Car Haunt
(August 21, 2018)
5
Before Wendy could even react, Mabel yelled, "Hah! I knew it! High-five, sister! Do you know any spells for bust enlargement?"
"Cool it," Wendy said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not a witch. It's the hair." She flipped her long red mane, causing the troll to squeak in alarm.
"Whoa!" Dipper said, surprised at its sudden burst of speed.
The creature ducked behind Stan and peered fearfully around his legs, whimpering.
"The hair?" Mabel asked. "You mean if I dyed my hair, I'd gain magical powers? Why doesn't anybody tell me these things?"
"No," Wendy said. "Let me say, and be absolutely clear about this, I am not in any way a witch. Well, I do have telepathy, but that only happens with one person and it wasn't my doing to begin with. OK, listen: There used to be a big troll—bridge troll, not a forest troll—under Three Arches Bridge years ago. My dad was like a teenager then, and he grew his hair real long, not as long as mine, but long for a guy, and he already had his beard. So this troll, about the size of a grizzly, used to swing up on the bridge and challenge logging trucks, askin' 'em riddles, and of course the trucks couldn't answer, so the troll once or twice dragged 'em to the edge and shoved 'em in the gorge. Trolls are real strong for their size. Luckily, this one was so slow that the drivers always managed to jump out."
"I never heard any of that," Dipper said.
"Nor I." Ford stared at her, then at the troll.
"Dad never likes to talk about it, 'cause he's kinda ashamed of what he did to stop it. He drove his truck up, stopped it just short of the bridge ramp, and when the troll climbed onto the bridge it asked him a riddle—'Why do gahoolas never vex a spapoon?'"
Dad screamed, "''Cause YOUR FACE!' and he ran and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and kicked that troll's butt from one end of the bridge to the other and then back again, until it begged him to stop and promised to go away. But it asked him, 'How you know the answer to unanswerable riddle?' and dad screamed back, "'Because I'm a WITCH!'"
"Witch," whimpered the small troll.
Ford nodded and then said, "I don't understand any of this. I never knew these creatures were in the Valley, and I've explored everywhere!"
Dipper said, "I think I get it. Dan traumatized that one troll so much it warned all the others of its kind to clear out from the bridges because a witch with long red hair would defeat them."
"Witch," moaned the small troll.
"Yeah, 'bout the size of it," Wendy said. She took a knee and held out a hand as if for a fist bump. "Hey, little guy, I got no quarrel with you. I won't hurt you."
The troll, like an anxious two-year-old, peeked at her with one eye—first the right, and then it ducked behind Stan's legs to peek out with the left.
"Here ya go," Stan said, turning to pick it up. "Come on, little fella. This here is Wendy, and, uh, she only uses her witchness for good, OK?"
Mabel whispered to Wendy, "Give him a donut."
Wendy blinked at her. "Where would I get a—"
"Always be prepared!" Mabel pulled a small donut, the kind you can buy from a vending machine that always tastes as if it were baked to be stale, out of her sweater and slipped it to Wendy.
"Um, ew, OK." Wendy held the dubious treat toward the troll. "Here, this is, uh, a magic donut. It's a pledge that I won't ever hurt you with magic. You have to eat it for it to work."
The temptation proved too great. The troll reached out a shaggy, spindly arm and delicately grasped the donut before yanking it back. "Poison?" it asked tremulously.
"It is not, uh, not not poison," Stan said. "Wait, is that right?"
It must have been. The troll choked the dry little morsel down, doing such a messy job that Stan put it back down on the floor. "Not hurt Neeahpik?" it whispered. "Swear?"
Wendy looked around for help, which not one of the human onlookers could supply.
But a Gnome could. "Swear on a sacred object," he suggested.
Dipper recognized the foreman of their garbage pick-up crew. "Oh, hi, Stewart," he said.
"Dipper."
"How are you guys doing?"
"Good, good, lots of rotting food this run. Won't go to waste!"
"Guys," Wendy said, "Sacred object?"
Stewart frowned. "Uh, wish Jeff was here. He knows words I don't. Uh—geastlik? Know that one? No? Um, like when an alv-mekke blade shines blue?"
