The Prodigal Troll (28 page)

Sore and drained, Maggot finally locked his hands around the trunk like a child around a mother's neck, and leaned against the rough skin of the tree, closing his eyes.

A hand tapped his shoulder hard.

He looked back. The other man mimed falling asleep, leaning his head sideways, eyes closed.

"I know," Maggot said. "Good idea. We can't do anything else, huh." He leaned against the trunk again.

The man hit him harder this time, the knuckle hitting a nerve that jerked Maggot awake.

"Hey!"

The man mimed sleep again, and then falling off the tree into the water. Maggot thought about explaining that this wouldn't happen, but changed his mind.

They shared a strange intimacy, crushed together, their backs resting against each other, skin wet and cold. Yet they were able to see each other only by the most difficult contortions. Maggot had never been so long in the presence of another person before.

He pushed himself up and adjusted his position to face the man as well as he could. "Not much of a cave, is it?"

Gesturing with one hand, the stranger repeated a phrase several times. Maggot didn't understand, so he stuck out his tongue. The other man laughed, shaking his head from side to side, then spoke the phrase again.

"No," Maggot murmured, sticking out his tongue.

The stranger, clearly frustrated, shook his head and enunciated the phrase carefully.

Maggot shook his head from side to side.

The man raised his eyebrows. So Maggot raised his. The man shook his head. No. Shaking the head meant no. Maggot didn't know why no. But now he knew no.

He touched his knuckles right below his mouth, to say, This is what sustains me, and spoke his name. "Maggot," he said.

"Maw-kit," the stranger answered hesitantly.

Maggot repeated the gesture. "Maggot, Maggot."

"Maqwet," the stranger said more carefully.

"Maggot!" He repeated the gesture emphatically.

"Maqwet." The stranger put his knuckles in the same place. "Chin," he said.

"Chin," Maggot repeated.

"Chin!" The other man smiled broadly.

"You have a good stink, Chin," Maggot said.

Now that they knew each other's names, the learning went more quickly. Maggot could make a better variety of sounds, and soon they quit practicing the troll words and spoke only the language of people. He savored each sweet syllable as if it were a berry in his mouth. Hand. Eyes. Water. Tree.

Those were the words he would use to talk to the woman.

The broken branch quit lashing in the water. The other man pointed up at the sky. Three, four, many handfuls of stars twinkled through breaks in the clouds.

Maggot smiled, looked up again, and saw one less star. Dawn already ate them out of the sky. It was a silent morning.

The waters swirled away like an exhausted fit of temper, transforming the green meadows Maggot recalled into a flat of mud and devastation broken by innumerable pools and unrecognizable debris. High clouds brewed the sky, and carrion birds dropped like dark hailstones to feast among the refuse.

"We walk," the man Maggot called Chin suggested, and Maggot understood him. It felt like such a triumph.

"We walk," he agreed.

Maggot wrapped his arms around the trunk, swung under the branch, dug his toes into the bark, and climbed to the ground. Chin fell. They stood and stretched their stiff limbs.

The mud sucked at their feet as they waded across the swampy bottoms to the higher, drier hills. Chin lifted his head and thrust out his lips. "Brothers."

Maggot followed Chin's eyes. Coming toward them, between the trees beside the riverbank, he saw two men with bright red cloth wrapped around their heads.

"Brothers," he said, relishing the word. He gestured to himself and Chin. "Brothers?"

Chin looked at him and nodded. "Brothers."

"We brothers." Maggot quickened his stride to meet the others.

e is saying what?" Maggot asked.

In the moons since he had rescued Sinnglas-that was his friend's name, he knew now, not Chin; chin was their word for the food-slipping-in-place-Maggot had made great strides in learning people talk. But the newcomer's accent was just different enough that Maggot could not understand him. Nor did it help that he and Sinnglas sat on the far side of the council, in the place of least favor.

"Wait." Sinnglas leaned forward. "I'm listening."

Maggot waited. And listened. Mostly he watched.

The newcomer was only the latest visitor to come to the council cave of Sinnglas's people. Council lodge, he tried to think the word, though the space, shaped of cut and bent branches, and dark inside, resembled a stuffy cave, especially when crowded by several dozen men and the pungent aroma of their medicine weed.

Strangers had been coming for weeks to the council lodge, but this newcomer impressed Maggot more than the others. He was older, with shoulders as broad as a troll's and arms as long. His nose bent like a hawk's beak, and he talked through it more than through his mouth, making raspy, indistinct words Maggot could not follow. The newcomer's clothes were less like those of the men around him, and more like those Maggot had seen among the lion-hunting men. He carried many weapons, and two men followed him wherever he went, like a pair of trollbirds.

Everyone in the council lodge listened to the newcomer with great seriousness, as if he were the sound of dawn.

