~~~
“But Dad, you didn’t just leave her there did you?”
“Rick?” Mrs. Johansson questioned nervously.
“Relax. She’s probably the safest of all of us. She’s able to disguise herself perfectly, you said. And she’s not heading any further into their path than we would be going. We’ll wait for a few minutes, but if she doesn’t come back we need to start heading up. We’ll take the next ridge over to the north to keep away from whatever is up there.”
When Rick checked his watch and it had been just shy of twenty minutes since he’d left Marissa and they had not heard any further noises, he determined it was time to move on and get on the next ridge further away. He wanted to maintain the high ground, but felt like he needed to be out of view and earshot. If Marissa hadn’t returned that meant she (wisely) had determined it was not safe to be moving around the goblin camp at all, and so he meant not to.
“C’mon. Let’s go ahead. She will meet us back at the house as soon as she can get away.”
“Rick?” Sara asked, voice high. “We can’t just leave that young girl there! We’ve got to help her if she’s in danger.”
“Honey, trust me. I really think she’s safer than we are. I told her to hold still if she couldn’t get away without being seen and she seems like a smart kid.”
“Yes, but…” Robbie started to add.
“No! Listen. I sent her because she is one of them, right Kile?”
Kile looked around at the other faces before responding. But he did eventually nod his head timidly in agreement. “Yes. Marissa should be very safe. Both Pixies and Sprites are very good in the forests. She should be fine.”
Mr. Johansson continued. “Then let’s go. If we move fast, get Little Ricky back and get Kile back to his family, then we’re done. No fights. No concerns. You all said that goblins and trolls are afraid of interacting with humans anyway, right? So…we use that to our advantage. Let’s make it so they never even know we were here.”
Grudgingly the other three shouldered their packs and picked up their water bottles and other items and got ready to follow father to the next ridge. He directed them to be very quiet for a while and that meant moving a little slower than they had to that point, but he still kept a pretty quick pace wherever the ground was solid enough to prevent too much noise.
Tracing the further ridge turned out to be a benefit. The trees were mostly Aspen’s on it and to either side below which permitted quick movement. They had grown in such a pattern that Rick felt as though he’d be able to hear any movement easily. And it happened to tie back in eventually at a more flat foothill at the top of the cut on its south side to the ridge he originally planned to follow. From where the two ridges plateaued together he lead them south again and headed straight towards the top of the cliff face he’d pointed out to Marissa earlier.
As the family passed over the last of the giant dark stone to the obscurity of the forests just south and east of it towards the Troll cave and Maple Springs themselves, Rick paused and looked out to the valley immediately below them.
“What is it, Dad?” Robert asked from the tree line.
“The smoke. It’s gone now,” father replied. His tension had obviously increased, despite his effort to remain calm. He began wondering if he’d made a mistake about Marissa and contemplated rushing down into the valley from the ridge on the far south of it and burst in, guns blazing to make sure she could get away.
“Dad…”
Rick stood for a moment in silence still contemplating. Then he turned and walked to his family within the trees.
“Dad, that’s the valley and ridge I think Little Ricky and I took when we first came up here looking for the springs.”
Father gave son a worrisome look quickly covered with determination and said, “Yeah…well, I think its goblin territory now.”
Kile stood alongside Sara wringing his hands and shaking his head. “No, no, no. That’s our territory. They would not dare to trespass here!...”
The last was a question almost. Rick Jr. shook his head yet again and engaged the troll in a little conversation to keep him on task.
“Kile, if you were to ask any other human down there in Maple Springs whose territory it was I’m pretty sure you’d hear it was ours…and that’s if they were even willing to acknowledge you exist. Gonna end up in a fight anyway around it, no matter what you learned from your stay with us, don’t you think?”
The little troll dropped the last of any glimmer he’d been maintaining past the airfield and nodded his head sadly. His lips were curled and his eyes glistened as though he were about to cry. He wrung his hands tightly turning them pinkish through his grey-green skin tone. Maybe it’s better this way? He thought. Perhaps the goblins would engage the humans and then, one way or another, at least there’d only be one potential enemy to deal with.
But he thought better of it. For one, he realized, the humans were bound to win out because there were so many. And they were so powerful. They had such a variety of weapons and vehicles and technology even an attacking swarm of goblins wouldn’t get far. Perhaps Maple Springs would be in danger, but then the rest of the humans would come. And they would wipe them out… goblin and troll.
And secondly, Kile realized…he loved Robert and his family. The Johanssons were family as the humans described it, not as the trolls spoke of their clan at all. It was probably the very reason their race had filled the Earth so, and it was the very reason he wanted to stay with them. Whether or not any faerie conflict was imminent, he intended to make humans and trolls family if he had any capacity to do so. He only hoped the Queen would continue to see it the same.
Troll Brother Page 60
