The Prodigal Troll (18 page)

Reaching up, she took hold of Maggot and swung him down to the ground. "Go on then," she said, picking up the skin as it fell from his shoulders.

"Thanks, Mom!" His face beamed at her like the moon, so bright she almost had to shield her eyes, and then he took off running beside the girls as fast as his little legs could carry him. He looked funny, moving upright on his two feet and swinging his arms even though they didn't touch the ground. The girls slowed down a bit to match his pace.

"It's a freak," hissed her mother, slipping back beside her. "An animal."

Windy's gaze never strayed from him. "Whatever you want to call him, he's still my son."

They trotted steadily downhill for several miles. The trail offered glimpses of the river valley far below and a constant view of the mountains in the distant west. Near the end of the trail, Maggot ran up and tugged at her hand. "Mom, I'm tired."

"Here, I'll carry you." She held out her arm and he tugged on it again, but didn't climb up. If he was too tired to climb, then he was exhausted. She lifted him and draped him over her shoulder. He clung to her neck, twining and locking his hands together.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To spend the day in caves, at the bottom of these cliffs."

"What cl-"

The word dropped off in midair as they came to the top of a steep wall of rock nine hundred feet high.

"Wow." He said that last so quietly she felt only the air of it stirring against her neck.

A trail wound back and forth down the cliff's face. The older trolls descended quickly, digging their toes and fingers in the rock for vertical shortcuts in the places where the rock allowed. Those who left the blueberry patches earliest were already at the bottom when Windy began her climb, pressed against the wall of stone. "Hold on tight," she told Maggot.

He smacked his lips for yes, rubbing his forehead against the back of her neck as he squeezed tight.

She chose the easiest path down the wall. This place was sacred to the trolls. The story her mother told was that the trolls were born underground, of the earth itself, in the deep caves when all the world was covered with snow, living in the water and eating the fish and bugs that swam there. Most believed that the caves at the bottom of this cliff were the ones that trolls emerged from, like infants from their mother's womb, when they came out into the wider world.

It was still a safe place: the caverns stretched back for miles beneath the mountains, so deep that no people or other predators could ever find them there. All the things that trolls had ever stolen from people were stored there, in hordes cached in such odd corners that some of them had not been counted in a span of lifetimes.

"Hey, Mom?"

"Mmmm?" Windy asked, her face against the stone, her feet reaching out to find the next toehold.

"The girls're daring me to join them. Can I?"

She twisted her head around to see them. The girls were showing off, getting back at him for his adventures by climbing straight down the wall. Every young troll did that at least once, usually around the time they were as big as the girls. But Maggot was not every young troll.

"No," Windy said firmly. "You can't do that."

"Aw, Mom," he whined. But he didn't budge.

"You're a good boy."

"I'm not a boy. I'm almost old enough to be a grown-up, even though I'm as small as a baby. That's why Grandma wants me to die and all the other grown-ups want me to go away."

Something caught in her throat as big as a rock. "What do you think about that?"

"I tell them you won't let anything hurt me." He nuzzled his face against her. "'Cause you don't."

The burden on her shoulders grew heavier as she continued her downward trek. The air around her changed, charged with the tingling feel of daybreak. When she reached the bottom of the slope, she was panting. She looked up and saw the sun shining high on the very top of the cliff face. The wall there had lost the blue-gray tones of night and turned into startling shades of red and orange, streaked with white. It glowed like fire.

Then she noticed the two girls. They'd also seen the light, before she did, and they'd frozen in a spot some fifty or sixty feet up the wall, one above the other.

"Come on down!" she yelled at them. "Hurry!"

"I can't!" Blossom cried out. Rocky just cried.

Their mothers had noticed them missing also, pausing on the trail down to the caves. Blossom's mother, Laurel, shouted to the other trolls, calling for help. Windy didn't know her too well, but she'd been friends as a child with Rocky's mother, Bones. Bones ran to Windy's side and called up at the girls. "Come on down! The mouth of day is chasing you!"

And indeed it did, sunlight trickling down the face of the rock as the night at the bottom grew thin, an insufficient darkness. Windy paced nervously.

Bones tried to scale the cliff, but the lower reaches were climbed over, rocks loose and dusty, a slope of debris that couldn't support the weight of a full-grown troll. She was no more than twenty feet up when the rock gave way underneath her and she slid down in a shower of gravel and stone.

"Don't look up!" Windy yelled to the girls, but it was hopeless. Their eyes were fixed on the sky as the teeth of the sun closed over the uneven upper reaches of rock. Her heart pounded rapidly with worry. She turned to the other trolls and found them arguing.

"Someone needs to go up the trail and climb out across to them," a big troll named Stump said.

"And get caught in the sun?" someone answered. "Not likely!"

"Leave 'em there," someone else offered. "They'll come down before the sun reaches them."

"What if they don't?" Laurel asked. "What'll happen to my Blossom?"

"Let them jump," Ragweed said. He'd been blunting his compassion on Maggot for years.

"We can't leave them." Windy's mother's deep voice overpowered the others. "Those girls are important to the band."

"Let's vote," Stump said. "All those in favor of trying to rescue-"

By the time they decided as a group to get something done, it'd be too late. Windy knew they had to act now, but she didn't know what to do.

Maggot stirred on her shoulder. "What's wrong, Mom?"

"The girls are caught up there. If the sunlight reaches them, they'll fall asleep and drop. Even if they could hold on, the sun would shrivel them up."

Rocky's mother ripped away huge chunks of friant rock in a frantic effort to carve footholds in the stone. Windy stood below her. "If the girls fall," she promised, "I'll catch them. I'm right here with you."

