The Prodigal Troll (15 page)

etgo of it."

Windy tugged her shoulder free from Ragweed's grip, cradling the baby protectively between her milk-heavy breasts and the wall of the cave. "No."

"We took a vote and voted you should put the baby down."

"The vote was a tie, so I can do what I want."

Ragweed ground his jaws together until they squeaked. "But the baby's dead-that's why you should let go of it."

"Let's have another vote."

Ragweed smiled broadly, showing off his gray, cracked teeth. "That's a good idea. All those in favor of you putting down the dead baby?" He raised his hand. "And those against?"

Windy raised hers. "It's a tie. So I can do what I want."

"Hey! Wait a moment-"

Before he could protest, she stood up and leaned forward on one long-armed knuckled hand. The sun had finally sunk low enough to go outside again. She left the overhung ledge of the cave, pressing past the tree and through the overgrown shrubs. Leaves wet from a night and day of rain brushed against her, and water ran in little rivulets down her back, filling the cracks in her skin. She lifted her head into the branches to inhale the sharp clean scent of the pine needles. Droplets rolled down over the hard angles of her cheeks in place of the tears she refused to cry.

Windy walked to her favorite open spot on the slope, in the long shadow of the mountain's sheltering spur. From there, she peered over the pines into the meadow below, and, surrounded by shade, watched the last light flow out of the valley. Uncheered by the dying sun, she rocked the baby in the crook of her massive arm.

She glanced up to the mouth of the cave. Ragweed dug in the dirt with his big knobby fingers, then shoved his hands into his mouth. The soil was rich in spots where leaves and needles piled deep enough to decay, and the rain sent worms swimming toward the surface. That had to be what Ragweed ate. Windy stirred the compost with fingerlike toes, and a fat red wriggly worm squirmed out. She left it alone. She had no appetite.

Ragweed turned his head in her direction, wrinkled his nose, and snorted. "It's already starting to stink!"

She smelled it too. Her nose was sensitive to the scent of dead things, a main part of her diet. She knew her baby was starting to rot, even though it had been dead less than a day. "I like the way she smells! And I'm not putting her down!"

Ragweed shrugged, then resumed his digging.

Windy stared at the little thing in her arms. She had been such a lively baby, so adventuresome, afraid of nothing. Hardly feared daylight at all. She used to crawl away at the first hint of darkness. So last night when the rain poured down and she'd crawled out of their crowded crack of rock, Windy had listened to her laugh and taken the chance to rub butt with Ragweed. She'd just been getting excited herself when she heard the bigtooth lion's roar and ran out to rescue her daughter.

She'd chased the bigtooth off-it was a cowardly old thing with a limp. But by the time she'd reached her little girl it was too late. Her daughter's skull was crushed, all soft, pulpy, and misshapen. Like a rotten pumpkin. Windy had eaten pumpkins once, near one of the villages of the black-haired people. But now, thinking of her baby, she'd never eat pumpkins again, no matter how tasty they were.

She felt like she'd never do anything again.

The last finger of light lingered on the green face of the meadow. Ragweed strolled over and sat down beside her. He noticed the worm twisting in the leaves, picked it up, and offered it to her. She stuck out her tongue to show she wasn't hungry, to say no. He popped the worm in his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed.

"It's almost dark," he said. "We should go down to that turtle shell again."

The turtle shell is what he called the false cave built by people. "Why?" she asked.

Ragweed shrugged. "Might be something to eat."

"What if those people are still there? The man had a shining leaf." A sword. She had seen it last night when he came outside after the bigtooth ran that way.

Ragweed scratched his head, then probed one of his nostrils with a carrot-sized forefinger. Stirring up his brains in search of an idea, she guessed.

"We could try to scare them away," he offered.

She had guessed right. "You tried to scare them two or three times last night," she reminded him.

"Yeah," he said slowly. His face darkened cheerfully. "They're probably pretty scared by now!"

He didn't seem to notice her answering silence. She sagged on her haunches and studied him thoughtfully. Ragweed was the handsomest troll she'd ever seen-he had a beautifully shaped head that sloped back to a nice point, a brow so thick you could hardly see his eyes beneath its shadow, no neck to speak of, arms like the trunks of trees, and a belly as round and dark as the new moon. Short, bristly hairs ran down between his shoulders and into the crack of his buttocks. Just looking at him used to send shivers up her spine and make her feel all juicy inside. She'd flirted with him, and he'd responded, and she was as happy as any troll could be until she became pregnant and realized that Ragweed was not the sharpest rock in the pile. Of course, she couldn't be that much smarter. When it was time for her baby to be born, she'd let him persuade her to come down out of the mountains to this stupid little valley.

Ragweed grunted. "When I came down here a couple years back, the turtle shell didn't have people in it."

"Well, this year it did!" She'd heard the same statement a thousand times before, and she was tired of it. But more than that, she wanted to blame Ragweed for her baby's death. She wanted to blame somebody, anybody, because if it was somebody else's fault, then it wasn't hers.

Ragweed rooted idly in the dirt. "I'm hungry."

