28
Home Again
Annie opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was an elf butt just inches away from her nose.
“Wh-what?” she mumbled.
Cold had seeped through her wet clothes. Her stomach bounced against a hard shoulder, and someone or something was clutching her by the legs as the ground flew beneath her upside-down head.
It was a little disorienting, and the others could hardly blame her when Annie screamed, struggled, and fell—plop!—into the snow face-first on the edge of town.
Eva skidded to a stop and swore, yanking Bloom to a halt. Jamie cringed.
Annie pushed herself out of the snow and stared up at the others.
“Oops,” Annie said. “What happened?”
They quickly took off their skis and filled Annie in.
“I held the crow back with my ax,” Eva boasted. “And it turned back in fear, overwhelmed by the might and ferocity of me, Eva Beryl-Axe.”
Annie turned to Jamie for confirmation. He rolled his eyes.
“We’ve got to go on foot from here,” Eva said. “If humans saw us on flying skis, it would raise a lot of questions. And totally break the rules.”
“What rules?” Annie asked as Eva hauled her up into a standing position.
“The Stopper Rules,” Eva answered. “You seriously know nothing, you know that?”
“Yeah,” Annie admitted. “But at least I know that I know nothing?”
Eva gave her a blank stare.
“It was a joke. Obviously not a good one.” Annie’s head spun. Eva would probably think dizziness was a weakness. Annie changed the topic. “Where’s Tala?”
Jamie, Bloom, and Eva gazed blankly at each other.
“So, he’s frozen, too.” Annie swallowed hard, heart sinking with the realization. “The crow got him.”
They were all silent for a moment. Annie knew she couldn’t dwell on Tala’s loss. Dwelling on it would make it more real when she wanted it to be less real. “So where is your house, Jamie? I can’t remember.”
Jamie cringed. He tilted his head toward the main street of Mount Desert. White houses and small shops lined the snowy sidewalks. The gas station had a Closed for Winter sign on it. The only light came from the scattered street lamps and the reflection of the snow. It was a ghost town. A non-magic town, but a ghost town nonetheless, or at least it seemed that way to Annie.
“I just realized this will be the first time I’ve ever had friends over,” he twittered nervously. “Not that this counts as having friends over. Yeah … huh …”
They quick-walked down the snowy street. Bloom muttered elfish words, and their footprints disappeared behind them.
“Jamie,” Annie whispered as they walked past the First National Bank and the glowing light of its ATM. “Can you tell us about your family? How do we sneak the gnome past them?”
The others listened to Jamie’s silent pause. He cleared his throat. A dog barked in the distance. It reminded Annie of Tala, and resolve strengthened inside of her.
We will get the gnome thing back. We will save the town. We will survive this.
“Jamie,” Annie prodded as gently as she could. “Tell us about your grandmother.”
Jamie kept his head down. “She’s evil. That’s all. She’s evil.”
“Not helpful,” Eva muttered. “Artichokes are evil. Hamsters … zombies … trolls …”
“She’s a troll.” Jamie lifted his head and stopped walking. “There’s our house.”
The two-story house appeared to be just as Jamie had left it. None of the shades were drawn, and a dim fluorescent glow shone through the front porch window out into the late-evening darkness. The structure looked ordinary, normal for Maine. Not the kind of place one would expect to find trolls.
Annie realized she hadn’t really noticed the house when they’d rescued Jamie. She’d been too distracted by the fire and the hovering snowmobile and his grandmother—his hulking, massive, hungry grandmother.
“Is your father just like her?” Annie whispered as they all stood there staring.
“Yeah.” Jamie’s hands balled into fists.
The wind stopped blowing. Silence suddenly took over the town. Annie missed Tala so much it hurt.
“How should we do this?” Bloom whispered. “Perhaps I should scout out the perimeter? Annie and Eva can take the right flank. Jamie can take the left. I’ll go in through the door.”
“Splitting up is not a good idea,” Annie argued. “It would make noise across multiple positions. More for them to notice. One of us should sneak in.”
