Poppy and the Mane Mania (DreamWorks Trolls Chapter Book #1)

by David Lewman

“Thanks!” DJ Suki gasped.

  “Don’t mention it!” Smidge bellowed.

  Poppy, Satin, and Chenille paddled their leaf boat as hard as they could. They were getting closer to the shore, but they were also still moving downstream, toward the roaring falls. Poppy spotted a tree leaning over the water and had an idea.

  “Smidge!” she shouted. “Try to grab that branch with your hair and pull yourself in! You’ve got the longest hair, and you’re the strongest! If any Troll can do it, you can!”

  “If you believe, I believe!” Smidge shouted back. She swung her wet blue hair around in the air three times, spraying them all with water. Then she whipped her hair toward the branch. WHAP! It hit the branch and wrapped around. Smidge grabbed her hair and started pulling, hand over hand, hauling their boat toward the shore. “Grab on to our boat!” she yelled to the three Trolls in the other leaf boat.

  To free their hands, Poppy, Satin, and Chenille dropped their oars into the water. Bobbing and sinking, the pieces of bark shot downstream and over the falls, out of sight. The three Trolls reached toward the other boat, grabbing the stern. Poppy was practically pulled out of their boat—her toes were hooked over the edge!

  “Should we climb into their boat?” Satin shouted.

  “It won’t hold all five of us!” Poppy yelled back. “Just stay in our boat and hold on to theirs!”

  “Smidge had better hurry!” Chenille shouted. “The stitches holding the leaves together are starting to come apart!”

  “I’M HURRYING!” Smidge bellowed. “HOLD ON TO EACH OTHER’S FEET!”

  DJ Suki grabbed Smidge’s feet. Poppy grabbed DJ Suki’s feet, and Satin grabbed Poppy’s feet just as Chenille grabbed Satin’s. It was a Troll chain!

  Just as the two boats were about to be swept over the falls, Smidge gave a mighty tug on her own hair, yanking them all onto the bank. They flopped to the grass like fish out of water.

  For a moment, they just lay there, panting. “Great job, Smidge,” Poppy gasped. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Smidge panted.

  “Well done, everybody,” DJ Suki said. “I can’t believe the boats held together in rapids.”

  “They wouldn’t have lasted much longer,” Chenille said.

  “You’re right,” Satin agreed. “Look.”

  She pointed to the stream below the water-fall. The boats had broken apart, and the shiny green leaves were floating on the water. The Trolls watched the leaves spin around and slip past the rocks. A big fish came to the surface and swallowed one of the leaves whole. GULP!

  “Okay!” Poppy said, standing up and shaking the water out of her hair like a dog. “Let’s go find Karma! I’ll bet we can still get back in time for the party tonight!”

  The other Trolls exchanged looks. In all the excitement, they’d forgotten about the party. It seemed impossible that they’d ever be able to rescue Karma and find their way back to Troll Village in time for the celebration.

  But as always, Poppy stayed positive. “Come on!” she said, helping the others to their feet. “All we have to do is find that field of flowers. Maybe Karma’s waiting there for us. By now she’s found the perfect flower for her hair. Wait’ll she sees our hair!”

  The Trolls looked at each other’s hair, wet and full of twigs, and started to laugh.

  “Let’s go this way!” Poppy urged. “I’ve got a good feeling about this direction!”

  “I wish I could say the same thing,” Chenille muttered to Satin.

  As they made their way through the woods, DJ Suki spotted something up ahead. “Look over there! Isn’t that some kind of field?”

  “Of flowers?” Poppy asked, excited.

  “I’m not sure,” DJ Suki said. “Let’s run!”

  But Poppy was already running, eager to see if they’d found the field of beautiful flowers Smidge had described. She dodged trees and jumped over fallen branches, hurrying to reach the field just beyond the trees. “KARMA!” she shouted as she ran. “KARMA, WHERE ARE YOU?”

  She passed the last tree and saw a field, but it wasn’t full of flowers. “I don’t see any blooms,” she said, disappointed. There were only plants. Their leaves were bright red, orange, and yellow, but they had no flowers or petals.

  DJ Suki caught up and stood beside her. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Let’s look a little closer.” She stepped into the field of plants, searching for flowers, and…

  SPROING! Suddenly, DJ Suki shot up into the air! “DJ!” Poppy cried. She ran forward, and…SPROING!

