Trolls – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #99B: “Diamondback V. Tunnelrat” by Nick Thomas

edited by Ziv Wities

Diamondback v. Tunnelrat et. Axeteeth

Parish Court of Quan, 3rd District

Ignatious P. Fizzlewig, Esq. Presiding

Cite as: Diamondback V. Tunnelrat, 245 3rdPar (1107)

The case before us concerns questions of property, ownership, and personhood.

It also concerns the sale of an ear.

The plaintiff is one Mr. Trawler A. Diamondback, member of the Diamondback clan of trolls of the Brass-Tree Mountains. The co-defendants are a Ms. Beardlynn Tunnelrat and a Mx. Aewyn Axeteeth, both dwarves, also of the Brass-Tree Mountains.

Mx. Axeteeth is currently in possession of an ear which was the previous property of Mr. Diamondback. The ear was sold to Axeteeth by Tunnelrat.

Diamondback makes the following claim: allowing Axeteeth to possess the ear constitutes a harm to himself. He seeks the return of the ear and requests the funds associated with its sale to be relinquished unto him.

All parties agree to the following facts. A skirmish broke out between the Diamondbacks and the dwarves during the Brass-Tree autumnal equinox fete. The fete is a centuries-old tradition, occurring every year and held in the foothills alongside the Cenen river. Brawls are as much a part of the festivities as the paper lanterns, the stewing of chicken heads, and the traditional weasel-peasel dance. Neither party makes complaint about the violence done to them or by them at the skirmish.

“Popped me right in the kisser,” said Tunnelrat, whistling through the gap in her teeth. “A great shot. Couldn’t let it go though. So I took a slash at his ear.”

“Very clean cut. Sliced it right off,” Diamondback responded, displaying to the court the new ear that had grown in place of the old. “Barely any scar and no complications. Amazing technique.”

Around the second hour of morning, the skirmish died down. All parties involved resumed the festivities and collected their winnings. Diamondback’s ear was amongst Tunnelrat’s trophies.

Usually prizes such as ears are valued for their ornamentation, which often include jewels of substantial value. Neither side disputes that the jewels and other baubles found on Diamondback’s ear were Tunnelrat’s to claim as spoils of the skirmish. In the usual course of things, however, the ornamentation and other valuables are removed and the appendage is discarded, left to petrify upon the next rising of the sun.

Such are the healing powers of trolls that, if the appendage were retrieved prior to petrification, it could be reattached without much issue. However, since most troll appendages will grow back without intervention, trolls seldom attempt to find their lost flesh. Diamondback affirmed this observation, stating “I simply could not be bothered to find it.”

The dispute therefore centers around what occurred next.

Axeteeth, an acquaintance of Tunnelrat’s, suffered damage similar to that of Diamondback, losing a left ear in the skirmish. In spite of their wounds, Axeteeth sought out Tunnelrat for dance and frivolity.

Tunnelrat explained, “I was in the middle of lifting the shinies from the ear when ol’ Axey showed up and asked if I wasn’t up for a bit of grog and grunge. Axey was bleeding pretty bad. A rockhead had gashed them up how I’d gashed up Mr. Diamondback, but not near so pretty. But they didn’t seem bothered by it and I already had a fair bit of blood on me, so a little more wasn’t going to hurt, so I said, ‘Aye,’ stuffed the ear in my pocket, and went off with them.

“Later, after we’d sank a fair few, we was laughing and chatting and they says, ‘I won’t be half so pretty or hear half as well, now that I’m down an ear.’ And me, being more than a little wheezed, pulls the troll ear out of my pocket and says, ‘Well, for fifteen and three I’ll stitch this here one on for you.’

“Well, we had a good laugh about that. And then drank some more. And then some more. And then perhaps a wee bit more. And ole Axey slapped fifteen and three down on the table and says, ‘Do yer damndest!’ And then flops their head down on the table, like a lamb laying down to slaughter.

“Now, any reasonable person would have told ‘em to sit up and stop playing the fool. But, as I was saying, we’d drank well beyond the point of reason. And I happened to have a pin of iron and a scrap o’ silk on me. So…I stitched it up. And I will admit: it was a wretched bit of stitching.”

“Aye,” Axeface here interjected, “Looks like she was trying to quilt during an earthquake.”

Tunnelrat shrugged. “As I say, it was a wretched bit of stitching. But welded on firm and tight. And didn’t seem like it would droop or go flying off during a spin o’ dancing. So, laughing fit to die, we went to join the others. Everyone thought it was a good bit o’ fun. Even the trolls laughed and cheered Axey on.”

