Trolls Prequel Novel (6 page)

H
alfway through the opening to the pod, we collide with something solid but squishy.

“Oof!”
I say into Biggie's belly.

I sway backward, and then Harper props me up again.

“Thanks,” I tell her.

“I was just coming to get you!” Biggie declares, and it's impossible to miss the hint of pride in his voice. Go, Biggie!

“Ta-da!”
He steps out of the doorway to reveal the display inside.

Every single solitary inch of the pod's massive walls is covered in framed pictures.

Every. Single. Solitary. Inch.

A few hundred even dangle from the ceiling by strands of Troll hair.

“There's certainly no need to worry about empty walls anymore,” I observe, turning slowly to take in the images.

Harper does the same, her jaw practically on the floor.

I hold up a hand and walk into the space, lightly touching the hanging portraits. They sway as I move through them.

“They're all the same!” I murmur. I really can't get over this. Everywhere I turn, I see Mr. Dinkles reflected back at me.

“No! They're not,” Harper says, gesturing me over to the wall by the entrance, where she has her nose nearly pressed to the glass of a portrait of the tiny worm. When I reach her, she points at two hanging just over my head. “In this one on the left, Mr. Dinkles's top hat is set at a forty-five-degree angle, but this one is closer to
fifty degrees.”

She's right. Harper's the one with the trained eye, so I'm not surprised she's the first to pick up on the subtle differences between each and every portrait. Now that she's shown me, I can spot a whole bunch of others along the row.

“Wow, Biggie. This is impressive,” I say.

And it is. Biggie's collection is
enormous,
and I'm crazy-impressed with his monumental artistic feat of capturing the tiniest variances in each pose.

Harper seems to agree. She moves slowly from frame to frame. “Oh, and this one is overexposed just the smallest amount; whereas this one looks a shade or two underexposed. Am I right, Biggie?”

Unfortunately, he can't answer because once more, he's overcome with happy tears. Oh, Biggie!

“I just love seeing so much Mr. Dinkles in one place, on display for everyone else to see, too,” he says, sniffling.

“Look, Mr. Dinkles. It's you,” I say. “And you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and—”

“We get it, Poppy!” Harper interrupts, smiling at me before turning to Biggie. Her eyes widen. “What is it?”

Biggie is staring into his hand. “He's not here!”

“What?” Harper and I shout at the same time. Mr. Dinkles is
always
there, any time Biggie isn't posing him in front of the camera. Always.

“Where would he go?”

Biggie is frantically turning in circles. I step toward him, but he jerks to a stop and sticks out a giant arm to halt me. “Wait! Don't. Move.”

I freeze mid-step, one leg lifted and the other planted. Biggie drops to his knees and pats the ground in front of me.

“Okay, you can step here. But only here. Mr. Dinkles is small. One misplaced foot could…”

He can't finish his sentence, and this time, for the first time ever, it seems like Biggie might actually be about to cry with…sadness. Which positively can't happen.

“Mr. Dinkles!” I call. “Oh, Mr. Diiiiiiinkles!” We all strain our ears to listen for an answer, but there is none.

“I am totally on this. Operation Locate and/or Rescue Mr. Dinkles starts right now. Biggie, you have nothing to worry about. We will find him and return him to you safe and sound, or I'm not the princess of Troll Village!”

This seems to reassure Biggie. Thankfully. For her part, Harper is frozen in place, too, staring at me with wide eyes.

“Okay, here's what we're going to do,” I say. “Uh, you didn't happen to come across an astoundingly bejeweled and sparkling clipboard while you were hanging pictures, by any chance, did you, Biggie?”

He shakes his head slowly, but I'm already racing on.

“Harper, pass me a piece of paper from your sketchbook and one of your pencils. Please.”

She stretches out her hand, and I do as well, but there's too much distance behind us. With a quick “Don't worry!” to Biggie, I drop to my knees and examine every inch of the ground in front of me as I crawl over to Harper. I definitely don't want to endanger any stray pet worms.

“Hi,” I whisper when I reach Harper's toes. “Little help?”

She reaches down and tugs me up. “What's your plan?” she whispers back. We glance at Biggie, who is rocking in place, clutching to his chest the portrait of Mr. Dinkles that's dangling closest to him.

“I'm going to mount a search mission to rival no other,” I declare. “Mr. Dinkles will be tucked back in Biggie's arms before you can say ‘Trolls rule.' ”

“Trolls rule,” Harper says dryly.

I pop a hand on my hip. “Okay, so maybe not
that
fast. But fast.”

Harper bites her lip. “I know he couldn't have gotten far. I'm just worried about letting down all the Trolls we have on the list to show their entries today. Should I—”

I interrupt her. “Of course! You should stay and keep to the schedule. I'll pop out and find Mr. Dinkles and be back before you even notice I'm gone.”

Harper has given only half a nod when a whimper comes out of Biggie. I drop to my knees and speed-crawl back to him.

“Okay, big guy. Let's start with a little fact-finding expedition. When was the last time you saw Mr. Dinkles?”

Biggie's eyes are filled with unshed tears. “Right after I came in, I guess. I was worried that all the stretching I'd have to do to hang the pictures of him would disrupt his nap, so I went to set him down next to the cupcakes. Except he made that adorable little
‘Mew!'
sound he makes. You know that sweet
‘Mew!'
?”

