A Most Magical Girl

by Karen Foxlee

  In Annabel’s dream there were maps: paper maps unfurled and fluttering down from the sky; the maps from Miss Finch’s Academy, drawn with her own hand; and the map written in magic upon her body. The world could be mapped—she knew it in her dream—yet there were always places uncharted. In her dream she knew she would travel to such places.

  “All of good magic depends upon you,” the wizards said, just as Mr. Bell had in real life, and they peered over her with their kindly blue eyes in their wrinkled, worn faces.

  “Yes, I am the Valiant Defender of Good Magic,” she said to them, and her voice sounded very sure. But then she felt herself drifting the way one sometimes does in dreams, drifting upward, slowly, as though coming to the surface of all things. Then she was there, and she opened her eyes and was surprised to find the wizards’ faces still above her.

  She was even more surprised to see they had grown little beards, and she wondered at that for a moment. Then she pondered the rags tied in their long straggly hair and thought that was quite strange. Finally she considered the rotten teeth in their mouths and realized she was not looking at the Finsbury Wizards at all but that, above her, were three trolls looking down.

  “Ooh. She be ugly,” said the middle troll, in a yellow dress. She had a flat gray face and a squished nose. She fingered the little beard on her chin and grinned.

  “Very ugly be she,” said the trolls on either side.

  Each held a torch with a flickering flame. They were equally gray-faced and squishy-nosed. One had tufts of hair protruding a good inch from her nostrils.

  Annabel opened her mouth and tried to scream but found she could not. All the air had been knocked out by fear. But Kitty rose up, kicking and screaming. It gave the trolls a surprise, although not for long. Two of them leapt on her.

  The trolls were short and fat, but their shortness and fatness were no impediment to them. They were tremendously strong and swift. Annabel was spun by the hair before she even knew she’d been touched, and a coarse rope was lashed around her arms and waist. Kitty went to release a heart light, perhaps to scare them, but the hum was punched out of her by a troll. The light orb fizzled and evaporated as the rope was strung round her.

  “This one does magic!” cried one of the trolls holding Kitty. The broomstick and the wand were picked up from the ground and examined.

  Kitty called them “greasy mutton heads” and “fat galoots” and several other bad names, which they listened to with interested expressions.

  “We’ll take them both to Aunty,” said one when Kitty had finished.

  “What about the king?” said the middle one, who had trussed Annabel up. She was the smallest of the three, and she wore a thoughtful expression as she stroked her little dark beard.

  “The king be busy getting married again,” said one of the others. “We’ll take them to Aunty first.”

  Annabel and Kitty were bundled together, and with the little troll in the lead, lighting the way, and the other two behind, they set off to be shown to Aunty.

  “Now what are we going to do?” whispered Annabel.

  It was all wrong. Mr. Angel was going to the Finsbury Wizards and she was meant to be finding the Morever Wand, and now she was all tied up with rope.

  “Did you see this in your map?” hissed Kitty.

  “No,” said Annabel, although perhaps she hesitated too long, for Kitty stopped and stared at her until she was prodded from behind by the two trolls.

  They were Erta and Marta. Annabel knew this because, it seemed, trolls spoke of themselves incessantly.

  Erta said, “I cannot believe Erta found some humanling children. Aunty will be pleased, she will.”

  Marta said, “Marta found the humanling children. Marta sniffed them out.”

  The troll at the front, guiding the way, said, “I found them. You both know I did.”

  Annabel thought it strange that the little thoughtful-looking troll did not refer to herself by her own name.

  “Hafwen found naught!” shouted Erta.

  “Naught Hafwen found!” shouted Marta.

  Then they giggled very loudly, so that it echoed up and down the tunnels, and before them Annabel saw Hafwen’s shoulders slump a little.

  Annabel had been raised very well and Kitty’s wildness hurt her senses, but nothing had prepared her for the misbehavior of trolls. Trolls do not say Please or Thank you. They do not say How do you do? or ask after your relatives. They do not say Excuse me when they burp or break wind. They both burp and break wind with alarming frequency. Hafwen broke wind in front of them. A loud breaking of wind. It stank, and Kitty called her some more names that Annabel had never heard. She thought she would faint. Erta and Marta prodded her from behind.

