The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  Then, placing one foot on its side, Maggot pounded the dangerdeath warning on his chest, laughing.

  "Too late," he told the bigtooth. "Sorry."

  When he nudged it with a toe, his grin turned to a frown.

  He couldn't carry the whole beast back down the valley to give to the woman. Maybe he could just show her part of it. The skin, since people seemed to use so many skins.

  Looking at it again, he wanted the claws too so he could show how brave he was. And the teeth.

  Maggot knelt and took the front paw in his hand-it still had a deadly weight to it. He sawed with his knife, breaking the joints at the ankle to remove the big clawed feet but leave them attached to the pelt. Then he sliced up the belly, and the legs, and hacking, pulling, finally removed the skin in one piece, leaving it connected to the head, which he also cut off. He ate the liver as he worked, and strips of the meat, which were strong-tasting and stringy, but satisfied his empty stomach.

  When he finished and looked up, vultures circled in the dawn-pale sky. They could have the rest.

  Rolling up his trophy, Maggot slung it over his shoulder and took the long way around the stream so he wouldn't wash off any of his by now impressive scent.

  He grew tired like any troll in the morning. Before he returned to the woman's camp, he climbed into the crook of an elm tree and settled down to nap in the notch where its trunk divided into three.

  Ants crawling across his skin to get at the bigtooth jerked him awake. He squinted at the sky, turning his head to find the sun. He'd slept straight through the warm part of the day.

  He brushed the ants off the bigtooth's tongue and eyes, off the long yellow teeth, licking them off his fingers for a snack as he climbed down and resumed his journey. The cuts on his calf and side throbbed, and a bark scrape on his thigh hurt, but it was nothing bad. When he looked away from them, he forgot that his wounds were there.

  The mammut, spear carriers, log-and-mushroom men, and others left trampled grasses, broken limbs, and other signs of their passing along the riverside, an easy trail for Maggot to follow. They had returned for a second day of beating brush in the hills, not knowing their quarry was already dead. Maggot smiled as he went, imagining the woman's surprise when he brought her his gift.

  The sun was low behind the mountains, the sky as red as blueberry leaves in autumn, when their camp came into view. Fires burned inside the palisade. Maggot circled around to the hill beside the river, above the camp where he could see over the wall. He concealed himself in the remaining trees to look for the woman again.

  He saw her for only a heartbeat, taking long strides through the firelight between tents. She entered one with blue-and-yellow stripes, like the covering on the mammut's back. He counted carefully-it stood in the second arc, third from the end.

  When hardly anyone moved about the camp, Maggot took the bigtooth's skin and approached the palisade. Not seeing anyone or anything moving through the cracks, he slung the pelt over his shoulder and vaulted the wall.

  He tried counting the tents, orienting himself, but the smoky, meaty stink of all these people made him jumpy. He started walking fast, then running, in what he thought was the right direction. He was rounding the second arc when he came face-to-face with one of the spearmen.

  The man looked at Maggot, looked at the bigtooth's pelt, looked at Maggot, and opened his mouth to scream.

  Maggot panicked. He grabbed the man by the throat, twisting his head hard as he dragged him to the ground the way he would wrestle a troll. The man went limp when Maggot landed on him. Maggot rolled away, hand still covering the mouth for silence, when he realized that he'd broken the man's neck.

  His heart thumped in his chest-other voices sounded nearby, coming closer. He'd dropped the pelt when he lunged. He scooped it up and spotted the woman's striped tent, third from the end, just as he had counted. Dashing to it, he pulled aside the flap and plunged inside.

  A fire burned in a polished dish, illuminating the interior to daylike brightness. Maggot blinked.

  The woman sat on something beside the fire. She started to move, then stopped when Maggot stopped.

  He gaped. Her hair had become suddenly long, longer than Maggot's. The other, older woman held it-pausing in midstroke as she ran something like a knife across it. Maybe she was cutting it-

  "You st-stink," Maggot stuttered quickly, in proper troll fashion, before he lost his courage. "You stink a lot."

  The older woman's mouth opened and closed like a fish surfacing to eat.

