by Carrie Jones
She stood there, glaring at him.
“You stabbed me!” he accused.
“You made me small!”
“I was saving you from the trolls.”
“YOU MADE ME TINY!” She shook her miniature-size ax at him. “And look at my ax!”
“I was saving you!” he insisted, flabbergasted. He stomped away to the front door, righting things as he went, searching for the trolls that had toppled out of the mug. “You really aren’t nice, Eva.”
Anger coursed through his veins. Where were the annoying trolls? Why couldn’t he just find them? Why couldn’t Eva be grateful? Frustration rippled through him. He roared like some sort of monster.
And stopped.
He took a deep breath.
“Jamie!”
A voice!
He peered down. Eva stood by the broken mug and pointed across the room. “The trolls are hiding behind the Fluffy Pillow of Happy Slumber and the Doll of Beddybye Land. Say nothing of it! Ever.”
The trolls scattered as soon as she spoke, but Jamie scooped them up and placed them inside another mug.
“Try not to break that one,” Eva said. “There’s a lid over there.” She gestured toward the back of the room. “Also, you’re missing the elf and the Stopper still.”
The trolls objected to their captivity, of course, but Jamie ignored their flailing limbs and name calling. Instead, he verified that Canin was still on the shelf. Jamie transferred him to his pocket and searched for Annie and Bloom. He found them in a pile of dust by the broken leg of the Table of Awesomeness. He picked them up, apologizing even as they sneezed.
“It’s—achoo—okay.” Bloom sneezed. “You had to do what you could.”
“It was—achoo—a good—achoo—idea, sort of,” said Annie. “It’s just kind of weird being so little and so sneezy.”
Jamie tucked them into his front coat pocket and grabbed Eva.
“Dwarfs do not get carried,” she announced. “This is humiliating.”
“There is nothing wrong with being small, Eva. You say that all the time.”
“But this isn’t small. This is pixie size.” She harrumphed. “How long is this going to last exactly?”
“I don’t know … Let me look at the label.”
“What?” she roared. “You didn’t look at the label first? Seriously? Are you freaking kidding me?”
She began grumbling. Jamie stopped listening, focusing instead on finding the broken vial and reading the label, which he did aloud. “It says results may vary.”
Canin howled. Bloom just started to laugh.
“May vary! What does that even mean?” Eva demanded, thudding her fist against Jamie’s chest.
“I think it means it depends—” Jamie began.
“Depends on what?”
“Good question.” Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve got to … We have to find someplace to put the trolls in case they get big again.”
He exhaled deeply, feeling suddenly very large and very responsible. Annie, Bloom, Canin and Eva were under his care now, and he was the least magical of everyone. He couldn’t even throw a potion right. How was he going to protect them? It seemed impossible. He picked up the ax Eva had tried to get him to use before. He swallowed hard and set off into the night.
Jamie scurried out the door of Eva’s house and then stopped dead still on the front walk. What if the trolls grew back to their normal size and attacked? He was completely unprepared.
“What are you stopping for?” Bloom climbed up to his shoulder and leaped up to his earlobe. He dangled there, swinging back and forth. Eva joined the elf. It was a little disconcerting, but at least she wasn’t stabbing him with toothpicks anymore.
Jamie cleared his throat and explained his predicament.
“Just kill them,” Eva insisted. “Squish them or step on them or something.”
“I can’t do that.” Jamie shook his head, nearly flinging off Eva. She let go of his ear, landing next to Canin who was currently pacing back and forth on Jamie’s shoulder and sniffing the air. Annie poked her head out of the pocket and then seemed to think better of it and ducked back in.
“Why the heck not?” Eva bellowed. “They’d kill you and then they’d suck the marrow right out of your bones, and would they think about it? Would they regret it for just one second? Let me tell you, they would not.”
