Sky Run (4 page)

We glided in to tie up at the jetty, where he stood waiting, big and fearsome and slightly unhinged-looking.

The Toll Troll was in, all right. And in a bad mood too. But then perhaps he was never in anything else.

Peggy, being so old, often doesn't seem so bothered about things that rightly ought to worry a person. I mean, I'm not a worrier. I've never really had anything to worry about – except for that time when we were small and we didn't have anyone and everybody kept calling us orphans (and usually poor ones too, as the words
orphans
and
poor
are kind of inseparable).

But even with a whole bunch of carefree years behind me, I was worried now. I'd never seen anything like this. The so-called, self-styled Toll Troll was even bigger close to than he'd seemed far away. He was immense. He was twice as tall as Peggy and as broad as a rock. He looked down on us like somebody contemplating his dinner and thinking that the helpings looked rather mingy. But Peggy just acted like she was the big muscly one, and he was the one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old sky-shrimp.

‘Well?' she said, with a very sharp tone to her voice. ‘And what do you want?'

‘What do you think?' the huge man said. ‘What does it look like?'

Only he didn't exactly say it like that, as he had a very odd accent, not like anything I'd heard before. He said it more like: ‘Whit dee yee thunk? Whot daes it luuk lyke?' But his accent fluctuated. At first he was calm and clear, but then the more irritated he got, the more impenetrable it became.

‘Why's he started talking funny, Peg?' I said. But I didn't get a proper answer. Peggy just glowered at me, Gemma kicked my shin, and the big guy kind of tensed up and started clenching his fists.

‘Will ye tell yon brat tae hold his tongue before I rip it oot his mouth for him?' he said.

‘Martin –'

But I'd heard.

‘Good,' he said, when I clammed up.

‘So what do you want?' Peggy said again.

‘The toll. Whit else?' he said.

‘Toll?'

‘Aye.'

Peggy looked at him, up and sideways.

‘And why should we pay you any toll?'

‘Because I'm asking for it.'

‘And what entitles you to ask?'

The big man looked around with a kind of false innocence, and then he slowly raised his big fist and he waved it under Peggy's nose.

‘This,' he said. ‘This does.'

‘I see.'

‘Good.'

‘You're a crook then,' she told him.

The big man got indignant at that.

‘I'm nae a cruk!' he said (his variable accent suddenly thick as cream). ‘Ye want to use my airspace and sail between my islands, then ye have to pay.'

‘Why?' Peggy said.

He stared at her, as if no one had asked him this before.

‘To pay for all the maintenance,' he said.

‘What maintenance?' she said.

He got angry again.

‘The maintenance!' he repeated. ‘Maintaining the highway and keeping it in good repair.'

‘It's sky,' Peggy pointed out. ‘You don't have to do anything to it. It's just there. So what are you maintaining exactly?'

The giant of a man thought about this for a moment; he stood winding bits of his straggly red beard around his fingers, then said:

‘I'm keeping the sky clean and free from debris.'

And that was when I heard Peggy mutter something that sounded like
bullsh
— But I'm not supposed to know expressions like that, let alone use them.

The man looked down at her. The insects went on swarming around his head, like some kind of a halo. Some of the midges were even nibbling at his hairy legs, which poked out like tree trunks from his kilt. I wondered if maybe the insects had driven him mad.

‘No toll,' he said, ‘no go.'

‘Well, that's too bad,' Peggy said, ‘because we've nothing to give you.'

The man sneered.

‘Everyone's got something,' he said.

‘I'm an old woman with two children; we've no money and just enough food and water to last the journey. We're heading for City Island so they can go to school and get an education. And that's it.'

‘Bairns!' the man said. ‘Nothing but trouble and nothing but expense. That's bairns.'

Peggy sat down on the jetty. The giant looked down at her with outraged surprise.

‘What are you doing?' he said. ‘What do you think you're doing?'

‘Sitting down,' Peggy said. ‘I get the arthritis.'

‘She gets the arthritis,' Gemma said, backing her up. ‘And she can't be on her feet too long without a break.'

