The Flame and the Arrow

by Emigh Cannaday

  Chapter 35

  Ohan the green

  Finally there came a clearing in sight, a welcome reprieve from the endless carpet of looping roots that threatened to take down anyone who wasn’t carefully watching their step. A bloodwood hadn’t been seen in a good hour or so, much to everyone’s relief. It was growing to be late afternoon and the sun was starting to be stingy with its light. Hilda and Runa swung up onto their deer and took off running, glad to finally be out of the flesh-eating forest. They raced each other out of sight, and no sooner than they had left, Zaven turned to Finn with a wary expression.

  “Something’s not right. I don’t know what it is, but I can smell something in the wind…I don’t recognize it.” Finn looked around in every direction, sniffing the air along with his cousin, but he seemed baffled for the first time in his life.

  “I don’t know either…I only smell sheep,” Finn replied, but Zaven shook his head.

  “It’s not sheep. It’s something else; something I’ve never smelled before.” He and Finn looked around curiously and heard a terrified shriek coming from the direction that Hilda and Runa had disappeared. Everyone immediately raced ahead through the trees until a large shadow crossed their path. All of the animals’ ears swiveled to the front and left simultaneously, and Midas reared so high that Annika was half expecting him to sprout wings and fly away. The wolves were growling as Justinian and Sariel dismounted and drew their swords. Talvi sniffed the air and sneered as he whipped out his bow and held a blue tipped arrow against the sinew.

  “I know what it is,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “It’s a troll.”

  “What do we do?” Zaven asked nervously. “I’ve never seen one face to face; I’ve only read about them in books. He’ll eat little Runa in two bites!”

  Everyone listened again for Runa and Hilda’s cries of fear, but they never came. They neared the massive shadow and were stunned to see a giant green-skinned troll, over eleven feet tall, with huge fanged teeth jutting up from his lower jaw, covered in woolen clothing, with a giant axe lying on the ground next to him. But the most puzzling aspect of the sight before them was that Hilda was sitting in his hands, showing off her green sash. Runa was sitting on his shoulders like a child, listening intently and nodding her head. It didn’t seem she had any fear of being eaten.

  “I dyed this with ragweed. There’s a lot of it around here,” Hilda was telling him. “I’m certain it wouldn’t be much trouble for you to gather enough.”

  “And you get this brilliant shade of green with that nasty weed?” the troll demanded in his deep growl of a voice. “I’ve only used fiddle ferns, but they taste so good, I end up eating them before my wife can prepare a dye.” Runa giggled and looked up, seeing the others had come into their view.

  “Zaven, look what we found,” she laughed. Hilda turned around in the troll’s large hands and flashed a smile.

  “Ohan, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Ohan. He’s a troll,” Runa announced.

  “Thank you for making that perfectly clear,” Finn said, still unsure of what to make of her and Runa sitting so calm in the presence of a massive creature.

  “His house is in the direction that we’re traveling,” Runa chirped happily. “He invited us for dinner tonight. Can we go, please? I want to meet his wife. I want to see his little sheep. Won’t it be fun? Please, can we go?” Talvi turned towards his brother and cousin, and mouthed the word ‘no’, but Zaven ignored him and glanced at Runa.

  “Come now, Talvi; who could say no to her?” he asked with an affectionate smile. The decision was made.

  They came to a clearing where a large house made of giant stones and a thatched roof stood. There was no grass immediately surrounding the house; it was all trampled down to nothing, only bare dirt showed. It looked like someone had attempted fencing off a large area for a garden, but the fence had been torn apart and built into a flimsy fort instead. Three enormous troll boys darted out from the fort, swashbuckling with wooden swords, screaming like banshees, and then ran to the back of the house. Six large broken chairs lay against the house beside a pile of flagstones that would have made a pretty pathway. A gong hung not too far from the door, with a mallet attached by a rope.

  “I’ve been meaning to fix those. Just haven’t had the time,” Ohan said and pushed the heavy door open for the travelers. Annika was shocked by what she saw. After her stay at the impressive and stately Marinossian home, this place was the exact opposite. It was everything that Talvi’s home was not. The words filth and squalor had never jumped into her head as quickly as they did upon entering this home. She’d seen plenty of bachelor pads with their milk crate coffee tables overflowing with beer bottles and take out containers piled on top of pizza boxes, along with the ashtrays crammed full of cigarette butts, not to mention furniture covered in wine and whiskey stains. This place was so much worse.

