by Alex Aster
5
The Troll Tunnels
Tor and Engle stared down into a dark, dark hole. The opening had been covered by a bush that Melda had taken down with her. Tor hoped very much that its leaves had somehow cushioned her fall.
Engle squinted. “She’s all right,” he said, seeing something Tor could not. “It’s not as deep as it looks, just dark.”
“Is it the tunnel?”
Engle nodded. “Looks like it.”
Tor motioned forward with his chin. Even though Engle said Melda was okay, that didn’t mean he was ready to throw himself into the darkness. Or, at least, not until his friend did. “Go on, then.”
Engle shrugged, then jumped right into the hole, eliciting a scream from below. Tor heard Melda’s voice: “You landed right on my foot!”
“Did you not have the good sense to move?”
“Well, excuse me for thinking that someone with the gift of sightseeing would see my big toe!”
Tor sighed. “I’m coming down,” he yelled, their fighting taking the fear right out of the jump. Then, he, too, joined them in the dark.
Even with the small hole of sunlight raining down, the tunnel was the closest to pitch black Tor had ever experienced. No color lived down there, just dirt stone walls, and musky air.
After a few moments of thick silence, Engle’s voice rang through the passage. “Grab on to my arms, I’ll lead you through.” he said. They reached out and held on to him tightly, then walked forward blindly.
Tor heard a crinkling of paper and assumed Engle was unfurling the map. “All right. We take four right turns, then two lefts. We can remember that, right?” he asked.
“We better,” Tor said. He repeated the directions in his mind again. If they made one wrong turn, they could be lost in the underground maze forever.
Satisfied, Engle tucked the parchment away, and they started their journey into the center of the mountain range.
Tor never thought he would find himself in a place like this—below millions of pounds of rock, miles of land above him, underneath a ceiling that could cave in at any moment. He was meant to have a smooth, uneventful future. Children with featureless lifelines lived similar lives to Tor’s grandfather, who spent his days tending to a small garden and had never left Estrelle. A nice, comfortable life.
Now, anything was possible…including an early death. A chill snaked down his spine.
Still, if Tor allowed himself to be the least bit optimistic, he knew the stripping of his lifeline meant he might just have a chance at changing his future. If he could find the Night Witch and convince her to rid him of his curse, Tor could create a new lifeline. One filled with more peaks than the Scalawag Range, just like Rosa.
But Tor wasn’t sure he could convince the Night Witch of anything, even if they did manage to find her. He had read her story, more times than he could count.
Which meant he knew what he was up against.
They walked the next few miles in a silence only interrupted by Engle’s stomach growls, which marked five-minute intervals with surprising accuracy. When they reached the first right turn, Tor exhaled in relief, hoping their trip in the dark would almost be over. But the tunnel stretched on.
It was not long before Engle began to sigh, clearly upset that this was no time for snacking. Or perhaps he was bored. In any case, he started to complain about everything around him, from the mold-like smell, to the dust, to the tiny rocks that occasionally fell from the ceiling, raining down onto their heads like hail. When he was done grumbling about the tunnels, he quickly turned the attention of his laser-sharp eyes to another target.
“There’s something in your hair, Melda.”
She ignored him.
“It’s moving.”
“Let it move.”
“It’s glowing.”
“Let it glow.”
“It’s—”
“Would you please stuff your mouth with a peppermint roll so that we don’t have to hear your ridiculous squeaky voice anymore?”
That shut him up. And he very happily stuffed his mouth with a peppermint roll. Engle had been right, however. There was something in Melda’s hair, shining ever so slightly.
It was a few moments later that Melda spoke again. “Um, boys?”
“Yes?” Tor said.
She swallowed. “This is going to sound severely stupid.”
“Then best not embarrass yourself,” Engle said.
There was a moment of silence, and Tor would have bet all of the dobbles in his backpack that Melda was glaring at Engle.
His friend sighed dramatically. “What is it?”
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “I still can’t really see anything, and it might just be my mind making things up, but, are the walls…are they moving?”
Tor expected Engle to snort, or make a rude comment, but instead he replied, in a very tiny voice, “Yes.”
They came to a rough halt. That’s when Tor noticed that with the faint light in Melda’s hair he, too, could make out that the long cracks along the walls looked a bit like the outlines of creatures with curved noses and long, twisting tree-root fingers. He suddenly remembered a jingle about a mountain troll, something Rosa used to sing when she was little. He squinted, trying to remember the words. Was there something about a warning? Something about teeth?
Melda gasped.
Suddenly, there were not just cracks but also eyes in the walls, blinking open. They were alive with something Tor recognized immediately, given how long he had known Engle…
Hunger.
With screams that echoed in front of and behind them, they broke into a run, barely able to see and with nowhere to go but forward. When they reached a fork in the road, Melda managed to remember to turn right, just as Tor risked a look over his shoulder.
“Faster!” Tor yelled as he watched the faint outline of a troll peeling itself from the wall and heading directly their way. Melda was gasping as if her lungs were on the verge of total collapse.
