Troll Game

The boardwalk has been deteriorating the farther I go. Nearly all of my traveling today involved wading. The boards are there, under the water, but you have to tread carefully or risk putting your foot through a rotten one. Still, despite its erratic condition, the boardwalk is the only way to travel through much of the Great Shwamp without swimming. It's inevitable that such an important route would eventually attract trolls.

For the most part, I object to trolls. I wouldn't mind paying their tolls if they actually provided something in exchange. Some of them do; there are many roads in the Railway Regions that would be completely impassable by now if not for their curmudgeonly but dedicated troll keepers. Few people in the Regions are particularly interested in roads. It's easier to take the Train. Most trolls, however, do nothing but get in the way.

The troll booth was built on the only unsubmerged piece of boardwalk I'd seen all day. Someone had done some work to keep that section, if nothing else, above water. There were so many posts and tree trunks wedged under and around it that it looked like a funnel shrike's nest. Many of them were held together with string. The house itself was more or less mushroom-shaped; the bottom floor was only as wide as the boardwalk, while the second looked just wide enough to lie down in. It was quite obviously a troll house. They're built to get in the way as much as possible.

As if that wasn't enough, the troll herself was sitting outside, fishing. She was one of the Northern trolls - built like a foothill, with a nose the size of a loaf of bread. She was wearing a coat made of strips of odd, shiny leather. They were quite obviously hagfish skins. Most people at least take the heads off first.

Normally, I would simply have swam around the booth.* I have no objection to getting wet. My books and supplies are not quite so waterproof, though. The only way to get them past intact was through the troll's front door.

She stood up when she saw me, her coat creaking in protest, and leaned her fishing pole against the house. The hook was baited with a slice of cucumber. She grinned at me as if she'd just caught a particularly large fish. Her teeth were a mix of brown, gold, black, blue, and missing. One of her tusks had knot patterns carved into the tip. I could see mice climbing through her hair.

"Gots any moneys?"

"Yes," I said quickly. Trolls often see a lack of money as an excuse to take whatever they want.

"Tha'sh good." Her voice creaked more than her coat, and the tusks made her speech even harder to understand. It sounded something like a rusty doorknob being ground up in a landslide. I began digging for change in my pockets, but she held up a long-nailed hand to stop me.

"NO! Firsht we plays ze Game."

"Game?"

She grinned again, even wider, and pulled a pack of battered cards out of her coat.

"Ze Game o' Pickerel Shproot."

From her explanation, I gathered that, unlike most trolls, she preferred to gamble with her victims before taking their money. If she won, she would take twice as much as usual. (What "usual" was, I have no idea.) She didn't say what would happen if I won. It seemed overly optimistic to hope that I would get by for free; a more likely possibility was that I would be eaten in revenge. Maybe no one had ever won before. I suggested that I could just pay her right then and be on my way, but she was quite firm about that.

"No wan getz by wizhout playsh ze Game. Boring here, eh? Gotza have shomething te do."

I couldn't very well argue with that.

From somewhere in her closet-sized downstairs, she pulled a card table with three legs and set it up on the boardwalk. From her coat, she pulled an enormous porcelain pipe; she wedged a lump of coal in the bowl and lit it. The smoke was black. She breathed in deeply and sat down, dealing the cards with the machinelike speed of a professional.

"Now liszen good," she said, "'coz I'z only gonna tell ye ze roolz wance. Ye gotz ninedy-sevhen cardsh in Pickerel Shproot. Twenny iz Flatz, shirty-six iz Numverz, elevhen iz Shproots, nine is Doublez, ten is Upz, ten is Downz, an' wan iz ze Shpit. Ye gotza make pairsh and Threezies. Firsht ta get three pairsh, or two Threezies, an' ye win..."

The rules were long and complicated, and I won't go into them all. I don't even remember half of them now, though I'll probably try to write down as much as I can recall later. I want to know more about this game. Does it even exist anywhere else?

I was surprised at the cards when I finally got to pick them up. The fronts of the cards were unmistakeably the madly detailed engravings of Reddish Crill. I'd never heard of him illustrating a deck of cards, but it's not particularly surprising. He did practically everything before his dramatic high-altitude demise. In my hand, I had the Nine of Corkscrews, the Three of Speckles, the Two and a Half of Rocks, the Reverse Sponge, Toothache, and a card with nothing on it but pink flowers. I tried to keep the backs of my cards hidden as much as possible. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the troll was able to identify them by the coal stains.

Amazingly, I won the first game, more by beginner's luck than anything else. It's lucky that I pick up game rules fairly quickly; these ones were more confusing than most. The troll was not happy. The coal in her pipe glowed brighter, and smoke started coming out of her nose. She didn't say a word; she just shuffled the cards and laid them out again. I had won, so I got up to go.

"Besht two outta shree," she growled.

It didn't seem wise to argue.

She won the second game, after which she started to look happier. I had enough of a grasp of the rules to play the game, but not enough to be good at it.**

In the third game, I did my best to play badly, preferring to pay twice whatever the usual fee was rather than find out how gracious the troll was about losing. It didn't seem to matter. She was clearly not pleased with her cards. The coal in her pipe glowed hotter and hotter as the game went on, cards clenched in her rootlike fists. It only took a few rounds before it started shooting sparks; after that, it was only seconds before one of the sparks landed on her house. It started smoking immediately.