“It was quite diverting,” Diamondback acknowledged. “And very poorly stitched.”

“We all had a bit of a laugh and figured it would calcify as soon as the sun came up and fall off like an old scab.”

But this was not the case.

“When I woke up the next morning,” Axeteeth explained. “It felt like I had an axe buried in my skull. And the side of my head itched like someone had poured a gourd full of ants down my ear. But I chalked it up to drink and went down to the forge for work. When I walk in, my boss looks at me like I’m taking a squat on his floor and says, ‘What the hell have you done to your face?’ Even then I barely knew what he was talking about. It wasn’t until I found a mirror that I remembered exactly what happened.”

As indicated by Axeteeth’s testimony, the ear had grafted itself onto their face, wholly and completely.

“I tried my damndest to pull the thing back off. But it was welded on tight. And, after a good bit of tugging, I realized that the beastly thing was working too—I could hear.”

Axeteeth consulted a dwarf physician. He indicated that such a thing wasn’t completely without precedent. That there were stories of similar incidents happening long ago.

“He prodded at it with a wee metal pin and tugged at it with his tweezers and then he recommended that I get some pretties for it, ‘cause it wasn’t going anywhere. He did offer to cut it off, though. But he was going to charge me twenty and four, which is more than I paid to have the thing stitched on!” Axeteeth paused here to muse, “Though he was sober, I suppose.”

Though the ear looked out of place, Axeteeth was able to resume activities as normal.

“I actually hear better now than before. I can hear a fly pinching a loaf in the next room. Which is…about as exciting as it sounds. Though it does come in handy down in the tunnels.” Axeteeth paused. “Super hearing generally, I mean. Not the hearing flies shit part.”

Axeteeth indicated that they suffered derision and mockery from some of the other dwarves, but were otherwise able to return to a normal and productive life. Many dwarves actually sought them out, seeking information and advice on how to graft on troll appendages so as to heal similar ailments.

Word about Axeteeth’s luck spread throughout the tunnels and of the Brass-Tree Mountains. It found its way to the trolls and, eventually, back to Diamondback.

“At first I believed that the stories were just nonsense and hearsay. But then an associate said that he’d seen the ear and knew for a certainty it was mine. Then I had to go check for myself. I sought Axeteeth out at their business establishment. When I saw, the truth was undeniable—it was my very own ear. The twin and match to this one,” Diamond back said, displaying again the ear that had regrown.

“I’m afraid that I became quite irate. I acknowledge that I said some things that were regrettable.”

“He called me a dog-twaddling ear thief!” Axeteeth interjected.

Diamondback was removed from the property by the local security forces. After regaining his composure, he returned to Axeteeth and asked for the ear back. They refused, saying it was fairly bought and fairly owned. Diamondback then went to Tunnelrat, claiming the money from the sale of the ear was rightfully his. When she refused, he sought the advice of counsel. No agreement could be found between the parties, resulting in our hearing of this case.

Diamondback asserts that allowing another to own and wear his own flesh constitutes a harm to himself. When we posed to him that the ear was spoils of a fair and well-fought skirmish, he argued that “flesh was intimate and sacred.” That it should hold a special status, above ordinary property and goods. In doing so, he proposes to separate flesh into a distinct and elevated class, when compared with ordinary spoils. Diamondback requested to speak personally before the court and made the following plea:

“The ear is a part of me, indivisible as I am indivisible. It has been with me since I was born. It was the instrument through which I heard all the sweetest sounds of life. The first cries of my rock children. The whispers of my beloved shale mate. It has kept me safe in the deepest depths of the Brass-Tree—alerting me to the shifting of the rocks and the hissing of venomous shade spiders, to whom not even a troll is immune. It was into that ear that my rock father made his final utterances.

“To see a part of myself on another is greatly distressing. Displacing. What am I if I am both here and there? Am I unified and discrete? Or am I myriad and diffuse? Am I stone or am I sand?

“As a troll, I must be stone. I must have all my parts and pieces gathered together. The ear is a part of my person, sacrosanct and irreplaceable.”

The counsel of Axeteeth responded thus—“Irreplaceable my fanny! He grew another friggin’ one! Besides, them trolls never go looking for their bits and pieces. They don’t want them, so why shouldn’t we take ‘em?”

