Tamed by the Troll (The Perished Woods Book 1)

by Tracy Lauren

  “Sorry! Sorry! Why shouldn’t I look into the water? Is it the will-o’-wisps?” I ask, my heart rate increasing.

  “No. Nothing like that. It’s just… things sometimes die in bogs.”

  “Okay…?”

  “And they do not rot. If you look down, you might see something that would frighten you.”

  Beside me I hear the splash of water. “Brom!” I fret, gripping him tightly.

  “How about we walk quickly?” Brom offers.

  “Deal,” I agree, extending my legs to hop across the tufts of grass. Under our weight the tufts depress and water seeps up through them. The mud caked on my shoes makes each step I take precarious, but Brom steadies me every time I feel unsure of my footing.

  Though the water is dark, from the corners of my eyes I swear I see faces lurking just beneath the surface, but I tell myself it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. Still, every time I hear a splash I quicken my pace and bite back a whimper of fear. I pin my eyes on Brom, letting his monstrous form fill my vision.

  Luckily the path is not a long one and when I look over Brom’s shoulder I see we are nearing the little house. Up close, it certainly does not look ominous. Not in the least actually. It’s a very modest little shack, the pouch sagging inward. But in the windows delicate curtains sway in the mild morning breeze. I almost think a little family could live there. A husband and his wife, they’d fish for their suppers, living off the bog. They’d maybe have a child or two who would make their fun by skipping stones at the water’s edge. Despite the safe image my mind builds, when the door opens I startle, clinging to Brom.

  The creature on the other side looks as shocked as I feel, their eyes going wide--wider than one might think possible when they see Brom and me not 20 feet away. Their mouth falls open, gaping and wobbling a bit before words manage to work themselves out. “Angmar! Gussalen!” The frog calls. Brom and I remain frozen, watching the scene before us. From behind the house two smaller frogs, the size of human children, appear. They walk on hind legs like any man or woman might, but these creatures are frogs. When they see us, they run onto the porch, their parent ushering them quickly inside the house. With one last terrified look cast over her shoulder, the frog slams her door shut. Seconds later the curtains are quickly drawn, one by one. Still, I can see two sets of wide set eyes peering at us from what I imagine to be the kitchen window. The children are watching us with great curiosity.

  “Brom! What the hell was that?” I hiss under my breath.

  “Let’s go, we are frightening them,” he tells me.

  When we are far enough away, I look back. Watching us from the house is what I imagine to be the daddy frog, making sure we do not stick around to bother his strange amphibian family.

  “Were those people or frogs?” I question.

  “It seems they were both. I imagine there is a curse upon them. There’s no telling what their natural state might have been though. It is possible they could have once been humans. Of course it’s possible they are nothing more than what they are. If there’s one thing I know about these woods, it’s that the secrets it holds are boundless.”

  We continue our journey and the remnants of the bog melt away behind us. I cast one last glance at the water, my curiosity getting the better of me, and I see the surface ripple. Something long, thick, and undulating rolls out of the water and dives right back in--vanishing as quickly as it came. I yelp at the sight of it and bump into Brom, who laughs at me. I scowl at him.

  “I warned you not to look, Little One,” he tells me.

  “That thing was gross,” I proclaim seriously.

  “You didn’t see the half of it,” he agrees, raising his brows and laughing again.

  “Do we have to come back this way once we’re done?” I ask.

  “No, we will take a different road to Pontheugh. There’s a river to the east of Briarmere that we can follow to the great lake. We’ll have to trek the long way around the water though.”

  “Why not take a boat?” I question as we pass another small house. This one look unoccupied.

  “We might not find someone willing to give passage to a troll,” he answers. I nod knowingly. Even in a big city like Pontheugh, monsters from the Perished Woods are still monsters.

  “That’s fine, it will give us more time together,” I say, without thinking.

  “Do you want more time together?”

  “Huh?” I sputter. “Sorry, I know I’ve wasted a lot of your time already.”