  Afraid that she would scream, Maggot quickly made a vigorous "No" expression by thrusting his tongue and shaking his head from side to side.

  The woman reached out a restraining hand to her companion. Never taking her eyes off the bigtooth's skin, she said something that Maggot couldn't understand.

  But what was there to understand? She was even more beautiful than he'd imagined her, with sharp lines to her face and a broad, flat nose. She had blue eyes matched in color by a gem that dangled on a golden vine around her neck. Her yellow robe opened at her throat and was slit up the side so that her legs stretched free. She smelled like lavender and lilac.

  He fumbled with the skin, holding it out for her.

  She raised her eyebrows, said something again.

  "It's for y-you," he said, thrusting it out again for her to take.

  She glanced up at the older woman, shrugged, and gestured to a spot at her feet.

  Yes! He dropped to his knees and spread the pelt out on the floor, tilting the head up to her, making sure she could see the claws. When he stood up, his heart was galloping.

  She bent forward to look at it, said something again.

  Maggot took this as a hopeful sign of her interest, and, just to make his intentions clear, stepped close to her, spread his legs apart, and waved his painfully swollen sex at her face.

  She leaned back in her seat ... then sprang forward and kicked him hard in the crotch.

  He toppled like a tree in a storm, slamming into the dirt so hard that it knocked all the air out of him. He tried to inhale, but couldn't catch his breath at all. Probably because his sex was lodged in his throat.

  She grabbed a long knife and held it toward him, prodding him with the toe of her foot much as he had done to the bigtooth. When he didn't move, she stepped away and examined the pelt, flipping over the paws, looking at the teeth. She spoke to him the whole time.

  He didn't understand the words, but her tone was clearly admonishing. Somehow he propped himself upright on knees and elbows, gulping air, looking at her, trying to fathom what he'd done wrong.

  There was a shout outside the tent, and the woman stood and turned sharply toward it. When she moved, Maggot could see her sex through the part in her robe. Though it was obscured by a patch of curly hair, it was clearly not swollen or red. She wasn't interested in him after all. Glancing down at him, she followed his eyes and pulled her robe closed and stepped away from him. A second shout came from outside, more frantic than the first. The older woman ran to the entrance of the tent and shouted out a reply.

  Maggot realized that they'd discovered the body of the man he'd killed. And there was no reason for him to stay now. He stumbled to his feet and lurched past the older woman to leave the tent. He paused a second to orient himself.

  The flap flew open behind him. The woman stood at the entrance, her hand reaching toward him as she said something else he couldn't understand. The long knife was lowered. Probably she was asking if he wanted the bigtooth's skin back.

  Another tent flap snapped opened opposite her, revealing the outline of the boy who'd cast the spear. His eyes widened; then he shouted and began waving his arms.

  Quickly, Maggot stared into her eyes, stuck out his tongue, and shook his head from side to side. She could keep the pelt. Then, cupping his crotch, he ran despite the pain, heading for the main gate because he knew he couldn't climb the palisade. Separated by the wall of tents, and the confusion of darkness, men sprinted
past him in the other direction.

  Only one guard watched the entrance. Grimacing in pain, Maggot lifted his fist to force his way past. The guard took one look at him, threw down his spear, and fled screaming into the night.

  Maggot followed. When he overtook the guard, the man covered his face with his hands, shrieked, and fell down.

  Enveloped in darkness, Maggot ran until the pain in his groin faded compared to the ache in his legs and in his chest. He kept on running into the hills, toward the tree-covered slopes of the mountains. Water streamed from his eyes.

  The moon followed him as he ran, a sliver more than half full ensconced within a bright sphere of hazy light.

  The rains were coming.

  aggot kept on running into the hills, toward the treecovered slopes of the mountains. Finally, exhausted, he reeled from tree to tree, looking for someplace to hide from the rising sun. The hillside was pierced by out-thrusts of massive lichened stones, thick with nut trees and berry bushes. Smells of redolent spring earth and verdant damp pervaded the air. It was a very trollish place. He'd fled the life of a troll to become a man. Now he returned to trollish habits, following the natural shelter of the hills in search of a safe location, hoping to find the hole where he'd hidden the hollow log.

