I
Once upon a time, there was a great troll by the name of Andy, who had a great house that was covered with scales and from both the outside and the inside of the house, one could see it visibly breathing. It was a living house. It was not just the sound of creaking, or the rush of wind about a chimney, of the kind that constitutes the breathing that old houses are commonly supposed to make, but a marked swelling and receding of the external walls of the house, along with the internal scaled wallpaper and brick, and a visible rise and fall of the old floor boards, all this was obvious about this house. Not just an empty whistle did the wind make during a storm, somewhere just outside of its windows, that can be easily explained away in most houses, but a human-like sigh did this house make, sometimes tinged with the hint of a deep voice.
Andy loved his house. He bragged about it often to his troll friends at the troll bar he visited on the outskirts of the village that the trolls loved to torment and to troll.
"Mur house," was how Andy would, without exception, begin his drunken bragging, "It is bigger and, I say, I do declare, it is smarter than any house as has been ever inhabited by man or troll." He smiled an ugly smile at the thought of his house.
To provide a demonstration of the cleverness of his house, Andy would continue, "Mur house, it keeps mur possessions in order, it does. Never was a house tidier. Mur bed is made of a morning, mur clothes appear in mur dresser, neatly like, mur house does it all.
"Mur house, it can control the things I keep in it. If I need something, mur house brings it to me, I needn't lift a toe."
"What about yer slave girl then, what use is she?" Would ask another of Andy's equally despicable troll friends, with a terrible scoff and an incredulous face. "I declare, what's a slave fer if yer house does it all."
It was no secret, afterall, that Andy kept a slave in the basement of this famed house. She had been a beautiful orphaned child he had lured away from the streets a number of years ago, where she had been sleeping for some weeks, waiting for the impending death of starvation or exposure that had awaited her there. Simply, he'd lured her away with the promise of a hot meal and a warm place to sleep, in exchange for domestic duties. And funnily enough, all of this was exactly what he'd delivered, but still she had the persistent feeling that she would have been better off on the street. Andy had named her Beta.
The abduction would have been an outrage or a scandal among the inhabitants of the village, had any of them cared much, or at all, for orphaned girls.
"Never you mind what a slave girl is fur." Said Andy, waving a hairy finger and lifting a warty eyebrow, sloshing half his brandy on the bar in the process. "Mur house is of better mind and conversation. Better use entirely, I declare, than mur slave girl, other than to look at. Mur house is, I won't deny, it is no beauty."
"But a house is of no mind and no conversation! Yer a mad troll, Andy." Rejoined Andy's troll friend, partly just to be difficult, since he had heard this story many times before and already knew the explanation. He had in fact witnessed the phenomenon of Andy's speaking house on many occasions during Andy's infrequent poker nights, during which they would play card games, gamble and laugh as Andy poked Beta with a long stick while she brought them drinks.
"Mur house is special, it speaks words straight into mur head! Mur house is cleverer than any troll!"- this was undeniably true and would not really be a difficult feat, trolls being exceptionally stupid and irrational - "I would not, I declare, I would not, be half the troll I am today without the advice of mur speaking house!" Here Andy banged his fist against the bar table and disturbed a number of other troll drinkers, who started up a mighty din of troll complaints, leading inevitably into a troll bar fight. It began with curses and smashing glasses and ended in blows.
A troll bar fight is a thing to behold, not just for its intense physicality, for trolls speak almost poetry in their insults, troll language contains almost a thousand different swear words, which I won't presume to bore you with here.
When the fight was over, Andy dragged his heavy, drunken body back towards his home.
He was of medium height for a troll, that is to say around seven feet tall, and he never fared too badly at bar fights. He couldn't say if he had won or not, which is the sign of a good fight. Trolls he had never spoken to before had joined in on his behalf, purely for the excitement, and no one had been outnumbered, which is also the sign of a good fight.
Andy had a weighty right fist, covered with hair and black nails, more closely resembling claws than human nails, that he used to great effect against any opponent, but most commonly Beta. Trolling was, after all, interchangeable with cruelty. He had long, greenish hair that he tamed in a knot at the back of his oblong skull, masses of protruding teeth and a formidable reek that he brought about with him everywhere, to the offense of even the most indecorous person and to the respect of even the dirtiest troll. He wore clothes that were aged and even rotting, his pants held up by suspenders over his bloated belly, but how they came to be rotting, no one would ever know, since his house would always arrange his clothes back into his dresser when he was done with them. It could only be suggested that his dresser was somewhat damp, or that the clothes had not been dry when they were stored away. Andy pretended not to care at all for his attire, but in reality, he was a connoisseur of fine repugnance, the beauty of his slave girl being the only exception. He was truly a despicable troll, and would have glowed with pride had he been so called.
