Troll story
This novel responds to the challenge « Houston, we've got snowdrifts ! » of in Déc 20-Jan 21, that requires a chilly plot, if possible from a secondary character point of vue. Brrrr…
.oOo.
Somewhere in Eriador, maybe Thalion or Breeland...
All morning long, Grandma Armbrawn had endured her grand-nephews' squeals. She had them in charge so that the family could finish the chestnut harvest, before the arrival of winter. Heaughtily, the old ones would scold the younger ones who harassed them. Confined for weeks because of the cold and rain, the kids were yelping and stamping restlessly. And the elders scared the little ones with absurd stories of trolls and other chimeras whose traces had purportedly been found nearby.
Overwhelmed, Granny had taken advantage of a lightening and had sent them to the garden. That would ease everyone ! The grown-ups would watch the little ones, she would be able to devote herself to Yule shortbread and everyone would have cakes for the big winter solstice party! Anyone who's able to get a glimpse at Father Yule's beard will be entitled to a bowl of honey cereal!
Once her nieces and nephews were out, she gave a sweep to her cottage floor, cleaned her stove and then went out to pick up a few logs.
The children had dispersed well beyond the assigned limits. The rascals were screaming and exerting, this one on the swing, another in the branches of the pear trees, the others indulging in a tireless hide-and-seek in the neighbors' fields. Grandma frowned, but chasing a horde of kids was no task for her age any more.
Beholding all her nephews jittering as bugs, the old woman thought it was time to store her wood...
As a matter of fact, it was starting to snow.
.oOo.
He was definitely going to win the hide-and-seek game. The snow had covered his tracks, the cousins would never find him!
Well maybe it was time to go home, Grandma was going to worry.
How good that was, this cottony tranquillity gently lulling you under the flakes silently drifting...
What is that? A little bells tune stealthily passing in the air...
A majestic hitch rattling a Yule melody! Reindeers carrying a sled led by a snowman... as if calling for the beginning of the party...
.oOo.
Elsewhere, probably further north, but not very far, in some moor infested with unsavory creatures...
The small sausage, firmly stowed, swayed softly, hanging from the rack where hams matured along with bloody reindeer carcasses.
Tied like a roast, he suffocated in the fumes of spoiled meat and the hints of filthy droppings infesting the trolls' cellar. The kid's terrified eyes were coming out of his head. Or maybe it was a hobbit? Quite indistinguishable, tied as he was. If you will, we shall continue to call him "the sausage", since he has all its attributes.
His mind fogged by the awfull smells he was macerating in, our sausage tried to follow the trolls' conversation, while they were bickering in the next room. Quite a difficult task, since the unfortunate victim had plugs in his ears, besides the terror that shook his bowels...
What? Some objection already? The point of view of a secondary character was mandatory and this particular character seems to stand at the center of the story?
Ah, but do not imagine that this wretched entremets will be allowed any initiative! He has an apple stuck in the gull, he is naked and tied like a Yule turkey, with parsley in his ears and a bunch of aromatic herbs in the backside!
That is to say the scope of the protests he could emit! Fortunately, as he had been found a little bit frail, he had been loaded with reindeer fat, that kept him warm and which bland and rancid smell somehow anaesthetized his sense of smell…
May I take it up again? Where was I?
Oh yes, the trolls !
They had just returned from hunting. You could hardly see them from the cellar, only their threatening and grotesque shadows coming and going around the hearth where pieces of birch were burning. At least that was clear, you could recognize the healthy smell of the freshly felled sapwood.
Besides, the sausage remembered them quite well, even if that was all that emerged from the nightmare of his capture: their big, patibular heads, their prominent canines, their deformed breasts, their hairy, swollen, barrel-shaped bellies... but above all their greenish skin covered with scales and purulent pustules, and the horrible, irresistible strength of their twisted arms…
As for their brains, hardly enough vocabulary to betray their vexed and vile nature, but enough dark ideas to destroy, pillage and swallow! In addition, too little judgement to get along like honest robbers ! Trolls, in short, gigantic and stupid, carnivorous and vindictive!
Of course, our trolls were bickering: what to do with their catch?
- Here are two goats in the lardoir! yelped the feisty one.
- Rubbish! That's no goats, that's reindeers!" replied the taciturn one.
- Rain dear? Wattizat? Me hate rain, no dear!" said the enthusiast.
- You already put two aside, Don! I have a bite right away!" muttered the taciturn with a greedy glow in the eyes.
- Don't touch no goats!" Don grumbled, brandishing his club. We keep it for our guest!
