A DEMOCRACY OF TROLLS.
CHARLES COLEMAN FINLEY.
"LET GO.".
Windy tugged her shoulder free from Ragweed"s grip, cradling the baby protectively between her milk-heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the wall of the cave. "No."
"We took a vote and voted you should put the baby down."
"Mosswater is dead, so his vote doesn"t count."
"That"s true. Mosswater is dead," Ragweed said flatly, remarkably unmoved by his brother"s demise. He ground his jaw so hard the big flat teeth in back squeaked.
The sound annoyed Windy. She turned to snap at him and saw his face darken with a new idea.
"But the baby"s dead too!" he said triumphantly. "That"s why you should let go of it."
"Let"s have another vote."
Ragweed smiled, showing off his gray, cracked teeth. "That"s a idea. All those in favor of you putting down the dead baby?" He raised his hand. "And those against?"
Windy raised hers. "It"s a tie. So I can do what I want."
"Hey! Wait a moment--"
Before he could protest, she stood up and leaned forward on one long-armed knuckled hand. The Sun had just sunk low enough so they could go outside again. She left the overhung ledge of the cave, pressing past the tree and through the overgrown shrubs. Leaves wet from a night and day of rain brushed against her, and water ran in little rivulets down her back, filling the cracks in her skin. She lifted her head into the branches to inhale the sharp clean scent of the pine needles. Droplets rolled over the hard angles of her cheeks in place of the tears she refused to cry.
Windy walked to her favorite open spot on the slope in the long shadow of the mountain"s sheltering spur. From there she peered over the pines into the meadow below, and, surrounded by shade, watched the last light flow out of the valley. Uncheered by the dying Sun, she rocked the baby in the crook of her ma.s.sive arm.
She glanced up to the mouth of the cave. Ragweed dug in the dirt with his big k.n.o.bby fingers, then shoved his hands into his mouth. The soil was rich in spots where leaves and needles piled deep enough to decay and the rain sent worms swimming toward the surface. That had to be what Ragweed ate. Windy stirred the compost with fingerlike toes and a fat red wriggly worm squirmed out. She left it alone. She had no appet.i.te.
Ragweed turned his head in her direction, wrinkled his nose, and snorted. "It"s already starting to stink!"
She smelled it too. Her nose was sensitive to the scent of dead things, a main part of her diet. She knew her baby was starting to rot even though it had been dead less than a day. "I like the way she smells! And I"m not putting her down!"
Ragweed shrugged, then resumed his digging.
Windy stared at the little forlorn creature limp in her arms. She had been such a lively baby, so adventuresome, afraid of nothing. Hardly feared daylight at all. She used to crawl away at the first hint of darkness. So last night, when the rain poured down, and she crawled out of their crowded crack of rock, Windy listened to her laugh and took the chance to rub b.u.t.t with Ragweed. She was just getting excited herself when she heard the bigtooth lion"s roar and ran out to rescue her daughter.
She chased the bigtooth off at once, but by the time she reached her little girl it was too late. Her daughter"s skull was crushed, all soft, pulpy, and misshapen. Like a rotten pumpkin. Windy had eaten pumpkins once, near one of the villages of the black-haired people. But now, thinking of her baby, she"d never eat pumpkins again, no matter how tasty they were.
She felt like she"d never do anything again.
The last finger of light lingered on the green face of the meadow. Ragweed strolled over and sat down beside her. He noticed the worm twisting in the leaves, picked it up, and offered it to her. She stuck out her tongue to show she wasn"t hungry, to say no. He popped the worm in his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed.
"It"s almost dark," he said. "We should go down to that turtle sh.e.l.l --" that was what he called the cave that people built themselves to live in "-- and see if Snapper"s still there."
"Why?"
Ragweed shrugged. "Might be something to eat."
"Those animals might try to kill us, the way they killed Mosswater last night when he went to warn them about the lion."
Ragweed scratched his head, then probed one of his nostrils with a carrot-sized forefinger. Stirring up his brains in search of an idea, she guessed.