  “Keep walking, ugly girl,” they said.

  Never in her life had she been called ugly.

  They went up and down troll tunnels. They went in and out of troll caverns. They walked and crawled. Trolls were very good crawlers.

  “Hurry, before the king’s wedding feast is finished,” said Erta.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry, or they’ll see our treasure,” said Marta.

  Finally in the far distance they saw a tiny glow. Erta and Marta began to call. “Aunty, Aunty,” they cried, getting up to their feet. “Erta and Marta have a surprise.”

  A voice came from afar. “A surprise! You haven’t killed Hafwen, have you?”

  “No!” they shouted with glee. “Wait till Aunty sees it!”

  They pushed Annabel and Kitty through the troll hole and placed their torches in brackets on the walls. The space was tiny, the floor littered with remnants of food. There was another hole leading from the first room, and from there the voice called again. It was a loud, gravelly voice.

  “Show Aunty, then. Is it the biggest worm you ever saw in all of Trollingdom?”

  Annabel and Kitty were pushed through the second hole, and there on the floor, on a pallet of straw and hair and the tops of root vegetables, lay a very large troll. She was roughly the same height as the other trolls, Annabel guessed, but twice as wide. Her tummy bulged inside her heavily stained nightdress. Her eyes grew huge when she saw what her nieces had brought her. Erta and Marta took an arm each and pulled her to a sitting position.

  “By all the trolls in Trollingdom,” she gasped. “You have found humanling children.”

  “Erta found them,” said Erta.

  “Marta found them!” screeched Marta, and she struck her sister troll a blow to the cheek.

  “I found them,” said Hafwen, and she scowled at her captives.

  Annabel saw intelligence in this troll’s eyes, which were a murky green. Something else, too: a tiny pearl of sadness. Yet when she went to look closer, the little troll had turned her face away and was staring at the wall.

  “Bring them to me,” said Aunty. “The dark-haired one is very bony and will be good for naught, but look at the fair one. Bring it so I can see. Aunty will feel its arm and tell you exactly how to cook it, what kind of sauce to use, and what kind of night vegetables to serve it with.”

  “What of the king?” asked Hafwen.

  “Pah! The king—what of him? He has just had a wedding feast. Aunty will send him the skinny one and keep the fat one!” shouted Aunty.

  Annabel had never been called fat! No one had ever told her how she was to be cooked! She wanted to speak, and she was beginning to speak when Erta interrupted.

  “This one does magic,” said Erta, and she prodded Kitty with her fat, dirty finger.

  “Oh, does she?” said Aunty. “Even better! The king will give us a reward for her. Do some now, humanling child.”

  “I can’t when I am tied up,” said Kitty.

  Aunty laughed and her belly heaved.

  “Aunty is not stupid,” said Aunty. “Untie you and you will magic us to death.”

  “And this one lay with these two pieces of wood,” said Marta.

  “They’re my broomstick and my magic wand,” said Annabel. Then, hopefully,
“I can do magic, too.” She didn’t want to be cooked in a pot with night vegetables.

  Marta clipped Annabel on the head for speaking.

  “Ouch!” shouted Annabel. “I beg you, please stop.”

  Erta and Marta raised their eyebrows.

  “Please,” repeated Annabel. She felt very cross. “We must pass through the Kingdom of Trolls and we must continue on our journey. We must find the Morever Wand. I am the Valiant Defender of Good Magic and the youngest and most able of the Great & Benevolent Magical Society, and the whole of London depends upon me.”

  Erta and Marta laughed so hard that they both broke wind.

  They pushed Annabel close to Aunty, who pinched her arm.

  “Delicious,” said Aunty. “But look—she has lines all over her. Will that ruin the taste? Tell Aunty again where you have come from with a broomstick and a magic wand and what is the purpose of your journey.”