Indeed, the prevalence of abandoned and petrified body parts throughout the paths and passes of the Brass-Tree Mountains is well documented and commonly known. It was not two years ago that this court presided over Calcite v. McGrew, in which a Lacy McGrew from a nearby township complained that the prevalence of troll appendages of a particularly personal and intimate nature, in particular one member that the local birds had taken to using as a favorite perch, made the Koleolee Pass an unsuitable hiking grounds for her children. To keep her little ones from seeing “the naughty troll bits,” she made them wear dark glasses. The result of which was a small pack of children bumping into trees, tripping over roots, and hugging bears.

Axeteeth was allowed to personally respond to Diamondback’s arguments. “I ain’t got no pretty speech, like Diamondback. But I’ve heard pretty things out of this here ear. And I expect to hear a bunch more. And takin’ that away from me would be just plain wrong. It kept him safe down in the mines; well, it’ll keep me safe too. And in the forests, where hearing a fotex or a lyger or a tredulo can mean life or death. And I got babies of my own. And I wanna hear them too. In both ears, if I can. I wanna hear their love on all sides of me, comin’ at me from all around. ‘Cause that’s the way love flows.”

Axeteeth then cleared their throat and said, “Plus it’s welded to my face. And I’ll stab any fucker that tries to cut it off.”

And though perhaps not so eloquently put, Axeteeth’s point is well made—returning the ear would be a severe and extraordinary hardship. Indeed, it would be punitive. And this court can find no wrong in their actions.

However, prior to making our judgment, we posed to Diamondback the following questions:

“You assert that your personhood is being assaulted—without the ear, you are no longer the person you were before?”

“Indeed.”

“But people lose parts and pieces every day! Indeed, even now you are shedding little pebbles in our courtroom. Are you a different person now? How is it that the loss of an ear has disrupted your personhood, but the loss of these pebbles has not?”

Diamondback paused here to confer with counsel. Finally, he responded, “The pebbles fall from my body, are struck by the sun and calcify. They are inert. The ear is still alive. It is still flesh. My flesh.”

“Even though it is on the body of another? If the ear had been left to calcify, would you still be altered? Would you still be the same person?”

After a moment’s thought, Diamondback replied, “I would be a different person, but not in a way that I found distressing.”

“Merely seeing the ear on another is enough to cause you distress?”

Diamondback shook his head. “I can feel it. Its presence is an itch in the ether that I cannot scratch. Sometimes I hear snatches of sounds that are not there.”

We find that this is the crux of the argument—distress. And though we do not dismiss Diamondback’s distress (we certainly would not want to see our nose stitched onto the face of another), we do not feel that the degree of distress outweighs the harm that would come to Axeteeth should the ear be forcibly removed. It is unfortunately often that the law is enforced in a way that one party or another finds to be distressing. Particularly when it comes to property rights.

Diamondback admits that he discarded the ear. The fact that it was later discovered to have a greater value than he estimated is immaterial.

And thus we would have dismissed Diamondback’s claim and found in favor of Axeteeth and Tunnelrat. Indeed, we were raising our gavel, about to issue the order when Diamondback interrupted to make a final argument.

“Safety! And protection. The ear must be returned to me for safety and protection.”

“He already tried that!” shouted Axeteeth. “And I already said: me not having an ear makes me less safe.”

Diamondback raised a hand. “Not simply for me, but for all trolls. If it becomes known that our flesh can be used to replace lost or defective flesh in others, we shall never know a moment’s peace. We shall be hunted, our guts and appendages sold in every black market. If others are allowed to buy and sell our flesh, we will be domesticated, animals kept for slaughter.”

When we pressed Axeteeth and Tunnelrat for a reply to this charge, Axeteeth simply shrugged. “Ain’t my problem.”

Though we find Axeteeth’s lack of empathy to be repugnant, dislike cannot be a deciding factor in a case. At the same time, we cannot so blithely dismiss Diamondback’s concerns.

The courts exist to interpret laws. And the tragic essence of our existence is this: in interpreting the law, we must choose winners and losers. However, we cannot do so blithely—we must do so in a way that causes as little harm as possible.

Diamondback’s assertion already seems to be bearing out. Indeed, even we have heard whispers of increased attacks in the Brass-Tree Mountains on the trolls. And though it is not certain that this violence is connected to the discovery that troll appendages can be grafted onto others, it is possible and even likely.

But what are we to do? Creating a separate class of property for body parts, subject to separate rules, requirements, and penalties, is the purview of the legislature. Any court doing so would be guilty of gross overreach.