"We could try to scare them away," he offered.
She had guessed right. "We"ve been trying to scare them away for months," she reminded him.
"That"s true," he said slowly. "They"re probably pretty scared by now."
He didn"t seem to notice her answering silence. She sagged on her haunches and studied him thoughtfully. Ragweed was the handsomest troll she"d ever seen -- he had a beautifully shaped head that sloped back to a nice point, a brow so thick you could hardly see his eyes beneath it, no neck to speak of, arms like the trunks of trees, and a belly as round and dark as the new Moon. Short, bristly hairs ran down between his shoulders and into the crack of his b.u.t.tocks. Just looking at him used to send shivers up her spine and make her feel all juicy inside. She"d flirted with him, and he"d responded, and she was as happy as any troll could be until she became pregnant and realized that Ragweed was not the sharpest rock in the pile. He only looked smart compared to his brother, Mosswater. Of course, she couldn"t be that much smarter. Before it was time for her baby to be born, she let Ragweed and Mosswater persuade her to come down out of the mountains to this stupid little valley.
Ragweed grunted. "When Mosswater and I came down here a couple years back, the turtle sh.e.l.l didn"t have Snapper in it."
"Well, this year it did!" She"d heard the same statement a thousand times before and she was tired of it. But more than that, she wanted to blame Ragweed for Mosswater"s death -- Mosswater was stupid but very kind, and used to bring sweet little slugs for her baby -- and she wanted to blame Ragweed for the baby"s death too. She wanted to blame somebody, anybody, because if it was somebody else"s fault, then it wasn"t hers.
Ragweed rooted idly in the dirt. "I"m hungry."
Windy sighed. She"d heard that a thousand times as well. She stood up. Doing anything was better than doing nothing. "Come on. Let"s go down to the turtle sh.e.l.l. Maybe they"ll be scared off. Maybe we"ll find something to eat."
He clapped his hands. The crack echoed off the mountain walls, scattering birds from the trees. "That"s right!" he said. "All you need is some food, then you"ll put that baby down."
They walked down the familiar slope. They"d varied the path some every night looking for new sources of food, but there were only so many ways to go. Ragweed turned over logs and broke off pieces of stumps, but they were the same logs and stumps he"d searched a dozen times before. They hadn"t seen the carca.s.s of so much as a dead sparrow in two weeks; it had been a month since they"d found that deer before the wild dogs got to it. Ragweed paused to snack on a nest of termites, then a bunch of grubs and crunchy hundred-leg bugs inside a stump. She waited for him to stuff his face. When they continued on their way, he grabbed the lower branches of trees and chewed the leaves off the ends. The rain moistened them up a bit so they didn"t taste so chokingly dry. The scent enticed Windy, but not enough to make her eat.
They arrived at the wide meadow beside the pond and Ragweed waded into the water to slake his thirst. Windy"s throat was terribly parched despite the drippings she"d licked off the cave roof, so she followed him, holding the baby out of the water as she bent down to take a drink.
Ragweed splashed over and rubbed his hands on her bottom.
"Thhppppt!" Water sprayed out of her mouth. "Stop that!"
"Nothing to interrupt us now," he leered.
She ignored him, bending to take another sip. He reached around and squeezed her breast.
"Yow!" Windy hopped away with a splash, bared her teeth, and smacked him with a backhanded swing.
"Hey!" he hollered. "What did I do?"
"That hurt." She turned away, sloshed out of the pond, and started her three-legged gait through the woods without him. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s ached like a bad tooth. They"d been leaking all evening and she didn"t know what to do. She guessed they"d dry up in a few days, but right now she"d rather step in fire than have him touch them.
Ragweed hurried to catch up. They crested the chestnut ridge where they"d sat most nights through the late spring and summer. Mosswater had been the only one brave -- or stupid -- enough to approach the turtle sh.e.l.l night after night. But he was that way. He did something one time and then got stuck doing it over and over even if it didn"t work because he couldn"t think of anything else.