"Thank you," said Bones. Her feet slipped before she'd climbed twice her height.

Windy braced and caught her. It knocked her backward, and she felt Maggot's weight slip from her shoulder and roll free. That was something they'd practiced. If she ever fell on him, he'd be crushed. She extricated herself from Bones and looked around to make sure that he was all right. When she didn't see him, she started turning over rocks. "Maggot! Where are you?"

"He's up there," Bones said.

Windy lifted her head and saw him halfway to the girls, spidering up the cliff. The skin wrapped around his neck gave him a hairy appearance. She jumped after him, but Bones grabbed her. "Don't! You can't make it. You'll fall."

"But he doesn't know how to climb a wall that high!"

"Could fool me."

Windy held her breath. Maggot reached a tough spot and crossed horizontally until he found another handhold above him. He did everything just like she'd trained him, keeping three feet on the wall at all times. If anything happened to him ...

Along the trail to the cave, the other trolls had finally voted to rescue the girls, but no one volunteered to go get them except Stump. But Windy's mother thought Stump was too heavy and wanted someone else to make the climb. So now they were proceeding to another vote.

Windy shook her head and looked helplessly above her as Maggot overtook Blossom and began talking to her. He put his hand over her face, and it was enough to break the sun spell. She resumed her journey down, keeping her eyes on the ground the whole time.

Bones caught her off the wall and hugged her. "I was so scared!" Blossom said, tears pouring down her face, and then she squirmed away from them to run to her mother.

Higher up on the cliff, Rocky wouldn't budge. Maggot talked to her; Windy could see that much. He pointed down, but Rocky refused to turn her head. He tried to cover her eyes, and she shook her head free.

"She'll come down any moment now," Windy said soothingly, eyeing the slow advance of sunlight down the stone. Most of the trolls had headed off for the caverns without waiting to see if the other girl could be saved.

Bones chewed on her knuckles. "She's so timid, so much more timid. I don't know if she'll make it."

Windy's mother and Stump joined them at the base of the wall. The band must've voted for Stump to make the climb. He paused briefly to look up at the motionless figures of Rocky and Maggot. "Looks like I still have two to rescue after all. I better hurry."

He headed up an older trail-a dead end that Windy had forgotten-that would take him near their position. Windy watched him make his way up, wishing she'd thought to try that way herself, when she heard her friend gasp. She craned her neck around just in time to see Maggot slip. She screamed, but he pressed himself flat and found another foothold some ten feet farther down. "What happened?"

Bones covered her mouth. "She hit him."

"Of course she did," Windy's mother said. "The stupid boy threw that nasty skin over her face!"

Windy noticed her mother's choice of the word boy, but didn't comment. "Come down!" she cried up at her son. "Come down now!"

He ignored her and inched his way back up the rock. Stump was at the proper height on the trail, but he had a hundred-foot horizontal climb to reach them. As he began his slow way across, Maggot started yanking on Rocky's feet.

Bones gasped. "He's going to pull her down. Stop! Stop! Wait for Stump!"

"I don't think that's what he's doing," Windy whispered, not quite sure herself what Maggot was attempting. Although the skin covered her eyes, Rocky still wouldn't move.

"Hold on!" Stump shouted. "I'm almost there!"

But he wasn't close at all, having reached a spot where his toes could find no hold. Windy's mother tugged at her arm. The whole eastern sky glowed orange above the rim of the mountains. "Come!" she said, her voice as hard as granite. "We saved one girl and we must go down to the caverns. At once!"

"Wait," Windy implored.

The deep shadows of the canyon barely shaded them, and she too felt the compelling need to run; but then Maggot's plan worked. He took Rocky's foot and put it in a lower toehold for her. She shifted her weight down to it, and the spell was broken.

Slowly at first, then more quickly, they came climbing, sliding, down the rock face. Stump called encouragement on his own speedy descent to the trail. The children were halfway down when a peregrine falcon, flying out of the sun, dived at them curiously. With the day fear on her, Windy expected them to be dislodged by the plummeting bird, but they didn't even notice it before it veered away.

"Come on, you're almost here," Bones called.

Rocky pulled the skin off her face, letting it flutter to the ground as she scampered down the last part of the slope and into her mother's arms. Bones swung her daughter up on her back and hurried off with Windy's mother down the trail for the caves. Windy backed away, under the trees between the cliff and river where night still lingered. "Keep coming, Maggot! I'm right here for you!"

His little spider arms and legs trembled as he moved cautiously from hold to hold. Stump slowed in his dash down the trail. "Your son's a good troll," he said as he passed Windy.

"Thanks," she answered, looking up at the frail little figure clinging two dozen feet up the wall. He fell.

She lunged forward to catch him, cradling him in her arms and hugging him tight to still his shaking. The skin on his chest and under his arms and on his thighs was scraped raw. His fingers and his toes were bleeding, and his teeth chattered. She picked up his skin and covered him as she hurried toward the refuge of darkness.

"We saved them, didn't we?" he said proudly.

"Yes we did," she whispered, in the voice that was just for him. "You're a good troll."

"I'm the best troll. Even Stump's not as good as me."

Her mother waited for them, frowning, just inside the cave. The gray old troll took one look at them and yawned. "I suppose it's too late today to call for any votes. Let's wait and see what sunset brings."

Windy smacked her lips in agreement.

"But you let go of Ragweed. He mates with someone else."

Windy lifted her head, smacking her lips again, relieved. When her mother snorted and moved off into the deeper dark, she rocked Maggot in her arms. "I'm never going to let go of you again, you hear me?" she whispered.

He laughed at her and struggled to get loose.