  He was scouring a hillside when he saw, in a dell below, a denshaped mound covered with thick vines and shrubs. Hickory trees towered protectively around it. He went to explore.

  Taking hold of the vines, Maggot pulled himself atop the mound. It was constructed of logs, like the palisade but stacked atop one another. A wall and part of the sheltering roof had collapsed at one end, but a fallen tree canopied the hole-its dead branches sustained a mass of fallen limbs and brown leaves. Some of the logs pulled away in Maggot's hands, revealing a spacious den. He crawled inside. The hollow extended nearly the full length of the mound. In parts of it he could stand straight up. It was a good place to hide for the day. To decide where he should go, what he should do next.

  He sagged against the darkest corner and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to forget the woman. But an ache in his heart worse than the pain in his groin made him toss and stay awake.

  Daylight cracked open the sky.

  Maggot rolled over and stretched his tired limbs. Dusty sunlight penetrated the room, illuminating the scattered bones of maybe two people. And a tiny, cracked skull that clearly belonged to a troll. Maggot jerked upright.

  The bones were partly hidden by a beam where the roof had fallen in. He braced his shoulder under the rotting wood and heaved it aside-leaves and dust showered over him. A little stripe-back ground squirrel scampered across Maggot's foot, then zagged back into the safe cover of the collapsed wall.

  A baby troll's bones were nested against a human skeleton. A troll and a man, together.

  It disturbed him that light should fall on this child's bones and prevent the soul that once wore them from finding its way back into the comforting darkness. He looked up-this was a poor imitation of a cave. Eventually it must collapse, and that might leave the bones completely exposed.

  He probed the dirt with his fingers, loosening a thin layer of decaying leaves and dead vines. Beneath that he found it packed hard. He saw stones in one of the corners. He pried several up out of the ground until he found a large, flat one with a sharp edge. If he scraped a hole and buried the bones then they should stay in darkness long after the logs all fell and rotted.

  Raising the stone high above his head, he plunged it into the dirt. The edge bit the soil. He worked mindlessly, forgetting himself in the good pain of muscle and bone bent to a purpose, until he'd finished a shallow pit.

  He picked up the skull, his thumb fitting in the bony ridge of the brow. His other hand took the tiny lower jaw.

  "Who are you?" he asked aloud. He was thinking how Windy had found him, adopted him-here a human mother must have found and adopted this baby troll. "How did you get here?"

  He held the skull and jaw together, opening and closing the mouth. The teeth clicked against each other, but his little counterpart said nothing to him.

  Gently placing the skull in the pit, Maggot turned to gather the long bones of the arms and legs, glad that no big scavengers had cracked them open for their marrow. The knobby backbones were easy to scoop up, but the ribs and the small bones of the hands and feet were scattered either by smaller vermin or the vagaries of time. Maggot dug through the humus and roots, determined to gather them all if he could. Strands of long red hair were tangled in some of the bones. No troll had hair that long or that color, so he plucked them free before placing the bones in the pit.

  The longer he worked, the longer he avoided any thought of the woman. He didn't know what to do. He still desired her. But he didn't understand people, didn't know how to be one, didn't know why he'd expected it to be so easy to get her to show interest in him.

  He kicked the dirt into the trench, nudged the flat stone over it with his toe to cover the bones, and sighed.

  He let himself look at the other skeletons. Being creatures of the day, perhaps they wanted their souls to bask in sunlight. He didn't know. He decided to leave them as they were, not knowing the proper way to show respect.

  Something glinted inside one rib cage. He bent to look. Two tiny gemlike shapes, as smooth as pebbles from a stream but shining with some inner light, were strung on tarnished strands of silver about the neck. Maggot thought at once of the woman and the blue gem that dangled from her throat. He palmed the skull, snapping it to one side so that he could lift the two strands out of the body. Untangling them from the ribs, he draped them around his own neck, slipping them under the sheath that held his knife. The chains felt cold around his skin, but the lucent stones pulsed with faint heat against his naked chest. Now he had something that made him more like the woman and connected him to her.