‘Break?' the giant of a man said, speckles of froth appearing on his lips and on the fringes of his beard. ‘I'll give you a break. I'll break your necks. I'll break your skulls open with the hilt of my claymore –' And he indicated a long-bladed, heavy-handled sword, covered in rust, that stood stuck in the ground nearby.

His indignation rose like steam until it was all but puffing out of his ears.

‘You dinnae sit down when the Toll Troll's talking. You quake in fear, that's what you do. You quake and tremble and beg for mercy. That's the style you need. I've never been so bloody insulted!'

‘No swearing in front of the children, if you wouldn't mind,' Peggy said.

‘Nae swearing? Nae swearing! I'll give you swearing –'

But Peggy just reached out and said, ‘I wonder if you'd mind giving me a hand up now. I can't sit down too long either or I start getting the cramps.'

‘She gets cramps,' Gemma explained, ‘as well as the arthritis. She's a hundred and twenty, you see, and not as young as –'

‘Will ye all shut up!' the man said. ‘All of ye. Just shut up and let me think.'

While he was thinking, I got curious. Peggy says curiosity is my trouble, but I can't help it. These questions just form in my mind, and when they do, I have to ask them, as I like to find things out.

‘Excuse me,' I said. ‘Mister Troll –'

His eyebrows moved like a couple of those sun caterpillars you sometimes see on the rocks – the furry, poisonous ones that'll kill you if you brush against them.

‘Whit did you just say?' He looked at Peggy. ‘Whit did he just say? I thought yon brat was supposed to be keeping his teeth together and his mooth shut.'

‘I was just wondering, Mister Troll,' I persisted, ‘if you had another name. Like, a real name. And what it was.'

The eyebrows went on working. I really did think for a moment that they might come off and attack me. But then they came to rest and they arched into a look of, well, perplexity, I guess.

‘Ma name?' He turned to Peggy. ‘No one's ever asked me ma name. And I've robbed – that is, I've needed to take toll money from – hundreds, no, thousands who've passed by here. And no one's ever asked me ma name.'

Peggy just looked at him and gave him one of her old smiles. Her smiles are full of wrinkles and crows' feet and leathery skin and a hundred and twenty years of living.

‘Out of the mouths of babes and children,' she said.

‘Well, I'm nae telling you ma name!' the Troll said. And he sounded a bit peevish, like
he
was the spoilt brat – instead of a massive man with a sword and bagpipes and a kilt and a big chip on his shoulder from somewhere.

‘My name's Peggy. This is Gemma. This is Martin. So there. We're introduced.'

‘Well – then –' It was plainly an effort for him to let the words come out. ‘Then ma name – might be – though I'm no saying it is – but it might be – Angus.'

‘That's a nice name,' Peggy said. ‘Angus. Very nice.'

One of the caterpillars came back into action and it arched itself up into a quizzical sort of shape.

‘Are ye trying to be funny?'

‘No. Not at all.'

But then the brief thaw turned to ice again.

‘It makes nae difference!' he boomed. And he went and yanked the claymore out of the ground. It was a huge sword. It took both of his hands to lift it. ‘Makes nae difference what anyone's called. You have to pay the toll or you don't go any further.'

And then he swirled the sword around his head. But whether it was to frighten and intimidate us, or whether it was to try and get rid of the insects that were tormenting him was hard to know.

Something puzzled me then. Why
did
the insects bother him? They weren't bothering me, or Gemma, or Peggy. The just seemed to like eating him. They left us alone completely.

I looked past him. The island wasn't that large and it looked mostly barren. There was a vapour compressor next to a small stone house and behind the house a greenhouse, where he must have grown a few vegetables to supplement a diet of sky-fish – as I couldn't see what else he might have lived on. A sign on the door of the house read Bonny Banks. There was a small outside lavatory too, and that had a door-sign reading Bonny Braes.

To the right of the house, at a short distance, were some small mounds of stones – cairns, I think they are called. I'm sure that's what Peggy told me once. But I might have been wrong.

‘I may have to sit down a moment again,' Peggy said. ‘I get dizzy if I'm up on my feet too long. I suffer with the poor circulation.'

