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chapter-8-motley-crew

Dalkey Island, South County Dublin

There is a common misconception that trolls are stupid. The fact is, trolls are only relatively stupid.

Compared to astrophysicists and Grand High Hey-Hey Monks, trolls could be considered a bit lacking in the IQ department; but even a below-average troll will solve a puzzle faster than any chimpanzee or dolphin on the planet. Trolls have been known to fashion crude tools, learn sign language, and even grunt out a few intelligible syllables. In the early Middle Ages, when troll sideshows were legal, the famous performing troll Count Amos Moonbeam would be fed honey punch by his dwarf handler until he belched out a fair approximation of The Ballad of Tingly Smalls.

So, trolls stupid?

Definitely not.

What trolls are is stubborn. Pathologically so. If a troll suspects that someone wishes it to exit through door A, then it will definitely choose door B, possibly after relieving itself all over door A on the way out.

This made it difficult for trolls to integrate in the Lower Elements. The LEP even have a special troll division of trained handlers who log the most overtime hours per capita tracking down rogue trolls who refuse to be corralled in the tunnels of suburban Haven. At any given time there are a hundred-plus trolls who have chewed out their tracking chips and are crawling through cracks in the earth’s crust, moving inexorably toward magical hot spots on the surface.

Trolls are drawn to magical residue like dwarfs are drawn to stuff that doesn’t belong to them. Trolls feed on residue. It nourishes them and increases their life spans. And as they grow older, they grow craftier.

The oldest troll on record has been known by many names in his lifetime. His mother may have named him Gruff, or she may have been trying to say Get off. To LEPtroll he was simply Suspect Zero, and to the humans he was the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, or El Chupacabra, depending on which area he had been spotted in.

Gruff had stayed alive for several extra centuries by being prepared to hike across the globe in search of magical residue. There was not a continent he had not visited under cover of darkness, and his graying hide was crisscrossed with the scars and scorch marks of a hundred tussles with the LEP and various human hunters. If Gruff could put a sentence together, he would probably say: Maybe I look beat up, but you should see the other guys.

Gruff was currently residing in a cave on Dalkey Island, off the coast of South Dublin, and he would swim ashore to a private slipway and help himself to livestock from surrounding farms. He had been spotted a few times by the owner of the slipway, an eccentric Irishman who now sang to him nightly from across the bay. Gruff knew that he would either have to move on or eat the human in the next couple of days, but for this particular evening he was content to lay his head on the carcass of a sheep, which would serve as a pillow for now and as breakfast later on.

His sleep was interrupted by the activation of a sixth sense that inhabited the space in his brain somewhere between taste and smell. There was magical activity nearby that set the inside of his skull a-tingling, as though fireflies had hatched in there. And where there was magic, there would undoubtedly be residue. Enough to cure the ache in his back and seal up the running sore on his haunch where a walrus had gored him.

Gruff scooped sausages of offal from the sheep’s innards and swallowed them whole to sustain him for the trip. And as he lowered himself into the sea for the short swim to the mainland, he felt the magic’s lure grow stronger and his spirits lifted.

Gruff longed for the sweet nectar of residue to cure what ailed him. And when a troll has its stout heart set on something, there are not many things on this earth capable of blocking its way.