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Crickets chirped. In the distance, a dog barked and someone yelled at it. Margaret Domzalski’s foot landed squarely in a mud patch the light rainstorm earlier that day brought on. Margaret muttered a few words her mother would have been abhorred she knew and stomped on. Checking bushes, in trash cans, and under parked cars.
“Mr. Mittens? Mr. Mittens! Mr. Mittens, oh where are you?” Margaret pulled her coat tighter around herself. It had been hours since the rain had dissipated, but night had come before the sun could warm the world again. A part of her minded the cold, but she was far more worried about her cat. Mr. Mittens wasn’t used to the outdoors. Constantly intrigued by it, yes. But he was a pampered, pudgy fuzzball who should be back home snuggled up in his deluxe cat bed. Not out who-knows-where on a chilly night because she’d opened the kitchen door to let smoke from her most recent failed dinner out and he’d seen the opportunity for adventure. Ridiculous cat didn’t know that he wasn’t meant for adventure.
Margaret stepped under a streetlight and rubbed her hands together. She should be getting back. It certainly wasn’t proper, or safe, for a young woman such as herself to be out alone at this hour. As a girl, she had been told many, many, many stories about things that lurked in the night. Not that she believed any of them, of course. It was preposterous to think that massive creatures with glowing eyes roamed the streets completely undetected by the police force. Margaret looked once more around the street, hoping to see a flicker, even a small one, of movement. There were none. Mr. Mittens was nowhere in sight. It was time to go home. Margaret headed for a shortcut heading into a small wood behind the neighborhood.
The trees were serene, quiet but for the wind whispering through them. An owl hooted somewhere from the darkness and fluttered into silent flight. Margaret slowed her pace, incredibly aware of the crunch of dead leaves and twigs beneath her feet. There were no large predators in these woods. They covered too little an area. The trees too sparse. Not to mention boxed in by Arcadia’s suburbs. Still, not even the company of the shining moon gave much comfort.
“RAWWRRRAAUUGGGHH!!!”
Margaret froze. Her fingers clenched around the thin trunk of a tree she’d used to balance herself while climbing over one of its fallen brethren. She spun left, then right. Nothing. No monster charging in for the kill. She took a deep breath. Her heart refused to stop hammering.
“Meow meow.”
It was a cry that only could be heard due to the silence that had succeeded its predecessor, but it was one Margaret recognized quite well. That was her cat. That was Mr. Mittens. Margaret stepped off her log, glanced around, and picked up a conveniently nearby, large stick. She swung it around a couple times and found it satisfactory. Then, Margaret marched in the direction of the cries, uncaring now of how much her feet crunched.
There, in a moonlit clearing, was one of the most memorable sights of Margaret’s life. A rock creature stomped on poor, unsuspecting wildflowers and swung around a massive, glinting, double-bladed axe. It was, Margaret thought, as if a boulder had self-animated and decided the best way to spend its newfound life was to tear up the woods. As she observed, the creature thrust his axe into the ground, thudded over to a nearby stump, and retrieved something fat and fuzzy from a hole in its center, and lifted it to his gaping mouth.
“Hey! That’s my cat!”
Margaret charged forward and whacked the creature’s leg (the one part of him she could reach, he was quite tall) with her stick. Upon impact, the stick shattered. The creature slowly blinked down at her. The arm that held Mr. Mittens by the scruff lowered. Margaret jumped for her captured feline, but he remained out of reach.
“You…you are not afraid?” The creature rumbled. Up close, his mass blocked out most of the moonlight. His brilliant, red eyes were surrounded by shadow, but they were too inquisitive to be threatening.
“That. Is. My. Cat.” Margaret jutted out her chin, crossed her arms over her chest, and straightened her posture. Maybe she was just a little bit scared since her one weapon was a pile of splinters on the ground and all. But she wasn’t going to admit it. “And taking him is thievery. Murder, if you eat him. Give him back. Now.”
“I…I apologize. I did not realize I was in error against human law.” The creature held out Mr. Mittens to Margaret. She quickly took the cat in her arms, scratched behind his ears, and murmured comforting nonsense words to him. Mr. Mittens seemed unfazed by his ordeal. While all that was being done, the creature repeated, “You are not afraid,” more to himself than to Margaret.
Margaret eyed him from over her cat’s head. “Why? Should I be?”
“I am VRAXEL!” The creature roared in Margaret’s face, blowing her hair back. Great, now she’d have an even more difficult than usual time brushing it out later. “I am MIGHTY! Gumm-Gumms cower at the very thought of my BATTLE AXE!” He tugged the axe out of the ground and swung it toward the sky in an impressive arc. Vraxel held the position for a minute, then deflated. He heaved a breeze of a sigh. “By Deya’s grace, I fool no one. Not even you, a puny human.” Vraxel dropped his axe on the ground.
“I’m not puny.” Honestly. Margaret went jogging every weekend. She may not be athletic like her community college’s football team players, but still. Rude. “and my name is Margaret.” She paused. “And this is Mr. Mittens.” She showed her cat to Vraxel. “You can pet him if you want to say sorry, but you have to promise not to try and eat him again.”
“I assure you, Margaret.” Vraxel dragged out the middle of her name so it sounded more like he was saying Mar-gurrr-at. “No more harm will befall the beast from me.” Tentatively he reached out a finger the size of Mr. Mittens’ entire body to stroke the cat.