Windy sighed. She'd heard that a thousand times as well. She stood up. Doing anything was better than doing nothing. "Come on. Let's go down to the turtle shell. Maybe they'll be scared off. Maybe we'll find something to eat."

He clapped his hands. The crack echoed off the mountain walls, scattering birds from the trees. "Good," he said. "All you need is some food, then you'll put that baby down."

They walked down the familiar slope. They'd varied the path some every night, looking for new sources of food, but there were only so many ways to go. Ragweed turned over logs and broke off pieces of stumps, but they were the same logs and stumps he'd searched a dozen times before. They hadn't seen the carcass of so much as a dead sparrow in two days; it had been a week since they'd found that deer before the wild dogs got to it. Ragweed grabbed the lower branches of trees and stripped the bark off with his teeth. The rain had moistened them up a bit so they didn't taste so chokingly dry. The scent enticed Windy, but not enough to make her eat.

They arrived at the wide meadow beside the pond, and Ragweed waded into the water to slake his thirst. Windy's throat was terribly parched, despite the drippings she'd licked off the cave roof, so she followed him, holding the baby out of the water as she bent down to take a drink.

Ragweed splashed over and rubbed his hands on her bottom.

"Thhppppt!" Water sprayed out of her mouth. "Stop that!"

"Nothing to interrupt us now," he leered.

She ignored him, bending to take another sip. He reached around and squeezed her breast.

"Yew!" Windy hopped away with a splash, bared her teeth, and smacked him with a backhanded swing.

"Hey!" he hollered. "What did I do?"

"That hurt." She turned away, sloshed out of the pond, and started her three-legged gait through the woods without him. Her breasts ached like a bad tooth. They'd been leaking all evening, and she didn't know what to do. She guessed they'd dry up in a few days, but right now she'd rather step in fire than have him touch them.

Ragweed hurried to catch up. They crested the chestnut ridge where they sat most nights. When the nuts started falling off the trees, this would be a good valley to be in. But that was months away.

The rain-heavy breeze carried new scents. Off in the direction of the sunset, toward the river, she thought she sniffed something dead, maybe drowned in yesterday's flood. Small, but still a good meal, if she'd been hungry enough to go looking for it. She turned her head toward the little hollow of land where the turtle shell stood, smelling the faint scent of the lion, a goat, and something else-

Ragweed caught the same scent. "Hot diggety!" he shouted, making an enthusiastic scooping motion with his hands before he ran down the hill. "Fresh rotten meat!"

"Be careful!" she cried out. Holding her baby tight to her chest, she ran after Ragweed. He stooped outside the shell, rooting his nose where blood had spilled in the mud. Windy paused beside him, and only then did her ears, which were better than the average troll's, certainly much better than Ragweed's, detect the high-pitched crying.

When Ragweed turned to enter the shell she tripped him, grabbing hold of his wrist so he couldn't break his fall. As he squawked and hit the ground, she rushed inside.

The odors of the dead man and woman hit her first, but the smell of baby poop and urine were also strong. Windy wrinkled her nose, swiveling her head around until she saw the woman's corpse in the corner. A baby was chewing on her long red hair, its eyes shut, so tired it could barely sit up straight as it cried.

Ragweed burst through the doorway behind her. "Ho there! Save some for me!"

He shoved her down and she kicked at him. He dodged her foot, hopping ponderously over her outstretched leg. She dropped her dead daughter, dove under Ragweed's groping arms, and slid across the dirt floor on her tender breasts to grab the crying baby first. She curled around it protectively.

"Go ahead," Ragweed said, clearly disappointed. "It's not much. Won't fill your belly up."

The baby continued to wail as it snuggled into Windy's arms. It rubbed its face around her breast until its tiny mouth closed on the hard pebble of her nipple. It didn't have much of a suck, compared to her little girl, but then it didn't need much of one either.

Ragweed picked up the woman's hand, stuck the fingers in his mouth, and chewed on them. After a couple crunches, he spit them out and dropped her arm. "This one's still warm-the bigtooth killed her. Ought to let her rot for a couple days. She'll taste better with bugs in her."

Windy wrinkled her flat nose again. The dead woman was this baby's mother; she suddenly felt quite protective. "Go chew on that one, then," she said, pointing to the man's body. "He's been dead longer."

"All gristle, no fat, like enough," Ragweed muttered, but he crossed the room.

Windy caressed the baby's head. It had such beautiful black hair, disguising its misshapen skull and lack of a brow. Large-gorgeously large-eyes in the painfully flat face stared right at her before they fluttered shut. The ache in Windy's heart eased as quickly as the soreness in her breast.

"Ack!" Ragweed jumped back so hard he fell on his bottom. He bounced up and retreated across the room to Windy's side.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Go look for yourself! I'm not getting near it, not if it was a rotten mammut on a hot summer night and I hadn't eaten anything in ten days."

Windy carefully cradled the suckling baby to her, took a step forward, and almost turned to stone. The amber-colored ampules strung around the dead man's neck-they were magic, sunlight trapped in warm ice. If either one cracked accidentally it could kill them both, at least according to the stories about similar treasures stolen in the past. She hopped backward so fast the baby lost the nipple. Its eyes flew wide open.