"Um," Ford said. "A blade forged by the Elves burns with blue fire when enemies are in the vicinity?"
Stewart stared at him. "Yeah, go with that."
"Let me see," Wendy said, kneeling again. She reached behind her and said, "I'll swear to you, OK? On this."
She drew out the axe Archibald Corduroy had bequeathed her, the one he had forged himself in life, the one his ghost had wielded after death.
"Pretty!" Harmony said.
"Cool, dawg!" agreed Little Soos.
"I gotta get, like, a picture of this, dudes!" said Soos.
"I didn't even know that it would do that," Mabel chimed in.
"Magical blade, close enough," Stewart said.
The troll stepped from behind Stan and bowed again, its round mouth open with wonder, stale crumbs dribbling onto the floor.
Dipper had seen the axe shine like that once or twice, briefly, in desperate times when Wendy brandished it in fights with various ghoulies, ghosties, and the occasional long-leggedy beastie, but this was the first time he'd seen it held still and in dim light. He shivered a little.
This was no mere glimmer. The entire axe, blade and haft, seemed to burn with an electric-blue fire, the silent flames rolling off it. The effect reminded him—too strongly—of the flames that would boil from Bill Cipher's stick-figure hand when the triangular demon would screech, "Come on, Pine Tree, let's make a dee-al!"
"Wow," Wendy said, and he realized the effect was new even to her. "Uh. All right, uh—what's his name?"
"Newman," said Soos unhelpfully.
"Na-uh," Stewart corrected. "Listen closely, it's hard for humans: Neeahpik. Whatever you do, it's not Neevelheek. That means 'knee-high,' and it's an insult to trolls. Come to think of it, to us, too. Neeahpik."
"All right," Wendy said. "I, uh, Wendy the Good Witch of the North, swear to you Neeahpik, the honorable Troll of, uh, this place, that I will never harm you or use magic against you and, uh, will be your friend."
"Excellent," Stewart said. "You even got the fricative hiss on the h!"
"He doesn't know 'spiritual' or 'elf-made,' but he knows that?" Ford asked, his eyebrows high.
"Hey, you'd be surprised how often audiological topics come up in the waste-management business," said Stewart.
"Ssh," Dipper said.
Mabel, like Soos, had her phone at the ready.
When the little troll, its head politely bowed, reached out its cupped claw and sort of clasped Wendy's fist, both took photos.
"The historic meeting of witch and troll!" Mabel said reverently. "A moment that will live in the ages! When are we gonna eat? I'm starved!"
Neeahpik, taking over the high chair that Harmony had used until a few months earlier, sat at the table with them. Abuelita wasn't fazed by having a mythological creature dining with them, and its fondness for her chicken tinga persuaded her that it wasn't a monstruo after all, but a pollito pobre.
Whichever, it gave Mabel competition in the appetite sweepstakes.
After dinner, Stanley insisted they had to do some rehearsal. They improvised a bridge by placing two straight chairs six feet apart and balancing an eight-by-one-inch board over the top rails. The troll had no trouble clinging there. Then the others pretended to be tourists passing by and taking photos. "No flash, folks, the little guy is shy," Soos kept warning. They experimented, and the troll didn't mind a combination of one dim yellow bulb and a couple of red ones. The photos looked weird, but, as Stan said, "So much the better!"
Soos got busy sketching out a little wood bridge, a gentle arch six feet wide with steps on both ends and a protective hand rail. "This is, like, nothing, dawgs!" he said cheerfully. "I can have this knocked out by Wednesday evening!"
And the troll would make his show-biz debut on Thursday.
Neeahpik still seemed a bit skittish, or maybe a better word is awed, around Wendy, but she treated him gently and, Dipper noticed, with just a hint of regality. He no longer seemed afraid of her, though—just respectful and somewhat distant.
"So the plan is," Stan said, "You, Neeahpik, will hang out under the bridge. The kiddos—you know what I mean? The little humans, like-
"Sooshie!" Neeahpik said. "Har-many!"
"Uh, yeah, go with that. They'll cross over the bridge, and you come up before they do and ask 'em an easy riddle. I'll teach you some. Like, 'Who's the most popular guy in the nudist colony?'"
