The Heart of Glass (8 page)

“Hmph.” Fedora folded her arms. “We’ll see. They’re both horrible, so I suppose they’ll suit each other. Mother, can I have a new dress? Rose-pink with blue roses? Only with more petticoats than the last one?”

Her mother, who was wondering if she was in the middle of some strange and dreadful dream, nodded feebly. “Of course, dearest. But now I think I
must
have a cup of tea. Auntie dear, could you help me up?”

G
ubble was making steady, if slow, progress. A solid and determined troll, he took the most direct route to Flailing and the Unreliable Forest; if trees or bushes got in his way, he either rooted them up or squashed them flat. When at last he saw Marcus’s pony patiently standing beside the pathway, he grunted and began to peer around to see if Marcus was nearby. After ten minutes he had still found no sign of the prince, and no sign of any dwarf activity either. Gubble scratched his head and tried to think what he should do next. Thinking was not something he found easy. After a while he fixed his gaze on Glee, some faint idea stirring in his small and dusty mind about animals having the ability to follow their masters’ tracks. “Marcus!” he instructed. “Find Marcus!”

Glee looked at the troll but did not move. He was not at all unhappy to have Gubble’s company; the trees around him had stopped their sneering and whispering as the troll approached. The pony was deeply loyal, however, and Marcus had told him to stay where he was. Gubble came closer.

“Gracie in danger,” he explained. “Go! Us find Marcus.”

Glee’s ears twitched, and he lowered his head and whickered softly. Gubble nodded. “Good. Good! Now find Marcus.” He took hold of the reins and tugged Glee toward the track so as to encourage him. It was unfortunate that Gubble was quite unaware of his own strength; the pony shot forward, staggered, and in trying to save himself, lurched heavily against the troll. Gubble’s head, never firmly attached even at the best of times, fell off. With a terrified whinny and a wild shake of his mane, Glee set off down the track at a gallop, and Gubble was left rolling on the muddy ground with his feet in the air. “Ug,” he said crossly. “Ug.”

It took Gubble some time, but at last he was reassembled. His head had been bumped and shaken by its fall, and he found a new idea was rattling around inside. “Prints!” he announced, and felt a warm glow of pride sweep over him. “Footprints.”

Fired up by his cleverness, he stomped purposefully along the path in the opposite direction from that taken by Marcus’s pony. Here and there the ground was damp and muddy, and Gubble gave a grunt of excitement when he finally saw two clear sets of footprints: one larger, made by an expensive pair of riding boots, and a smaller pair, rather scuffed around the heels.

“Clever Gubble,” he congratulated himself, and increased his speed to a shambling run. When a birch tree made a sudden sideways leap across the path, it caught him completely by surprise, and for the second time in ten minutes his head left his body. This time it rolled under a large gorse bush; his nose was prickled by thorns, his mouth was filled with leaves, and his angry mutters sent a family of beetles running for cover.

“It’s OK, Mr. Troll,” said a squeaky voice. “I can see it! Stop pulling those branches to bits, and I’ll tell you where to look. I mean, I’ll tell you where to put your hand.”

Gubble stopped quivering with rage, and from under the bush his disembodied voice said, “Alf?”

“That’s right,” said the little bat. “Move your hand left — no,
left
! The other way . . . that’s right. I mean, that’s the way to move it. Just a little bit farther — there! Well done!”

Gubble hauled his head back toward him and thunked it into place on his shoulders. A wisp of silver thread was draped over one ear, and he pulled it off — but then, seeing it was pretty and thinking that Gracie might like it, he tied it clumsily around his wrist.

“Better now?” Alf inquired from his perch on a nearby twig.

“Ug,” Gubble said with feeling. “Thank.” And then, “Where Marcus?”

Alf waved a wing. “Over there. He’s waiting for Marlon to come back and tell him what to do. Did you know that Gracie disappeared?” Alf puffed out his extremely small chest. “I’m marking the tree she fell through.”

“Tree?” Gubble stared at him. “What tree?”

“
This
tree. But it keeps trying to move, and it’s getting really hard to hang on. I don’t suppose you could hold on to it for me while I have a rest?”

Gubble’s answer was to take firm hold of the slender silver birch. He felt a shiver under his arms and a quivering. A moment later, twiggy fingers clutched him, and Alf, watching wide-eyed from above, saw the troll’s solid body vanish. There was nothing to show that he had ever been there at all, nothing except for a sizable bulge in the birch tree’s trunk. And a sudden sound that made Alf giggle.

