AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jake and I are back to being a well-oiled, albeit old and a little rusty, machine for our morning routine. I think he needed to see that I could take care of myself in this new role and dealing with the trolls gave him that chance. He kisses me good-bye, a good kiss, as he guides the kids to the mudroom door, and I turn to make myself a to-go cup of coffee. My eyes flick up at the familiar flash of red as the fox kits play in the yard. I wave at Minori, our resident kitsune, as she happily squints her eyes and flicks her tails. We are just two moms tending to our packs in our own ways.
I grab my coffee and my gear bag. I have more than just a gi now; I have full-on equipment:padded gloves, a mouthguard, and a padded helmet thingy. Then I head to my car. George no longer dictates what we’ll be doing each day ahead of time. More creatures are waking up and coming out of hiding every day, and he never really knows ahead of time what I need to catch up on anymore. Most days we do a combination of physical training and research in the library. Yesterday’s beasts were trolls. Today’s could be unicorns. Who knows! Being the Guardian is just a fun and exciting crap shoot of, well, crap.
Before I even knock, George swings the door open. His entire being is buzzing at such a high frequency I can see the air around him glimmering. “What took you so long?” He recedes to the far side of the expansive marble foyer and begins to pace while I lug my bag across the threshold and close the door behind myself.
My eyebrows do a boogie across my face because, unlike his normally reserved self, the energy he exhibits today is downright frenetic. As I watch his frantic steps go left and right and back again across my field of vision, I try to initiate a conversation. “I’m sorry? I’m not even late. What is with you?”
He pauses his gait and looks at his watch. “Oh. You’re not late. Huh. Look at that. Sorry. It felt like you were.” He locks his eyes on mine as he raises his hands, palms up, pleadingly. “What the hell happened to me last night?”
“What do you mean? What don’t you remember?”
He’s back to pacing which is making my brain hurt. I’m normally the one pacing. He’s normally the calm one. My eyes trace his path back and forth across the room like I’m watching a tennis match. My pulse is speeding up. I wrap my fingers about the metal cuff, forcing my brain to silently recite five things I can see.
He doesn’t bother looking at me when he talks. He’s too busy trying to recall events just out of his reach. “I remember finding three guys in the woods.”
I’m getting dizzy watching him. No wonder he hates when I move like this. “Yeah. The trolls.”
He stops. “No, just three guys.”
I nod slowly and wish we could fast forward through this redundant conversation. “Yes. They were the trolls.”
His head tilts to the left as he plants his hands on his hips. “How could you think they were trolls, Miranda? They were just three men.”
The smile I’ve been trying to maintain slips, and I answer him sharper than I intend. “Trust me George, again. They were the trolls. We went through this all, last night.” I walk past him to the door and open it, using my hands to gesture to the not-so-great outdoors. “Shall we take a walk and see?”
He looks at me, then the door, and back to me before running his hands through his hair and nodding. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
I try to keep my eye on my docent as we walk through his woods, back to where we found the rotted vegetation yesterday afternoon, and then the humanoid (some more human, some more -oid) trolls last night. I have never seen him so frazzled. He is usually composed to a fault. Is this typical George when he’s nervous or an after effect of the troll’s spell? Or maybe the spell is still on him? Oh, crap. What if the trolls broke free and weren’t turned to stone, meaning the spell is still active? I’ll need to track them down and find another way to kill the bastards so I can get my docent back to normal.
I sigh with relief when I see the three stone figures against the boulders. I point so he knows where to look, since they sort of blend in with the giant rock behind them. “See? Like I said—trolls.”
George’s brow is so low that I don’t know how his eyes are still open. He also stares at the boulders slack-jawed. “But, how did you know? That they were trolls, I mean. They look so human. Well, two of them at least. Was it that big guy? Did he give them away?”
“Yeah, especially when he started farting a heavy green spell gas all over us…from his mouth.”
In my periphery, I see his head snap around to look at me. I slowly rotate my own, afraid I’ll get a kink in my neck if I move as fast as he did. His mouth hangs open, and his eyes blink rapidly. “Why don’t I remember that?”
I pat his shoulder. “Oh, Honey…” I sigh. I look back at the trolls and cross my arms smugly. Nodding toward them I announce, “I’m going to be honest here. I wasn’t sure that cord was going to hold. I’m pretty fucking proud of myself right now.”
George follows my gaze. “Howdidyou tie them so securely?” He walks to the boulder with urgency, arms swinging. Then he inspects and maybe even admires my handiwork.
I follow him, and as I get closer, I notice that when they froze (er, stoned? Died? I’m not really sure what to call the action), they were cowering against the boulder, pressing themselves into it. Not only were they not trying to escape, but their faces were twisted in fear, wide, open eyes with eyebrows arched high and mouths twisted in screams destined to be silent for eternity.
“I wonder what they were so afraid of?” I ponder out loud.
“What makes you think they were afraid of something?”
“Look at their faces.” All three wore similar expressions when they died:
“I guess,” he answers shortly. “Or maybe it was because the sun was coming up and they knew they were about to die.”
“I guess.” I try to believe that explanation, but I can’t help feeling like something is off, something in the angle of their stares. Their eyes are all focused on where I stand, a few feet in front of them, not where the sun would have peeked over the horizon and through the trees to shine on them.
“Wow, trolls sure are stupid.” George’s voice comes from behind the boulder.
I squeeze through the gap to see what he’s talking about. The knots I tied are almostuntied. In the very least, they are much looser than I remember leaving them. Either the trolls struggled hard enough that they had almost freed themselves, or I fucked up. No matter which, something other than the way I tied this cord stopped them from slipping the binding and escaping to exhale their horrible breath another day.
“Wow, we got lucky this time. I think maybe we need to incorporate some basic knot tying into my training, yeah?” I turn to George when I say this, but he is focused on that knot. Bewilderment still has his features twisted. “You okay there, George?”
