-O-
Picturebook Romance
A Trolls fanfic
By Dreamsinger
Chapter Nineteen
The History of the Trolls and the Bergens
Another thing that was different about living with Jaunty and Courtley was that they were more willing to talk about things that other trolls wouldn't, or couldn't; unhappy things, even disturbing things. But they were things I needed to hear.
It was Courtley who gave me a long-overdue lesson on the history of the trolls and the bergens.
-O-
By the third morning, Jaunty was almost over his cold, and had urged Courtley and me not to miss our evening walk again. As we strolled along, I thought about the past few days and how unexpectedly good it had felt to help Courtley take care of the usually-jolly magenta glitter troll.
Until now, I'd been the one everyone focused on. I'd been the one causing difficulties and worry. It was a nice change to be one of the trolls doing the caring, for once.
I realized that I'd liked taking care of him. I'd liked being needed, liked how strong and capable it made me feel, to sit by Jaunty's side and put cool cloths on his forehead and read to him to keep him from being bored. To let him put a sweaty hand on my shoulder to keep his balance as he made his shaky, fever-dizzy way to the bathroom. I'd been needed, and his and Courtley's grateful thanks of appreciation had felt really good to me.
This time I hadn't let them down.
Maybe I should be a doctor when I grow up. Or a nurse, I mused, peacefully breathing in the cool night air as Courtley and I continued our stroll.
I had a lot to think about tonight. Besides King Peppy, the other trolls had begun to look at me in a different way than they ever had before, with interest and pleasure, not wariness. And they were praising me.
I wasn't used to being praised, but I discovered I loved it. I recalled with pride all the comments on how smart I was for creating the healing soup, how special I was, how caring, and how natural I looked as I sat next to Jaunty, feeding him the soup, a damp towel draped over my shoulder to clean his face when he was done eating.
I was even praised for how quick I was to shield the soup with my hair when Jaunty sneezed and a cloud of glitter went up. Organic troll-glitter wasn't poisonous, of course, but I didn't want it to dilute the healing properties of my special soup. I wanted Jaunty to get well as fast as possible.
As Courtley and I walked along the familiar route, my thoughts began to drift in familiar directions. Suddenly I stopped short.
"What's wrong, Branchkin?" the tall light-purple troll at my side asked.
Jaunty had begun calling me by the odd nickname a few weeks ago. It had annoyed me at first, but then Courtley had picked it up. It had embarrassed me, but at the same time I'd been flattered that the two best athletes in the village had given me a nickname, no matter how silly. I'd gotten used to answering to it, even when other trolls used it, and I rarely noticed it now.
"I didn't do a patrol last night! Or the night before! I forgot all about it!"
"Well, you were a bit busy helping me care for Jaunty. I'm so glad you were there, lad. He's never been so sick before. I honestly don't know what I would have done without you."
I was torn between pleasure at the praise and guilt at my negligence. "What if the bergens had come, or some other predator, with Jaunty lying in bed, helpless?"
Courtley was silent.
I bristled. "I know, you're gonna tell me they aren't coming and that I'm being silly to worry so much."
"I would never say that, lad." Courtley's deep, steady voice comforted me as much as his words. "You aren't silly. In fact, you could stand to be a little bit more silly, maybe, but you're as clever and caring and hard-working as any troll I'd wish to meet, and Jaunty and I feel very lucky to have the privilege and pleasure of having you with us."
I kept quiet, unsure where he was going with this, although I couldn't help but feel a warm glow inside.
We walked for a little while in the soft nighttime moonglow before Courtley nodded to himself and took a deep breath. "Has anyone ever talked to you about the bergens, Branch?"
"No. They say it's not healthy to obsess about them so much."
"Then, what are your thoughts about them?"
It took me a minute to decide what to say. No one had ever asked me anything like that before. "Well, they might talk and wear clothes, but they're not real people. They can't be."
"Why would you say that?"
"Bergens don't have feelings. Not like we do."
He looked surprised. I sighed and got ready for a lecture song on how Everything Has Feelings And We Should Respect Them Because That's How We All Live In Harmonyyyyy.
Instead, I got a pleased smile. "You're quite the deep thinker, Branch. Always asking for answers, or seeking them on your own until you're satisfied. I respect that."
"You do?"