  There were cobwebs on every rafter above, the stone hearth and all of the walls above and around it were thick with soot, and nearly every surface was sticky with the residue left by fourteen grubby troll boy hands. Stacks of dirty dishes surrounded the sink, some with mold growing inside the cups and bowls, and piles of dirty clothing lay nearby on what must have been the dining room table, desperately awaiting their chance to be laundered and mended. There were even a few spots on the wall that held evidence of a food fight or two. Or ten…million.

  “Hello my love!” Ohan called to a muscular yet matronly blue troll in a brown wool dress hunched over the sink, washing silverware while a very large green-skinned baby played at her feet. The woman turned around to reveal a pregnant belly.

  “This is my wife Aghavni, and our youngest son, Sedem. Aghavni, this is everyone.” The group greeted her and introduced themselves. The woman smiled tiredly, throwing a dark purple braid of hair over her shoulder. She had larger pointed ears and an elegant pointed nose. Her pointed teeth were smaller and only the tips showed over her upper lip. Her horns were the same light blue as her skin, with black tips. For being a troll, she was quite attractive. She didn’t look that old, but she looked exhausted.

  “How many extra mouths are we feeding tonight, dearest?” she asked, resting a hand on her belly.

  “Oh, let’s see, three, eight, thirteen? And then the boys and you and I, that makes, oh, hmm. Twenty-two it is, my love,” he declared with a grin.

  “You won’t have to worry about me,” Konstantin said, trying to be helpful.

  “We won’t eat a lot either!” Dardis and Chivanni chimed.

  “Alright, so that makes…” He counted on his fingers, and then counted again. “Well, I keep losing count, but it’s a lot.”

  Aghavni smiled weakly and began to rummage through the cupboards and pantry, but Chivanni buzzed over to her in his tiny form, whispering something in her ear. She squinted at him, as if she hadn’t understood what he had asked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked him suspiciously. “You honestly want to cook for all of these mouths?” He said something else and she held up her hands, as if to surrender, still not convinced he knew what he was getting himself into. Suddenly he burst into his larger self, and she jumped back.

  “Oh, that startled me!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t been around fairies in a long time. My boys unfortunately scare them away with all their noise and roughhousing. What a little fairy magic wouldn’t do for this place…” she said with a sigh.

  “Where are the other children?” Hilda asked curiously. Ohan gave an affectionate chuckle.

  “It’s best to leave them outside until dinner is on the table,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  Are they children or pets? Annika wondered. Nikola stifled a laugh, turning it into a cough, while Talvi only rolled his eyes. He wasn’t the biggest fan of children or trolls to begin with, let alone seven combinations of the two.

  Aghavni cleared the piles of laundry from the table so that it could be sat at, and those that couldn’t find room on the crude, temporary benches took seats in t
he huge chairs around the hearth, unoccupied by the children. Annika folded her hands on the table, and then regretted it. She pulled them away but they were already coated with a sticky, somewhat slimy residue. She tried not to look like a snob, but it seemed everyone except Ohan felt some degree of awkwardness. Aghavni didn’t know what to do with herself, so she grabbed a shirt and began to sew up a tear, glancing at Chivanni nervously every now and then as he and Dardis worked in the kitchen. Ohan threw another log onto the fire that was as large as Annika’s leg.

  “So you made it across the Sea of Forneus, then? Did you see any sirens?” he asked.

  “Yes, you could say so. Some of us saw them better than others though,” Justinian snickered, and Sariel elbowed him in the side. Ohan snorted a laugh.

  “So who dove in after them?” he asked, looking around the group carefully. “It was you, wasn’t it?” The troll pointed at Finn, but he shook his head. Ohan frowned and kept glancing around. Nobody said a word. Nikola kept his mouth pursed a little too much, looking just a little too interested in his surroundings than the subject being addressed.

  “Oh, you’re the one, eh?” Ohan said to him. “Well, it happens to the best of us. I wouldn’t be that upset about it, being that you’re alive.”

