The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  But these abuses drove Sinnglas; Maggot understood that much. Sinnglas had been following the men in the camp of tents to watch against them when the flood struck, separating him from his brothers. He had been preparing for this war then. So if Maggot had not saved him, there might not be a war at all. The war was very important to Sinnglas. Maggot was glad that he had saved Sinnglas.

  Squandral, the newcomer, spoke again, and Damaqua repeated his words about feasting and careful thought and agreement, and then the men rose to leave.

  Maggot followed Sinnglas outside. The weight of all his tools and weapons still felt odd to him, bouncing against him as he walked. As did his clean skin and hair. He had scrubbed himself raw in imitation of the other men.

  Sinnglas and his two brothers carried their bows and quivers. Maggot followed them outside the village palisade, larger and sturdier than the one by the river, as they crossed the fields and meadows toward the forest. No one spoke for a long time, until they were far away from anyone else.

  Maggot lost hold of his tongue first. "The man, he nose, like a hawk-"

  "Squandral," Sinnglas said. "A great man. First among his people, a friend of my father's when he was First among ours."

  "Squandral," Maggot repeated. "He wants we do what?"

  Sinnglas meditated on this, wearing the same expression on his face that Damaqua had when smoking the pipe. The two brothers looked very much like one another.

  The four men followed a path through the woods and over a ridge. Another person waited for them down in the glade-one of the two trollbirds so recently perched upon Squandral's shoulders.

  "That," Sinnglas said, "is what we have come to find out."

  Away from craggy-faced Squandral, this man made a stronger impression. He was lean, with a long axe-shaped head. He and Sinnglas exchanged nods, and then they both squatted down, troll-style, resting arms on their knees. Maggot hunkered down beside them, but Keekyu and Pisqueto waited at a short distance.

  "Greetings, Menato," Sinnglas said.

  "And greetings to you." He lifted his chin in Maggot's direction. "So this is your foreign wizard. Is it true that Gelapa has put a curse on him?"

  Because of the charms about his neck, and because of things that Sinnglas had said about him, these people believed that Maggot was a wizard. This made men hesitant around him and the women afraid. The women avoided Maggot, even though he told them he was no wizard. The only other wizard in the village was Gelapa, an old man who rattled turtle shells at Maggot whenever he came close. People feared him too. Another thing Maggot didn't understand.

  Sinnglas merely shrugged. "Gelapa is weak. He drinks too much of the medicine water. He could not heal a bullfrog of its croak, and his curses couldn't make a rabbit jump."

  "Heh." Menato lifted his chin again at Maggot.

  "His name is Maqwet." Sinnglas was unable to give Maggot's name the deep throaty inflection of a troll. "He comes from over the mountains."

  Menato smiled. "Squandral calls him the Vulture, because of the way he hovered over the council meeting. There is a hungry look in his eyes."

  "Heh," Sinnglas said. "Vulture. That's good."

  Off to the side, Pisqueto chuckled. He was very young, with no hair on his chin and hardly any flesh on his bones. Keekyu, who was older than Damaqua, smiled, rubbed his nose, and stared at the ground. He had an unfamiliar sick smell about him sometimes.

  "We have heard rumors of him," Menato said. "We have heard that he is one of the southerners, come from over the mountain to pledge their men in joining our war. Now that we have seen him with our own eyes, Squandral doesn't know what to believe."

  Sinnglas answered with a small, tight shake of his head. "He is not one of the southerners. We have seen them, you and I, when we went raiding among them. Maqwet does not look like them, does he?"

  "No."

  "Also, he knew no more of their language than he did of ours. And yet he can describe all the passes through the mountains, and the paths of the rivers and the ways they flow."

  Maggot had tried hard to explain himself to Sinnglas, and he had wearied of it. All he wanted to do was learn enough to follow the woman where she went. He would help Sinnglas as a favor for that knowledge, and then he would go find her.

  "So where is he from then?" Menato asked.

