The Great Troll War

Moll the Troll

The Troll was being held in the hotel garage, which was situated a couple of streets away. The main door was guarded by one of the worriers, who apologised profusely about something trivial, then chewed his knuckles anxiously. We opened the door carefully and walked in, the Princess, myself and Tiger. The interior was large enough to hold about twenty cars, but these days was used as a storeroom for hundreds of extra chairs, hotel furniture and obsolete catering machines. The Mini was in the centre of the concrete floor, and table and chairs had been set up next to it.

We were all wearing neckerchiefs over our mouths and dark glasses so she wouldn’t be able to send our likenesses into the Hive Memory, and I laid Exhorbitus on the table lest she try anything – although since she was still stuffed inside the Mini, it was difficult to see what she could do in a hurry. I then sat down, while Tiger and the Princess stood near the door, arms folded, leaning on some stacked furniture.

The Troll stared at me for a moment, then at the garage that surrounded us. She looked at the walls, the ceiling, then the large double doors.

‘Will they open without warning?’ she asked.

‘Locked and guarded.’

She nodded, then carefully unlatched the car door and climbed out in a single unhurried movement that was peculiarly elegant. The car’s suspension rose as she did so, and once out of the car she could stand up to her full height, which although not substantial for a Troll was still at least ten feet. Despite this, she wasn’t as frightening as any of the other Trolls I’d come across: she was not armed with the usual assortment of clubs or knives hanging from her waist, just a potato peeler and a runner bean slicer. Her leathery skin was liberally covered with tattoos, and aside from the geometric patterns and the customary Troll history on her right leg – the events surrounding Troll War II, I think – the tattoos were mostly of vegetables. On top of her head was the customary small leather cap, but in this instance it was not decorated with a dead goat, but a rope bag containing rotten cabbage heads and blighted carrots that were slimy with age.

She stretched out on to her tiptoes, twisted left and right, then smiled broadly.

‘Hello!’ she said brightly. ‘The name’s Molly. Easy to remember. “Moll the Troll”, that’s me.’

‘You can call me Truman,’ I said. ‘Truman … the human. And that’s Roy,’ I added, pointing at Tiger. ‘Roy … the boy.’

‘What about the scrawny one?’ asked Molly, pointing towards the Princess.

‘Pearl,’ said the Princess. ‘Pearl the Girl.’

The Troll narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

‘I think these are all made-up names.’

I decided not to answer.

‘Roy?’ I said instead. ‘The dinner.’

Tiger placed the large bowl he’d been carrying on the table and took off the tea towel to reveal a quintuple portion of macaroni cheese.

‘For me?’ asked Molly, and I nodded.

Most Trolls eat with their hands – they pride themselves on their lack of manners, in fact – but this one used a large wooden spoon, which looked out of place, like a poodle wearing a monocle.

‘How did you get to be vegetarian?’ asked the Princess.

‘Does it show?’ asked the Troll guiltily.

We all nodded and the Troll sighed deeply.

‘Troll parents see vegetarianism as a sociopathic eating disorder,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s deeply shaming, and cave prices plummet if a veggie is thought to be in the area. My parents were actually pretty good, for Trolls,’ she said. ‘Barely beat me at all and only left me outside in the winter for a week, not a month, as is normal to toughen us up. They were seen as overindulgent parents, but I still loved them. Dad conducted the Trollvanian Petraphonic orchestra. The sound of twenty per cent of the Troll population tapping rocks together is something to experience. My mother used to solo on river pebbles. She could tap like an angel and often reduced audiences to tears.’

She picked up the bowl and licked out the remains of the macaroni cheese.

‘The thing is, all Trolls were once vegetarian. We were a peaceful race, harming no one. But a Troll named Qurrgg suddenly took a liking to meat, and the usually placid community fell to his power. The veggie trolls were maligned and pushed to the edges of society. We remain hidden these days, frightened to even think about cooking up a creamy mushroom tagliatelle, much less make it. Have you ever had moussaka?’

‘Yes.’

‘We used to clandestinely meet in forest clearings to secretly conjure up a moussaka and other non-meat specialities. We had to smuggle ingredients in. Then, one evening, on ravioli night, we were denounced. I was charged with making pasta “with intent to consume”, and possession of an aubergine, a charge which was dismissed as they couldn’t prove I was going to eat it. I, and by extension all the other vegetarians, were sentenced to a life of unpaid domestic work with no possibility of moussaka.’

She gave a doleful sigh.