  “I come from London,” said Annabel, and she would have pointed above her head if she had had a free arm. “Have you heard of it? And the world is in danger, you see, because there is a gentleman by the name of Mr. Angel and he has built a machine that will produce dark magic, and already he is raising shadowlings. They are terrible things. I don’t think you’d like to see one. And when the moon rises tonight, he will raise an entire army of them and everything will be in darkness and he will turn everything to dust. At least I think it is tonight in London Above.”

  Oh, it all sounded wrong. Kitty did nothing to help her. Kitty would be glad she was not for the pot but to be taken to the king. Just the thought of that made Annabel feel even angrier. She made a small angry noise.

  “So, yes, the world, all the world, will be in darkness. And I am the Valiant Defender of Good Magic, and I must find the White Wand and take it back to the Great & Benevolent Magical Society so they can defeat Mr. Angel. I beg you to let us pass!” she cried, exasperated.

  “Yes,” said Aunty, scratching her large belly and then her large hairy chin. “Of course.”

  Annabel breathed out a sigh.

  “Only, we are quite fond of darkness, us troll-kind,” Aunty continued. “And this gently-man wants more of it, you say. And you on your way to save the world, and this scrawny one here, being magical.”

  “I am a little magical, too,” said Annabel eagerly.

  It sounded as if she were making it up.

  “Yes, both magical now,” said Aunty. “Let Aunty think….The skinny one was seen to do magic. The golden-haired one with the two sticks says she has magic and she is the valiant defender of the magic, here to save the wide world, upstairs and downstairs….Let Aunty think.”

  Erta and Marta leaned toward her, waiting for the decision. Aunty chewed on her bottom lip like an enormous cow. Hafwen stared at the wall, unmoving.

  “No,” said Aunty at last. “We will eat them both. With a black sauce. The skinny one will add flavor with her magical bones.”

  She began to laugh then, and she laughed so hard that bits of clod fell from the walls of the little round room.

  “Keep them tied while Erta and Marta go to the night garden. Hafwen can watch over them,” directed Aunty. “Humanling children are cunning. They are very good at getting away.”

  “They won’t get past me,” said Hafwen.

  Hafwen pushed Annabel and Kitty back into the first room, with the broomstick and wand placed beside the door. She prodded them into a far corner and then sat before them, her flat, warty knees an inch from Annabel’s. Annabel thought of her vision. She had seen this, and it made her shiver and close her eyes. Hafwen did not look at them. She stared at the wall. Annabel looked at Kitty, and Kitty nodded in agreement.

  “Why can’t you do magic with your arms tied?” said Hafwen to the wall.

  “Arms are needed for magic, it seems,” said Kitty. “I have never been tied up to notice it before.”

  “Well, now you are,” said Hafwen to the wall, quite pleased.

  Hafwen stared at the wall, and Annabel stared at Hafwen’s eyes. They were no darker or lighter than her troll sisters’ eyes, but they were different. They contained a twinkle. It was a tiny twinkle, hardly there at all, but a twinkle all the same. Trolls are not known for the twinkle in their eyes.

  “And what can you do with that wand?” asked Hafwen, staring at the wall.

  “Much magic. I got the Singing Gate to release Kitty’s foot,” said Annabel. She nodded at the bandage on Kitty’s ankle. Hafwen looked briefly at Kitty’s leg.

  “Not many get past the Singing Gate,” said Hafwen. “Does it hurt?”

  “Of course it hurts,” said Kitty.

  “Good,” said Hafwen.

  “Do you like it here, Hafwen?” asked Kitty.

  Hafwen ignored her.

  “Have you always lived here?” asked Annabel. Very gently. Very politely.

  “I don’t know why you are speaking to me,” said Hafwen. “I will speak to you only when you are in a stew.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Kitty.

  “Shut your little humanling trap,” said Hafwen.

  Annabel took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She knew Hafwen was their only hope. How she knew it, she wasn’t sure, never having dealt with trolls before, but she knew it all the same.

  “Is she still fat, Hafwen?” called Aunty from her room. “Perhaps we should feed her something.”

  “She is still fat, but I’ll feed her some night turnips,” replied Hafwen.

  “Good!” shouted Aunty. “Aunty can smell her from here. She will be like eating wedding cake.”

  Hafwen did not stand. She did not fetch night turnips.