  “I don’t mind,” he offers, nodding his head toward a small door built into the side of a hill. Brom holds his axe at the ready, but no one comes out as we pass by.

  “It’s just, you thought you were getting a slave and instead you got this. I know I’ve been a lot of trouble. You don’t have to be nice about it.”

  “I was hoping for a slave. But it all worked out in one way or another. Things always do.”

  “Still. I can’t help but feel like you got a bad deal. I guess I just want to say sorry and thank you.”

  “I suppose you shouldn’t have to be sorry for not wanting to be a slave.”

  “Well I’m sorry I made a mess and hurt your back at least.”

  “It is already nearly healed,” he assures me with a wave of his hand. “But you can tell me why you’re thankful,” he says with a smile.

  “Fishing for compliments?”

  “It is one of my favorite types of fishing.” His expression is light and happy. I love it when he’s like this. Even with one eye on the strange little cottages dotting the landscape, he can still be so easy going. For all that he’s a troll--a monster of the Perished Woods--he’s still the light to my darkness.

  “Thank you for caring for me, protecting me, and offering to take me home.”

  He shrugs like it’s nothing, but to me it is, so I take a deep breath and I go on.

  “I want to thank you for talking to me too. Even… even back when I hated you. You’re the first person to truly talk to me since my parents died. The only person who seemed like they understood me… or at least wanted to understand me.”

  Brom reaches over and caresses my hair. “I’d carry any burden for you Adelaide.”

  I nod, knowing in my heart that he speaks the truth. “It’s made all the difference. For the first time I feel like I can have a future again, that I can move on from all this grief.”

  He nods but his smile looks forced. “Moving on is good.”

  The further we walk the more my mind travels back to Brom’s little lair. I was sad to leave it behind and now I’m even sadder, knowing I’ll never see it again. I watch Brom as he moves, the way his muscles flex and cord. He’s sexy, but he’s more than that. He’s my friend. It’s going to be hard to part ways with him. Seems like what I said earlier was truer than I realized. I really do feel like I’m going to be lost without him.

  I consider Ellyn again. She’s been living for years in the city. She might be the last of my family, but I hardly know her and all she knows of me is the silly girl I was before I lost my parents. She doesn’t know who I am now. I hardly know who I am. I’m only just getting to know myself beyond my grief. The best picture I had was the couple of hours I spent working in the Cocky Bull. I had fun then. It was the first time I was ever really allowed to be myself and people liked me for it. They liked my sense of humor and crass language. Suddenly I feel as if I’m walking further and further away from home, rather than closer to it.

  Ahead of us, a mossy bit of ground seems to move. Brom halts suddenly, putting a protective arm up to hold me back. Then, the moss rises. I stare at it in shock, wondering what will come of this new bit of oddness. Slowly, my mind makes sense of the greenish-brown mass. It’s a figure in a cloak, slowly approaching us, wobbling heavily with each step.

  “Who goes there?” Brom asks, his voice deep and reverberating.

  “Guardian of the witch’s land,” comes a dry voice from beneath the hood. “I am here only to give you warning. Beyond
this point everything is dead. Eat only what you have in your pack and do not drink the water here.”

  “What of the witch?” Brom questions.

  “Her army will guide you to her.”

  “Her army?” I gasp and the cloaked figure turns to me.

  “Follow them and no harm will come to you,” he assures.

  Brom thanks the man… if that’s what he is at all, but I hesitate so that I may ask one last question.

  “What types of things does the witch value?” I question. “Do you know what kind of deals she makes with her visitors?”

  “She will find something to take from you. She always does.”

  Brom tugs at me, but I watch the cloaked figure return to his seat at the base of a tree. Once he settles into his spot, the moss covering him falling into place, I can hardly tell there’s anything there at all beyond the gnarled stump of a tree.

  “We will not be making any deals with the witch beyond the one we came here for,” Brom insists. “If you have some idea to make a dark deal with her, I demand you cease that line of thinking immediately.”

