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The March-Stepper
Chapter Two

Once upon a time there was a Troll who lived under a bridge and a girl with no name.

Trolls tell half stories; that was what the girl found the most irritating about her new friend. One day when they were passing the time he cleared his throat in a way she had come to recognize as a signal and said "Once upon a time in a far away land the King went a'hunting and came across a glade so fair and beautiful that he planted his banner on the very spot and declared that he and his sons would live forever in the castle he would build there."

The girl sat up. "How beautiful was it?" she asked, probingly.

"Comely as the mornin'," said the Troll.

"Cliché," said the girl. The Troll scratched his nose contemplatively.

"To furnish his new castle," he went on, ignoring her completely, "he carted in the finest carpets from the Holy Land, paintings by famous masters, furniture carved from rare and aromatic woods, candlesticks of the purest silver- you know. Swag. He didn't miss a trick, that King. Spent a year and a day and a mountain of gold building that damn castle. Only one thing he left out."

"What was that?" inquired the girl, sitting up straight.

"Walls," said the Troll, a slow grin spreading from bat ear to bat ear and exposing a mouth choked with teeth. "On account of the view was so good that he couldn't bear to have anything get between him and it. Right out there in the middle of the boonies he threw down a flagstone floor even a troll couldn't hardly spit across, with a pillar at each corner and a thatch roof to keep the rain out. Wasn't much more than a gazebo!"

"What's a gazebo?"

The Troll told her. She considered this for a moment, then asked "What did he do with the paintings, if there weren't any walls?"

"I expect," (said the Troll, with great dignity) "that he just propped them up against chairs and pillars and them."

The girl accepted this without question, frowned a bit, and asked "What about when he had to go to the loo?"

"What?" demanded the troll, consternated.

"Well," said the girl, "I just can't see a King going to the loo out there in the boonies. They're very particular about that sort of thing."

"He had a silk screen about the chamber-pot," allowed the Troll. "Well, he had two, on account of there wasn't a wall to put it up against." And with that the girl was satisfied.

They sat there in silence for some minutes. It was about when the Troll lifted a lamb from her flock in one massive, creased palm and began to toss it idly from one hand to the other that common decency prompted her to demand "And then what happened?"

The Troll looked up, astonished. "What do you mean, what happened?" he asked.

"I mean what happened next!" explained the girl, exasperated.

"How should I know?" asked the Troll. "I wasn't there."

"But-"

"Can't go around asking people to tell you about things they don't know about, girl. That's in the rules, that is." And he fell into a blue sulk until she stomped her foot once on the cobbles and went home with her sheep milling around her ankles.

("Once upon a time," she told her father the next morning, "a King built a castle without walls in a beautiful glade, because he liked the view so much."

"I'll built yez a castle if'n yez don't watch out," said her father. "Go and milk the cows!"

"Will you really build me a castle?"

"No.")

Other than that, though, life was good; very good, in fact. Life was roses. The Troll and the girl spent every afternoon together, trading riddles, racing sticks, and generally behaving like a couple of enormous prats.

But every day the Troll came around to telling a story, and when he did no amount of wheedling, weeping, or wiles would induce him to continue after he was through. Every day ended with the girl storming off in a huff, the Troll watching her go with his big, watery eyes, knowing she would be back again the next morning.

A year and a day passed in such pleasant pursuits, and with every passing hour the girl found herself more and more smitten with her friend the Troll. In her eyes his long green knobbly arms grew graceful and strong (well, stronger), his oily black hair fell down his back in a foam of curls, and his massive, twisted face was, if not handsome, somewhat less than ugly. In contrast, the boys in the village were sunburnt, spotty, and oh so very stupid. They never seemed to know any stories at all. And most of them were afraid of her.

And so one day she sat up from the yearling she had been putting to very good use as a pillow and, for the first time ever, interrupted the Troll halfway through his story. "Oh, Troll," said she, "I love you truly."

The Troll, who had been spinning out a long yarn about a fairy blacksmith who proposed marriage to a frog, blinked his oil-drop eyes at her in astonishment.

"And I love you," he said after the sort of long and awkward moment that shows up in stories right after the snotnose kid points out that the king isn't wearing his trousers. "You're like the little sis I never had on account of I was born outta a rock."

The girl scowled. "No, you don't understand," she said, "I love you."

The Troll stuck one long green finger in his ear and twisted it about enthusiastically. "I love you too," he said, "more'n a goat an' more'n cool water onna hot day an more'n a nice fresh Roman. You know that."

Exasperated, she kicked the Troll in the leg. Almost immediately, she regretted it.

"I don't think we're talking about the same kind of thing," she opined a few minutes later when the swelling had gone down. "I love you like in the story."

"Wot story?" said the Troll with a note of desperation in his voice. "I got a thousand an' one of them, me. You mean the one about the mad Turk and the blue salamander?"

"No," said the girl.

"Wot, the one about the vicar and his amazin' going-up-in-the-air machine?"

"No," said the girl, through clenched teeth. The Troll scritched his black nails against his chin.

"Ah, I've got it," he said, "you mean the one about the pirates wot run aground on the floatin' island of-"

"No," the girl yelled with a suspicion of tears in her voice, "I mean the one about the blacksmith and the frog! I want to marry you!"

The Troll twitched his bat-ears and waggled his heavy brows and drummed his long, gnarled toes on the cobbles in honest confusion.

"But, girl," he said, finally, "I can't marry you."

"And why not?" she demanded, her voice more than a little shrill.

"'cos you aren't a troll!" returned the Troll, as if it was as obvious as what year it was (609) or what color the sky was (blue) or who the Pope was (Holy Boniface IV).

It was too much. The girl stared at him for a good fifteen seconds, her ordinarily pale face mottled with a rather frightening purplish color, before kicking a sheep over the side of the bridge ("Hey!") and storming off without her flock. The Troll watched her go.

The next morning he hoisted himself over the edge of the bridge when he heard the sound of hooves clip-clopping across the cobbles only to find that it was not the girl but the youngest of her seven brothers, who took one look at the Troll and promptly went and ruined a good pair of trousers.

When he told the story at supper his brothers laughed at him, his father swore at him, and his mother crossed herself elaborately. His sister only scowled. That night, when she heard the soft sound of someone clearing their throat in the darkness outside her room, the girl went and closed the shutters without looking outside.

Of course, she had to go back to the bridge sooner or later. As the youngest and her family's only girl she was the one they could most afford to lose for the half-day it took to take the kine to pasture. But when she did find her way back, the bridge was empty and nobody's blue-green fingers were clamped on the edge. The Troll, it seemed, wasn't talking to her.

And when she dropped sticks, always feeling a bit guilty at the frivolity, they never came out on the other side of the bridge afterwards.