“But that person would be too vulnerable.” Bloom shook his head.
The house creaked. A shadow moved across the front window.
“That’s her bedroom,” Jamie said, voice raised. “She probably saw us out here. She’s probably coming down right now. She probably … She probably …”
“New plan. Eva plan,” Eva said, not even bothering to whisper.
“What?” Annie asked. “What plan?”
Eva didn’t take the time to answer. Instead, she just rushed the door.
“Eva!” Annie whisper-yelled after her. She motioned to Bloom. He shook his head and started after her.
Eva’s little dwarf shoulder smashed open the front door of Jamie’s house. She disappeared into the darkness.
“Oh, no …” Annie held her breath.
Bloom stopped midway across the lawn. His footprints and Eva’s lay visible in the snow. They were past elfish spells now, thanks to Eva.
Several loud thumps sounded from inside the house.
“Eva?” Annie whispered.
More thumps.
A grunt.
“Eva?”
Footsteps, loud and un-shy, came to the doorway. Mr. Alexander appeared. At least, Annie thought it was Mr. Alexander. He was wearing a ratty yellow bathrobe and striped pajamas. But his skin wasn’t human … and his bulging arms full of muscle weren’t human and his teeth … His teeth …
“Looking for something?” he asked. He lifted up an arm. Eva dangled from it, kicking and trying to punch the massive troll. But her arms and legs were far too short, and her kicks and punches came nowhere near their intended mark.
Mr. Alexander laughed. “So feisty. What do you think? Would she be a better appetizer or dessert?”
29
Dwarfs Are Tough Appetizers
“Put her down!” Jamie stalked past Annie and then Bloom, heading right up the stairs before he even thought about what he was doing. His voice was louder, deeper than ever before. “Put her down right now.”
He stood below his father, breathing in the horrible rotting stench of him. How could I have lived here so long and not realized my dad is a monster? How could I have let him treat me so badly?
I didn’t know any better then, he thought.
Jamie knew better now. He knew that you have to fight trolls. He knew if you didn’t—no matter how large or scary or mean or hungry they were—they would take you over.
He took a step closer. “I said, put her down now!”
For a moment nothing happened. The air seemed to ripple a bit the way it will right before an explosion happens. Jamie could almost see the tension in it and feel it tremble against his skin. Then his father threw back his head and laughed. It reminded Jamie of the crow’s cackle—wild and wicked and horrifying all at once.
“Stop laughing,” Jamie demanded. He lifted an uncharacteristically threatening fist. “Don’t you dare laugh.”
Mr. Alexander’s mouth closed. His large beady eyes fixed upon Jamie. He countered the lifted fist with a thick eyebrow raise. “Are you telling your own father what to do, boy?”
“You are not my father,” Jamie sputtered. He swayed where he stood.
“Whatever.” Mr. Alexander’s goggling eyes seemed to lurch in his head. “Did you come back so I could wish you a happy birthday?”
A hand gently touched his arm. It was Annie. “Jamie …”
> Jamie ignored her calming, warning tone and snorted, “And don’t call me ‘boy’!”
“Of course I will call you ‘boy.’ I will do whatever I want. I am your father. I raised you. I fed you. I nurtured you for how many years?”
Mr. Alexander tossed Eva backward inside the house. There was a thud and then silence. The troll stepped forward, closer to Jamie, Bloom, and Annie. “But that doesn’t matter. And who do we have here? A girlfriend?”
He stopped and sniffed the air, and his hair stood on end. “Someone smells delicious. An elf? Could it possibly be an elf? How tasty! I haven’t smelled an elf in years! Let alone eaten one.”
With a roar he leaped off the porch, thudding to a landing behind Jamie and Annie, and much, much closer to Bloom, who pulled out his dagger.
Annie pushed Jamie up the stairs. “Get Eva and the gnome. Bloom and I will hold him off.”
Her voice was so authoritative that Jamie didn’t argue. He turned from them and raced up the porch steps, scattering “Welcome” mats and old rolled-up newspapers that were still in their plastic wrappings.