  “I know… I was just curious, in case she doesn’t want what I have to offer.” Surely there will be something I can trade her to help Brom get his supplies back. I worry though that I am being naïve. Brom knows this place and these people better than I do. For the first time, I consider telling him the truth and seeking his aid. Maybe he’ll have a better idea. Or maybe he’ll turn us around and take me out of here, drop me off in Pontheugh, and have nothing for all his trouble.

  I’m deep in thought, considering the very limited knowledge I have of witches. Which basically consists of a handful of fairy tales my parents told me as a child. Other than a special trinket and the blood of a virgin, I have no idea what this witch might want from me.

  The trees around us clear and we are left in an open meadow. Though midday has come and gone, the sun never seemed to get any brighter than it is now and the sky has the dull gray of dawn to it.

  Here in the meadow the haze that has been following us has turned into a thick blanket of fog, not allowing us to see farther than a few paces ahead of us. Other than tall, dead grass, poking up through the mist, all I can see is rounded mounds of dirt making little hills all along the path. Brom raises his axe before him and takes on his battle stance as he walks. He looks ready for an ambush.

  “What’s wrong?” I whisper. He inclines his head, motioning toward the mounds of dirt.

  “Her army,” he answers quietly.

  I screw my face up, confused by his response. But I look closer at the unnatural mounds, that are about as high as my thigh. When I focus on them, I notice an eerie detail—they look like massive bodies lying on their sides. Looking ahead along our path and even out into the meadow…all I can see peeking up through the fog are mounds. They surround us, as far as the eye can see.

  “There.” Brom points ahead of us. A lone mountain rises from the center of the meadow. My heart pounds in my chest and I can’t shake the foreboding feeling inside of me. As the mountain comes into focus, I see a few spindly trees curving out from the sides of it. Crows line the branches and though I cannot see them well, I can hear the flapping of their wings and the ungodly caws they make. One hand grips Brom’s muscled arm and the other holds the hilt of my knife.

  “There’s a cave in the hillside,” Brom notes. “That is where the witch will be.”

  “Brom!” I say suddenly. “I don’t know about this. Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “There is nothing to fear when I am with you, Adelaide,” Brom tells me confidently, and while I trust him to win against anything that might try to fight him, I don’t know that he can protect us against a witch’s magic. We hesitate on the path, looking at one another. I bite my lip trying to think of something to offer him instead of the witch. But our attention is broken by the sounds of crumbling earth all around us.

  I gasp in horror as one of the mounds of dirt shifts and rises to its feet. “Gollums,” Brom growls. I draw nearer to my troll as more and more of these creatures rise up around us. They are faceless and larger than any man, comparable in size to my Brom. I tell myself they are just dirt and they can’t hurt us. But slowly they begin closing in on all sides but one.

  “They are forcing us toward the witch’s den,” Brom tells me, his voice not nearly as frantic as I think it ought to be.

  “Brom, I have something to tell you!” I confess as the gollums push us toward the cave entrance. We stumble forward under the army’s pressure, nearing the fissure in the rocks. Over us I can hear the mad cawing of crows and the flap of what sounds like a hundred wings.

  “You can tell me later, Adelaide,” Brom says, his attention on a gollum pushing him roughly from behind.

  “No! I can’t! Brom, I need to tell you now! I’m not a virgin!”

  Brom spins to look at me, his eyes wide. When he searches my face, he sees the truth there. He rips his gaze from me and I see him gripping his axe, looking for a route of escape amongst the gollums. But we are surrounded—engulfed by the witch’s army.

  “I’m sorry, I thought I could think of another way to help you before we reached her, Brom, another deal I could make.”

  “We didn’t have to come here, Adelaide,” Brom growls.

  “I wanted to give you something in exchange for everything you’ve done.”

  He rubs his forehead roughly and looks around, considering our options.

  “It’ll be okay. She’ll just have to make a different deal with us,” I tell him. “Right?”