  Poppy was sent soaring high into the sky, too!

  When Satin, Chenille, and Smidge ran into the field to see what was going on…

  SPROING! SPROING! SPROING! All three bounced into the air!

  The plants they’d stepped on were Spring Plants—not plants that grow in the spring (though they sometimes do, which is a little confusing), but plants that act like springs. If someone steps on a Spring Plant, it throws the stepper high into the air!

  Unfortunately, when Poppy fell back down, she landed right on another Spring Plant! SPROING!

  “AAAAAH!” Poppy yelled when she was flung into the air again.

  “WHAAAAH!” DJ Suki screamed as she bounced from plant to plant.

  The others were yelling, too: “YAAAH!” “HEYYYYY!” “NOOOOO!”

  Poppy tried to make a staircase out of her hair, but because she was tumbling upside down, it was hard for her to aim her hair at the ground. Then, when she finally managed to aim her hair, it set off another Spring Plant, which sent her hair flying right back into her face!

  SPROING! SPROING! SPROING!

  If anyone had been around to witness the scene, it might have looked as though the Trolls were bouncing on dozens of trampolines—moving from one trampoline to the next, spinning and somersaulting through the air. It would have made a pretty decent circus act. But unfortunately, the entire operation was out of their control.

  Finally, each Troll was sprung past the edge of the Spring Plants field, where they landed on bare ground. THUMP! WHUMP! WHOMP! THWOMP! THUMP! The five Trolls lay in a heap.

  “Okay, so they’re not flowers,” DJ Suki said.

  “Actually,” Poppy said, “that was kind of fun! And it was a quick way to get across the field. Now let’s see which way we should go. I guess I should have tried to look around while I was up in the air, but it was hard when I was tumbling upside down.” She stood up and peered into the distance, shading her eyes with her hand.

  Chenille sniffed. “Does anyone else smell something weird?”

  The others sniffed and nodded. “Definitely,” Smidge said in her bass voice.

  Poppy took a step, and…

  SHPLORP.

  Poppy’s foot sank into the wet ground. She pulled her foot out. SHHHPLOOP! A greasy gob dripped from it. “This is a marsh!” she cried. “A greasy marsh!”

  “Yuck!” Satin said, lifting her foot out of the gooey ground. “This stinks. Literally.”

  “Well, we can’t go back through that field with all the bouncy plants,” Poppy said. “We’ve got to go on. Let’s just hope this marshland ends soon.”

  SHPLORP. SHPLOOP. SHPLOP. SHWURK. The Trolls walked as best they could through the greasy swamp, pulling their feet out of the muck with each step. They kept their eyes peeled for stepping-stones, but there weren’t any.

  Unfortunately, the grease wasn’t just under their feet. The swamp trees had long, mossy branches that hung almost to the ground, dripping with more grease—which dripped right into the Trolls’ hair.

  “Well,” Poppy said, trying to look on the bright side, “maybe with all this grease in our hair, the twigs will slide out.”

  Satin giggled. “Hee hee hee!”

  So did Chenille. “Heh heh heh!”

  DJ Suki giggled, too. “Tee-hee hee hee!”

  Smidge giggled the lowest, deepest giggles they’d ever heard. “Ho ho! Hoo hoo hoo!”

  “Why are we laughing?” said Poppy, chuckling. “Did I
say something really funny?”

  “Hee hee—no,” Satin managed to say between giggles. “Walking—hee hee hee!—through this greasy swamp…heh heh!…doesn’t seem at all funny.”

  “But I can’t help giggling!” Chenille tittered.

  “It’s like—hee hee!—we’re being tickled!” DJ Suki chuckled.

  Suddenly, Poppy remembered something. “I think this must be the Tickle Marsh. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been here. Hee hee hee!”

  “What’s a Tickle Marsh?” Smidge asked.

  “My dad told me about it, heh heh heh,” Poppy said. Her dad was King Peppy. “He found it a long time ago, when he was looking for a place for us to live. Hee hee hee! The ooze in the swamp has this weird effect on anyone who gets it on them. Hee hee! It tickles!”

  Satin looked down at her feet. They were covered with ooze. “Heh heh—well, we’ve certainly got it on us. Hee hee! On our feet, in our hair…and even though I’m laughing—hee hee hee hee—it’s not funny!”

