Horns & Wrinkles (9 page)

"I saw them playing just one." I was trying to be helpful.

"I stole the other two back." She winked. "And I'll get that third one too, if Bodacious doesn't get it first. Oh, don't look so surprised. It's not the ukulele she cares about: it's young river trolls. She tries to make miners out of them, which is what started all this nonsense in the first place. A long time back, Bodacious hired three river trolls to help her mine to the moon. They were never seen again."

"The moon?" I'm afraid my mouth was hanging open. "How can you dig a mine to something in the sky?"

"Better not let Bodacious Deepthink hear you say that," she warned, raising a finger to her lips. "As far as she's concerned, when the moon sets, it sinks into the earth. You see, rock trolls believe that long, long ago the moon was their home. When it rises at night, they get misty-eyed just looking at it. Bodacious has staked her whole reputation on getting them back there, and nothing matters more to a rock troll than reputation."

"I had no idea." I swallowed hard. "But what happened to the missing miners?"

"Nobody knows. Bo claims she paid each of them a lucky cricket and sent them home, but the only ones who ever made it home were the crickets."

"What do they say happened?"

"Who knows? Bo keeps the crickets locked away, except when trading for shooting stars. Of course the three river trolls' wives retaliated by dulling Bo's picks and shovels with a curse. Bo didn't waste any time dreaming up a curse of her own. Back and forth they went, until the river trolls came up with a doozy: Bo will never find the moon until the three missing river trolls find their way home. Bo topped them, though: Any river troll who won't help mine has to bring her a shooting star to light the tunnel going to the moon, and he has to do it before the hatch of his firstborn. If he does that, fine, she trades him one of the crickets who knows where the first three miners went. If they don't..."

"They become human?" I cringed.

"Exactly. It's a possibility that curls their tails good. Once they're human, the only way to change back to a troll is to stand up to Bo in person, and so far as I know, it's never been done. So you'd better hand over their three silver dollars and go tell that cousin of yours to stay as far away from Bodacious Deepthink as he can manage."

"What would she do to him?" I asked.

"Put him on her pantry shelf, I shouldn't be surprised."

"I'm afraid they've only given me two silver dollars to trade," I confessed, not wanting to think about pantry shelves. "I'm supposed to use my sweet voice to talk you into a third."

"That's Jim Dandy for you." She clucked her tongue in disgust.

"Does the third dollar absolutely have to be from a troll mother's purse? What if I promised to sneak one out of my mother's? I doubt that she'd mind."

"Sorry," she firmly said. "Got to be from a river troll mother. I give each of them a silver dollar for her newborn boy, as a promotional for the store. Baby girls get free thornbushes. When the boys grow up, they bring the dollar back for a screen. The girls trade their thornbushes in for a look into the future. That's the going price."

"There must be exceptions," I reasoned. "I mean, what if a mother loses her silver dollar? Then what?"

"These silver dollars don't get lost," she explained, sounding awfully sure of it. "They're special."

She meant it too, wouldn't budge a bit, not even on a couple of free willow cats for goodwill. So I handed over the two silver dollars. They'd no more than touched the old lady's hand than the woman engraved on the first silver dollar started yapping away. I could see her lips moving as she said to the old lady:

"They've got your ukulele, you know."

"There's a rhino boy too." The woman on the second silver dollar chimed in.

"Several people have been turned to stone."

"A dog too."

"And they've been singing that ridiculous song."

"Chug-ga-la-ka, chug-ga-la-ka."

Quick as she could, the old lady dropped them in a nearby cookie jar and closed the lid, confessing sheepishly, "Helps keep me abreast of the troll community."

So now I knew why it had to be silver dollars from their mothers' purses or nothing at all. Such goings-on left me pretty much speechless and a touch numb. Talking silver dollars weren't something you ran into every day, not even along the river.

Collecting two screen doors, which were twice my height and wide as my hands could reach, I started edging out of the store.

Before I'd gone three steps, the old lady stopped me to take a hard look into my eyes, just the way she'd done in the rowboat.

"What do you see?" I whispered.

"A turtle," she answered, puzzled.

"Is it Lottie?" Suddenly I felt hopeful.

"Hard to say."

"What's she doing?"

"Hiding in her shell."

That didn't sound like Lottie, unless she was in trouble. Up to then I'd been avoiding the old lady's eyes by gazing above her head, but now, worried about Lottie, I lowered my vision.

My own reflection wasn't gazing back from her eyes. No, facing me was a young woman from another time. I say from another time because she was dressed in an old-fashioned frilly blouse and long skirt and sunbonnet that hid most of her face. Still, she struck me as kind of familiar, and after a while I thought maybe I knew why. I guessed the old lady was somehow showing me what she looked like way back when she was my age. If that was the case, she must have been even older than I'd thought, for the young woman peering out at me was dressed like a pioneer. Since my mom had drummed into me that you never, ever inquire about a lady's age, I asked instead what was so interesting in my eyes.

"An old friend," she sighed, sounding kind of happy and sad all at once.