Andy now made his way up a pebbly path towards his scaly house, a path that lead over a bridge before it reached its destination, as trolls have a particular predilection for bridges, and there was a necessity for at least one to be present on Andy's property.
His house was three stories tall, not including the basement. The rooms were capacious, the top story empty, as there were only two inhabitants living there and neither had many possessions. The house had a large windmill attached in an unsightly fashion to the side, only unsightly because it was so miss-matched with the rest of the construction. The windmill was not turning. There was, however, a delectable smell emanating from the windows, meaning that Beta was cooking, or had already finished.
Andy stomped up to the front doorstep and swung open the front door. It was freakishly soft and warm, like heated leather. Once back inside his house, Andy called out a greeting, "Allo, house."
His house replied, "Good day, Andy." And Andy shuddered with the pleasure that that cello-like deep voice inside his own head gave him. He slapped affectionately at the beams of the doorway as he threw the front door closed, and said, "It surely was, house, it surely was."
"BETA" The troll yelled from the short hallway that lead into the opened door of the livingroom, "Bring mur dinner, I'm home!" He then moved himself into the livingroom and took a seat. His couch had to be large enough to comfortably seat a troll, and this it certainly was. He sat back in a state of domestic bliss and flung his great dirty boots onto the coffee table. He took a newspaper out of his coat pocket and began to read it, while saying aloud mocking troll comments, to the reporter's expense, that the house would indulgently laugh at, with a rumbling from beneath the livingroom rug.
After a few minutes, a trapdoor in the corner of the room lifted. It was Beta who emerged into the room, like a ray of beauteous sunshine in a dark and ugly house, with its dark and ugly master. She was focused on carrying a tray with Andy's food on it, her concentration gave her an extra kind of sweetness that the troll looked upon greedily. Her long hair fell in front of her delicate face, rising up from the trapdoor like a mermaid from the surf.
She kicked up a bit more of the chain that was attached to her ankle so that she wouldn't trip on it, and carefully closed the trapdoor behind her. As she was walking towards the troll, the house inhaled deeply, making her rise a few inches and causing the gravy to spill from the pot that held it, over onto the troll's tray. She made a sound of annoyance, believing that the house had done it on purpose just to get her in trouble.
"Yur spilled mur gravy, clumsy wench." Said the troll as she deposited his food onto the coffee table.
"Get back with ye." He immediately began eating loudly. It little mattered what his food looked like in the end, when she was done preparing it; it was gone within a few minutes.
Beta returned again to the basement, to sit alone in a corner and dream away her time. It had been years since her abduction, more than a decade, enough time for her to grow to full adulthood and Beta was still kept on a chain there, mostly living alone in the one room, with little variety or change, little comfort and much cold. Here she would spend her days turning an enormous heavy wheel, that was not too heavy. Andy did not wish to maim her with hard work, nor did he wish to make her muscular. He liked her small and "Nice tur look at." He would say. The wheel seemed to simply keep her busy.
She was reminded often that her functional purpose was being "nice tur look at", so much so that the troll would declare that, were she to get old or fat, she would no longer be his slave and would become his dinner. He would stew her with potatoes and eat her brains as dessert. He would drink her blood as wine and make sausages from her innards. This was probably all lies. Beta would have to get very old indeed before she was no longer beautiful in comparison the hideous house and the troll with hair like sea weed and a face like a boar. It was hard even to say if Beta would be considered beautiful among average human women, her environs so conspired in her favour. If she had one fault, it was that she was slightly but permanently stooped over, either from leaning over her wheel, following it in a circle about the room, like a mouse's wheel, or perhaps from an emotional cause, a feeling of dejection and shrinking away. Her lovely hair, that she took great care of, was her best feature.
Beta did not know what the functional purpose of the wheel she worked at incessantly was, although she assumed, and was correct in assuming, that it was something like the purpose of a windmill, to pull up water from the ground.
Her daily labour was in fact what bought clean water into the house.
Her chain was just long enough that she could go up the stairs from the basement and out into the living room and also of course the kitchen. In the living room, she could sit in front of the fire that the house lit spontaneously when the weather was exceptionally cold, too cold for her to remain in the basement. Sometimes the trapdoor from her basement was kept locked, in such cases she would take refuge under her pile of rags that she slept on. If she was to try it twice, however, the trapdoor would almost always seem to unlock by itself. There was a trapdoor also in the kitchen, but Beta's chain was not long enough to allow her to go from the kitchen straight to the living room, so she had to detour through the basement.
It was a punishing, cold and very lonely life that Beta lead. And the house watched it all, too shy to lend her much company.