I nod hard. “It's so cute!”

Biggie whimpers again. “The cutest.”

“So he made the noise, and you…”

“Hmm? What? Oh. Right. I knew that was him telling me he didn't want to be set down, so I curled up my hand so he could take a nap.”

“Of course. Makes perfect sense,” I tell him. He seems relieved.

“I did everything using only my free hand, and I honestly don't remember uncurling it, but I guess I must have, because…”

He trails off, staring sadly at his empty palm.

“Okay,” I say, using my most chipper voice. “Well, it might not seem like it right now, but this
is
progress. If we can rule out the places where Mr. Dinkles
isn't,
we're that much closer to figuring out where he
is.
”

Biggie seems cheered by this, so I whip out the pencil and paper again and ask my next question. “What was Mr. Dinkles wearing today?”

“Which hour?” Biggie asks. Harper has been down on her hands and knees, methodically covering the floor of the pod in a gridlike pattern as she searches.

“Um, probably just the last outfit change,” I tell Biggie. “What he had on when you were going to set him down next to the cupcakes.”

“Right,” he answers. “Well, he has his tiny top hat perched on his sweet little head.”

I nod, smiling my encouragement for him to continue before emotion overtakes him.

“And that's about it. He was between outfit changes—I had this little shirt picked out for him after I hung all the portraits, but…”

“I think we can rule out the pod,” I say. “He would have answered us if he were in here.”

Harper nods in agreement. “He's definitely not here.”

Before Biggie can react, I rush right in with a plan of action. “Let's go check with the other Trolls. Maybe someone has seen him. Sound good?”

Biggie swallows and nods. He lifts a foot to take a step and hesitates before putting it down. Harper squeezes his arm. “He's not on the ground, Big. I'm a thousand percent positive.”

Biggie nods again and sniffles his way past the dangling portraits of his missing friend as he heads for the door.

“I'm right behind you,” I assure him, pausing to turn to Harper.

She's grimacing. “Go. You have to do this. I'll be fine…on my own.”

Her voice gets smaller with each word, so I know she's not sure about that. I give her a hug and a happy smile. “Duh. Obviously. You've totally got this. Remember what we talked about outside.”

She nods slowly, keeping her eyes on the floor. “I remember.”

I squeeze her arm once more and lean down to swipe a cupcake off the tray. It's been a while since I've eaten, and search parties require strength and fortitude. “Back super soon. Think of all the added growth potential of working independently for a bit.”

“Yup. Growth potential.” She doesn't sound convinced, but she's definitely trying to put on a brave face.

“You just have to trust yourself!” I call over my shoulder as I exit.

W
e're in total luck because there are three Trolls we can ask right outside the pod. I catch up with Biggie, and he's pulling something out of his hair—it's a
looooo­ooooo­ong
strand of photos, attached to each other accordion-style. They spill out and form a line twenty feet in front of him on the ground.

“Oh my gah,” says Smidge, one of the gathered Trolls, who is surely waiting to go next with an exhibit submission.

Oooh, I wonder what it is. She's really good at crocheting things. And she also loves, loves, loves Swedish death metal. Maybe she has another musical entry to match DJ Suki's.
Ugh, not the time for this line of thought, Poppy. Mr. Dinkles is missing!
If anything were to happen to him, I—I can't even think of that. I have to be positive. Of course we'll find him, safe and sound!

I refocus on the scene in front of me.

“Oh, Biggie, we're so, so sorry,” says Satin, and her twin sister, Chenille, finishes: “I wish we could say we've spotted him today, but we haven't seen anyone other than Smidge since we got here.”

“We'll help you look!” Smidge offers, already doing a handstand to check inside a hole at the base of a tree trunk next to her.

Smidge is always in motion, so I'm not surprised she's jumping in to help now.

If she isn't rappelling down the felt bark of a tree or trampolining on the tops of mushrooms or surfing the backs of friendly, ambling critters or jumping rope with her hair, she's weightlifting, which is her favorite hobby.

Smidge is especially tiny, but she's also super fierce, and she can handle a bar of heavy weights like it's a feather.

“Nothing there,” she says, popping back up to standing position. Her voice, in total contrast to her size and the delicate pink bow she wears in her tower of hair, is as deep as a bullfrog's.

She bounces in place a little before scaling the tree to check the entire trunk.

“Remember, ruling out places Mr. Dinkles isn't counts as progress, too,” I reassure Biggie, who nods sadly.

“Satin and Chenille, think you guys can search this whole clearing while you wait for Harper?” I ask.

“We're on it,” the twins answer in unison. If
they
said “Jinx!” and “Double jinx!” every time they spoke at the same time, they wouldn't have time for anything else. They're conjoined at the hair—matching puffs of cotton-candy pink and blue, which meet in the middle in a super-cute shade of flamingo—but it's like they share a brain instead.

“Thanks, guys,” I answer. They immediately head to one corner of the clearing and drop to the ground.

I call up to Smidge, who's still scouring the tree trunk. “I think Harper's ready for you, if you want to head on in. Tell her I'm taking Biggie to help spread the word to everyone so we can turn all of Troll Village into one giant search party. We'll get Mr. Dinkles safely back to you super-duper fast, Big.”

He nods and lets me tug him along the pathway.

Poor Biggie. He's devastated. Oh, we just
have
to solve this mystery!