Courtley nodded and looked into the distance. "You remind me of a certain impetuous young female troll I used to know…" For a minute his expression resembled mine when I looked into a mirror: unhappy. Then he shook his head and smiled down at me.
"But in this case, your conclusion is based only on the bergens you remember from four years ago. Well, it's true that they have their own ways, very different from us in some ways, but not so different in others."
"Well, since 'their ways' say it's okay for them to eat trolls, to me they'll always be nothing more than monsters."
"Maybe they are monsters, now," Courtley murmured, almost more to himself than to me. "But has anyone ever told you that the bergens weren't always as you remember them?"
I looked up at him with wide eyes. "They weren't?"
"Well, lad, I wasn't much older than you when the first bergen discovered us. Back then, the bergens were bold and fierce and proud, traveling through the forest in small groups, hunting and gathering as they went. I remember that although they were quick to anger, they were also very clever and technologically advanced in some ways, since unlike us, they were too big to work with the forest bugs and animals as we do. So instead, they'd had to invent all kinds of nonliving things to help them. Maybe that desensitized them to the feelings of other creatures, like us trolls."
Some of this I remembered seeing for myself, but what Courtley said next stunned me.
"But even so, they did know how to laugh."
I flicked my ears back in surprise. "Bergens don't laugh. Everyone knows that!"
"Just listen, lad. Remember how Jaunty and I told you how the bergens don't work well together? Well, they used to, and they accomplished many marvels we trolls had never thought of. We learned a lot from watching them, those early years, before their growing dependence on troll happiness became all they thought about. We had plenty of opportunities. We watched them build an entire town around the Troll Tree. At first, we were even happy about that, because as trolls, of course we loved having company."
"What? That's crazy. They wanted to eat you! Why didn't you all escape while you had the chance?"
"We didn't know, Branchkin. We thought they were our friends."
"Your friends?"
"Branchkin, when trolls first started to go missing, we had no idea what had happened to them. We searched for them, but of course, we never found them. We thought there must be some new predator in the area that had developed a taste for trolls, so we spent a lot of time tracking the forest creatures and searching through the forest. The bergens even pretended to be concerned, and volunteered to help us look for our missing loved ones. Many times, the trolls that went with them to search…never returned." His voice broke, and I bit my lip.
"I'm sorry," I said softly, wondering whom he had lost. "That must have been so awful."
Courtley took a deep breath as he ran a hand through his luxurious dark hair, looking much like my own in the darkness, a tower of black with purple-green highlights reflected from the glimmer bug that rode on the top of my own shorter black thatch.
It took him a moment to continue. "The bergens told us they were eaten by all kinds of predators. Their king saw to it that only a few of the royal staff had access to the tree, and none of them ever let on what was really going on, so it took many years before we found out what – or rather who - the real predators were. In fact, it was little Princess Poppy's mother, Daisy, who discovered the truth."
"Really?"
"We were classmates, and good friends. She was a brave, clever troll with a wonderfully playful nature. She was also, incidentally, something of a rule-breaker. One day she hid in the chef's hat, planning to stick a rainbow sparkler in her hair to shower them in glitter, and ended up in the kitchen. She overheard the bergens talking about…about what really happened to the trolls who disappeared. They were all kept in another part of the castle, and once a year there was a…a sort of holida…"
He stopped speaking, and I noticed his hands shaking. I felt a great sadness sweep over me, remembering all those I had lost, and then a pang of remorse. He grew up a prisoner of the bergens. He must have lost so many people he cared about.
For the first time in my life, I felt an impulse to reach out and hold his hand to comfort him, but just then the little glimmer on my head flew down and hovered in front of his chest, humming a concerned trill. The tall troll lifted his hands to press the bug affectionately to his cheek. The alarmingly harsh lines of strain on his face lit up by the soft glow began to relax. "Sorry, Branchkin. It's not easy to talk about it."
"You don't have to," I said.
"No, it's all right lad. I had a point to all this. Well, the shock of what she heard was so great that she let herself be seen. They tried to capture her but she escaped, and managed make it back to the troll tree and tell the king and queen what was really going on. King Peppy told me once that that was the moment he fell in love with her, standing there all covered in taco sauce after her terrifying adventure in the kitchen, but showing not an ounce of fear. She wanted to go right back out and confront the bergens then and there."
"Wow. Did she do it?"