  “I’m not upset,” Nikola said a little sharply.

  “Did you see any other monsters?” Aghavni asked, delicately changing the subject. “Did you see Forneus himself?”

  “Maybe from a distance. It was hard to tell. There was a giant tentacle, but it disappeared right away and gave us no trouble,” Justinian said. “Captain Kovachev told me that only a few days earlier, Forneus had eaten an entire pirate ship. He was probably still digesting while we sailed.”

  “How lucky for all of you, that he ate the entire ship,” Aghavni chortled. “And where, pray tell, did you travel from?”

  “Srebra Gora, farther south,” Finn informed her, and she set her sewing down in her lap.

  “You wouldn’t know Anthea Marinossian, would you?” she asked excitedly. “I know she was from an elven village in Srebra Gora.” The elves were just as surprised as she was.

  “Anthea is our eldest sister,” Yuri said with curiosity shining in her eyes. “How do you know her?”

  “She’s your sister? Why, you do look very much like her,” Aghavni said with a smile. “She and I studied healing arts together…oh it was ages ago! She was such a pleasant creature. She was so kind and compassionate, especially when the other girls in the class were so rude to me about my size. What has she been up to?”

  “She’s got the sweetest little girl and a baby boy now,” Yuri told her. “They’re really adorable.”

  “I’m sure they are,” Aghavni said, smiling at the thought. “Do they look like her or their father? I met Asbjorn once. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  “Stella looks more like Anthea,” Hilda answered. “But Sloan has his father’s yellow curls…and his eyes.”

  “Asbjorn’s actually part of the reason we’re traveling this direction,” Finn explained. “He’s trapped somewhere on the other side of the broken portals and we believe it’s the Pazachi who are responsible. If we can locate them and determine the extent of their involvement—”

  “The Pazachi?” Ohan growled, cutting him off. “I know about them. They’re the ones that killed half of my sheep earlier this year!”

  “Ohan, you don’t know that for certain,” his wife said delicately, but Ohan had renewed a latent anger buried deep within himself.

  “Oh, it was them alright,” he asserted. “If it had been wolves, there wouldn’t have been much left to discover. When I saw my sheep in the field, they had no visible injuries whatsoever. They were just lying on the ground, dead as a doornail, but they were completely intact. That is dark magic if I ever saw it, and such a despicable waste! They didn’t even take the wool or the meat! I heard a rumor that they thought I was using too much of the land for my sheep, and they wanted to make a point. Hurrumph! I am a steward of this land! I plant three trees for every one I fell, I compost the manure, and the stream is definitely far enough away from the barn to not be a concern.” Ohan’s eyes twinkled brightly as an idea crossed his path. “What I wouldn’t give to find those Pazachi and make things square between us!”

  “Yes dear, you are very good about planting trees,” Aghavni said. “But you know, you could do a little better with that garden of ours. Perhaps next harvest, our cellar will be bursting full instead of looking like it presently does.”

  “Oh, you over exaggerate things so,” he chuckled dismissively. “You’re provided for, aren’t you?”

  “Just scraping by and living abundantly are two very different lifestyles, Ohan,” she said in a voice that exuded practicality. “What if the price of your precious wool goes down? What will we do then?” Ohan started to get irritated by his wife when an idea struck him. His toothy jawline curled into a grin.

  “Then let’s make a deal, my darling,” he said. “You write up a plan for running our farm the way you see fit, and if I agree, you will concede to let me take my revenge on the Pazachi. My axe has grown dull from felling trees…perhaps I should sharpen it for felling Pazachi heads!”

  “What?” his wife replied, as though he had proposed the idea to grow another head. “Do you honestly think I would agree to your leaving me here with the children while you run off and play in the woods without me? You must be mad! There’s no telling when you will be home! Why, if you’re not here when this child comes…”

  “Aghavni, think about it,” he tried to explain diplomatically, but everyone could tell how much he wanted to go with them. “You just asked me what we would do if the price of wool ever went down. The truth is…I don’t know. So you tell me what your expectations are and if I agree, then you must let me go to battle. I will even sign it in my own blood.” He sat back and chuckled to himself, thinking that there was no way Aghavni would know how to run a farm when she wasn’t running a household so well to start off with. But now it was Aghavni’s turn to chuckle.

