Trollhunters (15 page)

Jack stepped toward me, his metal parts jangling, and reached for my neck with one of his tack-edged gloves. I held my breath and wondered if this was it—the premature, and quite weird,
death of Jim Sturges Jr. Instead of squeezing, though, Jack looped his finger around my chain and pulled the bronze medallion out from where it hid under my shirt. Jack flashed me an impatient
look, then took hold of the sword on the face of the medallion and twisted it. It went from horizontal to vertical.

My ears popped. Suddenly I was hearing Blinky in midrant.

“—a doltish look about the face, doesn’t he? And that slackness of jaw? That hunch of back? Ignominious breeding, I’m afraid. Ignominious! I ask you, what are we to
assume from that outrageously bland ceremonial garb? Where is the roguish
joie de vivre
? The vainglorious family crest? And no battle scarf?
No battle scarf?
That’s an
affront! A direct affront! But hark! I see a spark of intelligence! Why, it’s rather adorable. The little fellow is…Is he…? Oh dear. Oh dear, indeed. He can understand me now,
can’t he?”

Though mostly blind, Blinky had extended one of his eyes so that it hovered and squinted from a foot away. His peanut butter–covered appendages dithered a bit at the faux pas. In short
order all eight of the eyes were turned in my general direction and blinking rapidly. His bigger companion licked the inside of its cheeks thoughtfully before lowering its head to look at me.

“Hullo.” Peanut butter slime dripped from ARRRGH!!!’s fangs. “Boy. Human.”

“They talk,” I mumbled. “Tub, they talk.”

“Don’t go crazy on me, Jim,” Tub said.

“Of course we talk,” Blinky said. His English accent was impeccable. “We are hardly
cattle
. We are, by the best estimates of troll intelligentsia, the most advanced of
all existing species.” His haughty tone collapsed into a remorseful sigh. “We can also be the rudest. Do accept my apology. We regret that we do not have a second translator for your
noble man-at-arms.”

“They’re apologizing, Tub,” I said. “Because you can’t understand them.”

“Tell them apology accepted. No! Tell them I’m sorry about trying to shoot them. Tell them that first. That’s important.”

“They can understand you just fine, Tub.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Then, louder, to them: “Sorry! I mean it! Please don’t kill me!”

“Kill? You?” Blinky looked baffled. “Such savagery is not the providence of the elite! Heed this: if you are to irk me, boy,
irk cautiously
. You are fortunate that my
patience is renowned—I can out-wait anyone, anywhere, anytime. Why, my waiting contest with Prothnurd the Persistent is legend. Three years I sat opposite old Prothnurd, happy as you’d
like, and I would’ve sat for three more had the old boy not died. So I wish you well in your irking. My hirsute colleague, though—patience is not her strong suit.”

“Her?” I looked doubtfully up at ARRRGH!!!.

“Her?” Tub parroted. “It’s a her? I mean, she’s a her?”

“But of course,” Blinky said. “Most of the great troll warriors are female. To be a warrior worthy of song, brute strength alone will not suffice. Not nearly! You must possess
cunning as well as compassion, and neither quality is the male’s forte. Traditionally, we males are more proficient at whipping up imposing smells and choreographing the ceremonial
disembowelment waltzes. Besides, isn’t the color of her coat a dead giveaway? It’s
ink black
.”

“Ink black,” I said, nodding.

“Exactly,” Blinky said. “How you could mistake that for the
coal black
of males is entirely beyond my understanding.”

Jack glanced at the clock on the wall. It was spattered with peanut butter. He gripped the mask in his hands as if dying to put it back on. He was, at least, human, and I turned to him in
desperation.

“Uncle Jack,” I said. “Where have you been?”

“With us,” Blinky said. “For forty-five years, your uncle has been our equal, deserving of the respect and praise so often tossed at our collective feet. There are kneeling
rituals I can suggest to you if you’d like. Beautiful, sightly rituals! Ah, if only we had the time. For now, forgive your uncle’s taciturnity. If you’ll permit me an opinion, I
believe he might be overwhelmed at being in the house of his older brother. Your father’s scent is everywhere here, you understand.”

“You want me to get Dad?” I asked. “I can wake him up.”

Jack’s eyes blazed.

“You cannot, actually.” Blinky’s voice was apologetic. “He will not wake until first light.”

“Why? What did you do to him?”

Blinky fluttered various tentacles. “Posh! Details are unimportant—”

“Tell me.”

