Horns & Wrinkles (8 page)

About then the sun popped up huge and red over the eastern bluffs like something was chasing it too. The campfire snuffed out, leaving a sickly green curl of smoke.

"Aren't they great?" Duke asked me.

Duke hustled me back to the dugout canoe and slapped a paddle in my hands. When I asked how he knew where to go, he said, "They sent me over there yesterday, to arrange things."

My ears perked up at that, for Duke never explained anything unless trying to cover up something else.

"How'd they arrange to turn your folks to stone?" I pried, dipping my paddle into the river.

By daylight, I saw that the paddle was a crooked old stick with a flattened coffee can knotted to one end, but one stroke sent us skimming over the water. Duke's mood brightened with my question, so I knew that wasn't what he was hiding.

"Touched them with a feather," he bragged.

"What kind of feather?"

"There wasn't exactly time to ask. The back door blew open and there they were. It was really something."

Hoping to cut short his smirk, I tossed out, "So what'd you arrange at this store?"

"Never mind about that," he said, souring fast. "Just say you're there for screens."

When I pushed him on it, he got prickly, but I stuck with it until he admitted that the store owner had refused to sell screens to anyone with a horn. Afterward, Biz had wanted to ditch him. When Jim Dandy stood up for him, he pretty much made himself a friend for life, no questions asked. It must have been about then that my services got volunteered for free.

"What makes you think I'll have any luck getting screens?" I asked.

"Not now," Duke grumbled under his breath. "They might be listening."

"Who?"

"Jim Dandy and the boys."

"Where?" I twisted about without glimpsing one troll snout in the water.

Duke glared and dipped his chin toward the bottom of the canoe. I couldn't spot any trolls swimming beneath us either, but that didn't mean anything, not muddy as the river was.

We paddled upstream toward Big Rock, a small village on the Wisconsin side, and steered clear of the boat and barge traffic on the main channel. It was a five-star spring day, blue and clear, and more blue, and warm. Tree branches remained bare but you could smell spring cooking inside them. It was too grand a day to waste chasing around in a dugout canoe that was attracting the first flies of the year.

"Say I help you with these screens," I said, keeping my voice low, "then what?"

"We do some mining."

"With screens?"

"We'll need them for sifting sand."

"For what?"

"Stars."

He spit that out as if every doorknob in the world knew that much.

"I'm sure you'll find tons of them." I didn't even bother to roll my eyes. "What about your parents and Grandpa B?"

"Who cares?" Duke jeered.

Figuring he was trying to impress his new friends, I ignored that crack. "So we get these stars, then what?"

"We trade them to Bo the Great Rock Troll."

"The one who tricked their dads?" I remembered the trolls' song. "Are they going to make you an honorary troll for helping?"

"Maybe," Duke said, doing his best not to sound hopeful. A moment latter he gruffly added, "Hold on."

We shot across the main channel a quarter-mile before Big Rock and tied up below some railroad tracks. There was a nice dock right in town, but Duke refused to go anywhere near it. Turning sullen, he muttered that yesterday a bunch of kids on the dock had made fun of his nose. If he saw them again, he might tear them into little pieces, and we didn't have time for that. We were after screens.

"Get 'em and come back," he ordered, meaning no dilly-dallying.

"What if I need some help carrying them?"

"Figure it out."

"I might drop them."

"Don't."

He was about to add one of his famous or elses, but two large bubbles surfaced, popping near the boat. I caught a whiff of trolls.

"If you need help," Duke said, changing his tune fast, "stand on the end of the dock and wave."

"You're a peach." I scrambled out of the dugout before he could sock my shoulder, the way he usually did whenever I brought up peaches.

The village of Big Rock was wedged between the river and the base of the limestone bluff it was named after. The few houses were packed close together like sticks of gum. I was supposed to hunt up a store called Trolls & Things, which on a Sunday morning would probably be the only store open. The three other stores in town—Shop 'n' Go, Big Al's Everything, and New Antiques—took the day off.

An old silver bell jingled when I opened the heavy front door to Trolls & Things. After the bell, shadows and quiet greeted me. The store smelled like fresh rain, though it was perfectly dry, outside and in.

"Hello," I called out.

No one helloed back. A quick tour took me past wooden barrels that held yardsticks, square-toed boots, glass eyes, old trumpets, underwater wristwatches, and unmatched orange tennis shoes. Each barrel had an
ALL SALES FINAL
sign. And that was only a sampling of what I saw. To get anywhere, you had to walk sideways down aisles so narrow you brushed against nylon bicycle outfits, Christmas tinsel, Halloween masks, moonglasses, and potted ivy. Even the ceiling, high above, was crowded. Ukuleles hung from every rafter.