I
f anybody had told Marcus that he would spend a whole hour having an argument with a bat in front of a confused dwarf, he would not have believed them. “But Marlon,” he said for the umpteenth time, “I can’t get hold of a princess just like that. It just won’t happen. You’ve seen them; you know what they’re like. Stupid, the lot of them. Even if I knocked one senseless and carted her here by force, she’d scream her head off the minute she woke up. And they’re terrified of trolls. Honestly — if I even mention the word, they go into spasms and screech for hours. Idiotic, or what? I mean, I know that thing we saw just now was huge, but it wasn’t exactly dangerous — and Gubble’s one of my best friends.”

Marlon considered explaining to Marcus that not all trolls were like Gubble, but he decided to leave that for another time.

“Seems simple enough to me, kiddo. No problemo re: the screaming — trolls are used to it. And look at it my way: one princess for the dwarves equals they dig our Gracie out.” He turned to Bestius. “Right? If we get you a dame, you’ll help us?”

Bestius blinked, considered briefly, then nodded.

“Sorted.” Marlon waved a wing. “So it’s up to you, kid. . . .”

Marcus groaned and put his head in his hands.

Bestius, who had been imagining the most appalling future for himself and all the dwarves as the result of his foolish promise, saw the possibility of a solution hanging in the balance. He too had realized how little Marcus knew about trolls, and he also did not feel this was the right moment to enlighten the prince. “She wouldn’t have to
stay,
” he suggested. “If we could just hand her over for even an hour or so, we’ll have honored our . . .” He stopped and looked embarrassed. “I mean,
my
promise. King Thab’ll have no excuse to take revenge on us dwarves, and we can get on with our work.” He gave Marcus a cool stare. “And while we’re talking about work, I’d like to point out that if you Royals hadn’t insisted on so many crowns for the Dreghorn wedding, we’d never have gotten into this situation in the first place.”

“True enough,” Marlon agreed. His eyes brightened. “Hey, kiddo! Here’s a plan! You get hold of the dame; our friend here trots her off to the trolls; the king gets happy. The dwarves dig out Gracie; we get happy. And — listen to this, kid! While the dwarves are busy with our Gracie,
you
rescue the princess from the trolls — and hey! You’re a hero!”

Marcus sat up and looked thoughtful. The role of hero had a strong appeal. His life so far had been safe, privileged, and exceptionally boring, whereas Gracie — in Marcus’s view, a romantically abandoned orphan — had survived a terrible childhood and had already had several interesting adventures. Admittedly he had shared in a couple of these, but he never felt that he had covered himself in glory. Marcus looked at the hopeful faces of Marlon and Bestius and went on thinking. He would happily dig Gracie out of her imprisonment with his bare hands if that were practical, and he would be just as happy to do battle with any enemy that threatened her, but standing to one side while a team of dwarves rescued her was not in any way heroic. On the other hand, saving the dwarves from a war with the trolls followed by rescuing a princess from a troll king would really be something . . . a genuine adventure. And there was an additional attraction, now that he came to think of it. Surely his father would be impressed by such real heroism — even, perhaps, sufficiently impressed to excuse Marcus from taking part in the hideous royal wedding. Ignoring the fact that he himself would be responsible for putting the princess in danger in the first place, Marcus made a decision.

“OK,” he said — and Marlon and Bestius sighed in relief. “I’ll go. Don’t know how I’ll do it, but I will. But on one condition, and one condition only. It’ll take me a while to get to Dreghorn and sweet-talk one of those stupid girls into coming back with me, and I can’t leave Gracie stuck wherever she is until then. The dwarves must start work on getting her out right now. Hey! Is Alf still marking the tree? Didn’t he disappear?”

“We’ll sort it out, kiddo,” Marlon reassured him.

“I’ll be off, then.” Marcus stood at attention, saluted, then bowed to Bestius. “You have the word of Prince Marcus of Gorebreath.” And he hurried off through the trees.

Bestius looked after him, rubbing his chin. “No offense, but is he a reliable sort of a lad? I don’t want to dig this girl out and then have him say, ‘Ho-di-ho! Let’s forget all about this princess business.’ You know what humans are like. All promises and no payment.”

Marlon drew himself up to his full height of six inches. “Told you before,” he said grandly. “That lad is Prince Marcus. One cool dude. Honorable from top to toe.”

“Beg pardon, I’m sure.” Bestius shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it. So where do we start digging?”

“We find my nephew — we find the tree. Easy as pie.” Delighted by the success of his plan, Marlon waved a confident wing. “He’s on the case. Trust me, he’s —”

The rest of his sentence was interrupted by a wild squeaking as Alf arrived at top speed and hurled himself at his uncle. “Unc! It’s happened again! The tree! It’s got the troll! Vanished, just perzactly like Miss Gracie! Gone! What’ll we do?”

“Troll?” Bestius’s eyebrows rose. “What troll?”

Marlon disentangled himself from his nephew and dusted himself off. “Keep cool, kid. Keep cool. Tell it slowly. . . .”