  “I have all these witnesses to what you just said, Ohan. I honestly hope you meant what you just said, because I know how much you’d like to sharpen that axe of yours,” she said merrily. “I only hope we have enough paper for me to list all of my terms.” She gave a wicked laugh and Ohan swallowed hard, like he had severely underestimated her.

  “For what it’s worth, this is supposed to be an investigatory expedition, not an all-out battle,” Finn tried to explain.

  “But if it comes to that, we’re prepared,” Justinian added, much to his chagrin.

  “Well, before you go signing anything in blood, you might want to—” There was a loud crash, and everyone turned towards the kitchen.

  “Don’t worry; I have everything in my control!” Chivanni called out, and began humming to himself.

  “At least you’re more graceful in the kitchen than you are in the ballroom,” Dardis teased him.

  “Whose ballroom?” Aghavni asked.

  “Oh, it was for mine and Talvi’s birthday party,” Yuri said. “We had so many attendants. How many do you think it was, anyway Talvi?” She asked her brother.

  “Five hundred, I think it was,” he said from his spot in the corner. It was the most he’d said in hours.

  “Five hundred and six, actually,” Finn corrected his brother.

  “Goodness sake; and I worry about my seven boys! Tell me about your party, so I can at least pretend what it’s like to get out once in a while. I can’t even escape in a book because I’m always disrupted. Tell me, what did you wear? How was your home decorated? Was there music? Was there cake and wine? Describe everything to me, and don’t leave anything out,” Aghavni pleaded with a dreamy look in her eyes. And just as Annika feared, Yuri was more than happy to describe everything, from the perfectly moist chocolate raspberry cake to the very buttons running down the back of her red dress. On and on she went, conveniently leaving out the vampire attack and her
drunken displays of affection for Konstantin, until Ohan couldn’t take it anymore and announced he was heading out to the barn to check on his sheep. Following his lead, all the other men jumped up to volunteer; all of them except for Chivanni, who was still humming along in the kitchen.

  While Annika and Dardis tried not to gag, Yuri continued describing every little detail of her birthday party. Somewhere in between the flower petals made of frosting that spelled her and Talvi’s name on the cake, and the potentially disastrous decision whether or not to wear a corset with her gown that night, Sariel had pretended to doze off, and even Runa was cringing more than just a little bit.

  “It sounds positively marvelous,” Aghavni sighed when Yuri had finished. “I haven’t looked that beautiful since…since the day I married Ohan,” she sighed again. “And then all these boys came along, and bless them all, I love them so much, but it is next to impossible to get Ohan to help me with them. I keep thinking with seven strong sons that I shouldn’t have such mountains of work before me, yet here is my ballroom.” She waved her hand through the air regally. “When Ohan and I were married fifty years ago, I thought we would have a bountiful garden with cold frames and a greenhouse. We both wanted lots of children, but I expected them to help me with the chores when they got older, not create more work for me. Ohan gets the boys all wound up right before dinner, spoiling them rotten, allowing them to bring in the dogs and dirt and slimy creatures they find in the swamp and the riverbank. And then I have to deal with them. It’s so hard to keep up, even with Ohan. Sometimes I think he makes it worse. When we’re almost out of wood, or something needs to be mended, I try to remind him and he calls me a nag. Those chairs outside, guess how long they have been broken?” she asked casually, as if it were a game. No one said a thing.

  “Seriously, I want you to guess,” Aghavni asked the girls again.

  “A week?” Hilda said.

  “No.”

  “Two weeks?” Annika guessed.

  “Not even close.”

  “A month?” Runa squealed.

  “No, it’s been a full year,” Aghavni said testily. “I actually have kept track. It was a year three days ago. Can you believe that? It used to bother me, but now I just try to ignore it. I would do it myself if I had the time, but…” She turned to the kitchen, motioning to the pile of clothing and dishes. “I have more immediate things to tend to. When we were just starting our family, I used to literally follow right behind them, cleaning up after the boys and Ohan, but somewhere between Tri and Chetri I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I wonder how badly he wants to join forces with you. Maybe this is the lucky break I’ve been asking the gods for?” she wondered with a smile. She seemed to be grateful to have other women to talk to for once, instead of trying to reason with a very stubborn husband and her unruly sons.