‘How did you escape?’ I asked.

‘We were called to the front line to man the mobile food kitchens – a thankless and disgusting job, as you can imagine – and that was when Mr Zambini appeared. He said you would help us out, so I abandoned my post, found somewhere restrictively small to hide and made my way over just before the Button Trench was filled. I guess no one was expecting to see a Troll driving a Mini. Is there any more of that macaroni cheese?’

I nodded to Tiger, who went and fetched another helping.

‘So,’ I said, ‘tell me more about that.’

I pointed at her hand, and the message written in black Sharpie:

Contact Jennifer Strange in Penzance and tell her everything. She will not harm you.

She looked at her hand, then at me.

‘You’re Jennifer Strange, aren’t you?’

‘I am.’

‘Ha!’ she said. ‘I knew you were using made-up names.’

I pulled down the handkerchief that was covering my face. There was no point to the subterfuge now.

‘Your kind has a Hive Memory, so you can understand how it might pay to be cautious.’

‘The shared memory only runs through individual strands of Troll society,’ she explained. ‘My memory only feeds into the other veggie trolls. Before I got in the Mini I could feel them, y’know, in my head, doing stuff all round the country. Back in Trollvania we used to share memories to hone survival strategies – and swap recipes. But once I was in the Mini, I couldn’t feel them any longer. Do you think that’s weird?’

‘I can’t think of much that isn’t weird about all this.’

She paused for a moment.

‘If I tell you all about your Zambini friend, can you offer a safe haven for all the veggie trolls? We’re only 6.66 per cent of the Troll population.’

‘How many is that?’ I asked, thinking I could find out how many Trolls there were in total. But she cocked her head on one side and looked at me as though she didn’t really know what I was talking about.

‘Trolls prefer to work in percentages, fractions and ratios, as it allows a clearer overview of stuff, rather than getting bogged down in specifics.’

‘Can you give us an example?’ asked the Princess, who was aways interested in figures.

‘Well,’ said Molly, ‘if the Troll agree to spare ten per cent of humans from the pot, then we can say that without needing to count you all first, which would be time-consuming and tricky, since you spend a lot of time scurrying around and screaming idiotically. Here’s another one. I represent twenty-five per cent of the creatures in this room, right?’

We nodded. There were four of us: Me, Tiger, the Princess and the Troll.

‘Okay. Now, if the seventy-five per cent of creatures in this room that belong to the subset “non-Trolls” agree to share a cake of unit one, what would be the numerical value of each share?’

‘.333,’ said the Princess, before adding: ‘Actually, the 3s would go on for ever.’

‘And if you recombined the cake without eating any, would the sum return to unit one?’

‘No,’ conceded the Princess, ‘by my reckoning it would come to 9.9999 recurring.’

‘Then you see what I mean. Fractions are better for sharing cake, percentages for understanding sets within a large body without quantification. Numbers, well, they’re quite good for precisely defining ownership, but not much else.’

‘I disagree,’ said the Princess. ‘Numbers are not simply about raw quantity – they can be manipulated with others to calculate a future event with accuracy. If I know how far away something is, and have an idea how fast I will move, then knowing the time it will take to reach it is a useful asset. Similarly, if I have limited time and a destination to reach, I know how fast I will have to travel. And if I have both limited time and speed, I will know how short I will fall of my destination.’

Molly chortled.

‘Your complex mathematics don’t fool me, Human. Your calculations only have relevance if you place value on what time you get anywhere. We prefer a “we’ll get there when we do” approach.’

‘Some of our trains work on the same principle,’ I said.

‘So I heard,’ said Molly. ‘If you dispensed with timetables and defined arrival time as when they got there, all trains would achieve one hundred per cent punctuality.’

‘By the same token they would all depart exactly on time, too,’ said Tiger.

‘Now you’re getting it,’ said the Troll. ‘Numerical values are seriously overrated. Here’s another example: if I were to tell you the mass of the sun is roughly 2 x 1030 kilograms then it would just be a meaninglessly high number – two with thirty noughts36 after it.’

‘I agree with that,’ said the Princess.

‘Right,’ said the Troll, ‘but if I were to tell you the sun has 99.86 per cent of the combined mass of the entire solar system, what would that mean?’

‘It would mean … wow,’ said the Princess.

‘Exactly,’ said the Troll, grinning broadly. ‘Wow.’

‘So hang on,’ said Tiger, ‘all the rest of the planets and moons and comets and stuff make up only, what, less than .14 per cent of the total mass?’