The rain-heavy breeze carried good scents. Windy smelled the fruit ripening on the pear trees away down the valley. Off in the direction of the sunset, toward the river, she thought she sniffed something dead, maybe drowned in yesterday"s flood. Small, but still a good meal if she"d been hungry enough to go looking for it. She turned her head the other direction toward the little hollow of land where the cave was. She smelled Mosswater strongly above all else, and the faint scent of the lion, and goat"s blood a couple days old. The squash were ripening, and the corn, and the beans inside that little thorn wall. And then she smelled something else ....
Ragweed caught the same scent. "Hot diggety!" he shouted, making an enthusiastic scooping motion with his hands before he ran down the hill. "Fresh rotten meat!"
"Be careful!" she cried out. But Snapper was dead, the one that came out and shouted at Mosswater and threw fire at him. At least she thought he was. Holding her baby tight to her chest, she ran after Ragweed.
Ragweed stopped beside his dead brother, whose body sprawled face down in the mud. Windy paused beside him and only then did her ears, which were better than the average troll"s, certainly much better than Ragweed"s, detect the high- pitched crying. When Ragweed turned to enter the cave she tripped him, grabbing hold of his wrist so he couldn"t break his fall. As he squawked, hitting the ground, she rushed past him and inside.
The odors. .h.i.t her first. The dead man -- Snapper -- and the dead woman. There was something wrong with the woman"s flesh. The smell of baby p.o.o.p and urine were also strong. Windy wrinkled her nose, swiveled her head around until she saw the woman"s corpse in the corner with the baby sitting there chewing on her hair. Its eyes were shut, so tired it could barely sit up straight as it cried.
Ragweed burst through the doorway behind her. "Ho there! Save some for me!"
He shoved her down and she kicked at him. He dodged her foot, hopping ponderously over her outstretched leg. She dropped her dead daughter, dove under Ragweed"s groping arms, and slid across the dirt floor on her tender b.r.e.a.s.t.s to grab the crying baby first. She curled around it protectively.
"Go ahead," Ragweed said, clearly disappointed. "It"s not much. Won"t fill your belly up."
The baby continued to wail as it snuggled into Windy"s arms. It rubbed its face around her breast until its tiny mouth closed on the hard pebble of her nipple. It didn"t have much of a suck compared to her little girl, but then it didn"t need much of one either.
Ragweed picked up the woman"s hand, stuck the fingers in his mouth, and chewed on them. After a couple crunches, he spit them out and dropped her arm. "This one"s still warm, but she"s been sick. Ought to let her rot for a couple days. She"ll taste better with bugs in her."
Windy wrinkled her flat nose again. The dead woman was this baby"s mother; she suddenly felt quite protective of her. "Go chew on Snapper then," she said. "He"s been dead longer."
"All gristle, no fat, like enough," muttered Ragweed, but he crossed the room.
Windy caressed the baby"s head. It had such beautiful black hair, disguising its misshapen skull and lack of a brow. Large -- gorgeously large -- eyes in the painfully flat face stared right at her before they fluttered shut. The ache in Windy"s heart eased as quickly as the soreness in her breast.
"Ack!"
Ragweed jumped back so hard he fell on his bottom. He bounced up and retreated across the room to Windy"s side.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Go look for yourself! I"m not getting near it, not if it was a rotten mammut on a hot summer night and I hadn"t eaten anything in ten days."
Windy carefully cradled the suckling baby to her, took a step forward, and then almost turned to stone. She didn"t need to get any closer to see the amber-colored ampules strung around the dead man"s neck. They were magic, sunlight trapped in warm ice. If either one cracked accidentally it could kill them both. She hopped backward so fast the baby lost the nipple. Its eyes flew wide open.
"You"ll have to share it now," Ragweed said.
Windy kept one eye on Snapper"s body as if he might leap up and attack her. The baby stretched its neck, trying to get its mouth back on her breast. "Share what?"