  “Anthea would talk about your family, about how everyone had chores that had to be done, and I always thought I would raise my children like that,” Aghavni said. “I know the boys can do better, it’s just that their father spoils them so.” Annika felt sorry for her, wishing there were something she could do. She excused herself and walked to the kitchen.

  “How’s it coming along?” she asked Chivanni.

  “Oh, very well…very well indeed,” he boasted. “I’ve made a fine vegetable stew, which will be just scrumptious with taboule and tomato salad, and whole wheat rolls. And for dessert I made pumpkin pie!” He looked so proud of his great effort, but Annika could only look at him with skepticism.

  “Chivanni, that sounds great and all, but just one pie? Are you trying to incite a riot?” she asked.

  “Oh ye of little faith,” he said, wrinkling his nose at her. “I made two.”

  “Okay…whatever,” Annika replied, still unsure how two pies would satisfy everyone, but she just took the heated water from the stove and washed up some plates instead.

  Ohan came lumbering back into the house with the other men and was pleased to see that the table had been set and dinner was almost ready. He cracked a few jokes about how he didn’t trust a skinny chef, namely Chivanni. He then told them all about his prize-winning sheep that produced the softest, warmest wool in the land. He seemed just as proud of his sheep as his sons, of whom he had nothing but kind words.

  “You should have seen Edno with his axe the other day. Why, he felled a tree with three swings, he did! And Tri and Chetri come up with some creative weapons that they try out on the others. Yes, my sons will be terrific warmongers someday. I almost hope we don’t eradicate all of the Pazachi so that my sons might have some practice.” Aghavni rolled her eyes and shook her head behind Ohan’s back.

  Dardis scrubbed the table as best as she could, and Hilda and Runa set the food and dishes on it, waiting for Annika to finish washing enough dishes for everyone.

  “We can sit at the table, and the boys can just sit on the floor around the fire. They won’t mind at all,” Ohan said, and stepped outside again. There was a loud metallic sound as he hit the gong with the mallet, and then he returned to sit at the table. Little did anyone know it was the calm before the storm. Suddenly Annika got the impression the house was under siege, as a troupe of solid troll children and barking dogs thundered into the house, making a beeline towards the food.

  “Stop right there!” Ohan bellowed, and they froze in their tracks. “Now line up and meet our guests.” The boys did as they were told, forming a line from tallest to shortest.

  “This is Edno,” Ohan proudly said and pointed to the tallest boy. They all looked like younger, smaller versions of Ohan, with their father’s dark grey hair and green skin. From there he moved down the line. “And Dve, Tri, Chetri, Pet, Shez, and of course Sedem is the youngest.”

  “Okay boys, take a plate and don’t be greedy,” Aghavni warned them. “Save some food for our guests.” The boys descended upon the table with grunts and exclamations and piled their plates high, then sat on the floor, chomping and smacking with no manners whatsoever. None of them bothered to use the silverware that had been provided. A couple of the boys were on their hands and knees, eating like dogs with their heads buried in their bowls. A couple of dogs were sneaking bites of food out of unattended dishes. There were bits of food sticking in their long, shaggy grey hair. They squabbled among themselves about whose dish was larger, how it wasn’t fair, and then pow, someone was punched in the face and bam, someone was punched back in the arm. The oldest five ended up rolling on the floor in a twisted pile of little horns, long matted hair and dirty green skin. The parents didn’t seem to even notice the fight breaking out in the living room. Aghavni went to fix a plate for Shez and Sedem, but was more than just irritated when she looked into the empty bowls.

  “I told you to save some for our guests!” cried as a dish of taboule flew through the air. Four of the dogs jumped at once to eat the spilled contents off the floor.

  “Now, now, we’ll make do,” Ohan assured his wife. “They’re growing boys. They need to build strong bones and muscles like their father.” He was trying to soothe his poor pregnant wife’s rising blood pressure, but it didn’t exactly work.