I made it out of Trolls & Things without knocking anything over, a miracle considering how heavy and awkward the screens were. Afraid that I'd trip and poke a hole in one, I headed to the town dock to wave for my cousin.

The two kids fishing off the dock caught the jitters as soon as they spotted me coming, as if maybe they'd seen screens come down that dock before. And once they saw Duke sprinting toward the dock in the dugout, one of them broke for town, shouting, "Rhino boy! Rhino boy!" The other tried pulling his minnow bucket out of the river. The trouble was, the bucket was too heavy with water for the little squirt to lift it by himself. Duke reached the dock before the kid could make a run for it.

"Where's the willow cats?" he asked, panting and looking behind me as if I'd left them somewhere.

"Couldn't get them."

"Jim Dandy wanted willow cats."

"He's lucky I got him two screens."

"Two!" Duke cried. "You know we need three."

All this time the kid pulling up on the minnow bucket was also doing his best to be invisible. It didn't work. Duke pointed at him and shouted, "You! What's in that bucket?"

"N-nothing," the boy squealed, stumbling backwards. He was a chicken-legged little kid, a redhead like Duke, but that didn't save him.

"Mine now!" Duke bounded onto the dock and jerked the rope out of the boy's hands.

By then a crowd was gathering at the end of the dock, so Duke didn't have time to unknot the minnow bucket's rope. From an inside pocket, he whipped out a jackknife and cut the bucket free of the piling it was tied to. The instant my cousin cut the rope, he let out such a yowl that I thought he'd sliced his hand. Then I saw that it wasn't his hand but his nose that was hurting. It was having another growth spurt.

Duke's howls attracted even more kids, and as their number grew, so did their bravery.

"In the boat," Duke shouted at me between yelps. "In the boat."

I tossed the screens across the dugout and jumped after them, landing up front. The dugout tipped without flipping.

"Paddle!" Duke yelled, diving in back with the bucket. "Paddle!"

I paddled. A good thing too, because I was the only one doing it. Duke held his nose with one hand and had his other hand curled around the minnow bucket as if protecting a cookie jar. We were halfway across the channel before picking up any speed.

Back on the dock, kids were throwing rocks and shouting. There were splashes in the water but no direct hits, so except for Duke's nose, it was a clean getaway. Duke didn't care about his nose, though. The minnow bucket was full of willow cats.

We lazed about a sandbar all that Sunday, with nothing to do but sleep, argue, and hang low until nightfall, when we were supposed to hook up with the river trolls again. I asked Duke why he hadn't bothered to mention who ran Trolls & Things. He claimed he hadn't wanted to scare me. I brought up the stone feather. He threatened to pound me into pudding.

"I doubt your new friends will want me pounded into anything," I said.

"Once we find their fathers?" He cackled. "They won't care a bit."

Around noon an old couple in a houseboat pulled up to our sandbar, and Duke ordered me to create a diversion. He planned on stealing their lunch but got caught when his horn knocked over a pitcher of pink lemonade.

After getting past their amazement at Duke's nose, the old couple took pity, handing out hot dogs, potato chips, two fruit jars of lemonade, and radishes. They even sent along some complimentary packets of ketchup and mustard. Duke was willing to share only the radishes and mustard until his nose started to tingle—then he became unexpectedly generous.

By daylight you couldn't help but notice the changes to Duke's face: puffy, watery eyes; thickened lips; sunken cheeks; stretched ears; and, for some reason, thinning hair.

What's more, with all that horn, he had a hard time seeing in front of himself. That meant he was constantly turning his head one way or the other to get a good look at things. Afraid that he was about to crash his horn into something, he dared not run fast enough to catch me. I found that out when a blue heron flew overhead and dropped an orange tennis shoe in my lap.

"Give me that!" Duke squawked, lunging.

He missed, wide.

By then I was off and running. He was yowling, for as soon as he sprang at me, his horn acted up. The old couple tried comforting him, but he shrugged them off to chase me. I soon lost him on the back side of the island, where I plopped down against a huge cottonwood.

There were two pages inside the shoe, the first filled with Mom's handwriting:

Claire,

Help is on the way—I hope. A river troll by the name of Two-cents Eel-tongue visited me early this morning, which was how I found out you were gone. She's on the trail of her son, a troll named Jim Dandy, and believes he's with Duke. She promised three times to help you and Duke. An honest person probably would have only bothered to promise once, but she did at least offer to send this note. I offered her a silver dollar for your safe return. Love, Mom

P.S. Your father and the sheriff are still searching. Don't let Duke talk you into anything.

The second page was a note from my older sisters:

Claire,

We put that toad of yours in the basement.
Feeding time can wait for you.
Lillie and Fran

The toad, whose name was Three, lived in a wool sock under my bed. No word of Lottie.

I had time enough to read the notes twice before hearing Duke crash through the underbrush. I popped the paper into my mouth and had both sheets swallowed before he sprang.

"What was in the shoe?" he demanded, grabbing the tennie and flinging it as far over the river as he could.

"Don't worry," I teased. "Help's coming."

"It better not be," he said, stomping off.