Rather than wait to be petted, Mr. Mittens jumped out of Margaret’s arms onto Vraxel’s hand, ran up his arm, across his broad shoulders, and down to the other hand, where he meowed amiably at the creature that had tried to eat him mere minutes before.
Vraxel laughed. “Fearless as his human.” His eyes returned to Margaret and his stony eyebrows furrowed. He reached over and grabbed a knapsack hidden in the shadow of the stump. “Hold this for me.” Vraxel took out a horseshoe and held it out to Margaret.
Margaret stared at the horseshoe. It didn’t exactly look clean. “Why? Can’t you just put it down if you need something else from in there?”
Vraxel grunted. Swiftly, he lunged forward and pressed the horseshoe to her exposed cheek. Nothing extraordinary happened. He stepped back again.
“Hey! What was that for? Didn’t your mother teach you not to be rude to girls?” Margaret snatched Mr. Mittens off Vraxel. “Being a rock doesn’t absolve you from having decent manners.”
“I am a Troll not a rock.” Vraxel corrected. “I had to be sure.” One of his hands reached up and clenched around a crystal pendant he wore around his neck. “You must understand, humans have lived unaware of my kind for centuries. When one of you sees us, they usually…” he mimicked someone screaming in fear and altogether freaking out. Margaret laughed. Vraxel frowned at her. “When one doesn’t, it generally means ill for whoever happened upon them while alone.”
“Why?” The question was out of her mouth before Margaret had truly considered any ramifications of asking it.
Vraxel’s response was to stare at her. Then, “Safety is the utmost importance. For both your kind and mine.” He looked away from her. “I will speak no further on this matter. I should never have spoken upon it at all.”
Margaret bit her lip. Questions danced around her mind, but she held them back. How to get him talking again? After considering many potential offerings of friendship, she went with, “I don’t suppose you’d enjoy some pie? Everyone says mine are the best.” No one had ever said that, but Vraxel didn’t need to know that.
“Pie?”
“It’s a pastry. A dessert treat. Do trolls not have foods like we humans do?” Seeing Vraxel open his mouth, probably to object to her questions, Margaret hurriedly added, “Don’t answer that. Come on.” She turned to go and waved for him to follow. “The least you can do for a girl after you almost eat her cat is walk her home and compliment her superb baking.” She paused. “Like this, Margaret, this pie of yours is simply divine! I must have your recipe so I can show all my fellow trolls how good your food is.” She batted her eyelashes at him.
Vraxel, who had started to follow her, stopped. “I will speak of this night to no one.”
“But you will eat a slice of pie.” Margaret grinned when he didn’t argue that point. Together they (and Mr. Mittens) tromped over wildflowers and out of the woods.
The Domzalski house kitchen was a pleasantly-sized, tidy room meant to be the place where the family sat down and enjoyed meals together. It was not meant for nor had it ever before been inhabited by a troll a little taller and wider than the doorway to enter it. Vraxel barely squeezed into the room and then immediately had to hunch over to avoid scraping the delicate, stained glass light fixture hanging above the table with his horns. He briefly studied the chairs around the table, then concluded it would be best not to even try. Vraxel gently leaned his axe beside a row of old shoes by the door, but it still scratched paint off the wall. Margaret would always remember how odd it looked next to her rain boots.
“Here. It’s apple. That’s a type of fruit by the way.” Margaret offered a plate with a large slab of mostly burned pie and a fork to Vraxel. She eagerly watched as he took it, attempted use of the fork, gave up on the object too tiny in his grasp and instead opened his mouth wide, lifted the plate, and slid the entire slab past his fangs.
After swallowing, Vraxel smacked his lips. “I like the taste of this ‘pie’.”
“Here, have some more.” Margaret cut him a second slice. “I’m glad you like it.” She added with a smile. Sure, her baking may never win any local contests like Dorothy from down the street’s, but she doubted Dorothy’s pies would stand up to the probably picky tastes of a troll. Vraxel ruined this thought by washing down the pie with both the plate and fork she’d given him.
“So, why were you in the woods?” It was an innocent enough starting point, Margaret figured.
“Training, with my axe.” Vraxel picked gunk out from between his fangs with his finger. “I was in the woods for privacy. These are dangerous times, but I assure you, Margaret, neither you nor your cat will be in danger. Of that, I can give you assurance.”
“What would we be in danger from?”
Vraxel turned toward her and seemed to take in her human appearance. He stood. “That does not concern you. You would do well to forget that this night every happened. I thank you for the pie.” He maneuvered toward the door faster than Margaret thought he would be capable of. Vraxel disappeared into the night.
Margaret grumbled at questions left unanswered. She gathered up Mr. Mittens in her arms and went upstairs to tell her diary all about the peculiar experience. Deep into that night, while staring at the ceiling because her brain was too full of thoughts to sleep, she would be unaware of a solemn troll guarding her house from the woods.
A week or two later, Margaret left a pie, this one cherry, on the kitchen windowsill to cool. She returned a couple hours later to find it gone and an intricately carved, deep purple gemstone in its place. Margaret picked up the gemstone, studied it, smiled to herself, and put it in a shoebox where she kept many such stones.
A little way off, under the shadows of tall, ancient trees, Vraxel carried a burned pie to his training meadow, as he had every night for the past two weeks.