“They smell your stupid peppermint rolls!” she yelled, chest rising and falling like there was a rabid animal stuck behind her ribs. They made another right turn.
Engle made a face. “It’s not the rolls making their mouths water.”
The light in Melda’s hair was brighter now, and Tor could see her blue eyes become the size of chestnuts.
The tunnel rang with growls and the sounds of dozens of large, pattering feet. And with so much echoing noise, it was impossible to know how close the beasts were.
Another right turn. Just two more lefts to go.
Engle gripped his friends’ arms tightly. Tor could feel Engle’s palms getting slippery with sweat.
Something like a small gust of wind tickled the back of Tor’s neck…something like a breeze. Impossible. They were miles and miles underground.
But there it was again, a stream of air blowing his hair across his own sweat-stained forehead.
Tor had a feeling he would regret it, but he looked over his shoulder anyway, trusting that Engle and Melda could lead the way. Hot breath blasted across his face. With a growl, a troll reached forward, and Tor screamed as its claw ran down the length of his arm.
He tumbled, inhaling a cloud of pulverized rock. Dozens of jaws snapped at the air just above him, the trolls trying to get a mouthful of flesh.
Tor squeezed his eyes shut, afraid that even in the dark, he’d see death coming in the form of a troll’s gaping mouth. He braced for the sensation of coral-sharp teeth sinking deep into his skin, and the warmth of his own blood puddling beneath him.
Tor heard a sound he thought likely to be his last: his friends’ screams.
“Get away from him!”
“Take the peppermint rolls instead!”
A grunt, as one of them kicked at a troll.
“Le
ave!” Tor yelled, trying not to let the fear in his voice show. “Get out of here and save yourselves!”
He was half-disappointed and half-grateful when he realized they were not following his orders. He wasn’t a leader anymore, after all.
“Tor!” Melda yelled. “Don’t let them bite you, Engle says not to—”
He screamed.
It was like a giant needle had skewered his toes. Sparks of pain ignited in his bones. His entire foot went numb, and Tor was sure the troll had bitten it clean off.
A moment later, Melda screamed, too. “Ow, my hair!”
And all at once, there was light—a halo of it surrounding Engle’s outstretched hand. A carrot-sized woman was wriggling in his grip, glowing from head to toe.
The trolls looked up from where they were crouched over Tor. One glance and they all let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
The mountain creatures turned, still screeching, trying to run away. But as soon as the bright light found their leathery skin, they hardened back into stone, one by one. Right where they stood, they froze—arms still outstretched, eyes still wide, and hungry mouths still open.
And then there was silence.
Melda ran to Tor’s side and wrapped one of the many ribbons from her hair around the place the troll had scratched him.
Engle helped him to his feet, and Tor was happy to find he still had two. “Don’t worry, troll bites are nothing but annoying,” his friend said. “Their teeth release just a bit of a chemical that promotes drowsiness, making it hard for their victims to escape. You know, kind of like how the snaggletooth viper has venom that paralyzes its prey?” Tor had no idea what Engle was talking about, but felt suddenly grateful for his friend’s fascination with deadly creatures.
Miles from the sun, it seemed the trolls’ weakness was light—and Engle’s quick thinking was likely the only reason Tor was still alive. He limped forward, foot dragging lamely behind him, most of his weight on Engle.
He looked down at his friend’s palm. The fairy had turned back into a flower—their preferred state—but was still giving off a soft glow.
Melda sighed. “Must have gotten lodged in my hair when I fell through the bush,” she explained.
Engle shrugged. “Well, I did tell you that you had something stuck in your—” He was cut short by an especially severe glare. He pushed the flower back into Melda’s hair, and there it stayed, acting as both their protection and guiding light as they made their way out of the troll tunnels.
The Hydroclops
Once upon a scarlet heart, a man fell in love with a woman and gifted her his most prized possession—a forever-blooming flower. One he promised would never die, just like their love.
But promises, like snowflakes, are easily broken. Just a few springs into their marriage, the lovely wife learned that her husband had fallen for another maiden, with cheeks that bloomed red as dawn.
Consumed by grief and jealousy, she climbed the highest mountain peak she could find, and yelled a single wish to the heavens divine: make it be that my husband can never leave me.
And so, her wish was granted.
The next morning, upon awakening, the woman found she had no arms to stretch above her head, no fingers to brush away the hair that had always fallen onto her cheeks. In fact, she had no hair left at all. The wife blinked, and found she had but one, giant eye. She opened her mouth to scream, but discovered she could only hiss…
She was forever bound to her husband, both turned into serpents, connected. One head on each end.
Tied together for eternity.
And so, the first hydroclops was created.
6
The City of Zeal
As soon as they were out of the caves, the fairy flew away, taking a chunk of Melda’s black hair with it. “Ow!” she yelled, rubbing her scalp. They had exited through a small opening at the base of the mountain, so tiny they had to slide on their stomachs to get out. Tor found that his foot was almost all the way mobile again, except for a few of his toes. Engle was right about the venom’s drowsiness effects. Tor felt as though he could sleep the rest of his lifeline away.
