Chapter 30. The Trolls Catch Up
The trolls arrived at the park to find their prey already dead. Oddly, the creature had broken into two pieces before it expired. The trolls found the colorful bird-like portion first, and the four-legged beast afterwards. This, they thought very odd. They mumbled amongst themselves about it until Slimegobbler voiced the question out loud: “What could have sliced the creature in two like this?”
Schmoozeglutton didn’t understand the trolls’ confusion at first. “Sliced?” He looked from the rider to the horse. He saw nothing that had been sliced.
“Yeah,” said Slimegobbler. “The top part of the creature from the bottom part of the creature. This orange and yellow part from that brown part.”
“Ah,” said Schmoozeglutton, finally understanding. He explained to the others that what they had been hunting was not a single creature but two creatures. He relayed the story of chasing the horse, only to have his hunt intercepted by this land troll, who had gotten atop it and ridden it away. Comprehension dawned in the eyes of the trolls. They weren’t looking down upon the bird half of a crazily evolved two-armed four-legged two-headed creature, they were looking simply at a land troll and some anemic descendant of a mammoth.
Now that their vision had adjusted, they could see that the birdlike creature was in fact a land troll. Its coloration was still a shock, but it was indeed a land troll with the usual configuration: two arms, two legs, a single head. It was dead, though, by some mechanism they didn’t understand. Surely one of Obeast’s fake rocks wouldn’t have killed this creature? But maybe it had. Land trolls didn’t have a very strong constitution, that much was obvious. The four legged beast, which lay a hundred yards or so beyond the land troll, was equally dead, and equally more familiar in its form. It, too, however, was no mastodon. The shape wasn’t right. The proportions were off. All in all, evolution seemed to have taken some nasty turns during the trolls’ Big Sleep.
And how did this creature die? Also by a well-thrown fake rock? The trolls were puzzled. And also a little disturbed.
What the reader knows that the trolls didn’t was that the former sheriff’s horse was old and decrepit; she wasn’t in any shape to be running full tilt from anything, much less these bad smelling monsters who wanted to eat her. The mare’s poor old heart had given out shortly after Ferdy made his crash landing. She had had a good life, the former sheriff’s mare, though unfortunately the former sheriff could no longer remember her name. (Unfortunately, the author has been similarly unable to turn up the name of the mare. He might have invented one, but truthtelling is an important value. Had he simply made up a name, the reader would be correct in looking skeptically upon other facts presented in the story). The former sheriff’s mare had marched in parades, led posses into the woods, and had once been decorated as First Horse when Lone Tree had needed an equine hero. The sheriff, back when his faculties had been more acute, had once said that the town hadn’t voted for him as sheriff; they just liked his horse. He may have been right about that. In any case, that First Horse was now dead on the lawn of Moon Park, a victim of age and changing times and a ticker that couldn’t take one more shock.
For the trolls, of course, this state of events was somewhat anticlimactic. They had yearned for a hunt, and had even engaged in the lion’s share of a hunt. But a hunt without a kill is no hunt at all. The trolls stood staring at the two creatures, both looking small in their inanimate state, and shrugged.
A pathetic land troll, and a rather puny descendent of the once-mighty mastodon. It was a poor showing. Their imaginations had been caught by the four-legged, two-armed, twoheaded beast, but now that magic had been revealed as a trick, and they were disappointed.
And, they were further disappointed to find, they didn’t feel hungry any more. They certainly weren’t going to eat a land troll, and the mastodon-beast wasn’t truly all that appetizing, either. There just wasn’t much meat on its bones. Then there was the fact that their tummies were still tender from the hot dogs. Come to think of it, they were still feeling woozy from that experience. Dizzy, even.
For the trolls, most everything in this world had been a disappointment. This unexpected end to their hunt was another disappointment on that long list.
But where the dead before them had lost their shine, the park did sport another object that drew their eyes: the single tree that stood grandly in its center.
Once upon a time, the trolls knew, this land had been a lush jungle. This one tree, standing against the night’s horizon, looked to be the brave beginnings of yet another jungle. The sight awed them. To a troll, the Rabid Band was drawn to it.
One thing the trolls had missed during their excursions upon the land, of course, was good solid clubs. Clubs, the jungle had offered in abundance. Oh, they could see that Bilgewater and Biledumper had some small versions of clubs. They could see Schnottweiper’s stop sign club. But none of them had good old traditional clubs—clubs with some heft to them. The first order of business, then, was to harvest a set of clubs from the tree.
