Once Upon a Marigold (2 page)

Beads of sweat popped out on Ed's forehead. Why, the kid was a scoundrel. A con man. A rascal and a rogue. And there wasn't a thing Ed could do about it. He
did
know what those parents would think. And what they would probably do to him. Who would believe the truth coming from him, a mere forest troll, compared to a big lie coming from an adorable kid with the heart of a weasel?

"Jeez," he said. "You're a menace."

"Only when I have to be," Christian said with an unhappy little tremble in his voice, and went to lie in front of the fire with Cate and Bub.

And as much as Ed wanted to turn him over his knee and give him a good spanking, he couldn't help noticing how relieved the boy looked to be piled up with the undemanding, comforting dogs.

Christian stayed there almost all day, dozing or playing with the dogs, not asking for anything, just saying "Thank you" very politely when Ed brought him something to eat.

"I've got to go out for a while," Ed said. At Christian's ferocious look, he added, "And I'm not telling anybody anything, so quit giving me that black eye."

Outside, the forest was unusually still, as if all the creatures in it, even the fiercest, ugliest, most fire-breathing ones, were holding their breaths. Even the leaves hung motionless in the dusty golden sunlight. Ed stood still himself and listened. Far off he heard the yodel of hunting horns and the baying of bloodhounds, and he understood why the forest creatures were lying low. Nobody likes to be hunted down.

But maybe the horns and the dogs weren't hunting animals. Maybe they were after a little boy. Ed set out through the trees, following the sounds—but they just kept getting farther and farther away. And with them went his chance to unload the little rapscallion.

What had possessed him to bring the kid home with him? If he'd left him in the bushes, his parents would doubtless have found him by now. As the sounds finally faded completely away and darkness began to settle around him, Ed sighed and turned toward home. Oh well. He'd buttered his bread, and now he had to lie in it.

C
HRISTIAN WAS WAITING
by the fire, one arm clutched tightly around each dog, his eyes wide.

Ed flung his jacket onto a chair. "They were out there, looking for you, but they're gone now."

The dogs went tearing out of the cave. They'd felt some instinctive protectiveness toward the boy and wouldn't have left him alone. But now that Ed was home, they were way overdue for a run.

"Will they come back?" Christian asked.

"The dogs? Of course. They live here."

"Not them. The people looking."

"How should I know? How bad do they want you?"

"Maybe not very much. They don't like my ideas."

"Ideas? What kind of ideas can a little kid have?" Ed asked. "For pete's sake."

"I have ideas," Christian said indignantly, coming over to Ed, tripping on the dirty tail of the big cambric shirt he still wore.

"Tell me one," Ed said. He needed some ideas himself. Like, what the heck was he going to do with a kid?

"I think people shouldn't have children unless they really want them," Christian said.

Well, Ed agreed with that idea. He definitely didn't want a kid. "What else?" Ed asked grumpily.

"I think people should be nice to each other and share what they have with people who need things."

Ed swallowed hard. He couldn't exactly disagree with that, but he was getting the uneasy feeling that he was being manipulated. "Huh," he grunted.

"I think everybody should have six hugs a day," Christian went on.

"Well, that's hogwash," Ed said. "I can't remember the last time anybody hugged me, and I'm doing fine."

"Bub and Cate," Christian said.

"What about 'em?" Ed asked.

They're your hugs.

"Hogwash," Ed said again, just as Bub and Cate came racing back from sniffing whatever they'd been sniffing and jumped up on Ed. Together, they knocked him over, walked on him, licked him, as if they hadn't seen him for ten years instead of ten minutes.

"Get off me, you mangy mutts," Ed told them, struggling to get away, but not too hard.

Well, they'd heard that before. They didn't pay any attention.

When Ed had righted himself and picked the leaves out of his beard, he headed into the pink-crystal room, the one he used for his office, trailed by Christian and the dogs.

"I don't have time for this nonsense," he said stiffly, hoping the whole problem would somehow go away if he didn't look at it. "I'm a very busy person, waging an important campaign, and my time is valuable."

"What important campaign?" Christian asked.