  The giggling was getting exhausting. Their stomachs were starting to hurt. The five Trolls ran, eager to escape from the Tickle Marsh. But it wasn’t easy running through a swamp. SPLAT! DJ Suki tripped and fell facedown in the mucky ooze. When she lifted her greasy face, she was still giggling. “Hee hee hee hee!”

  Finally, after what seemed like ages but was really only a few minutes, they reached the edge of the marsh, where the ground was more solid. They ran on dry grass, then collapsed, wiped out from all the giggling.

  “I usually love laughing”—Poppy gasped—“but that was weird.”

  “I agree,” DJ Suki said. “Nobody say anything funny.”

  Unfortunately, that struck Satin and Chenille as funny, and they started to laugh again. Smidge, Poppy, and even DJ Suki couldn’t help joining in.

  “My aching stomach!” Chenille complained, still laughing.

  Satin tried to run her fingers through their hair. “How are we ever going to get all this grease out of our hair?” she asked.

  “Not to mention the twigs,” Smidge said.

  Poppy glanced around and saw they were in an open, rocky field. There weren’t any flowers, so she knew it wasn’t the field Smidge had been in when Karma disappeared. But at least it looked much easier to walk through than the greasy Tickle Marsh.

  As they lay there trying to recover their strength, the Trolls felt a breeze. It felt good, and it smelled fresh after the stench of the marsh. But the breeze picked up, blowing harder, until the breeze became a wind.

  And then the wind blew harder, and harder…

  Poppy jumped to her feet. “We’d better hurry! I feel a big storm coming!”

  They all got up and started walking. They hadn’t taken more than a few steps when…WHOOSH! A gust of wind picked up Smidge, spinning her around and lifting her high into the air! It was a mini tornado!

  “WHOOOOOAH!” she bellowed. “HELP!”

  But the four other Trolls were too busy dealing with their own mini tornados to help Smidge. One twisted Satin and Chenille’s hair into a terrible tangle. Another blew DJ Suki across the field. And a third picked up Poppy and flung her even higher into the sky than Smidge!

  Poppy looked down and saw that the field was full of mini tornados—spinning cyclones that skimmed around the meadow, bumping into each other and flying off in opposite directions. Poppy was spinning so fast that she was getting dizzy.

  WHUMP! Poppy was set back down on the ground. “Try to stay together!” she shouted to the others. “We can’t get separated!”

  Another tiny twister picked up Satin and Chenille, spinning them off the ground. They didn’t go too high—about as high as three Trolls standing on each other’s shoulders—but they spun around at a terrific speed. The twins managed to join hands while their feet stuck straight out behind them as they twirled around like a pinwheel.

  WHOMP! Smidge landed back on the ground. “Whew!” she groaned. “That’s enough of tha—” But before she could finish, another mini tornado whirled her up again, carrying her even higher than before. “I DON’T LIKE THIS!” she wailed.

  DJ Suki didn’t get lifted high into the air, but the mini tornados spun her all over the field. She was like a ballet dancer forced into pirouettes. She was getting so dizzy, she was afraid she’d toss her cupcakes! “Make…it…stop!” she moaned. “I want to get off this ride!”

  WHAM! Satin and Chenille crashed to the ground, still holding hands.

  “You okay?” Satin asked her twin.

  “I think so,” Chenille answered, “but our hair is a mess!”

  Poppy got an idea. Maybe if the five Trolls joined hands, together they would be too heavy for the mini tornados to lift off the ground. But first they had to get close enough to each other to reach.

  “Everyone get together!” Poppy shouted to the others. “We’ll join hands! Maybe all together we can keep ourselves from being blown away! It’ll be like Hug Time!”

  Since Satin and Chenille were already holding hands, Poppy decided to try to make her way over to them. She put her head down and dug in, walking into the fierce wind, resisting its attempt to pull her up into a funnel cloud.

  But the strong wind kept lifting Poppy off her feet. She thought if she stayed close to the ground, she could avoid the gusts, so she got down on her hands and knees and crawled toward the twins.