  "Maybe he is like First Man," Sinnglas answered. He glanced sideways at Maggot and explained. "When the animals stole the secret of speech from Earth Spirit, they began to mock Earth. Mammut said, `Look how weak Earth is: I can tear it up.' Flathorn Stag said, `Look how ugly Earth's plants are, I will mark them with my antlers.' Crow tried to warn them that Earth was angry, but they wouldn't listen. So Earth Spirit let loose a great flood that drowned all the animals. Those that survived crowded together on the high mountaintop, and Earth Spirit opened a crack in the ground and out came First Man."

  Maggot craned his neck and concentrated. He knew almost all these words, but had never heard this history before.

  "So," said Sinnglas, "Earth Spirit took the power of speech away from the animals, all except for Crow, and gave it to First Man. Then Earth said to him, `You may take one thing from each of the beasts and keep it for yourself.' From the lion, First Man took a tooth and fashioned it into his knife. From the mammut, he took the long tusk and made a spear. From the stag, he took the flathorn and made it into a shovel, and so on. The animals remember their loss, and so continue to tear up the earth, but Earth Spirit pays them no heed. From Crow, First Man took nothing, and Crow, in gratitude used his speech to teach him wizardry."

  "Heh," Menato said thoughtfully.

  Sinnglas stared at Maggot, seeming to measure his response. "So I say you are like First Man. You appear after a flood, coming out of the mountains, born, as you tell us, of no woman. You came unadorned, naked as a newborn, but with tools, as First Man did; and like First Man, you are also a wizard."

  Maggot sank back on his haunches. "No. When they raised hands for First, I lost the hands to my father," he said, the words he had repeated many times now coming to him more easily. He looked at Menato. "I have never speaked to a crow, but now I speak with happybird-that-visits-in-the-night." There was no word for trollbird: that was the best translation Maggot could manage.

  "Heh," the lean-faced man repeated. He didn't move for several long seconds. "He talks like a wizard."

  Sinnglas laughed. "Yes. And he saved my life, when I was swept away in the floods. You may believe that also."

  "Ah, the floods."

  "My life was saved, but others died, and we did not find their bodies. Now their spirits haunt us. We lost all our spring planting and much of our remaining seed, and many animals were destroyed. Plants we collected from the forest have been swept away. This will be a hard year for us."

  Menato shifted his legs, placed his fingertips on the ground. "It is the invaders who do the damage to us. Our village was spared the worst, but the floods swept away the tame cattle of the invaders, whole herds of them. Now the invaders come and trample our fields, hunting the deer and bison we would eat. They tell us that we will have to pay a heavy tax in crops this year. The Lion will devour us all."

  Maggot frowned. He supposed that a lion could eat several handfuls of people, but no lion he had ever seen could eat all the people in this village.

  Sinnglas nodded. "Their emissaries have said the same to us, though our second crop is late planted and less than it should be. They already planned to bring their herds up here to pasture, and so they came to kill the lion and the wolves that live up here. But the floods drowned their herds and so they do not come. Damaqua says it is a sign that we should continue to accommodate them. But I say they will come next year, when they are stronger and we are weaker. It is better if we strike now, while there is still strength behind our fist."

  Menato pursed his lips. "This is what Squandral thinks also. He respects and fears the Lion. But we are too weak to act alone, so Squandral will not go to war without Damaqua."

&n
bsp; "Without Damaqua or without our village? Damaqua will be for peace, but we are divided. He cannot get consensus."

  "But neither can you."

  Sinnglas shook his head. "No, I cannot."

  Maggot shook his too, practicing the gesture so that he would not stick his tongue out when he meant no. Pisqueto looked at Maggot, stuck out his tongue, and bugged his eyes. Keekyu smiled, briefly, and Maggot laughed aloud.

  They all sat silently for a time. The warm sun on Maggot's back made his skin itch for shade.

  "We must do something," Menato said finally. "If we do not stop the invaders here, we will have to flee south across the mountains and fight for land within the country of our enemy."

  "Some already flee," Sinnglas said. "They went that way last winter but never arrived."

  "We must do something. This is what Squandral says."

  Sinnglas's mouth tightened. "I will raise a raiding party, such as one that we would take across the mountains into the land of our enemy. But I will lead it down into the valleys stolen by the invaders. Damaqua cannot stop that."

