Abigail

7 - Abigail Makes a Wrong Turn

Abigail blinked into awareness as her nose twitched with the overwhelming odor of thick manure and rotting vegetables. Her heart sank: that deep sinking that drags your heart down into your stomach.

"Laz," she whispered, voice barely audible yet even then not quite able to hide the edge of despair. He woke and turned toward her expectantly, but she found she could barely go on. The words were trapped somewhere between her brain and her throat and for them to ever reach her mouth seemed unthinkable.

But the smell made it certain: they were in troll land.

* * *

Trolls are blind with an overpowering stink—the only way their dinner was found was by sound. A troll's feet, as Xander had taught them, are huge, but padded. They can move more silently through a wood than a squirrel, and they have impeccable hearing. Silence was of the greatest import now.

Laz mouthed the word at her long after all this had processed: "Trolls?"

She nodded despairingly. Thick clouds of darkness swirled around them: a springstorm. Mist lifted up from the ground as icy drops began to fall from above. The worst possible combination for visibility. Laz picked up the largest stick he could find and stood the way Xander had taught him.

Abigail looked at him skeptically.

"What?" Laz hissed, shrugging with his hands and stick.

Abigail rolled her eyes and shook her head. "We shouldn't have left him," she muttered.

"I can take care of us," he snapped back, voice rising a pitch. "I've been doing it a good deal longer than Xander the Coward."

"He's not a coward!"

"How can you say that? He left our father behind to die and saved his own life instead!"

"Yeah, so said a guy in a pub!"

"Well, thanks to the pub we can ask our father in person!"

"If we reach him! We're in troll land, Laz. Troll land. The one place he told us was most dangerous."

"Yeah well your feet took us here, Abigail!"

She was silent. He was right. She couldn't understand why, but he was right. She had led them here. The mist was so thick now that Abigail could barely see past her hand. As she took a breath to answer him, she suddenly felt a gust of air as an extraordinarily large sized hand reached out by her hair, missing her head by only a pinky's width.

She gasped in surprise and dropped to the ground, crawling away rapidly.

"Abby?" Her brother's voice sounded far away.

"Shut up, Laz!" She said it as loudly and clearly as she could manage, hoping to draw the trolls away from him. As the thought formulated, she stood and burst into a sprint. "Just MAKE SURE YOU SHUT UP!" She could feel and smell the trolls chasing her, though she could not hear or see them.

Abigail ran as fast as she could, vocalizing crazily as she did.

A branch broke beside her and then another on her opposite side. So there are at least two following, she thought grimly. She could see them occasionally, the sight of their thick, coarse fur bursting through the mist. She needed a plan, any kind of plan, any step to take after the running. Climb the tree? Could trolls climb? She couldn't remember.

Then she heard it—raw, sharp, a sound that swung a cut deep into her heart—her brother's scream. Her heart pounded fiercely and a cold sweat broke over her. His scream was far; her run had put good distance between them. Alas, it seemed not all the trolls had followed.

She picked up the broken branch and stopped running. "Where are you?" Her voice tore across the woods, high-pitched and broken. Immediately she was face-to-face with the ugliest figure she had ever seen. Teeth jutting out from below its thick, poofing lips. Yellow eyes that were unsettlingly mismatched in size. A nose that took up far too much real estate of the face.

"ArrrrGGHHHH!" Abby grunted and swung the branch full-force at the head. It broke in two and landed on the ground. She bunched her hands up into fists, but in truth she never stood a chance.

She felt a blow to her middle. Her breath caught. Her nose filled with the stink of rotting meat; then came a thud to her head that she heard before the sear of pain made her eyes roll backward. Her breath caught. Rain poured around her as her body fell to the ground and consciousness slipped away, the reality of what was happening sunk it. She had failed her brother. She had failed her father. She had failed herself.

And now she was going to die.