  He squeezed the stones in his fist. He could never go back to being a troll or even to living among them. Just because he hadn't impressed the first woman he met didn't mean he would never find his mate. He would have to learn their ways.

  Sunlight no longer drifted into the den, but it was too soon to be night again already. He crawled out through the hole, looking up and sniffing the air. Dark clouds scudded across the sky. Trees shook in a wind that smelled like thunderstorms.

  Branches fell from the treetops. Maggot spied one lying on the ground that was mostly straight and about the length of a spear. He lifted it, aimed it at a distant trunk, and threw. It sailed wide in the wind.

  As the first fat drops of water slapped his shoulders, Maggot ran to pick up the stick and try again.

  The sky broke open, releasing a sudden downpour. Lightning veined the skies like pulses of pain, chased by stampedes of thunder that started far away, galloped overhead, and faded many heartbeats later in the distance. It grew darker than night, impossible to see, even the air squeezing him. He turned toward the den for shelter, thought of the little troll he'd just buried. He felt too sad to stay here tonight.

  He climbed the hillside and gazed across the dim, gray shapes of the sodden landscape. He had been on the right track the night before. The cave where he had stashed the skin-covered log was nearby. The entrance, when he found it, had filled with water. He lay on his belly in the puddle and peered inside. Drops of water reared down the stone walls, but it was dry compared to the world outside, and it was his alone. He cast the log out into the rain to make more room for himself, crawled inside, and curled up to nap.

  He awoke in total dark, dizzy and light-headed-the hole had collapsed, thick with mud. He dug in the mud with his fingers, scooping out handfuls and flinging them aside. One hand groped naked air, and he almost cried out, expecting his mother to grip it and pull him free the way she had whenever he had become trapped in some tight passage of a cave. But she wasn't there for him, nor was anyone else, so his hand flailed around until it gripped the rough stone, while he kicked his legs hard, shoving, swimming through the muck.

  Curled on his side, sl
ick with mud, Maggot lifted his head to the sky, swallowed a gulp of air, and stared into the glaucous eye of the clouded moon.

  He staggered upright, wanting to pound out a "happy" tattoo on his chest. He grabbed the log, but soaked, cracked, and half-full of mud, it made a poor noise. No matter-he was people now, and people did not pound their chests like trolls.

  As he started down the hill for the valley, a new rain began to pour like gravel coming down a steep slope. Maggot's skin felt bruised and sore from the constant pelting, but there was no place to hide. The wind whipped the rain around the backs of trees. By the time he reached the narrow river, the plain alongside it resembled a marsh. The water churned brown and muddy, thrashing at its banks like a bison wallowing in a mudhole. The palisade stood halfsubmerged beside the river's curve-

  The tents had disappeared. The camp was gone.

  His feet kicked up sprays of water as he ran across the rain-soaked meadow. Inside the log wall he found nothing-no sign of the people, no trail. The rain had washed away all marks of their passage. Emptiness shot through him-he had no idea which direction they'd gone or where the woman came from!

  He walked toward the rise with the trees. Water swirled around their roots, ripping at the bank, but he could climb them for a quick view.

  A sudden rich scent of wet soil filled his nose.

  Behind him, a roar shook the air, above the din of the rain, as though a bigtooth as large as a mountain pounced upon the valley.

  Looking over his shoulder, Maggot saw a cliff face of water, dark as scabbing blood, appear behind him, rushing down the river's course. He sprinted up the slope for the trees.

  The wall of water hit the palisade and shattered it in a shower of splinters, slamming into him just before he reached the grove. The wave lifted him up and knocked him into one of the new-hewn stumps, then dragged him under the water before he could snatch a breath.

  He banged into another trunk, swallowed a throatful of muddy water, and burst to the surface, gagging and spewing, gasping for air and grasping at branches. His hand closed on one, and it snapped as he swept past. Just before the water washed him away from the trees he flung an arm around a trunk.