and stamps, and I tossed the letter in the mail. If things went well, I might actually get home before it got to her, and I could shred it then. And if things didn’t go well, she’d have something.
Bright pinks and oranges streaked across the sky as the sun crept over the mountains in the east. The wind had died down over night, and I waited for it to pick up again. Dawn brought wind in the desert.