"The live meat."
"No!" She dodged his sudden grasp, bolted out the door and into the yard. He chased after her.
"We always share meat," he said.
"This isn"t meat -- it"s a baby!"
He slouched back on his haunches and laughed. "Don"t be crazy! You"re just sad because you lost your girl. You don"t mean to keep that thing."
She hadn"t realized that was exactly what she meant to do until she heard him say it. "I can. And I will."
He thumped his knuckles on his chest to frighten her. She wasn"t impressed and frowned at him until he gave it up. "If that"s how you feel," he said, pacing in a circle around her, "then we"ll just have to take a vote. All those in favor of eating the live meat, raise your hand."
He threw his hand up into the air, looking around the way he always did at meetings to see who was voting with him. She ignored him, and, gently as she could, switched the baby around, so it could drink from the other sore and swollen breast.
"All right then, everybody in favor of keeping the meat for a baby, raise your hand."
Windy lifted hers as she looked down, making a kissy mouth at the child. It stopped sucking long enough to laugh and reached up to touch her face.
"That"s two against one," she said. "We win."
"It can"t vote!"
"Well, it raised its hand." She really just hoped to confuse and distract Ragweed, because even if Mosswater was still alive and they both outvoted her, she wasn"t about to give up this new baby. She reached down to tickle its belly and saw it was a boy. "He heard you, and he raised his hand. So there."
"But --!" Ragweed sputtered off, then slammed his hands down, splattering mud everywhere.
The baby jerked at the sound, but she made another kissy mouth and a smoochy sound and he giggled again. His eyelids seemed very heavy as he swallowed gulp after gulp.
"You aren"t going to keep that thing, are you? It"s an animal."
"Is not." He had eyes just like her darling girl, she decided. Whatever he was -- whatever people were -- they were more than animals, even if they weren"t trolls.
Ragweed circled her. "It"s a maggot, that"s what it is."
"He"s a big strong baby." To be truthful, he wasn"t big or strong. But he was a baby and now he was her baby.
"It"s a maggot. It"s little, white, and it wouldn"t make a mouthful, and you found it crawling on a dead body. Maggot, maggot, maggot!"
"He is not a maggot!" She threw a clump of mud at Ragweed but it missed and smacked wetly against the side of the turtle sh.e.l.l.
"Well, it ain"t a slug." Ragweed hurled a mudball back at her, with better aim. She ducked, blocking it with her free arm, as he wandered over to the garden and shoved a half-ripe gourd into his mouth. He turned over some leaves near the bottoms of the plants. "Slugs have stripes," he said sullenly around a mouthful of pulp and seeds. "Least some do. The tasty ones."
He grazed through the garden without offering anything to her. Windy rocked her ma.s.sive forearm until the baby fell sleep. After a while she rose and ate a little also. Her hunger had returned. "What are you going to do about Mosswater?" she asked.
Ragweed looked up at the sky. It was getting late. He shrugged. "Thought I"d drag him back up to our cave, shove him in the back."
"Maybe tomorrow night?" Windy hated this time of year, when the nights were too short and too warm without enough time to do anything but eat.
Ragweed knuckle-walked over to his brother"s corpse. "I don"t want to come back here tomorrow."
"Maybe we could put him in the turtle sh.e.l.l with Snapper."
"Huh." Ragweed poked the dead body. "We could do that."
Windy felt so relieved she paused to empty her bladder. She didn"t want to come back here tomorrow night either. She helped Ragweed drag and push Mosswater"s body through the narrow doorway. While Ragweed laid his brother in the corner farthest from the door and window, she picked up her daughter and placed her beside the dead woman. She tucked the hand with the missing fingers under the little girl, and draped the other arm across her body. She carefully avoided Snapper"s body.
Ragweed waited in the doorway. "You done?"
She nodded and walked outside with him. He stood upright on his hind legs and craned his neck around, looking for stones. "Let"s seal up the whole cave," she said.