  “Perhaps I can do some magic for you, Hafwen,” said Annabel.

  “What kind of magic?”

  “Perhaps I can look into my special looking glass and tell your fortune.”

  “I already know my fortune,” said Hafwen, and there was something very sad in the way she said it. Her troll face was quite crumpled and angry.

  Something melted in Annabel’s heart. “You can never be sure of that,” she said. “I never could have guessed I was going on such an adventure. My glass is in my bodice, tucked in just here. You could get it out and place it on my knee.”

  Hafwen looked uncertain. She wanted to, Annabel could tell. A little pulse jumped in her hairy troll throat. Finally Hafwen stood and pulled the ruby-red seeing glass from where it was tucked. She placed it on Annabel’s knee.

  Annabel looked into it.

  “What can you see?” asked Hafwen.

  “You must be patient,” whispered Annabel.

  She felt scared. What if it didn’t work? She remembered the teacup of her mind, and she began to empty it out. What had happened to her great-aunts? What would Mr. Angel do to the Finsbury Wizards? Would she find the wand? Was she strong enough? Kitty, always Kitty—who had come to help her when she needn’t have. The time. The moon. Her mother. Finally her mind grew still.

  Annabel looked into the glass and felt a strange sensation in her belly, as though she were joined to the sky—a sensation she detested and loved in equal parts. She felt the peculiar falling feeling, the lifting feeling. I should like to see the future of Hafwen the troll, she said to herself very carefully. She had never asked before; she had only ever accepted what came. Please, she added, so as not to forget her manners.

  She saw something in the glass. Something strange. She saw grass. Long grass, wet with night dew.

  Well, that’s not very helpful, thought Annabel, but then she realized that the grass was very green, and she could smell the grass, all green-grass-smelling, and suddenly, a head appeared quite close. It was Hafwen the troll, with her crumpled, angry face, coming out of a hole, crawling on her hands and knees. Hafwen sat down, plonk, flattening the grass, and looked up at the sky.

  Annabel heard the night then. She heard the night all around Hafwen, the chanting of insects and the sighing of the grasses. She saw the big, clean, sparkling starry sky. That was whe
re Hafwen was looking. She was looking upward, sitting now, her head resting on her knees, looking up with a most un-troll-like expression of wonder. She was watching the stars, gazing at them, reaching her hand up as though she could pluck one, and then looking guilty and frustrated that she had done such a thing.

  “Why so long?” said Hafwen, and Annabel was suddenly rushing upward and out of her vision, seeing the crown of Hafwen’s head receding, and then nothing but plain red glass.

  “You shouldn’t interrupt, you big oaf,” said Kitty. “She was in the middle of seeing.”

  “What’s going on out there?” cried Aunty.

  “Nothing,” said Hafwen. “She just doesn’t like the taste of turnips.”

  She was clever, this little troll.

  “What did you see?” Hafwen whispered, leaning forward.

  “Well…,” said Annabel, and despite everything she smiled. “I saw beautiful stars.”

  She heard the breath catch in Hafwen’s throat. “I saw one of them belonging to you,” said Annabel.

  “To me,” whispered Hafwen, but then her face hardened. “You’re lying.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to have an adventure?” asked Annabel. “If you helped us, you would have a star of your own. I know it. I have seen it.”

  It wasn’t entirely the truth, but she knew it was their only chance.

  No reply. But there was a faint twitch in Hafwen’s cheek. “How could I have a star?” she asked.

  “I know where some are kept ready-plucked,” said Annabel.

  Kitty watched them both, a rare smile breaking out on her face.

  “If Annabel has seen it, then it is so,” she said. “Do you think they’d send someone with no talent on a perilous journey such as this?”

  “I saw you up above,” said Annabel.

  “Of course I go up above,” said Hafwen. “The troll tunnels go everywhere, right into your cellars. Why do you think I wear a humanling dress?”

  It was true. Hafwen’s yellow dress was definitely the wrong shape and size for the troll. Annabel imagined trolls in her cellar, maybe creeping up her stairs, rifling through her drawers. Oh, the things she had not known!

  “But I saw you outside, looking up at the sky,” said Annabel.