  Chapter 34

  Adelaide

  One last push and Brom and I are forced beyond the threshold of the cave. The sound of dirt crumbling and grinding fades away, vanishing as if it were never there to begin with. It’s dark in the cave and the only thing I can hear is Brom’s angry breaths and the slow sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance. Ahead of us is a dim light.

  I grab Brom in the dark, fumbling with him until I find his face. I pull him down toward me, pressing his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I thought I could work it out on my own.”

  “You say you trust me, Adelaide!” Brom growls, trying to control his anger.

  “Of course I trust you. I just…I don’t know. I didn’t want to be so helpless. I wanted to be able to offer you something in return for waking me from that sleeping curse and promising to take me to Ellyn. And maybe I still can. I just, I just thought you should know before we see the witch. Please don’t be angry with me, Brom. I swear my heart was in the right place.”

  He sighs heavily. “I’m glad I didn’t know,” Brom tells me finally.

  “What? Why?”

  “Had I, I’d have fucked you senseless the entire time we were at the goblin inn. I wouldn’t have been able to restrain myself.”

  I pull away, feeling a little confused. “I don’t get it. Are you glad we didn’t have sex?”

  He takes another deep breath, warring with himself over what to share with me. “I want you badly, Adelaide, but the closer I get to you, the harder it’s going to be to let you go. If we had sex…if we made love…” He sighs again, taking a long pause. “I promised to take you to Pontheugh,” he finishes, as if that explains everything.

  “Enter!” comes a voice from within the cave and I jump in response.

  “We will talk to the witch, but I refuse to allow you to make a deal with too steep a price.”

  I nod in agreement and Brom takes my hand, leading me down the twisting corridor towards the light. Along the way I see dark catacombs twisting off from the main path, but the light is so faint there, I cannot tell how far they go back or if they lead anywhere at all.

  Finally, we round the last corner and the cave opens up into a massive cavern, the ceiling high above us. Light shines in from somewhere high above and it ricochets off crystals embedded into the walls of the cave. Every sound echoes and those water droplets I heard earlier are amplified. For a moment
I appreciate the beauty of this place, with clear and amethyst-colored crystals jutting from every surface. But then I take in the center of the room. Woven around all the stalagmites is a sea of bones. I gasp in horror when I see it and grip tightly to Brom.

  “Step forward,” the voice calls out. It echoes off the walls until the sound is senseless. I crane my neck to see where it is coming from. All I have to do is follow Brom’s gaze. In the center of the cave there is a thick stalagmite, rising high above the rest. Stairs run the length of it and the top has been carved into a throne. On it sits the witch. She’s so high up I can barely see her.

  “I’ll speak only with the girl,” she says. “Troll, you can wait in the catacombs.” She makes a motion like she’s waving him away, dismissing my protector.

  “She makes no deals without me,” Brom insists.

  “I will speak with her and send her back to you. You can decide together if you wish to deal with me or not.” The witch sounds unconcerned.

  “No tricks?” Brom demands.

  “I’m a witch, not a magician,” she says plainly, her voice echoing throughout the cave.

  I can feel it in Brom’s body when he acquiesces to the witch’s request. His tense muscles relax and I know he plans to leave me alone with her. “Don’t you dare leave!” I hiss quietly.

  “I will be in the corridor, Adelaide. If you are in danger call my name and I will be by your side.”

  I whimper, but nod in agreement. I can do this.

  “And do not make any deals without speaking to me first. Even if it’s something that sounds innocent enough. This is a decision we will make together, agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Promise me,” he growls.

  “I promise!”

  Brom's hand finds my cheek and he tilts my face toward his, kissing me blatantly before the witch. I feel awkward about our audience, but I kiss him back, drawing strength from the connection we have.

  He gives me one last stern look before he turns his back, stalking toward the gaping hole in the cave where we entered. Once he’s gone, I turn and face the witch. She waits until it is just the two of us before she rises from her throne and begins to make her way down the rock. Her movements are jerky and inhuman. Just watching her makes fear coil tightly in my stomach, and the nearer she gets, the more reason I see to be fearful.