‘She suffers with the poor circulation,' Gemma said, backing her up again. ‘Along with the arthritis and the cramps.'

‘And then there's the gout,' Peggy said.

‘And the gout,' Gemma said.

‘But we'll not go into that right now.'

‘We'll leave it for now,' Gemma said. ‘It's not serious gout. Mostly twinges. I don't suppose you'd have a chair, would you? For Gran to sit on?'

Angus lowered his claymore and stood there open-mouthed.

‘A chair? A chair!'

‘If you've got one?'

He raised the claymore and pressed the point of it right into Gemma's neck. She stiffened.

‘Leave her alone,' Peggy said.

So he did. He stuck the point into Peggy's neck instead.

‘You pay, or you pay,' he said. ‘You pay the toll, or you pay the troll. Your money or –' Then he struck a pose of what's-the-word-I'm-trying-to-think-of? – ‘Oh aye. Your money, or your life. That's how it goes, isn't it?'

‘Just told you,' Peggy said, ‘don't have any money. Haven't had any money since I was eighty-three.'

‘Blew it all, did you?' Angus said in disgust. ‘Typical. Didn't think of making any provision for your old age.'

‘And as for life, I don't have much of that left either.'

‘Maybe you don't – but
they
do.'

‘What are you going to spend money on here, anyway?' Peggy demanded. ‘Where are the shops?' She moved her arms to indicate the empty islands and the vast, empty space beyond. And the gesture encompassed everything – the giant's isolation, his loneliness, the pointlessness of his demands and the uselessness of money to him. Why did he want it? What was it for?

‘I'm making provision,' he said. ‘It's nae for me. I'm making provision for the wife and bairns.'

And he swatted so violently at the midges around his head that he almost decapitated himself with his sword – which would have solved our problems nicely if he had.

Peggy looked at me and she looked at Gemma; she looked sad, and old. She didn't look frightened at all, just ever so weary.

‘Wife and bairns?' she said.

‘That's right,' Angus said. ‘It's not for me. It's the wife and bairns.'

And then Peggy asked him a question, though I'm sure she already knew the answer, just as I did, and Gemma maybe did too.

‘And where are they? The wife and – the bairns?'

‘They're right there looking at you!' the giant said. ‘Do you not have the eyes to see? That's Colin there, and that's Nancy, and that's Fiona herself, taking care of them.'

I was kind of afraid to look. But really, I'd already seen. My eyes followed his raised hand and his pointing finger. And I saw – just as I knew I would – the three heaps of stones, the three little cairns, the mounds of pebbles and rocks.

‘That's them right there,' he said. ‘They'd come over and talk, but they're busy. But they're relying, see. They're relying on me to provide. They'll be wanting to go to school one day and get an education. There's none to be had round here. City Island, see. That's where they'll be going, soon as they're the right age. So I'm saving up – for books and such, and uniforms and all that. So there's no choice about it. You have to pay the toll.'

And instead of protesting or getting angry or feisty or sarcastic like she could be, Peggy just looked really sad, and she reached out to him and she said, ‘We'd love to give something to help the children, Angus. We'd love to do that.'

And he just looked at her, just looked, and the big, rusty claymore fell from his hands with a clatter, and Peggy took a step forward and she took his great, huge hand in hers. His hand made two of hers, easily.

‘You poor man,' she said. ‘You poor man.'

And the great giant of an Angus didn't say a word; he just let Peggy hold his hand in hers, and a large tear, the size of a raindrop, rolled from his eye and down along his cheek and disappeared into his bushy red beard.

‘Will you take payment in kind?' Peggy said.

‘What kind?' he said gruffly.

‘Martin,' Peggy said. ‘Go to the boat and fetch one of the bottles that Ben Harley gave me.'

‘You mean the private stash?' I said. ‘But I thought you said it was lethal. I thought you said you should never –'

‘Just get it,' she said. ‘And stop asking questions for once.'

‘But I thought you said asking questions was good, and that when we get to City Island we have to ask nothing but questions, as if you don't ask questions you never learn, and then –'

‘Another time, Martin. Just bring a bottle of Ben Harley's private stash.'