"I'm going to bust Mab's monopoly if it's the last thing I ever do."

"You mean
Queen
Mab?" Christian asked. "The Tooth Fairy?"

"Tooth Tyrant is more like it," Ed grumbled. "She's got more work than she can handle, even with that incompetent flock of flying assistants she's got, most of which couldn't read a map to save their lives—if she even has any decent maps, which I doubt."

He warmed to his subject, which had begun as yet another troll tradition—the one that says the highest achievement a troll should aspire to is to take on a special task that will benefit the greatest number of people (even if they are children)—and had become a crusade. Most of the reason that it had was because Mab's inefficiency was so outrageous, it just plain gave him the whim-whams.

Ed continued. "More than once I've seen them buzzing around in the forest, running into trees and dropping their little parcels of money. I'll bet there are plenty of kids who
never
get their lost teeth picked up. And there are plenty of others who get those printed messages about how her secretary's out sick so everything's backed up, or how bad weather caused flight delays, or whatever. The truth is, Mab's overwhelmed and she won't admit it. And she won't let go of any of the business, either. Monopoly's not good, you know. Makes an enterprise lazy and uncreative. I've got some good ideas. I could give her a run for her eyeteeth if I could just get a nose under the door. I'm very busy," he repeated.

After a pause Christian said quietly, "I could help you. I could learn to do things. I could probably even invent something that would make whatever you're doing easier."

"No way, José," Ed said. "Impossible. Out of the question. We're going to find your family. Trust me."

Well, they didn't. And all Chris could—or would—tell him was that his parents were named Mother and Father and that they lived in a big stone house, but he didn't know where it was. Ed had no clue about where to start looking. Travelers, wanderers, warriors, and creatures verging on extinction from all over the known world passed through these woods on their way from Hither to Yon, so Christian's family could be anybody from anywhere. And the hunting horns and bloodhounds never came back after that one day, so either they'd given up on finding Christian, or they'd moved their search to a more remote part of the forest. Ed had heard all about the dragons and ogres, monsters and witches who lived on the other side of the vast forest, as well as the sour-tempered and unreasonable King Beaufort, and he wasn't about to go over there and run into one of them.

Actually, having Chris around turned out to be a better arrangement than Ed had imagined. For one thing, he was a sweeter-natured child than their initial acquaintance would suggest. True, he could be stubborn, but usually about something that turned out to be justified, so Ed eventually decided his reasons for not wanting to go back to his family must be good ones. Furthermore, he could already read and write, and he was eager to help Ed write his hundreds of letters to the other members of the LEFT (Leprechauns, Elves, Fairies, and Trolls) Association advocating a breakup of Queen Mab's tooth fairy monopoly. At the LEFT Conference each year, there was a vote on this issue, and while Ed hadn't managed a winning campaign yet, he wasn't giving up. He had hundreds of years to pursue his cause. Sooner or later he had to be successful. Then the ODD (Outstanding Distinguished Deed) Medal would be his.

Chris was also a great companion for the dogs. He spent hours playing with them and teaching them tricks, something Ed didn't always have time or inclination for. The boy was good at entertaining himself, too: exploring, bringing back unusual plants—sometimes edible and other times only beautiful—reading the assortment of dropped books found in the forest, studying the stars through the collapsible telescope, and inventing things. He hadn't been kidding about being an inventor. Or about making a big mess when he was working on something. He built one peculiar contraption after another out of forest-found items—contraptions that looked as if they might have a purpose, just not one that Ed (or Christian) could identify.

E
D NOTICED
that Chris was spending more and more time on the promontory outside the cave, looking through the collapsible telescope at King Swithbert's castle on the bluffs across the wide, rushing river. The royal family spent a great deal of time on the broad, walled stone terrace at the bluff's edge, and Chris seemed to enjoy watching King Swithbert and Queen Olympia, their four little daughters, and their courtiers going about their business.

Without being sure he wanted to hear the answer, Ed said one day, "I notice you watch the royal family a lot. Do you miss your own family?"

Christian gave him a serious brown-eyed look. "I can hardly remember those people, and I'm sure I don't miss them. I like my new family. It's a lot more interesting."