They laid down for a few minutes in silence, staring up at the sun that looked so much more useful than it had before. The city stood high in the distance, only a flat plain between them.
Engle started to snore, and Melda kicked him. “We’re not taking a nap,” she said, getting up. “Come on, then. We’ll want to find the know-all before nightfall.”
The City of Zeal was an artificially colorful place. Unlike their village, which boasted trees with leaves of every hue, a sea the bluest of blue, and animals with multicolored fur, this city was natureless—built entirely of stone and made up of people who wore dyed clothing and jewelry cut from precious gems.
It was a place of decadence. Instead of simply using their emblems to maintain the community, the people of Zeal profited from their gifts, which had created a hierarchy of citizens based on the rarity and usefulness of their emblem. Their economy was one of the few things Tor had actually paid attention to in training, mostly because they had learned about it around the same time Engle had seen the frozen gnome in the city’s markets.
At the very top of the settlement’s system was its queen, Aurelia, born with an extremely rare form of the leadership emblem called the puppeteer. She had the gift not to inspire others to follow her lead, but to force them to.
Tor had heard stories about Queen Aurelia, but none of them were to be believed. The word of Zealite visitors could not be trusted, since the queen had the power to make them say what she pleased. But he did know this: she was a cruel leader who never had to follow any rules, even as a child. She had taken the throne at just thirteen years old.
Still, even though stories of visitors disappearing abounded, people continued to travel to Zeal for its markets. The bazaar was full of objects that had been enchanted with an emblem’s power to do marvelous tasks—music boxes that could sing as well as Rosa, knives that could cut onions as expertly a Tor’s father, shoes that could make the wearer dance like a master. Engle had returned from his trip to Zeal with a hydroclops statue that supposedly turned blue when danger was near, though there wasn’t any way to prove its authenticity. Fake objects were about as plentiful as the real ones.
“Too bad I haven’t got any dobbles on me,” Engle said. “Could really use another statue. Think mine’s broken.”
Tor raised his eyebrows at him. “Engle, have you ever been in danger before today?”
He blinked. “Come to think of it, no.” He reached deep into his pocket and pulled out the tiny snake figurine. “Though I suppose this little adventure of ours is the perfect opportunity to test it out.”
“You carry that thing with you everywhere?” Melda asked, scrunching her nose in disapproval.
Engle shrugged. “Sometimes.”
They headed toward Zeal’s large gate, which stood open—though a few guards stood watch at the entrance, checking emblems. Those with marks that could deflect the queen’s power were not permitted inside.
A flurry of worries suddenly bloomed in Tor’s chest. He didn’t have an emblem anymore. For the first time, Tor realized that he was now markless.
And then, of course, there was the curse.
At the very least, the dark markings on their wrists would make them appear suspicious. At the very worst…
It could get them imprisoned.
Tor walked toward the guards with trembling hands. Melda tried her best to twist her frown into a smile, and Engle’s stomach chose that exact moment to groan like an angry giant.
Melda held out her arm and pulled up her sleeve, but just as she was about to be checked, the guard yawned. “Keep it moving,” he said, bored, like he couldn’t be bothered to take three children too seriously.
Fingers still shaking, Tor walked down the path in sile
nce, not daring to say a word that might shatter their good luck. The walls echoed with bursts of sounds ahead. When they were far enough away, Tor released his hiked-up shoulders.
“You know,” Melda said. “I’m not complaining, but you would think the queen would have better guards.”
Engle rolled his eyes at her, and Tor was glad she didn’t see it.
All at once, the narrow path opened up into a courtyard that made Estrelle’s town square look about as impressive as a broom closet. Every Zealite was covered by color, hues Tor had never seen worn before: light purple on a little girl whose thick fabric coat looked nicer than anything he had ever owned, the pink of dusk on a woman’s necklace, the shimmering gold of the sun on a man’s feet, his shoes made of a material that seemed likely to melt in rain. Nothing like the primary colors favored by the people of Estrelle.
Engle grinned. “It’s lightning, isn’t it?” he said.
“A bit much was what I was thinking,” Melda replied, arms crossed across her chest. In their village, her clothes were considered well-made, nicer than she could likely afford. Here, they looked downright ratty.
Tor stared down at his own clothes and felt plain. He suddenly—for just a moment—missed the purple rings around his wrist. The ones that made him special.
The ones Melda still wore. He caught a man staring at her wrist for a few seconds too long, eyes widened. Who knew what he, or others, would pay for a pinprick of its magic? A good leader’s voice could incite hope, energy, and loyalty in a crowd more than anyone else’s.
Melda quickly tugged down her sleeve. “Where’s Engle?”
Tor turned and realized his friend had vanished. He sighed. In a city with as many food carts as this one, it seemed he would have to watch Engle more carefully.
He took a long breath in and smelled something sweet and likely covered in frosting. They followed the scent, and, sure enough, they found Engle, trying to convince the woman at the cart to take his hydroclops statue in exchange for half a dozen diamond-dusted donuts.