At the back of the shop I found three bathtubs filled with running water and minnows, suckers, shiners, and—especially—willow cats. A sign above the tubs said
ALL SALES COMPLETELY FINAL!!!

"Hello-o," I called out again.

This time I got an answer, sort of.

A raccoon's masked face peeked out a door off to the side, hanging upside down from the door frame for an instant before ducking away. A minute later I heard footsteps.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," a familiar voice called out.

A moment later the old lady who had saved me at the wagon wheel bridge stepped through the door where the raccoon had been. She was wearing a different dress, a yellow flowery one this time, but the same straw hat and checkered apron and orange high-top tennis shoes. One of her tennies squished river water with each step. The raccoon played peekaboo from behind her skirt.

"Oh, it's you," the old lady said, friendly as ever. "Your cousin found you, then. I got your note and told him you were looking for him when he was in here nosing around yesterday." She chuckled when she mentioned Duke's nose but got serious again in a hurry. "There isn't much chance of him doing any good deeds while hanging out with Jim Dandy and his bunch." Clearing a stack of pointy black hats off a stool, she motioned for me to have a seat. "I suppose they sent you in here for screens."

"How'd you know that?" I frowned.

"Because Jim Dandy and his pals are about to become fathers. There should be a troll hatch any night now. The first new moon of spring is the time."

"What's that have to do with screens?"

"If you're doing errands for them," she supposed, eyeing me carefully, "I guess you've a right to know. They're under a curse, a pretty good one, actually. Nice and simple, the way a curse should be. If a river troll doesn't bring Bodacious Deepthink a shooting star before his firstborn is hatched, he gets turned into a human."

"That's a curse?" I was more than a little outraged to hear it.

"If you're a river troll, it is."

"Bodacious who?" I asked.

"Deepthink. Otherwise known as Bo the Great Rock Troll. It's her curse."

"What kind of human?" I spoke slowly, trying to think if I knew anyone who might qualify.

"Why, the same kind as you."

"So how come I've never seen one?"

"Oh, you wouldn't notice them." My suspicions amused her. "They're born in a hospital, same as any other baby. They don't even know where they come from themselves, except maybe deep down, where they don't quite feel as though they ever fit in. Even their mothers don't know." The raccoon tugged on her skirt, and the old lady leaned over to hear a whispered secret. "Princess Trudy thinks I might be scaring you."

"Maybe a little," I admitted.

"Well, I wouldn't worry about it too much," the old lady comforted. "A troll going human's a rare thing. Your average river troll can't stand the thought of washing with soap and eating vegetables all his life. Scares them silly. So they bring Bodacious Deepthink stars and clear out to look for their fathers as fast as they can."

"I see." Really, I felt blind. "Do you know anything about people who've been turned to stone?"

"Oh, dear," she fretted. "Who?"

"My grandpa, among others."

"Dear, dear. Your grandpa's much too lively a fellow to like being stone."

"You know Grandpa B?"

"Only since he was a boy."

Since you can hardly lift a rock around here without some story about Grandpa B crawling out, I wasn't totally surprised that the old lady knew him.

"Well," I said, "my cousin claims they turned his parents into stone with some kind of feather. Does that sound right?"

"Oh, yes. That's just what a stone feather would do."

"Thought so." I nodded, trying hard to act like an old river hand, even though I'd never before heard so much as a whisper about this kind of rivery business. "So when Grandpa went charging in and touched Duke's parents—more stone."

"Sounds like your grandpa," she agreed, "but he should have known better."

"He got pushed."

"Why, that's terrible," she said. "Is that why you're helping them out? So they'll turn them back?"

"Something like that." All of a sudden I went teary despite myself.

"There, there," she soothed. "You'll just have to get ahold of something they want really bad and trade it for the feather."

"I tried silver dollars—they weren't interested."

"Any other time they would have been," she assured me, "but those boys are about to pay Bodacious Deepthink a visit. That means they're only interested in silver that can buy them screens."

"I know, I know," I said wearily. "And it's got to be silver from their mothers' purses."

"I'm afraid so. You'll just have to bide your time and keep your eyes open for something else to trade them. And whatever you do, don't let them trick you into touching the feather unless you're wearing a stone glove. Touch it without one and you're a goner."

"A stone glove?" I repeated, blinking.

"They'll have one around somewhere," she said, patting my arm reassuringly. "They couldn't hold the feather without it. That's about all I can tell you, I'm afraid, except that if you find yourself in a pinch, throw a riddle at 'em. That should at least buy you some time. If they were rock trolls, I'd say a riddle would be sure-fire. Rock trolls can't ever turn down a chance to prove how smart they are. River trolls are generally smarter than that, but they'll often as not bite on a riddle too."

"I'll try to remember," I promised.

"Good. As for Jim Dandy and his bunch, they're lucky I'll sell you any screens. They broke in here the other night and stole three ukuleles."