His father had left the door ajar. A nasty smell of rotting pizza filled Jamie’s nose, making him lift his coat over his nostrils. He had no choice. He rushed inside and searched around for Eva. Darkness pretty much obscured everything, but he spotted her crumpled form halfway up the staircase. She groaned. A cat that didn’t belong to the Alexanders skulked about behind her.
“Eva!” Jamie was by her side in a second, checking her for broken bones. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. My father … He’s just … Are you?”
She hauled herself into a sitting position, and swatted him away. “I’m fine. Dwarfs don’t break. You get the gnome?”
He shook his head vigorously as she growled. She reached out and grabbed her ax from the stairs behind her. “Why not?”
“I was checking on you,” he explained.
“I am fine. Dwarfs do not get hurt.” Eva hopped to her feet like a gymnast, landing hard and flat on the floor, then raised her ax above her head like a super warrior from a comic book. “I’m going to go kick your father’s butt. You grab the gnome.”
Jamie scrambled over to investigate behind the front door. The same pile of shoes and newspapers were there, but no gnome. His stomach seemed to evaporate into thin air. He gulped.
“It’s not here,” he whispered, frantically knocking over newspaper piles, searching. The papers flopped to the ground, pages fluttering. “It was here … But now it’s gone.”
Outside his father roared something about how much he missed eating elves and how he hadn’t eaten any for a decade.
Eva raised her eyebrows.
“I’m going out there. Nobody gets to eat Bloom.” She hurried toward the door, stopping at the threshold only to turn and admonish Jamie with a emphatically pointy finger. “You find that gnome. We’re only here because you said it’s here. You better not have sent us on some wild goose chase and put us all in danger for nothing!”
She was out the door and onto the frigid lawn before he could reply that he knew that. He knew that very well.
Biting on the inside of his mouth, Jamie turned around in the darkness. He lived within these walls for years, but he’d never had to actually find anything in the house before. The task seemed overwhelming, especially when he imagined running into his grandmother.
“I can do this,” he muttered. “I can do this …”
The cat on the staircase mewed at him.
“Well, you’re new,” Jamie said, surveying the sleek gray form. It had white paws that looked like mittens or socks. They glowed in the half-light.
Annie screamed. He turned toward the door. He wanted to help. Anything could be happening out there, but he had to get the gnome first. Without it, so many people would die. Mr. Nate, Helena, Miss Cornelia … the entire town.
The cat mewed and then turned, silently walking up the stairs. Jamie lost sight of it in the dim light. He swallowed hard and followed, grabbing a flashlight from the box on the stairs. He clicked it on. Nothing. He hesitated and went back to grab another. The batteries must have died. He pulled another out of the wobbling pile inside the box. This one was huge and black and heavy, like the flashlights the cops his father worked with used.
The flashlight cast a circle of light in the darkness. Jamie swished it back and forth in an arcing motion. It illuminated his former home—and that’s when he realized that no matter what, even if he didn’t die tonight, there was no way he could ever come back here. His father and grandmother were trolls, yes, but even if they didn’t want to eat the marrow out of his bones, they were hideous and evil and so terribly mean to him. Nobody deserves that. Nobody needs to feel worthless all the time or to be called “boy” like it’s an insult. Nobody deserves any of it at all. Now he had a purpose; he had new people to love and protect, and he had a home with food that wasn’t Vienna sausages. He was not going to lose it.
The cat stood outside the door to his grandmother’s room.
“I deserve more than this,” he whispered to the cat.
The cat stared at him as if he were the least intelligent human—or soon-to-be troll—in the world. Then, the cat shifted its weight to its back legs, reached up, and scratched at the door.
“But that’s …” He couldn’t even finish his whisper.
Jamie had never stepped inside his grandmother’s bedroom. It was a forbidden place. Sometimes the nasty smell of asparagus would waft beneath the door and enter the hallway. Sometimes he thought he’d heard high-pitched whimpering noises coming from beyond the door.