"No. You see, Peppy's parents had spent over a decade believing that the bergens were their friends, and so they tried to tell her that she was mistaken. She insisted, so they relented and told her that they would go talk to the bergens. The next morning they left the tree for the first time in many years…and never returned."
"The bergen king claimed he hadn't seen them. Daisy wanted to search the castle, but Peppy begged her not to, saying that with his parents gone, he needed her more than he'd ever needed anyone before. A few weeks later, among his grieving people, Peppy took over as the new king, and Daisy became his wife."
"Soon after that the bergens began to construct a vast cage around the troll tree. To keep us safe, they claimed, but Daisy knew what was really going on. She tried to tell our people, but I'm sorry to say they didn't believe her. She was a famous prankster, you see. She did manage to convince Peppy to investigate and gather proof to convince the trolls that the only thing we could do was leave the troll tree."
"Why wouldn't they want to leave?"
"Because the bergens had managed to convince everyone that the forest was the real danger, and that the cage was the only way to stay safe. So King Peppy asked for volunteers to investigate the bergens. Jaunty and I were two of them."
"Really?" I was fascinated. "Like detectives? What did you find out? Did you find Queen Daisy's proof?"
"We found some evidence. I tore a page out of a book in the kitchen that explained how to cook…" He stopped, looking half-sick.
"How to cook trolls?" I asked grimly.
He nodded. "It got our people's attention, but it wasn't enough to make them want to set off into the scary forest, so we kept looking. If any of our people were being kept prisoner somewhere, it wasn't in the castle any more. We began to investigate the town, but we could only do it when we could sneak away from the bergens."
I was totally captivated by the story. "Couldn't Queen Daisy help you?"
"She did what she could, lad, but by then she was expecting Princess Poppy. There was only so much she could do. She did come up with the idea that eventually got us free, though."
"You mean tricking the bergens with trolls carved out of wood?"
"Right, lad."
"So how did you manage to convince everyone to escape?"
Courtley's face grew still and heavy. "We didn't. It was Queen Daisy. Not long after she had Poppy, she made a big announcement that she was going to confront the bergens and get them to stop doing bad things to us, and she said that if she didn't return, they would know who was responsible. And she left."
"And she never came back."
"…No."
We walked in silence, until I heard Courtley sniff. He could have caught Jaunty's cold, but I didn't think so. Again, I felt the urge comfort him. This was all history to me, but he had actually known and loved all these trolls who had died.
"Courtley." I reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. "I'm so sorry."
He turned to look down at me, his eyes wide with surprise, rimmed with unshed tears. I felt my own eyes well up, and I opened my arms and held them out to him and he swooped me up, hugging me tightly. "Branchkin. Oh, Branchkin."
I hugged him back, but when I was ready to stop, he wasn't. That was normal for trolls, of course, but not for me. It was too much. I began to struggle, pushing against him until he set me back on my feet.
I turned away, trying to hide my shame. Any other troll would have hugged Courtley as long as he needed.
Courtley's voice drifted over to me. "Thank you, lad. I needed that hug."
I looked down at the ground and felt my mouth curve into a small smile.
A few minutes later, after mulling things over in my mind, I asked softly, "Courtley, can I ask you something?"
"Of course, lad. Anything."
"Well, I still don't understand why nobody tried to escape until Queen Daisy had to sacrifice herself. It just doesn't make sense. Even if they didn't believe it was the bergens, obviously there was something taking them away."
"You're right, Branchkin, but you see, our relationship with the bergens was a complicated one. The decision to escape wasn't an easy answer. You see, most of us cared about them."
"What? No way!" I said incredulously.
"Remember, we thought they were our friends. And even after King Peppy learned what was really going on, he told me once that he had come to feel a certain amount of responsibility to the bergens."
"To the bergens? How could he? They ate us!"
"Yes, they did. But do you remember what I said about how they changed from the way they used to be? How they used to live in small tribes, hunting and gathering most of what they needed from the forest, fiercely wild and free?"
"Yes," I said reluctantly.
"I think being forced to live close to the Troll Tree and to one another was hard on them. Being dependent on us for their happiness was even more so. In a way, we were the ones holding them captive. Does that make sense?"
I shook my head. "Not really."
Courtley ruffled my hair. "I know. It took me a while to sort it all out in my head. I expect it sounds a bit crazy, doesn't it?"
"It sure does," I agreed.