As you can see, dear reader, Mich the scowling and Don the flamboyant didn't agree on much!
But I realise we have not yet presented our protagonists. The two of them – Don and Mich as you know now - were quite a pair, they never left each other's side. One was much of a loudmouth and the other a rather taciturn fellow. Don trumpeted all the time and Mich showed more pensive, as much as trolls could. Quite different bus as spineless as each other, though...
And why did these two gentlemen-Trolls find themselves at odds?
Because of a she-troll, of course!
Don waved the ridiculous puff planted on his unsightly troll noggin:
- Mich, all this stuff we trap, we save it for the guest!
- You're a dumbass party pooper, Don! We gonna taste it or it won't be cooked proper and fit! Plus she might not come out...
- I told her we have a beautiful snow gnome! Guests love decorations!
- ... you can't eat decorations," Mich objected with an incredulous grin.
- And also I said she would get double treat! Don gnarled.
Indeed that was true. Undoubtedly. Without any modesty, Mich unpacked the thing and considered his three-pieces service with a little sneer of pride. It was all he got from his idiot father Tim, whom he had had to eat before he was eaten himself. But Mich doubted that the argument was enough, no matter how strong it was. Don, with his usual loquaciousness, drove his point home:
- She'll come if gotta bite ! Cram all not !
Mich, forced to postpone his agapes, was a bad loser:
- With you big mouth, you think you always right! But she stays in her cave, because cold and snow...
What again? Another objection ! We haven't talked about the mandatory snowfall?
…
But I suppose our reader suspects it, smart as she is!
…
All right, let us sort it out.
Outside the troll cave, it had been snowing! For days and days! A tornado of hail and ice had battered as far south as the Shire and Breeland, burying forests and drowning hills, freezing ponds, every river and even the Brandywine River! The sun was no longer able to pierce the winter clouds that weighed down on the land and continually poured their cargo of heavy and sticky flakes. Snowdrifts accumulated on the roads, pushed by the north wind. Nothing alive was moving, everything had gone into hiding.
Hunting had been hard lately, even for trolls, and even for tough guys like Don and Mich. They had been very fortunate in the blizzard to capture a reindeer team carrying a snowman and a tender boy. A true bargain for Yule, all included with hors d'oeuvres, main course, sweets and decorations!
And if, precisely, the troll lady of their thoughts was likely to accept the invitation of our pair of thieves, it was because hunger was gripping her, forcing her to gnaw Uncle Tim's shin!
The sausage hung pitifully in the lardoir, waiting for his fateful hour while hearing what he could from the incessant bickering of his hosts, the trolls:
- It's your fault she come not before!
- You don't see your mug!
- You don't either ! Cause you always bite stupid and never agree with me!
- It's you who never agree with me!
- ...
But let's leave these high-class rhetorical assaults for a moment. Meanwhile, Don's praised Yule decoration rested on its sledge, a block of ice sparkling in the glow of the Trolls' hearth. Our sausage, in his pendulum spasms, could sometimes stare at the round shape of the snowman:
Two pebbles of coal and an old pipe were enclosed in a ball of ice that rested on a shapeless heap of snow, surmounted by a broad-edged frozen hat. A coarse pole, inserted in the body, represented the broom of the boniface. A poignant witness to the children's winter joys, but a derisory trophy of the trolls' savagery, the snowman waited in the hearth's dancing glow, waiting for the trolls to agree on the organisation of Yule's Eve.
- ...
- Roast on the spit!
- Stewed!
- There's no time to leave the meat to mature!
- Just take turns sitting on it ! It will tenderize him !
- We'll have to see not to make porridge out of it...
- Well, porridge good...
- It's no feast meal! It's for old people with no teeth! Gonna show we're young, we have teeth and everything else!
And the debate dragged on, under the stern gaze of the snowman. The two troll cooks had finally managed to skewer one of the reindeers, without skewering each other, after having peeled it and got rid of its bells.
The sausage was following the trolls controversy, while a melted puddle slowly spread under the snowman. The fatness of the pudgy man was diminishing, to the point that tiny icy waves featuring a beard and white hair could now be seen. A true artist had sculpted the snowman's ice!
Suddenly the blood inside the sausage nearly froze under his thick layer of fat: the troll roosters were predicting his gastronomic future! His culinary fate had already been discussed, as the sausage's finery testified, but the companions were opposed about the opportunity to share with the chosen one of their hearts.