She began to make bone marrow–slurping noises to demonstrate the disgustingness of the trolls. It worked; Jamie cringed, but it still wasn’t enough. He had no idea how he could hurt them when they were so small, so weak compared to him. It would be like squashing an annoying puppy, an ugly, annoying, smelly puppy. Okay … an ugly, annoying, murderous, bone marrow–slurping puppy.
“I can’t. They are powerless. If I killed them now, I’d be worse than them,” Jamie tried to explain.
“Are you going to eat them?” Eva demanded. She pointed her ax blade at him.
“No.”
She swung her ax around in a circle. “Then you are hardly worse.”
“Eva!” Bloom scolded.
She grumbled and plopped down into a seated position on Jamie’s shoulder, crossing her arms over her chest after she laid her ax in her lap. “I don’t agree with you.”
“I figured that out,” Jamie muttered.
“And I am really cranky that I am basically the size of a crayon,” Eva said, and Jamie imagined he actually saw steam come out of her ears. “How can I wield a mighty ax when I am the size of a crayon!?! A CRAYON!?!?!”
“I can’t blame you for being cranky, and I’m sorry.” Jamie checked inside the mug to make sure the trolls were still there. They tried to spit at him, but they didn’t have enough force and the spittle just flew straight up and landed back in their faces, which unleashed another volley of curses and threats. Jamie put the lid back on the mug, which smelled vaguely like hot chocolate mixed with troll sweat, so basically it smelled like hot chocolate mixed with old tuna fish. It was not a good smell.
“First things first,” he said. “We need to get these trolls somewhere that they can’t escape even if they grow again. Is there a jail anywhere around town?”
“No,” Eva said. Then she clapped her hands together and almost did a merry jig. “But there is a forgotten room.”
“A forgotten room?” Jamie asked.
“It’s like a dungeon, but kind of worse,” Bloom said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Jamie and his passengers trudged through the town, sticking to the shadowy street, always listening for signs of monsters.
“Where is everyone?” Jamie whispered as they tiptoed by Tasha’s Tavern. The structure’s windows were shuttered closed.
“Good question.” Eva climbed up to the top of Jamie’s head and sank into his hair. “I can’t see anything. Also, your hair smells like coconut.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s nice,” Bloom offered. “Coconut is a good smell.”
There was a strange pulling sensation along his scalp, and after a moment Eva shouted. “Okay, I built a platform.”
“Out of my hair?” Jamie interrupted. His free hand went to his head, feeling around.
“Yes, out of your hair. Watch out! You’re going to knock me down. Canin, Annie, come up here with us,” Eva demanded.
The wolf scurried up to the top of Jamie’s head via his earlobe and hair. Once there, he howled long and achingly sad. The sound ripped into Jamie’s heart. Annie gasped.
“What is it?” Jamie whispered as he lifted Annie out of his pocket and up to the platform. She caught Bloom’s hand and pulled herself on.
“I still hate heights,” she whispered.
“You’re being brave,” Bloom answered as Annie tried to console the howling Canin.
“What’s going on exactly?” Annie asked, petting the wolf’s head.
“Everyone’s hiding,” Eva said. “Or something. But that makes no sense because dwarfs don’t hide. And everyone still wants to send Annie to the
Badlands. Once the troll panic is over, they’ll be coming back for her.”
“You’ve said a lot of things about dwarfs, and I’m pretty sure you said that they don’t get carried,” Jamie teased, trying to make them all forget about the trade. It didn’t seem to fully work.
She made a harrumphing noise. “I’m not getting carried. I’m taking a ride. Big difference.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, almost there … The oubliette is right past the library and to the back of it, hidden in that copse of pine trees.”
An owl hooted in the distance.
“Where is it?” Jamie whispered. Everything felt too dangerous to talk in a regular-volumed voice.
“A door is in the trees,” Bloom said.
And there was, right in the middle of the trees, a large, red wooden door painted with all sorts of sad words like “sorrow,” “regret,” “what happens when you are evil,” and “past mistakes should not be future ones.” The door itself was sort of suspended in midair. Nothing was on the other side.
