Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
“Are you sure? Not a little peckish? It’s quite a walk there, you might be hungry on the way.”
“Show me where you live.”
“I don’t want to. You’re a scary troll who eats living things while they’re still living.”
“You’re afraid of me.”
“Yes.”
He lifts a finger and pushes it toward my hip. “Why haven’t you tried to shoot me with your weapon?”
“Oh. Uh. Well. I don’t… didn’t really seem. I don’t know. I don’t want to, I guess?”
“That is why I have not eaten you, and why I will not eat the buck who has lost you. Come here.”
I take a ginger step forward. The troll sniffs, his scaled nostrils flaring a little as he takes a breath. It’s like being caught in a small gale.
“Ah,” he says. “I see. Come.”
As he says come, he grabs me around the waist. This may very well be the last thing that ever happens to me. I am lifted up off the ground and carried through the air like a snack.
I give some consideration to screaming, but I don’t think that would help the situation much. There’s a lot going on now. I might be bringing a terrifying troll to Gruff’s door, at least, I am guessing that’s the scent he got off me. He’s going the right way, and though he’s moving at a lumbering pace, he’s covering far more ground than I ever could.
“Troll?”
“Yes, human?”
It occurs to me that calling him Troll, and having him calling me human, is putting a distance between us I do not want.
“What’s your name? I’m Jem.”
“Oh,” the troll says. “Roger.”
Roger the Troll. Why not.
“Why do you think I should be going back to the buck’s place?”
“You belong to him. He will be missing you. I can smell the longing on your skin.”
This troll who eats bad guys alive has a poetic streak, it would seem.
“But what if I told you I was seeking my destiny elsewhere? That I came here on a five-year mission to…”
“Missions,” Roger the troll snorts. “I had a mission, once. I didn’t like it.”
“So you ate it?”
Roger stops and lifts me up toward his face. “Are you giving me attitude, small human female? Are you making fun of me?”
“No,” I say. “That seems like it would be a very bad idea. You still have bits of the last creature that annoyed you in your teeth.”
“It’s the pelt,” he complains. “You’re supposed to skin them first, but they scream the entire time.”
“Tedious,” I attempt to commiserate. It’s not Roger’s fault he’s a troll who has to eat the prey that come tippy-tapping over his bridge, just like it’s not my fault I’m a human who comes from a species who happens to be fantastically good at exploring and then colonizing. It’s just who we are. We don’t mean anything by it.
“It is,” he says, tucking me back under his arm. “I don’t enjoy being a monster, you know, but I was never made to be anything else. The more I try to be nice, the more damage I do.”
I wonder if he is trying to be nice now, and how much damage he will do when he is done being nice.
The forest around Gruff’s bridge does prove to be a slight obstacle to him. He is as tall as many of the trees, and now I see how the wider paths have been forged through. They’re not goat paths. They’re troll trails. He snaps trees off at the base, sometimes uprooting them, sometimes simply crushing them as he passes by. I am dragged through several trees, partially protected by his arm and body, but also partially not. By the time we break through into Gruff’s clearing and into his bridge, my nose and face are bloodied, and my arms are covered in scratches and bruises from being held in front of my head to protect me from the worst of the onslaught of foliage.
“You can just leave me here,” I say as Roger carefully steps over one of Gruff’s fences, taking good care not to squish any goats, I am pleased to note.
Roger ignores me, insisting instead on carrying me all the way up to Gruff’s rustic front door. If Billy is around, he has taken shelter. A good idea, given all that is going on. The goats do not respond to Roger at all besides coming over in the way they usually do when they suspect someone might have food for them.
“GRUFF!”
Roger booms Gruff’s name, as if Gruff has somehow missed his arrival. He has not. He is standing out the front of his house, his arms folded over his broad chest, a very unimpressed, and dare I even say, annoyed and stern look on his face. It’s not Roger he appears to be angry at, of course. No, the murderous troll is no issue at all. It’s me who is in trouble. The human who never does what she is told.