I will kill you if you ever go in there, his grandmother had told him. I will kill you with my bare hands.
“I can’t go in her bedroom,” he whispered to the cat. “No,” Jamie said, backing away. He bumped into the wall of the hallway, knocking into the family portraits. They rattled. He jumped. “I can’t—I just—”
The cat pushed open the door. Horrible smells of rotting vegetables wafted into the hallway. The cat dropped back down on all four legs and trotted inside. Jamie’s heart clenched. His grandmother could be in there. She’d eat that cat if she found it in her room. She’d probably eat him, too, if she found him in her house.
“Great.” He tiptoed after the cat as quickly as he could. After a moment of internal debate, he decided to keep the flashlight turned on. He couldn’t imagine moving around in the stinky, unknown darkness.
The flashlight was so bright. He pulled the bottom of his shirt over it and swept the light along the floor and walls. There were bones everywhere. The centers were sucked out. Chicken skeletons, he thought. Along the walls were huge pictures of trolls. There was one of a woman wearing a suit of armor. The caption said “Mother.” Beneath a painting of a man in a toga was the word “Grandfather.” And then Jamie’s light swept over a blown-up photo of himself, back when he was about six years old. It was his first-grade class picture from school. His hair was sticking out around his head. He was smiling, showing the gap where three of his front teeth were missing. He was wearing a huge T-shirt that was far too orange and far too polka-dotted to be cool. But that wasn’t what horrified him. What horrified him was the caption on the plaque beneath his photo. It was just one word, but it made him almost drop the flashlight:
“Food.”
Food. That was really all he ever was to them. Jamie tightened his hold on the flashlight and turned away. He moved the beam along the walls, trying to search the room systematically. His nerves were so raw that every shadow seemed like a monster. Every object felt like a crow ready to swoop in and surround him with never-ending darkness. Every breath sounded like his grandmother ready to devour him.
Every breath? He held his breath. And he heard something else breathing, loud and both shallow and deep.
The sound was not coming from the cat.
Jamie slowly arced the flashlight up to the foot of the bed. There was a lump beneath the covers. A green, bulbous foot stuck out over the
edge. Hand shaking, he tried to keep the flashlight steady as the beam skimmed over the body and up … up past the belly … and to …
His grandmother snored and snorted in her sleep. Gripped tightly in her hands was the lawn gnome. She clutched it to her chest, a prize teddy bear that she wouldn’t part with, not ever.
30
Toppling Trolls
Mr. Alexander towered between Annie and Bloom. The hair on the backs of his arms and his neck rippled and moved. He grew one foot taller and then another. His yellow robe fell to pieces as the seams on his pajama shirt ripped from his rapidly expanding chest and arms. His pajama bottoms were suddenly much too short.
Annie staggered backward onto another porch step. She grabbed the railing, watching the hideous transformation, and wrapped her hand around the handle of the phurba in her pocket. She had to help Bloom. He couldn’t possibly face a troll alone.
There were newspapers and skis everywhere. Newspapers and their skis … batteries … skis … What good would that do? Think, Annie!
“Annie! Run!” Bloom yelled. “He wants me, not you.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she released her hold on the knife, scooped up a pair of skis, and brandished them like a baseball bat.
The troll lunged after Bloom. The boy leaped away and threw a ball of light at him. The troll sidestepped it easily.
“Baby magic,” he taunted. “Elfish goody-goody magic.”
Bloom’s face tightened. He threw another ball of light. Mr. Alexander dodged it and lunged forward. Bloom soared halfway up a tree, bounding out of the troll’s reach, but just barely. Mr. Alexander grabbed the tree by its large trunk and started to yank it out of the ground. The roots pulled up the snow, spewing it into the air like a geyser. It sprayed Bloom’s feet and pants.
Bloom climbed higher up the tree.
Annie had to do something. She rushed at the troll, holding the skis above her head.
“Leave him alone!” she ordered. The troll ignored her.
“I said, leave him alone!” Annie yelled again, swatting at him with the skis.