  "That is good."

  "I will call for the dance tonight, as the old men gather in the council lodge. But it will only be my venture, not the will of our village."

  "It will be a start," Menato said. "I will tell this to Squandral." He rose to leave.

  As he slipped off into the woods, Maggot and the other brothers stood around Sinnglas.

  "That went well," Pisqueto said, his grin as bright as a halfmoon. "The famous Squandral will be with us when we fight! How can we lose?"

  "I did not hear Menato promise that," Keekyu said.

  "Nor did I," Sinnglas admitted. "Likely we will make this raid alone." Then he smiled too, an expression somewhere between the grim face of Keekyu and the boyish joy of Pisqueto. "Perhaps it will just be the three of us then." He glanced at Maggot. "Perhaps even four."

  "Four," Maggot said firmly. "What is, we go do?"

  "To hunt and kill the Lion of the valley," said Keekyu. "If we can, and if the Lion does not kill us first."

  Pisqueto stopped smiling and bounced less.

  "He speaks truly," Sinnglas said. "But without the Lion to protect them, the invaders will be afraid."

  "Four of us not are needed to kill lion," said Maggot, swinging his arm to show how he had choked and stabbed one. "I kill lion, one time, all me. From out of tree, I felled, I stabbed lion in heart. Take me to valley where this lion is, and I will kill him."

  The three men waited quietly for a moment. "You will come with us and have your chance," Sinnglas said.

  Keekyu took steps along the trail. "We must go with the news, and prepare the men of the village for the dance, and for the expedition that is coming."

  "It's war!" Pisqueto said. Sinnglas nodded.

  Maggot shared their happiness. "It's war!" he said cheerfully.

  group of women, ranging from old and stoop-shouldered to young and grinning, was gathered just outside the palisade gate. They shied away from Maggot as he passed by, but he was too busy thinking about the other woman to care. He was going to war with Sinnglas, and while he didn't know what war meant, he knew there was a lion to kill. The woman had looked at the lion's skin. He could kill Sinnglas's lion too, if it was bigger, and present her with that skin to show her his intentions.

  Sinnglas led the other three through the village. It contained thirty-nine lodges-Maggot had counted them twice-although some contained only a few fire pits and some contained many. They came to Sinnglas's wife's lodge and entered. People looked up as the four men walked past the other fires to the room where Sinnglas lived.

  His wife turned her round face questioningly toward them, but Sinnglas said nothing to her. When Maggot, Keekyu, and Pisqueto sat beside the fire pit, she placed bowls of ground corn before them. Keekyu picked up his bowl, took one bite, and grunted. "I don't dare eat this."

  Sinnglas's wife stopped what she was doing, but didn't look over at him. Pisqueto, bent over his bowl, said around a mouth of food, "Why not?"

  Keekyu sighed, his older face sagging sadly. "When we have no corn to eat next winter, I'll remember this bowl and die of heartbreak."

  Pisqueto grinned. Sinnglas's wife smiled very slightly and went back to work. Maggot scooped his food into his mouth, but everything tasted like smoke to him, stifling his appetite.

  Sinnglas didn't eat. Instead, he retrieved his hatchet and sat apart to mark it with red paint, tie red feathers to it, and bind it with strings of black beads. His wife walked toward him, then away. She pulled first at one braid, then the other, plucking at the quill-work flowers that outlined her dress.

  "Will it be tonight then?" she asked finally.

  "Yes," Sinnglas said, without looking up.

  Her shoulders slumped as she turned away.

  Maggot was not sure what had just happened between them. People were not demonstrative in the same way that trolls were. While living in their lodge, he had seen Sinnglas and his wife couple several times, but he had never seen them groom one another-women did that only with other women, men with men. He had not been introduced to Sinnglas's wife, or told her name; and when he had tried to speak to her, she always turned away from him. Perhaps that was what he had done wrong with the woman in her tent. He should have just given her the lion's skin and not mentioned the good way she stank.