  “Oh, there is much more where that came from,” Chivanni said, and took the serving dishes back into the kitchen. He returned each one to the table heaping full of food, almost filled to the brims. Aghavni looked puzzled, but they all sat down at the not-quite-so-sticky table and ate the delicious food. Chivanni looked very pleased with himself. The adults were halfway done when Tri and Pet came back to the table with bowls that either they or the dogs must have licked clean.

  “Can we have some more? That was so good!” they said, burping and wiping their mouths on their already filthy sleeves. Aghavni sighed and was about to scold them again, but Chivanni stood up and filled the dishes once again, letting them heap their bowls with mountains of food.

  “Where exactly is all of this food coming from?” Aghavni asked. “I set out the vegetables for you, and I know for a fact it was not nearly this much.” />
  “It’s nothing a little fairy magic couldn’t help along,” he replied casually. “It’s impossible for anyone to have an empty belly tonight.”

  “Say, what happened to your friend? The pale one with the long hair? Is he ill?” Ohan observed. Annika felt her stomach lurch. They hadn’t told their host and hostess that a vampire was in their presence.

  “Um, he, um…he…” Runa stuttered.

  “Yes, about Konstantin,” Finn stumbled. “You see, the thing about him is…”

  “He prefers to find his dinner in the forest,” Yuri said quickly.

  “Well that’s strange. You’d think a fellow would prefer a hot meal,” Ohan said with his mouth full, yet he managed to shove in another buttery roll. Runa cupped her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh as she was sure Konstantin was having no trouble finding a hot meal of his own.

  Everyone under that roof ate to their heart’s content, and then Dardis brought out the pies, giving everyone a piece. The boys were so full that only Dve ate two pieces. With their stomachs ready to burst, the sons were all sedate and calm, lying about the fire like lazy lions. Aghavni took this perfect opportunity to coax the boys into their beds, leaving the house quiet. It was a refreshing change from the chaos that had gone on throughout most of the meal. Even the dogs were sleeping, curled up under the chairs.

  Ohan took his pipe from its place on the mantle and Finn filled it with his best tobacco. When Aghavni returned, she had with her a few sheets of paper, a quill and ink, a candle, and an inspired smile. Her husband just shook his head and spoke more to his guests about his wool trade, and the different dyes his wife could make, and the importance of proper combat training. Even though Annika had no idea what to expect from the Pazachi, she felt it would be extremely beneficial to have Ohan on her side when it came time to face him. And she knew she wasn’t the only one with that idea. Justinian, Sariel and Ohan debated which swords were better for severing limbs or merely causing flesh wounds, and Aghavni was too busy writing her list to partake in the after dinner conversation.

  When the fire had died down to coals, Annika found herself falling asleep sitting up. Glancing around, she wasn’t the only one who’d grown paralyzed by the enveloping coziness of the room.

  “We’re going to go set up the tents,” Zaven and Talvi announced, with no enthusiasm whatsoever. The air outside was very cold, and the coals in the fireplace were so toasty.

  “You will do no such thing,” Ohan yawned. “You are our guests. You shall lay your blankets in front of the fireplace.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Ohan, but it still might be too crowded in here,” Zaven said. Even though the floor plan was generously designed with eleven-foot tall trolls in mind, accommodating a slumber party of thirteen was pushing it. And there was also the matter of being squashed by troll boys running outside to play the next morning.

  “Well, after you have given us such a fine meal and such pleasant company, the very least I can offer you is the hayloft. With all the sheep in for the night, it gets quite warm in the barn.” Everyone looked at each other and agreed. The hayloft sounded like a much cleaner place than the inside of the house. And they were so sleepy; it was that much more inviting than taking the time to set up the tents.

  “Thank you Ohan, that is very kind of you,” Finn said. They walked out to the barn and were amazed at the cleanliness within. Clearly Ohan took more pride in his sheep’s living quarters than in his own. They climbed up the ladder to the hayloft, which was indeed very warm from all the body heat of the animals below. Every now and then a soft ‘baa’ was heard, but it was quiet and snug. The hay smelled sweet, like the end of summer, and they threw their cloaks and blankets over to make one giant bed. It was so much softer than the hard ground.

  Everyone fell asleep within minutes of literally hitting the hay. The only one still awake was Aghavni, diligently writing the list she’d had in her head for years.