They sat cross-legged on the ground, frowning and sighing somberly, while the newcomer droned. Maggot had tried sitting the same way and didn't like it, so he continued to squat troll-fashion on his haunches. It also raised him slightly above the others and made it easier for him to watch their reactions. The newcomer sat in the center at the council's place of honor, beside Damaqua. Damaqua was the First of this band. He was also Sinnglas's brother.

One of Sinnglas's brothers. The other two sat behind Maggot, at the farthest end of the hall, squeezed back against the wall. Their names were Keekyu and Pisqueto. Their eyes gleamed as happily as the morning they had found their brother Sinnglas safe from the flood.

The newcomer finished speaking. He unfolded a cloth lying across his lap and raised a broad belt of beads, mostly black and white. Maggot couldn't quite read the picture-it looked like several men hunting an animal.

Several of the older men shouted, then fell quiet. The newcomer handed the belt to Damaqua. Keekyu and Pisqueto traded half-smiles and nods.

Sinnglas pretended to relax, but his eyes stayed focused on his older brother. Maggot felt like he had the first time he could remember watching trolls vote on something.

Damaqua held the belt up, inspected it, then turned it around, lifted it high, and presented it again to all the men gathered in the lodge. Now Maggot saw the picture clearly. Four men hunted a big tooth lion. One of the men had bright red beads atop his head, the color of Damaqua's turban. Damaqua spread the belt on his lap, folded it, and handed it to the silent man who sat on the other side of him. Tanaghri, his advisor.

Sinnglas didn't like Tanaghri; therefore Maggot hated him.

Tanaghri held the belt with open distaste. Damaqua stretched out his hands for the pipe, placed the long thin stem to his lips, and puffed meditatively, sending little blue clouds of smoke into the air. The longer he waited before speaking, the more important his words would be. Finally, he laid the pipe upon his lap, leaving his hands upon it, and spoke in his strong clear voice.

"We are honored," Damaqua said, "to have so famous a First Man as Squandral come among us."

Maggot didn't understand the mountain range of differences that divided Sinnglas from his brother, but he liked the slow, rolling rhythms of Damaqua's voice. Squandral was the newcomer's name; Maggot taloned on to that.

"His exploits," Damaqua continued, "are known from the motherwater, River Wyndas, to the northern seas and over the mountains to the ocean. Who else among us besides Squandral has killed giants, has wrestled with the Old Ones, or defeated the invaders in so many battles? He was a friend of my father, when my father was First, and together the two of them turned their paths to peace, forging alliances with the invaders. For many years now we have traded with the invaders and lived peacefully beside them. When a man so renowned in war leads his people away from war, men follow."

Damaqua puffed on the pipe again. Maggot had understood the words, but only half the meaning. Later he would have to ask Sinnglas the meaning of giants, Old Ones, invaders, war.

No one else spoke or showed any expression. Damaqua placed the pipe to his lap, and gestured for Tanaghri to leave. The older man placed the belt down. Sunlight and the buzz of insects slipped in when he moved the skin at the door aside. Keekyu and Pisqueto shifted uncomfortably, scowling. But Sinnglas stayed fixed in his position, so Maggot did not move.

"Now Squandral has come down all the way from the place where three rivers meet to share his counsel with us," Damaqua said. "His words have led not only his own people, but all of our bands since the time of our fathers, and our fathers' fathers. If we are wise, we will listen to his words as young bucks look to the stag to see which way to run."

The door-flap opened again, and Tanaghri returned with a long bundle wrapped in cloth, which he handed to Damaqua, who said, "These are a sign of our respect for the gift of Squandral's wisdom."

A murmur of approval here. Damaqua unfolded the bundle and presented the gifts-a blanket of some fabric divided in squares such as Maggot had seen among the hunters; strings of glass beads, glittering like gems; an elegant dagger wrapped in snakeskin.

Maggot mulled this over. The newcomer, Squandral, gave them a belt; they gave him other items. Not that different from the trolls, he supposed, who shared whatever they had. If you found two bats on the floor of a cave, you gave one to a friend, and she did the same for you. That way everyone always had a bat to eat.

Sharing was a simple rule among trolls, but with people it was much more complicated. When Maggot had first arrived with Sinnglas, he'd had nothing but the things he carried-his knife, the two lucent stones strung around his neck-and he'd received gifts from many people. Damaqua had presented him with a blanket like the one given to Squandral. One evening Maggot went with Sinnglas and his two brothers into a house to talk to a man-Sinnglas had many people to talk to, all the time-and the old woman there gave Maggot a bowl of hominy. He was tired of carrying the blanket and gave it to her in exchange. Damaqua heard about it and was furious. He ceased speaking to Maggot afterward and no longer invited him to meals. Sinnglas, strangely, was not displeased. So Maggot thought that he had done something right, but he still had no idea what it was.