The trolls went to work with a passion. Schmoozeglutton, as the leader, climbed into the tree’s crotch and began breaking off limbs. These, individual trolls took away to work on. They removed the leaves and stripped the smaller branches. They broke what remained into a club of just the right length. Then, with care, each took his new club and began scraping it against a rock. The goal was to remove the bark, and to smooth the wood a bit. Create a good handgrip.
Within a couple of hours, each troll had a weapon in hand. A rough weapon, but a weapon nonetheless. Once they had seen some use, the clubs would mold themselves to the trolls’ fists. They would become smoother and harder. A club, as any troll knew, only improved with use.
After this operation, there was little left of the tree. What remained was a single trunk that stood perhaps seven feet high, surrounded by the detritus of limbs and sticks and leaves. The trolls felt a little remiss at having razed the only extant jungle, but they figured that where there was one tree, there would soon be others.
When the trolls were once again armed, they sat down in a rough circle to tell the stories of their adventures. After all, they were well away from any big turtle houses, and it seemed as if the giant metallic insects, those few that were still alive, had quieted and gone to sleep. There wasn’t a land troll in sight, other than the dead one they had earlier been chasing. It seemed safe enough to sit and share their tales. They’d enjoy the cool of the night. When daybreak neared, they’d make their way toward home.
A few had items for show and tell. A few had makeshift clubs they had picked up along the way. Bilgewater allowed Biledumper to hit his head with his metal bat, so that the other trolls could appreciate the resounding “kong” sound that it made. Obeast passed around a couple of his remaining fake rocks, so that everyone could have a closer look. Bilgewater showed off his item of manly apparel. The trolls understood clubs, and they even understood fake rocks—though that was a stretch—but they were skeptical about Bilgewater’s tie. What was it good for? Nothing. That was what it was good for. But Bilgewater stubbornly kept the tie hanging limply down his chest.
All the trolls had tales to tell. Adventures to relate. Knowledge to share.
A few of the trolls examined Gasbag closely when it was his turn, suspicious that he was acting a bit tipsy. But this they put out of their mind. Surely, these land trolls weren’t smart enough and cultured enough to make their own beer. Perhaps Gasbag, being so young, was just dazed by his experiences in this new world. Gasbag, for his part, told them about his adventures with the land trolls, though few believed him. Surely even land trolls had enough self-respect that they would have tossed Gasbag out of their above-ground cave, if not beaten him senseless with their konging clubs.
Gasbag kept to himself the fact that these land trolls did indeed have their own version of beer. And the music. He kept the music to himself, too. The music was too close to his heart to want to share it with the group. All those sad songs would replay themselves over in his mind for the rest of his life, he knew. None of these other trolls would understand, though, and he wouldn’t try to make them understand. The old sad songs with their twang of desire and hunger constituted a language that spoke only to him. Gasbag wasn’t about to share that intimacy with those who wouldn’t understand or appreciate it.
In all, it was a heartfelt reunion. The trolls were happy to see each other, happy to once again be part of a band. They reveled in stories and laughter. They remembered their experiences with big blue bugs and fake land trolls and row after row of dumpsters.
Schmatzenbladder saved his tale for last. It was a tale of horror, involving boomerang poodles, and a story of treachery, involving traitorous leaders. The trolls weren’t so sure they believed his story of the poodles—it seemed too strange, too far out, even for this world. But they all believed with a dark hard certainty in their hearts his tale about Brumvack attempting to block the single entrance to their cave.
And so it was that after a brief respite for tale-telling and knowledge sharing, the trolls once again roused to life. Schmoozeglutton, livid that Brumvack had proven himself to be such a coward, stood and exhorted them to rise to the occasion of a final battle, The Rabid Band vs. Brumvack.
The trolls stood as he spoke.
“We owe it to ourselves as self-respecting trolls to draw the line here,” Schmoozeglutton said, pointing to the ground at his feet. When the trolls looked to his feet questioningly, he waved his hands in negation. “Not here here. Not here by this tree. Here at this moment in history, when our former leader has shown his true colors.”
With that, the trolls raised their new clubs on high, yelled a war cry into the breaking of the day, and ran headlong back toward the lake.