Page 76 of The Troll’s Summer Flame

“Am I asleep this time?” he whispers, holding back.

“Are you asleep? No. You are awake. You can tell, because you’re talking to me with your eyes open,” I point out.

Hugo laughs—a sound I never heard in all of my life, not from him. He was too soft and small to be a brute and laugh at others’ pain. He was usually bearing the brunt of cruelty, and there was nothing to laugh at. “Well, I thought I was awake before. I was so tired, Gordon, so tired, and then there was a beautiful woman with wings, and reddish skin, and white hair, lots of it... And we were talking about Pine Ridge, just sitting on the rocks, talking until I felt like I was strong enough to stand and keep going. Only then—”

“Then you started to feel weaker, not stronger?”

“How did you know?” Hugo asks, carefully creeping forward.

“Long story. What happened?”

“I told the lady, Blanche —her name was Blanche, I think—that I felt sick and I needed to go find my brother. Only then I woke up—and I wasn’t on a rock, I was on the ground in the woods, and the woman was really there. She was crouched over me, and I shouted and threw her off, and she...” Hugo pats his arm and neck. “She gouged me with her claws and vanished with smoke and fire! I didn’t know what to do! Mother always said Pine Ridge was for human lovers and careful actors. She talked about how the bad monsters came here and secretly had basements full of human corpses to feast on, all the while pretending to play nice.”

“Mother is wrong. Mother is wrong about everything, but especially that. Pine Ridge is a good place, and yes, sometimes bad influences come here. They do not get to stay. Why are you here?”

Hugo moves forward again, and his arms start to rise, but then fall quickly.

A hug. My brother wanted to embrace me. I think. Or it could have been an attack, but he decided I was too ready for him. Needs the element of surprise, perhaps.

“I came because... Because I don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just Mother and me now.”

“What? Where are Matthew and Randall?”

Hugo twists his bloodied shirt in nervous hands. His skin is covered in tiny cuts and scrapes, signs of a troll living off the land for a long time. The jeans he wears only come to a few inches above his shin, revealing bony ankles above large, bare feet.

“Well... Matthew left a few years ago, looking for work when the factory started requiring identification papers from all the workers. He said he’d come back. Said he’d send money. He didn’t.”

I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It’s certainly selfish, and that’s exactly how “good trolls” act, according to Mother.

“Randall... Randall and Mother started looking for stranded drivers, and...” Hugo gulps. “That’s when I ran away the first time, but I came back after a few weeks of hiding, not able to find work, and not really sure how to—to do anything.” Hugo gives me a miserable, guilty look. “I found Randall turned to stone about five miles from the meat processing plant where Dad used to work sometimes. I’m betting he got hit in the head with a tire iron or maybe one of the people he stopped had a gun. He was sprawled out, on his back, as if he’d passed out or fallen, and I guess he wasn’t able to get home before the light came.”

“I see. So you ran again.”

“Well... Not at first. Because... Well, she’s my mother. I thought I had to take care of her, even if she hated me.”

“That’s very noble,” I manage a little smile, some of my unease leaving. “But there is no good that comes from caring for and nurturing wicked beings if they don’t express even a small interest in changing.”

Hugo hangs his head. “She also told me that if I ever left, she would hunt me down and crack my bones for marrow and eat my eyeballs for dessert.”

“Ah. That’s an effective threat.” But he ran. I size up my little brother. He is not so little now, but still pitifully thin for a troll. “You braved her threats, I see.”

“It’s more that I think she may finally be too old and sickly to catch me. She was hit by a car once. She was hunting the person pulled over on the side of the road, but their car was not broken enough to strand the driver. She discovered it was still functional when she attacked, and the driver ran her down in his escape. She had a broken leg, and then she told me I had to stay and ensure she was fed.” Hugo looks at me nervously. “I am a good hunter, Gordon. All with traps and snares. And a good marksman, too. One blow, never more than one. I don’t like things to be in pain.”

My heart warms in an unfamiliar way. A sort of familial affection that is odd and alien, but enjoyable. “That is the best way to be.”

Hugo nods, his dark curly hair flopping wildly.

For a moment, we stare. I don’t dare ask him to come home with me. Not yet. But I motion to him to join me where I stand. “How do you come to be here? In Pine Ridge?”

“I was looking for you! I was hoping... I was hoping you could teach me how to do things.”

“What things?” I ask warily.

“All of it! All the things Father tried to teach us but Mother tried to tell us were wrong. How to live with humans and in the human world. To get a job and work, and get to eat food you don’t have to kill yourself.” His brown-black eyes shine with excitement. “I have been working my way here for months, Gordon. I have seen hundreds of humans, and slept in homeless shelters, and worked little jobs for cash, and shopped in stores—well, I have tried.”

“Yes. That’s how it starts,” I explain, surprised to feel my cheeks lifting in a smile.

“But I don’t want to keep living like that. I want things that trolls should have if they’re living as men! Homes and meaningful work, and books, and movies, and a wife who will willingly share this life. That was the problem, Gordon. Father forced Mother to be what she did not want to be, and even though he did it to protect us, it didn’t work, did it?” He laughs ruefully and lifts up his shirt, revealing a great concave space between his ribs and hipbone. “That is what she did with her bare hands two winters ago. I want to find a place where no one ever treats me like that.”