Reaching out, Jamie tentatively touched it with his finger. It didn’t sway. It stood there, or suspended there, solid.
“You’ve got to knock three times,” Eva said. “Then it opens.”
“Three times?”
“What did I just say?”
Jamie didn’t answer. Instead, he knocked against the word “loss” three times and took a step backward, nervously. This incited Eva to make a dismissive snort. Jamie decided he didn’t care. The entire place spooked him.
“Good job, Jamie,” Bloom said. “Good knocking.”
“Stop trying so hard to be encouraging,” Eva shouted. “And Annie, stop petting Canin. He’s fine. And you are not going to fall. And even if you did, Jamie’s not that tall.”
“He seems tall now,” Annie whispered.
Slowly the door opened with a great creaking noise.
“Yes?” A scorpion man stood before them. His head, arms, and chest resembled that of a normal human, but from the waist down he had the segmented, armored body parts of a scorpion, including a giant stinger.
It took all of Jamie’s will not to take another step backward and run.
“H-hi …,” he stuttered out. “I’m James Hephaistion Alexander and I-I … um, I have some trolls in a mug for you.”
He held out the mug. The scorpion man took it from him, removed the mug’s lid, and peered in with distaste as the trolls began to shout for him to let them out. He ignored their pleas. “How unsightly. Did you shrink them thus?”
“I did.”
The scorpion man lifted his eyebrows and re-covered the mug with an emphatic smack. “With personal magic or with premade potion?”
“Premade potion,” Jamie answered. Eva was being uncharacteristically quiet. Everyone else was, too.
“And the dwarf and shifter, the elf and the Stopper?”
“They were in the way.”
The scorpion man scrutinized Jamie’s face. After a moment he answered, “It has been known to happen. The spell will wear off eventually. I suppose you would like to leave the trolls with me in the oubliette for safekeeping.”
“Um … yes … if possible.” Jamie cleared his throat. “Is the oubliette the forgotten room? That’s where Eva and Bloom said would be a good place.”
The scorpion man motioned for Jamie to follow him through the door. Peering inside before he stepped through the threshold, Jamie had to blink hard to understand what he was seeing. A passageway made of some sort of sandstone, the kind he imagined pyramids were built out of, headed into the tree. Along the sandstone were drawings of ankhs and stars, men in ancient robes. Most of the drawing was made of thick black paint, but there was some red and gold mixed in. Two eyes stared at him from the far end of the hallway.
“Enter if you like,” the scorpion man said.
“Eva?” Jamie whispered. He hated to admit it, but he was kind of freaked out.
She had passed out.
“Seriously?” Jamie plucked her off his head and stared disbelieving at her snoring form.
“I tend to make the dwarfs nervous,” the scorpion man said. “They are a mining species. They don’t really like scorpions.”
“That’s too bad,” Jamie offered.
“It is what it is.” The scorpion man gestured one more time for Jamie to enter, so he did, taking a large breath. The air was so much warmer and dryer. It was how he imagined desert air would feel. There wasn’t a trace of the Maine cold.
“Wow.” Jamie let out his breath. “This is really nice. Bloom? Annie, you okay?”
“Thank you.” The scorpion man led him down the hallway as Annie and Bloom whispered that they were fine. “I’m afraid I don’t have many visitors. People like to forget what this place is. I think they fear if they think too much of it, that they, too, will be punished here. So, they choose to forget. I find creatures, be they human or magical, prefer to forget the darker parts of their own history so that they don’t have to feel guilt over it.”
“Is it very dark here?” Jamie asked.
“Very.” Scorpion Man cleared his throat. “Sometimes, however, we must do things to ensure the betterment of all. As is the case with you at this juncture, am I right?”
“I don’t know what to do with the trolls,” Jamie admitted. “I’m afraid they’ll go back to normal size and hurt us.”
“Me, too!” Annie said from the platform in Jamie’s hair.
“And you don’t want to kill them?”
“No,” Jamie admitted. “It doesn’t feel—right.”
