“Well,” Wynforr said, coming up behind the others, “that was a most unpleasant event.”
Seth laughed. He and Mgwan had been waiting for Wynforr. It was almost noon, and Seth had been on the walls since nine o’clock.
“I would have thought that your gatekeeper organ would keep you from the pain?” Seth asked.
“Well, it does not work as well when one is asleep, and I believe a certain amount of the mental status of the Troll turned out to be necessary for the change.”
“Oh, sorry! Yes, it was painful. Are we ready to go?”
“We will need supplies,” Wynforr said.
“Mgwan arranged for those this morning, before I was even up. And Sionr can tell everyone that we are leaving. Come, let us go.”
The mist was gone, and the sun beat down on them. “It seems silly,”
Mgwan said, “to be invisible with backpacks on.”
“We can drop the backpacks if we need to,” Wynforr said, and the other two looked at him.
“Of course we can,” Seth said. “But that doesn’t prevent it from being silly. Perhaps you need to move further in the direction of Troll, so your social skills will mesh with ours. Mgwan was pointing out an incongruity, not a logical contradiction.”
“You, you are perhaps correct. It was, perhaps, an error to try for anything so complex as a mixed transformation the very first time I transformed.” He laughed, “Well, I guess that shows that even Ellyll aren’t omniscient.”
Mgwan turned, “They are still watching us,” he remarked.
“What else do they have to do?” Seth said, which was not strictly accurate, as many people were working busily; if anything spurred on by the advent of this scouting expedition.
“Look,” Mgwan said, pointing, and there, a mile or so away, was one of the Beasts. They hadn’t seen it before as it had been hidden in one of the dips.
It paid no attention at all to them, and they walked by it in silence, passing within five hundred yards at the closest; walking in silence.
“Well, that was a good sign,” Wynforr said, when they had moved on a mile or so. “It didn’t seem to pay us any attention.”
“Well, all it will have noticed was our backpacks,” Seth said, taking a skin out of his and drinking. “In a thinking person, that would have startled them quite a bit, but in an animal, well, it was just something small moving… 122 Vonsbooks.com too small for a big animal like that to worry about. I am not sanguine that they will take the same attitude over Horsemen and wagons and all.”
“That is good reasoning, my Lord,” Wynforr said, sounding confused.
Seth laughed.
“It is not only Ellyll who think, my fine friend. And Troll are the experts on animals, you know. So it makes sense that my brain would think of that before yours.”
Wynforr seemed to have nothing to say to that, and they walked on in silence for the rest of the day. When they awoke the next morning Seth said. “I think we should separate today. Mgwan, you walk in the middle, and I will walk to the left, and Wynforr to the right. We will come back together every four hours, and at night. If you find a good site, just come back toward Mgwan, Wynforr, and I will too.”
In the end, though, it was Mgwan who found something; a stream, not a huge stream, but a well flowing one, clear and cold. Mgwan looked up. He had found water, now for nearby high ground.
Seth had not said what Mgwan should do if he found something, so he decided to just follow the stream. It was going roughly in his direction anyway.
The Troll form was warm, but not built for walking in water, so Mgwan stayed on the bank, with his eyes peeled for an appropriate spot. And he hadn’t gone four more miles, short miles when walking as a Troll, before he found it.
The stream took a sharp turn, and there, in front of him, was a hill. Not a huge hill, but still, a hill; a hill at a bend in the stream. Mgwan followed the bank, and the stream went around three sides of the hill. Just perfect; water on three sides; easy to get. If they wished, they could even dig a tunnel to direct the water to a cistern under the fort.
Mgwan climbed the hill and looked around him. It was a tremendous view, a tremendous view which showed him four grazing Beasts, one of which was simply enormous, in a nearby valley. He carefully removed his backpack and, with his invisibility on full, stood and watched them.
A Mother and young, obviously, or so Mgwan reasoned. The smaller Beasts (smaller being only a relative term, the smallest of the Beasts was taller at the shoulder than Mgwan) followed the larger one around, only occasionally making forays by themselves. He watched them for quite a while, trying to figure out if the one animal was indeed a female.