"Yeah?" Ed asked, trying not to let his chest puff up. "You think so?"

"Yep," Chris said, raising the telescope to his eye again. "And more fun, too."

Ed bounced on his toes a few times and then cleared his throat. "Well. I guess I'd better go ... do ... uh ... something interesting."

"Okay," Christian said absently. "See you later."

Christian had told Ed he couldn't remember his family, and he meant it. He'd tried hard to forget them. But little pictures appeared in his mind from time to time. Two babies in blue baskets. A woman's long white hands holding a deck of cards. A man's voice, strong and scary, telling him that it was difficult to believe his fairy birth-gift had been good luck when he was in trouble so much of the time. A fair-haired little girl running up a long flight of stone steps, chasing a fat puppy.

When Christian had these memories, he felt no deficiency or regret—only a distant curiosity followed by a rush of gratitude for Ed, Bub, Cate, the cave, and the forest. He never doubted that his escape had been sensible, though he suspected that it wouldn't be the last escape he ever made. All his life he'd had the feeling that he was headed toward something—something that felt big—but he didn't know what it was. Somehow, though, he knew that being with Ed and the dogs, wandering through the forest, working on his inventions, and watching the world across the river, was preparing him for it in a way that his previous life had not.

O
NE NIGHT
, after Christian had been with Ed for a year or so, while Ed was supervising Chris's bedtime routine, a realization came upon the troll with the impact and terror of a lightning strike: He was a
parent!

"What's wrong?" Chris asked when Ed paused, thunderstruck, holding Christian's nightshirt out to him.

"Plenty," Ed said, handing over the nightshirt.

"Did I do something?" Chris asked, his brown eyes troubled.

"Not that I know about ... yet," Ed said, not recognizing that he sounded like most of the parents in the world, saying words designed to nudge their kids onto the right side of disorderly conduct. "It's something I need to think about."

"Can I help you?" Chris asked, buttoning the shirt and rolling up the sleeves.

Ed's heart did a little pixie jig inside his chest. The sensation was strong enough to cause him to put his hand over the sensitive spot. This kid that he hadn't wanted in his life had just about taken it over. The old troll had lived a long time without anybody around to help him. He'd gotten used to that—so used to it that he'd never even noticed the absence. But now that the vacant spot had been filled, he couldn't think how he'd managed without this handsome little boy with his crazy inventions and his tricks for the dogs—how many people had dogs who could clear the dinner table and sing in harmony?—and his willingness, even eagerness, to participate in whatever Ed was doing.

"You always tell me not to use my shirttail to blow my nose," Christian said, watching Ed. "So how come you can do it?"

Ed dropped his shirttail and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He had to be a role model, for pete's sake. "It was a sudden attack of hay fever," he said gruffly. "I won't be doing it again. After all, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the eager beaver. You got that?"

"I don't know." Christian almost never understood Ed's sayings but somehow got the drift of them anyway. "Does it mean don't blow my nose on my shirttail?"

"Yeah. Now get in bed."

After Christian and the dogs were in bed, Ed plucked a book on etiquette from the green-crystal library. Heading back to the parlor, he could hear Bub and Cate softly yowling a harmonized lullaby in Chris's bedroom.

He settled himself in his easy chair by the fire and began to read. It was up to him to make sure that Christian grew up minding his p's and q's and r's and s's. And all the rest of the letters, too. And he'd better get up to speed on them himself, since he hadn't even known that burping at the table was punishable by being dragged off to your room by your ear.

Edric had just finished an excellent meal, prepared by Christian, of gopher goulash, artichoke hearts, spinach salad, and cherries jubilee. He burped contentedly. "Who do you suppose ever figured out that artichokes are edible?" he asked. "They look lethal."

"Me, probably," Christian answered as Bub and Cate removed the plates from the table that Christian had not only built but had equipped with a crank that lowered it to the dogs' level for easier clearing. "I've never heard of anybody eating them before us." Of course, how would he know? The world was a big place, and more and more, he was realizing how little of it he knew.