“Even for you, elf boy?”
“Even for me,” Bloom said. He held Annie’s hand, and tightened his grip.
“I hope someday when your fate is in the hands of another, they offer you the same mercy, young James Hephaistion Alexander, and you, Bloom the elf, and you, Annie the Stopper. Now tell me what is happening out there.”
“Do you not get to leave?” Annie asked. She felt a bit braver now that they weren’t moving. Jamie’s head still seemed impossibly high, but Bloom’s hand gave her strength.
“No. I am not made for winter weather in Maine.”
So, Jamie told him what had happened, about Miss Cornelia’s abduction, the trolls in the town. Annie explained her own part of the story, as did Bloom.
“And you? What of you?” the scorpion man asked Jamie.
“I was raised by trolls,” Jamie admitted. “They wanted to eat me.”
“But you are not troll yourself?”
“I’m only thirteen. I have a whole year before I know if I’ll change.” Jamie stared at Eva’s sleeping form and switched the subject. “Can you tell me where you’re going to put them?”
It might be his fate someday, too, he realized, if he turned troll. What could they do other than kill him?
“The forgotten room is not truly a room. It is more of a shaft, which descends into a tiny chamber, wide enough for only one full-size troll, so if they transform back to their normal size, it shall be quite tight and terribly uncomfortable. I lower the prisoner down myself and shut a trapdoor behind me. If they are to be retrieved, I retrieve them via rope. It is much too high for even a troll to climb out. Plus, their kind cannot climb. Once they are full size, they shall be trapped there in their separate forgotten rooms until they are released.”
“Will you release them?” Annie blurted.
“Of course not.” The scorpion man eyed Annie and then focused on Jamie. “Do you wish this to be their fate, James Hephaistion Alexander?”
Regret filled Jamie’s stomach. “Is there anywhere nicer?”
“Only death.”
“Oh.” Jamie couldn’t just kill them, not when they were tiny and defenseless. He closed his eyes and thought hard for a second. “Okay. Please take them and thank you.”
“I think it may be best if you five did not stay to watch,” Scorpion Man said, “but I would like to convince you to have some tea. As I once said and believed, ‘No beast is more savage than man when posses
sed with power answerable to his rage,’ but that was before I knew of trolls and of demons. It was a gentler time despite man’s own ancient ferocities.”
The scorpion man’s long nose seemed to go beyond his thin mouth. He had a full beard that wasn’t to the point of birds nesting in it secretly, but was pretty lush and a good week past the stubble stage. There was an air of otherworldliness about him, Annie decided, that wasn’t just because of his scrambling, multiple scorpion legs.
“The legs are disconcerting to you, aren’t they?” the scorpion man asked.
“Oh, no!” Jamie lied. “I was just thinking it must be hard to keep track of everything you are doing when you have so many … so many …”
“Appendages. It is a bit, but it’s quite useful. I can write multiple thoughts at once.” The scorpion man sat down and illustrated, taking an old-fashioned fountain pen in each of his hands and legs and scrolling out a bunch of lines on papers.
“Wow …” Jamie came forward. “What does it say?”
“It says, Welcome, Catcher of Trolls, on this one.” The scorpion man pointed to a piece of paper on the floor, by his lowermost left foot. On this it reads, I am quite pleased to make your acquaintance. On this one it says, Would you like some tea? And so on.”
Using all of his legs, he picked up each paper and crumpled it, while still holding the assorted pens in the little claws at the end of each appendage. Jamie shook his head. Even though he’d been in Aurora for a couple of days now, sometimes it was hard for his mind to come to terms with the things he was seeing.
The scorpion man’s tail rattled a bit.
“Tell me about the trolls out there, young James. Unlike your namesakes you have never been trained to be a boy warrior. You could not even kill these two trolls that had just put you and your friends in mortal peril. You chose to confine them instead.”
“Maybe that’s because I’m a troll.” It was hard for Jamie to admit. “Maybe I didn’t want to kill them because I am like them.”