"FIRE!" roared the troll, erupting to her feet, upsetting the card table, and dropping her pipe in the Shwamp.*** She tore off her coat and began beating the flames with it.

Unfortunately, this was too much for the structure. Many of the strings had already been weakened by fire. At this new assault, they snapped. Knots broke, boards sagged, and as we watched, the entire house slowly tipped over into the Shwamp.

That put out the fire, at least.

Roaring with rage, the troll leapt into the water and sloshed over to her house. It was already starting to sink. It stopped when she dug her hands under it and heaved, lifting the entire structure several inches. I could hear dishes breaking inside.

I decided that that was a good time to leave. She seemed to have the situation in hand. As quietly as I could, I gathered up my luggage and crept over what was left of the boardwalk. I could hear her shouting unintelligible curses at her house long after I was out of sight.

I still wonder who would have won that last game.



*After checking for chekaraul and alligators, of course.

**Besides, the rules of drama require that every contest be decided only in the last round.

***It had obviously spent time in the Shwamp before. There were barnacles on it. From the look of them, some of the cards had been there as well.

Troll Booth

All was going well today. Plack and I had been walking along the Greenhouse Cliff road for several hours, having slept at a slightly wider spot covered in moss last night. There are flowers and mushrooms everywhere. Moss covers every inch of rock rough enough to grip, trees and flowering plants grow out of the moss, and more moss and flowers grow on the branches of the trees. It's the same in every direction - left or right, up or down. The roots of the trees above the road hang down and embed themselves in the miniature gardens growing on the trees below. The Cliff jungle grows on itself as much as it grows on the cliff. The trees are only one layer thick; beyond the row of trunks is nothing but empty gray fog. Insects fly everywhere, drops of condensation fizzing off of their rapidly beating wings. Small birds of every possible shape and color are almost as common. Some of them visit flowers; others eat the insects. They have to work harder to find the green or cloud-gray ones. Whole colonies of small frogs fill every rock crevice and bromeliad.

We had just navigated the hairpin turn onto yet another switchback (half the road had crumbled away at the corner, which made it interesting) when we saw a small house ahead. It was two stories high, wedged beneath an unusually high part of the overhanging rock, and about six feet wide. Only two thirds of it actually fit on the road. The remaining two feet hung out over empty space. Another story - a basement? - stuck out of the cliff face beneath the rest of the house, supported by a network of rotting wooden beams.

Though the basement level was sagging and covered with moss, the upper floors of the house were perfectly neat and painted spotless white. A little stove chimney hung out over the cliff on the top floor.

We were standing there, staring at this odd little house built right across the road, when the troll came out.

Like most of the turnstile trolls that plague bridges and narrow roads all over the world, he was large and lumpy, with gray scales and hair. Unlike most of them, his hair was neatly combed (even his mane and ear tufts), and he was wearing an embroidered tunic and stockings. There were buckles on his shoes. Obviously, this was a rather successful troll.

"Your house," said Plack bluntly, "is in our way." He was still behind me, due to the narrowness of the road where we were; I suddenly wished that he wasn't.

"I knows it is," said the troll. With a wide grin full of gleaming white fangs, he then gave us the traditional turnstile troll greeting.

"Your money or your life!"

(This is not strictly true, as trolls have rarely actually killed anyone. It causes them more trouble than it's worth. The worst they usually do is hit people when they're irritated. It sounds scarier this way, though.)

Plack was not scared and not amused. "Why don't we keep both and you move your stupid house?"

"Your money or your life!"

"Or we could move it for you."

"Your money or your life!"

"Oh, shut up," snapped Plack. "Besides, what are you going to do if we don't pay you, you overdressed mushroom? Sit there and blind us with your teeth?"

I was starting to feel rather nervous by that point. When someone is insulting a troll, it's generally not a good idea to stand directly between them.

"You no pays me?"

"No. We doesn't."

The troll then proved himself to be one of the few trolls in the world who had never met a llama. With a slightly more evil grin, he pulled what looked like a four-foot spatula from inside the front door. "Then I wallops you until you does-"

A brown blur flew over my head, landed with a CLANG, and became Plack, standing in front of me and glaring at the troll. The spatula was bent in half in the middle. The troll was standing about a foot farther back than he had been; his feet had left skid marks in the dirt of the road.

His grin didn't even flicker. "-Then I lets you through right away and gives you breakfast."

He proceeded to do just that, showing us through his tiny and spotless kitchen (the entire first floor of his house) with all the care and politeness of a Clam-Porklian waiter. It was less than two minutes before we were on our way again, Plack with a basket of salad and a bottle of grundle juice, me with a sort of mushroom omelet that turned out to be better than what you get in most restaurants. The troll waved us happily on our way and sat down to wait for the next travelers. He might not have known about llamas before, but he does now. Trolls don't become successful by being stupid.

"'Never happened before,'" Plack snorted as we continued down the road. "Hah." He didn't say another word all day, but the smug smile didn't leave his face until after he was asleep.

In the past, several turnstile trolls have made a fairly good living for themselves thanks to me. I should have started traveling with a llama years ago.