“I predict you will find it unappetizing. But as you wish. We have introduced into his digestive system a schmoof. A schmoof is, oh, how shall I put this? I shall just come out with it. It
is a fetus. We have a few on generous loan from the Schmooffingers. Seeking a womblike warmth, the young schmoof crawls in through the mouth and down the esophagus and burrows into the stomach
lining, where its enzymes release a powerful sedative effect upon its host. Schmooffingers are renowned for their sleeping. They have sixty-six different words for
snoring
. To catalogue
every possible permutation of slumber is their
raison d’être
. To that end, they sleep for eleven hours a day. The twelfth hour—well, it’s best not to be around
then, I’ll leave it at that. Now, do not fret. Being extremely sensitive to sunlight, the schmoof will crawl back up the esophagus at dawn, la-dee-dah, and find its way home through a drain,
at which point your father will wake up feeling refreshed and—”

“You put a troll fetus into my dad’s mouth?”

“Jim!” Tub shouted. “What the hell?!”

“Schmoof,” ARRRGH!!! grunted. “Is friend. Good for ache of head.”

She gestured at what looked like a large boulder halfway embedded in her skull.

“We have aspirin for that!” I cried. “Aspirin! Not fetuses!”

“Oh dear,” Blinky said. “I suspected that this was a bad topic with which to begin a friendship.”

“Enough.”

Jack’s young face was twisted into a snarl. The single word, only his second, seemed to have taken a deal of energy. His chest rose and fell beneath his armor of junk. He glared at Tub and
I, then glanced at the trolls before jabbing an impatient thumb toward my bedroom.

Blinky’s tentacles spread out in a way that somehow communicated apology. He then explained to me, in sentences that were, for him, remarkably concise, that we all had to go, right now,
and then he told me why. I was more afraid of Uncle Jack than these two walking nightmares and found myself nodding agreement to whatever came out of Blinky’s strange mouth.

“What’s it saying, Jim?” Tub pressed. “What’s going on?”

Even before I replied, I could not believe my response.

“We’re going hunting.”

The floorboards beneath my bed telescoped downward, a whirlpool of wood, the boards cracking and popping as they locked themselves into a new alignment: a spiral staircase of
treacherous, uneven steps. The stinky sock Tub had mocked earlier went tumbling down the stairs until it was swallowed by darkness. A few rogue marbles followed suit and we did not hear them
land.

Jack bounded downward. He was almost out of view before realizing we hadn’t moved.

“Let’s go,” he snapped.

Tub and I stared at each other, then at the bed being held over our heads by ARRRGH!!! as if it weighed no more than a sheet. She nodded us on, her horns ripping through my posters and helpfully
rearranging my models.

I descended with baby steps. Soon my eyes adjusted to the dim orange glow radiating from underground electrical grids. But this remained a staircase without a railing, and I moved with a caution
that frustrated Jack. He sighed and took steps by threes and fours. It made me feel lousy—this thirteen-year-old kid was making me look bad—but what else was I going to do? I inhaled
the briny funk of troll, tried to ignore the slither and thump of their weird appendages, and focused on maintaining my slow and steady pace. Tub, meanwhile, kept two handfuls of my shirt.

Ten minutes were spent passing through freezing air. Then we dipped into a lower stratum that was warmer, then hot, then sweltering. Light now came from oil lamps, the same as I’d seen on
my previous adventure, and at last I could see the walls around me. The staircase ran out of steps and my foot landed badly. Tub’s full weight slammed me from behind and we started to topple,
but warm, rippling tentacles curled beneath our armpits and brought us back to standing position.
Look thankful,
I thought as I shivered in disgust.

Jack chose one of three stone archways and charged into the lamplit tunnel. I didn’t cherish the idea of being left alone with two trolls, no matter how nice they were being, so I took off
at a sprint. Nearly a full, harrowing minute was spent alone in the shadowed tunnel before I caught up.

“Uncle Jack, wait,” I called. “You have to explain all this. At least some of it? Or just a tiny little bit of it? I don’t know why you brought us. You said you want us
to hunt. Look, that’s fine, that’s great, Grandpa took me mushroom hunting once. I was pretty good at it, found like twenty of those things. I don’t mind helping, really. But Tub
and I are pretty freaked, so maybe you could just—”

Jack turned around. Though I was two years older (or forty-three years younger, depending on how you looked at it), he and I were the same height.

“Grandpa?” he asked.

“Yeah. Grandpa. One time we—”

Jack’s eyes were shining.

Several seconds passed before I realized that the man I called “Grandpa” was Jack’s dad. This made me feel rotten because I knew what he’d ask next.

“Is he…?” Jack let the question trail off.

I swallowed.

“He died five years ago.”

Jack blinked hard for a few seconds, then nodded. This left his face pointing downward, and he seemed to notice his wire-covered right arm for the first time. He turned it this way and that,
examining the makeshift armor as if it were a colony of leeches that had attached itself to his arm.