Don meant that the sausage would be served as an enticing dessert, as a mouth-watering appetizer for the lady, a prelude to the lustful after-meal delights. Mich was in favour of thinly slicing the sausage and enjoying it right away, to strengthen his stomach and elsewhere, without leaving a single slice for the gluttonous Maritorne:
- Don't play with food!
- Oh, cause you don't play, do you?
- I give her enough to keep busy without worrying about dessert!
- You moron! If you rob delicacies right under her jaws, she's to rob our own delicate parts !
- Well then, let's just chew on it now !
And the debate was slowly getting worse.
From under the defrosted edges of the hat, the snowman's charcoal pupils glanced furiously, as if the ice building, damaged by the heat, deplored the hesitations of the cooks-decorators-lovers duo.
Waving his rebellious wick, Don was spouting out the most exotic preparations to accommodate the sausage, with the aim of impressing the she-troll of his dreams, without forgetting to slash his rebellious comrade with rather distressing insults. The unfortunate victim thus narrowly avoided being scalded, stuffed with artichokes or impaled on a spit. Mich usually limited his repartees to the classic "Yourself! "or "Bullshit! "but he never left his posture. For the time being, they agreed to leave the little sausage alive, but for completely incompatible reasons: Mich intended to keep this first-class piece for himself, whereas Don had already sacrificed it to his hypothetical conquest.
But the "beauty" was long overdue and the tone rose between the opponents, who did not realise that their Yule decoration was threatening to melt away purely and simply. Curiously, the more the snowman lost its virginal whiteness and gave the appearance of a greyish old man, the more their invective became scathing, each troll accusing the other of rudeness.
When the two horrid characters came to blows, the little sausage had a vague glimmer of hope, but it was all in vain. Soon, the mobsters seized their clubs and larders and settled their quarrel right away. Screams of rage followed swearing, battle gruntings rose and a long gurgle slowly died. Through the cellar door, he saw a hairy arm falling to the ground, shaken by horrible convulsions and the hooked hand dropping its cutlass in a final spasm.
The unfortunate sausage, who had grown pale with the culinary treatments he had been forecast, was expecting the silhouette of the winning troll to come forward, in order to carry out his gastronomic plans. He was trembling at the end of his string, waiting for the court-bouillon.
But nothing happened !
The fire was slowly going out. From the bottom of his lardoir, our sausage could only see the troll's motionless hand and the snowman. Slowly, with astonishment, he saw the features of an old man, still clutching a pipe between his lips, rolling angry eyes and hugging a long wooden stick in his cold arms, get out of his ice bark. He was even more surprised when the elderly, who had regained some colour, finally cracked his knuckles. The old man chased the last ice flakes from his beard and was finally able to move his lips normally. With obvious pleasure, he threw a bundle over the dying ashes, pointed his staff at it and said in his bass voice: "Naro!".
Immediately clear flames rose up joyfully and with the light, the memory came flooding back to the tied boy. So it was indeed Father Yule, atop his sledge, whom he had seen in the mist! But how could this legendary character have let himself be captured by trolls, like a dizzy young hobbit?
The old man, now quite alert, unhung the sausage and found the hobbit something to wear. As you have understood, it was indeed one of Grandma Armbrawn's nephews, who had escaped the old lady's faulty surveillance.
As you can imagine, Wizard and Hobbit did not linger, even when the boy realised that there had only ever been one troll!
As a matter of fact, the monster's huge trunk, on its strong legs, splayed into two separate branches. The tallest branch ended in a noggin with arrogant jowls and a mocking grin, with a ridiculous light wick that made him look like a cap of blond hair. The shorter, stocky one bore a second head, sparse and scowling, now frozen in a grimace of final regret.
The two protagonists, swept away by their anger, though united in the certainty that their sexual prowess was worth two trolls, had been unable to resist their mortifying instincts and had killed each other. The wizard admitted that he had stirred up the fire of their discussion, as far as his numb jaw had allowed him to do so. The young hobbit was deeply shocked by the self-destructive rage of this despicable spawn.
- "I'm afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each..."1 It's in their nature! Sullen Mich and Flaming Don didn't agree on much - luckily for us! I wonder by what dark magic the Witch-King could have created such a horror?
For the return journey, they had to do without any reindeer. The old man put the hobbit on the sledge and took the harness, this time determined not to himself be surprised by the evil cold emanating from the northern moors of Angmar.
- "My cousin Radagast is not going to be happy!" he sighed as he set off. "He loved his reindeers... "
1 The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien. You certainly guess this sentence entirely gave birth to the whole story.