  Sinnglas's wife placed a second serving in front of Keekyu. Pisqueto made a pleading gesture, but she took away his and Maggot's empty bowls to clean them. Keekyu smacked his lips noisily, taunting them both as he ate.

  When Sinnglas completed his preparations, he rose to leave. Maggot and the two brothers followed him to the clearing outside the council lodge.

  A tree trunk, stripped of bark and branches, rose out of the ground. It stood half again taller than a man, as straight as a ray of light. Skins of snakes, some of them longer than Maggot had ever seen, looped around and around the post in great flimsy coils, slowly shredded by time and weather. The wizard Gelapa tended the snakeskins, collecting them from the lower valleys. When the wind blew, he crouched by the post, listening to the skins as they scuffed and whispered. Later, he made announcements according to what the skins had told him. Although Maggot had tried listening to the skins, they said no more to him than grasses rustled by the breeze.

  Gelapa sat beside the pole now, with his head canted to one side, listening though no wind stirred the skins. He wore his hair in two short braids, like the women. His eyes were deep-set, wrinkled at the corners and resting on thick folds of skin. He squinted at the four men, scowled at Sinnglas and Maggot. Then he shook his head, saying, "Young men will always be young men."

  "If only leaders would always lead us," Sinnglas replied.

  He raised his hatchet and made to strike it against the post, but the wizard coughed. "Does the wind carry the future to you"-he turned his head to Maggot-"or to your friend, that you know the future and the vote of the council before the council votes?"

  "I raise a raiding party, Grandfather," Sinnglas answered. All the men called Gelapa Grandfather. "Those who wish to follow me may do so."

  "Who do you make your raid against?" Gelapa asked.

  People gathered to watch, including many of the women from the gate, alerted perhaps by Sinnglas's wife, who hovered nearby. Sinnglas held his blow and spoke loudly, so that they might hear him. "Against those who take the meat from our mouths. Against those who steal the harvest from our fields."

  The wizard rose slowly. He stood stiffly, with his back bent, glaring at Sinnglas. "So you say, Grandson. But will you return from your raid with meat and corn and gourds, or only with news to make the mothers mourn?"

  "I will come like the sun, rising high above the mountains, bringing another season in which our people may grow-"

  "No," Maggot blurted. "Like the sun, not."

  Sinnglas stared at the ground, caressing his hatchet. "And what should I say instead, Maqwet, my friend?"

  Maggot inhaled, thinkin
g of the things he wished he might have said when he'd campaigned against Ragweed to be First. "You say instead: the sun, when you return, will fear your coming. It will not to rise unless first you give it your speak. The sun, when you speak, will hunt down the lion. Like a pack of dyrewolves, it will tear the lion to pieces."

  Sinnglas's hand paused in its stroke. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "You will have to say it for me; otherwise I would be bragging."

  "I will say it for you."

  Gelapa teetered unsteadily away from Maggot. His face was marked by loathing. "So that's how it is?"

  Sinnglas nodded. "Yes, Grandfather."

  Gelapa looked to the crowd, encompassed them with a sweep of his arm. "Do well, then. We have a distinguished guest among us. It will be good to show Squandral the spirit of our young men, and also the wisdom of our elders."

  Sinnglas raised the hatchet and thunked it into the post. A strip of snakeskin broke loose and fluttered to the ground.

  Keekyu shook his fist at the crowd. Some cheered and shouted Sinnglas's name, while others rushed off among the narrow paths between the houses to tell the rest of the village.

  Gelapa bent to the ground and gathered up the snakeskin, saying, "Ah ah ah, that's how it will be. Very well, let some mother prepare to weep." Before he shuffled away, his sunken eyes glanced off Maggot once last time.

  Sinnglas had many friends-the men he visited frequently. One showed up at the post, then another, their arms full of items Maggot had never seen them wear before. Pisqueto and Keekyu went and collected similar things. In a short time nine men had joined Sinnglas and his brothers. The youngest was a slight lad who barely had hair about his groin; Sinnglas was the oldest but for Keekyu, and the only man among them who was married. Keekyu had no mate. Most were around the ages of Pisqueto and Maggot, between fifteen and twenty winters. They entered the building beside the council lodge.