"My point is, Branchkin, those of us who remember what the bergens were like when we first met them hope that they'll get better, that they'll go back to the way they were before they ever met us. And with every year that passes, that hope grows. And I hope, little Branchkin, that what I've said makes you feel better, too."
-O-
We never spoke of that conversation again, but in later years I thought about it a lot. Maybe, in a seriously bizarre way, we had been partially responsible for their misery, but that was no excuse for what they'd done to us. And if some of them resented us for their dependence, all they'd had to do was let us go!
I learned a little more bergen history in school as an older trolling.
We had once had over three hundred trolls in the village. It had taken a long time to deplete that number, in part because at first, we kept having more trollings. It took many years for the survivors to become hesitant to bring new life into the world, but from that point on our numbers began to drop alarmingly, to the point that when King Peppy fell in love with a brave, pushy, confident pink female, he began to listen to her when she urged him to try to escape.
"I know things have been this way for a long time," Daisy had told him. "But things are changing. I know you don't want to anger the bergens if we try and fail to escape, but if we don't do it soon, there won't be enough of us left to do what's needed to build a new home and survive out there!"
When she sacrificed herself, Peppy went gray for almost a month. So did some of his people, although all of them eventually regained their colors over the next several months. It disturbed Peppy to see them so downhearted, but he needed time to grieve, too.
Then Rosiepuff, one of the few remaining elders and one of the people Peppy had always been able to turn to in times of need, had been taken. I, her only grandchild, had gone gray and fretful, and had never recovered. The final straw had been when Chef chose his own child, a trolling less than two years old, to be one of the trolls sacrificed at the next Trollstice. From a lover to a fighter, Peppy had acted upon his beloved wife's escape plan, and never looked back.
-O-
Another thing I really appreciated about my foster dads was how they never tried to make me sing. They enjoyed singing, of course, but their real passion was for any kind of physical activity.
"You don't sing? Seriously?"
"No. I don't like it."
"But why not, lad?"
Blue and aqua eyes gazed at me in astonishment.
"I just don't. I don't like to sing!"
I started to tense up. My ears flattened as I looked down and to the side, feeling my shoulders hunch forward as I crossed my arms over my belly.
I'd been through this scene many, many times, and it always ended badly. The more they tried to convince me that not singing was wrong, that I should be advertising my feelings (and thus my presence) to the world at the top of my lungs, the stronger my instinct to clamp down, to run, to escape. If they kept pushing, I'd snap, and lash out: throwing things, breaking things, or knocking over cans of water or paint or glue to deliberately ruin arts and crafts projects. Then I'd stomp off, leaving sounds of dismay in my wake.
I sensed the two of them exchange glances, and then Courtley took a step toward me and knelt down.
Suddenly I was looking at a pair of light blue eyes just like mine, except for a few light wrinkles at the corners that gave his face a wise, kindly appearance. Against my better judgement, I felt my resolve weakening. Maybe it's okay if Courtley says so…
But instead he said, "It's all right, lad. You don't have to sing if you don't want to."
"Really?"
Surprised, I looked up at Jaunty, who nodded and smiled. He came forward to place a gentle hand on my head, stroking my hair back in an unexpectedly soothing motion. "No, of course not. You don't have to sing unless you want to, kiddo. It's no big deal."
I was silent, looking wonderingly from one to the other as I slowly relaxed. I let Jaunty's hand stay on my head, its warm weight steadying me as Courtley stood up and comfortingly patted my back.
"Okay."
-O-
Never before had I had foster parents with whom I was so in tune, who understood so much about me without me having to say anything. And it didn't seem as if they were making sacrifices to accommodate my needs; it felt natural. Like a real family.
I'd never seriously believed it could happen, but I wondered sometimes if they might really, truly want me. For good.
And I wondered if I might actually want them, too.
Author's Note:
I spend a lot of time on Branch's early life, when he had closer, more intimate relationships with the people in his life. Later on they are less intense, because with each new loss he had begun to pull away emotionally from the other trolls until he reaches the point where he cuts himself off completely. Well, except for a certain pink troll who never gave up on him.
I believe in educating kids, not hiding knowledge until they are 'old enough'. I remember when I was a kid, many of the things that scared me were harmless but no one bothered to explain them. Now we have the Internet, which helps, but it will never take the place of face-to-face conversation with a caring person who can explain things in a way that responds to your emotional needs.