‘To be honest,’ said the Troll, ‘most of what isn’t the sun is Jupiter. All the rest of it – us included – is the galactic equivalent of the dust you missed when cleaning.’

‘I’ve come over all negligible,’ said Tiger.

‘I try and keep all my counting to a minimum,’ said the Troll. ‘It saves a lot of time. So: will you give a safe haven to vegetarian Trolls, even if I don’t have a numerical value?’

‘I can’t make that promise,’ I said, ‘but I know someone who can.’

The Princess removed her handkerchief too. Sometimes a little trust goes a long way.

‘I am Princess Shazine Blossom Hadridd Snodd,’ she said, ‘uncrowned Queen of the greater United Kingdoms.’

‘You seem a little spotty for someone who’s going to be a great queen,’ said the Troll after staring at her for a moment.

‘And you seem a little lacking in grace for someone who will one day negotiate peace between our species.’

They stared at each other for a moment, then smiled. They would go on to form a great alliance, but that would be later, in a time and place I wouldn’t share.

‘Wow,’ said Tiger, who felt it too, ‘I think I’ve just witnessed history in the making.’

The Princess put out her hand.

‘I will offer the V-Trolls a safe haven irrespective of numbers,’ she said. ‘If a group of people are being persecuted for their beliefs, then assistance can only ever be a binary issue: yes or no.’

‘Now you’re speaking my language,’ said Molly with a grin. ‘So here we go: Zambini had four messages for me to pass on to Jennifer. The first was that the Mighty Shandar’s plans were ‘bigger and bolder than anything you can imagine’. Secondly, that you, Miss Strange, are the only one who can stop Shandar, and help will come from an unexpected quarter. You need to be brave, to be bold, and go where others fear to tread. The third message was less of a message, and more of a gift.’

She pulled a waxy object from her ear, where, she explained, ‘she had to keep it in case she was searched’. The key was greasy and, well, a little disgusting – there were even some hairs and a couple of beetles attached. I took the key, wiped it on my handkerchief and stared at it closely. I knew which lock it would fit.

‘And the fourth message?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the Troll, ‘but you have to come a little closer.’

I moved closer to the Troll, who, while not as grimy, smelly or as dribbly as her carnivorous kin, was still far more unpleasant than anyone I knew. She put her arms around me in the most gentle and tender of embraces and held me for a moment, rocking gently. She had emulated Zambini’s trademark hug so closely that for a brief moment it actually felt I was there, transported back to my first few days at Kazam, when everything was strange and frightening and new. The Troll put her mouth to my ear and whispered, in a fine impersonation of Zambini’s voice: ‘This is goodbye, Jen. Had you been my own daughter, I could not be more proud.’

I now returned the hug, hoping that it would eventually make its way back up the line to him. I knew then I wouldn’t see Zambini again, and not because he had stopped randomly appearing. It was just that the next time he did, I would, as likely as not, no longer be here.

Eventually, Molly released me from the embrace, and I blinked away the tears.

‘So,’ I said, wanting to move on, ‘why are Trolls so frightened of buttons?’

‘They’re just horrible,’ she said with a shiver. ‘The randomness of their size and colour – and the noise they make when they touch. Ugh. The same goes for swimming. I mean, what’s the point? The water gets up your nose and it’s really slow. And that shade of cerulean blue? It’s just, well, nasty.’

‘Would jackets covered with buttons be any sort of defence?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘The button suit would have to cover you head to toe, and it wouldn’t stop Trolls killing you and then pulling the clothes off your shattered body with a long pair of tongs.’

‘I suppose not. Tiger,’ I said, ‘send someone around the hardware stores of Cornwall and get as many blue paint swatches as you can to show Molly, and see if we can isolate the specific shade of cerulean they despise.’

‘It’s a very precise shade,’ said Molly. ‘Most blues we’re quite happy with.’

‘Also,’ I added, ‘I want you to source a long duster coat and fedora hat. I don’t want the sight of our valued friend and ally causing consternation or accidental attacks.’

‘Right,’ said Tiger, and hurried off.

‘I don’t want to go outside,’ said Molly, suddenly apprehensive. ‘I can transfer from a car to a building but only at a run.’

‘We can facilitate that,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said Molly, looking at us all in turn, ‘you turned out to be quite pleasant after all, and hardly dangerous or ill tempered at all. But you know what could really cement this friendship?’

‘Moussaka?’ asked the Princess.