Mgwan had not spent long among the Trolls, but he did suddenly remember something that made him grin. Standing up, he began to sing, “Come, come home, come with me…” in his booming Troll voice, a voice that the Troll used to call their animals. He hoped that the Prince wouldn’t mind being called with a cow song.
He sang, listened, and then sang again. Finally he heard, from his left, an echo of his song. He turned to his right, and sang. However long he sang, however, he heard nothing. Eventually he sat back down, watching the Beasts.
The Mother had looked up when he sang, but only curiously, not with any alarm. Mgwan was alarmed himself, though, when, several minutes later, he saw a backpack rising and falling. He could see Wynforr, but the invisibility was very effective. Without the backpack Mgwan doubted he would have noticed him.
Wynforr stopped at the top of a hill, no doubt having seen the animals below. Mgwan stood up and turned himself into a shocking pink − not an easy thing to do but one of the things the Troll boys had had him practice.
“It is all very well,” they had said, “to be invisible. But there are times when you need to be seen, and we have found this color very effective.”
He stayed pink for several more minutes, until he saw Wynforr's backpack turn and start around the animals. Then he turned invisible again, and sat down.
Suddenly he heard a splashing noise, subtly different from the rippling of the stream, and he turned around. Seth, too, was difficult to see, but his backpack gave him away.
“My Lord Prince,” Mgwan said, and Seth looked up, scanned, stopped, and smiled at Mgwan − who could see his teeth in the smile better than the rest of his face.
“Well, met, and well found,” Seth said. “Have you seen aught of Wynforr?”
“Yes, my Lord, he is coming.”
“Well, good then, we can sit together.”
“Did you find anything, my Lord?”
“Several nice hills, but no streams. This is a very nice stream. Clear and cold, it must come all the way from the mountains.”
“Yes, that is what I thought.”
“How long have they been here?” Seth asked, pointing at the Beasts.
“Ever since I have been here, my Lord,” Mgwan said. As they spoke, ironically, the Mother Beast lifted her head and moved slowly off.
Mgwan’s attention was attracted to a hill to his left, where a backpack was bouncing through the ‘air’ over the top of the hill. Actually, at the transition between the hill and the sky, in broad daylight, even the Troll ‘invisibility’ wasn’t all that effective − especially with a backpack.
“There’s Wynforr,” Mgwan said, gesturing with his head, while he continued to watch the Beasts in their slow progress.
Seth turned to look, but said nothing. Minutes later Wynforr came and sat beside them, panting slightly.
“Well come, Brother,” Seth said.
“Thank you,” Wynforr gasped out. “I was not sure that I would be coming at all.
“Oh?”
“The Beasts! The direction I went was full of Beasts, in practically ever valley, and all over the flat areas.”
“Did they notice you?”
“Well, no,” Wynforr admitted. “They didn’t seem to.”
“Good,” Seth said, and Mgwan laughed quietly to himself. Wynforr had made the adjustment from Ellyll, all right, and seemed to be finding the new form overwhelming.
They sat together in silence, each deep in their own thoughts. Finally Seth stood, “Shall we go?”
--
“My Lord General, we think we have found what we were looking for.
The plains slope gently up away from us here, in a series of rolling hills, moving toward the mountains. We followed the slope for several miles. We could see you at the top of every small rise until we were a half a day away from here.”
“How far is it, exactly?” the General asked, looking at Wynforr.
“Well, it is hard to tell,” Wynforr said, a bit flustered, “we had been walking for about three hours on the second day when we found it.”
The General surveyed the assembly. “We have our task set out for us,”
he said. He looked cheerful. He loved organizing; it was his best point as a General. “We need to ferry the Dwarves and their materials out to the site, and protect them while they build.”
“So far the Beasts have been very quiet, but we can’t count on that continuing. But at the same time, we don’t want to stir them up. So we are going to go very slowly, and very carefully.”
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
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Island People is a young adult fantasy book centring on a young prince. The book starts with his kidnapping and follows his adventures as he not only escapes from his kidnapper but gains critical allies and friends.
The entire book is scheduled on Substack, and there are several sequels. This is a book I wrote years ago, so it is in a bit of a rough form. Critiques and comments are more than welcome, they are requested.