  Smidge saw Poppy slowly heading toward Satin and Chenille. The little Troll decided to use the strength of her long hair to reach them. She swung her head in a circle, whipping her blue hair around three times, then snapped it forward, aiming for one of Chenille’s legs. On her first two tries, the wind blew her hair off course, but the third time, her hair wrapped around Satin’s leg. “Close enough!” Smidge said, slowly pulling herself toward the twins.

  Once Poppy and Smidge got to Satin and Chenille, they all grabbed on to each other, holding tight in the howling wind. They tried moving a few cautious steps together. The mini tornados weren’t lifting them off the ground!

  “It’s working!” Satin and Chenille cried.

  “Let’s try to walk over to DJ Suki!” Poppy shouted.

  “Where is she?” Smidge asked.

  They looked around and saw that DJ Suki was still spinning around the field, carried from one spot to another by the tiny twisters. Every time the clump of four Trolls tried to reach her, she went whirling off in another direction.

  “DJ!” Poppy yelled. “Try to hold on to something! Anything! Then we’ll come to you!”

  “I’ll try!” DJ Suki yelled back. “But I don’t know what to hold on to! This field’s pretty bare! I think everything’s been blown away!”

  As the mini tornados spun her around the field, DJ Suki frantically looked for something. There were no trees. No bushes. No rocks. Just hard-packed dirt.

  But then she spotted something sticking out of the ground—a gnarled old root.

  DJ Suki crawled over to the root. She grabbed it and hung on with all her might, hoping it wouldn’t come loose. Thankfully, even when a twister lifted her feet off the ground, she was able to hold on to the old root.

  Poppy saw that DJ Suki had managed to stay in one spot. “This way!” she shouted over the roaring wind. “She’s right over there!”

  The huddle of Trolls slowly shuffled toward DJ Suki. Their long hair whipped around their heads, sometimes slapping one of them in the face. WHAP!

  When they reached DJ Suki, Poppy yelled, “Grab on to us!”

  “I’m afraid to let go of this root!” DJ Suki admitted.

  “It’ll be okay!” Poppy said. “We’ll catch you!”

  Just as DJ Suki let go of the root and stretched her arm toward the cluster of Trolls, a gust of wind picked her up and spun her around again! But Smidge shot out an arm, grabbed DJ Suki’s foot, and pulled her into their desperate group hug. Poppy was so relieved, she hugged DJ Suki for real. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  Now that the five Trolls were bunched together, they couldn’t
be lifted up and spun around by the tornados. Holding each other tightly and shuffling along, they made their way toward the edge of the gusty field.

  “Almost there…,” Satin said.

  “Just a few more steps…,” Chenille added.

  Poppy had an idea. “Wait,” she said. “Even when we get out of this blowy field, we won’t know which way to go.”

  The others were puzzled. This didn’t sound like Poppy. It didn’t sound positive.

  “Well,” DJ Suki said uncertainly, “we’ll figure something out.”

  “Let me go,” Poppy said. “I’ll let one of the twisters lift me up, and then I’ll have a good look around. From up high, maybe I’ll be able to spot the flower field!”

  “Or maybe you’ll get blown away!” Satin said.

  “We can’t let you go!” Chenille agreed. “It’s way too dangerous!”

  “I have an idea,” Smidge said. “I’ll hold on to Poppy with my hair. You all hold on to me. Then we’ll let the tornado carry her up. It’ll be like flying a kite!”

  DJ Suki looked doubtful. “Except Poppy’s not a kite. She’s a Troll.”

  “I think it’s a great idea!” Poppy said. “Let’s do it!”

  Smidge wrapped the ends of her hair around Poppy’s ankle. The clump of Trolls shuffled a few steps back into the field of tornados. Then they let go of Poppy. She took a step or two away from the huddle…and was twisted up into the air!

  “Here I GO!” Poppy shouted, spinning away from them.

  She quickly rose as high as Smidge’s hair would let her. Smidge’s hair stretched and stretched until she started to rise off the ground—but the other three Trolls clutched her feet tightly.

  At first, Poppy was spinning so fast that everything looked like a blur. But then she got used to the twirling and was able to focus on what she had spotted in the distance down below. Poppy saw the edge of the field, and a forest, and a stream, and…a field of flowers!

  “I SEE IT!” Poppy yelled, but the wind was so loud, the others couldn’t hear her. She signaled to them with frantic hand gestures to pull her down.

  “What’s she saying?” Satin asked.