"No!" Dipper yelped. "Not that one. How about, 'What's brown and sticky?'"
"What is it?" Mabel asked.
"A stick!" Dipper said. "Everybody knows it's a stick!"
"No, not that one, I meant the guy in the nudist colo—"
"Mabel!" Dipper said. "Standards and practices!"
"Oh," his sister said, blushing. Then she blinked. "I don't get it."
"Or like 'What can go down a chimney up but not up a chimney down?'" Wendy asked.
"A squid in an elevator?" Mabel asked.
"An umbrella!" Dipper said.
"Oh, yeah! Why?"
"If you have to explain 'em they ain't funny anymore," Stan said. "OK, OK, I'll go to the bookstore and get a book of like kiddie riddles. You know, like used to be written on ice-cream treat sticks. What's a ghost's favorite flavor of ice cream? Booberry, get it? Or Peaches and Scream! Hah!"
"Huh?" Mabel asked.
Stan said, "Ah, come on! You guys and me used to eat 'em by the dozen and ask each other the riddles!"
Mabel frowned a little. "I have no memory of that."
"Just as well," Dipper said. "Anyway, Neeahpik—did I say that right?"
"Meh," said the troll.
"Sorry. Anyway, whatever the human child says, you say 'that's right' and let it pass over the bridge and then they can pose for a picture with you. OK?"
"I get donuts?"
"One for every photo!" Stan said.
"Then is OK."
Stan checked his watch. "It's way after sunset. You want to ride back to your bridge with me?"
"Yes. You come back for me?"
"In two days. Tomorrow is one, Thursday is two. I will come to drive you to work on Thursday morning."
"Tunkersdy," the troll said.
"Yeah, that too. Wendy, Dipper, Mabel, you want to come with?"
"Sure!" Mabel said.
"Guess so," Dipper agreed after a glance at Wendy.
Stan borrowed a kiddy car seat from Soos, Mabel fastened it in, graciously placing it so the little troll would ride shotgun while she'd sit in the middle of the front seat, and she told Dipper to sit in the back, directly behind Neeahpik, letting Wendy be behind Stan. That way Neeahpik would have a bit of distance from the witch.
When Mabel had the seat ready, she called them all out to the parking lot. Broken clouds let patches of night sky glittering with stars appear and vanish. The troll looked up and softly murmured something: "Ei tryllia mot yn tsjuster ferberje, mar hi kin nei stjerren sjen."
None of them could understand the words, but they were the closing lines of an ancient trollish ballad:
…Troll must in the darkness dwell,
But at least s/he may look at stars.
The s/he thing isn't trollish political correctness. They don't have politics and what's correct is just what's always been done. Their language lacks gender-specific pronouns, though, so "hi/hy/hyn" refers either to a male or female troll—oh, that's nominative, objective, and genitive.
Anyway, the title of the ancient lay might be translated as "Banishment," and it's one of the saddest poems in any language.
When Neeahpik turned toward the Stanleymobile, he also caught sight of Dipper's car, parked nearby.
The troll hissed.
"Geasth!" he warned, pointing a shaking finger. "Geasth!"
"Dip!" Wendy said, grabbing his hand.
Just for an instant, like a scene lit by lightning flash, Dipper saw a transparent figure, darkness vaporing off it, eyes glaring a baleful dull orange, standing beside the car, and then it faded.
On the drive out to the bridge, Dipper tried to get the troll to tell him whether "geasth" meant "ghost"—it sounded as if it might—but the little creature only huddled and whimpered until Mabel sharply told her brother, "Stop it! You're upsetting him."
Dipper thought to Wendy, —Mabel's right. I don't want to scare him so much we'll never learn anything. But we definitely have to do some serious investigation now.
I'm with you on this.
—Great! I need the help of a good witch.
Oh, shut up! But Dipper could tell she was at least amused.
—Well, he thought to her, you put a spell on me!
And a moment later, Mabel said, "You guys! Can't you go two minutes without kissing?"
"Nope," Wendy replied complacently. And they kissed again.
To be continued