We found ourselves at the center of a great moral dilemma. If we do not protect the trolls we have failed ethically; if we classify body parts as a separate class of property, we have failed legally. Our brain fairly burned itself to cinders turning the problem over and over. Indeed we might have collapsed from the strain, had it not been for one small serendipitous event:

Diamondback, itching at some fly or stuck piece of wax, poked a finger in his ear.

But it was Axeteeth who flinched.

Addressing Axeteeth, we asked, “Are you alright?”

“Just a twinge in my earhole. Happens every once in a while.”

Addressing Diamondback, we asked, “You say that you can feel the ear. You can feel it now?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Diamondback said.

We saw it plainly then—the sympathetic link between the ears was obvious. Diamondback was digging in his ear with the gusto of a miner who has stumbled across a fresh vein of gold. But it was Axeteeth who winced in discomfort. It brought to mind some of the fetish dolls made by the priests of the northern isles. And if a lock of hair or a drop of blood can forge a link between a person and a stuffed scrap of rag, how much stronger must the link be between a person and their own living flesh?

And while it is outside the purview of the courts to legislate, it is not beyond our mandate to inform. We would even argue that it is the essence of our duty.

“Mr. Diamondback, do you think that you could, perhaps, wiggle your ear?”

All persons in the court looked at us in a manner most confused. And so we continued. “If you could just humor us one small experiment. Mr. Diamondback said that he could feel Axeteeth’s ear. Even across great distances. We thought it might be interesting to see just how strong of a connection there is between the two ears. So, if you please, Mr. Diamondback–wiggle your ear?”

Diamondback wiggled his own left ear, looking as if he were trying to solve a most challenging riddle. And, after a moment’s pause, Axeteeth’s ear began to move in sympathy.

“Hey now!” Axeteeth shouted. “Don’t you go fiddling with my ear!”

“And do you think,” we said, continuing to address Diamondback, “that if you felt significant pain in that ear, that such pain might be transferred to its twin?”

Understanding spread across Diamondback’s face. “Perhaps, Your Grace. It might just be so.”

We turned then to Axeteeth. “And would you, Mx. Axeteeth, be willing to pay a small, monthly stipend for the privilege of not receiving, perhaps, random stabs of pain and wiggling ears?”

“This is extortion!” shouted Axeteeth’s counsel.

“Mx. Axeteeth is welcome to dispose of the ear if they choose. And Mr. Diamondback here is welcome to do with his person as he likes. Including, perhaps, piercing their own ear in the middle of the night when most people would be sleeping?”

“But what if I do the same thing back to him?” Axeteeth said, pinching at their new ear.

“Then I think that would encourage Mr. Diamondback not to abuse the power he has over you. I think this will encourage you both to arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement. You, Mx. Axeteeth, will have a new, fully functional ear. And you, Mr. Diamondback, will receive some compensation.

“And, I believe, knowing that someone else can cause you significant pain or control the movements of any stolen appendage or organ will discourage the illegal harvesting and trade of such, would you not agree, Mr. Diamondback?”

After taking a moment to confer, Diamondback and his counsel responded that this indeed would likely be a sufficient deterrent.

Thus, we dismiss Diamondback’s claim. The ear in question shall remain the property of Mx. Axeteeth and the proceeds from the sale of which shall remain with Ms. Tunnelrat. Any contract providing Diamondback compensation for the lease and peaceful use of the ear shall be between the two parties.

Such is our ruling. And here be it:

Signed

Ignatious P. Fizzlewig, Esq. Presiding Judge

Third Parish

Quan

Southern Isles

Summer of Cherries and Year of the Duck, 1107

3363 words

Author’s Note: I spend a lot of time reading case law for work. Some of the cases are super dry, but some are incredibly compelling–high drama with strong narrative arcs. One day, while staring out the window, I imagined a court case in which one party was trying to sell an ear they had found. The idea made me snort out loud and made me want to see if I could tell a similar story using the structure of a court opinion.

Nick Thomas spends his days building geodomes, playing squash, and drafting legislation for the Ohio General Assembly. He aspires to write stories that capture all the wonderful, weird beauty of life. He lives in Columbus, Ohio in a ramshackle old house with his wife, two children, and one little ghost, all of whom he loves very dearly.

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DP FICTION #75B: “Three Riddles and a Mid-Sized Sedan” by Lauren Ring

edited by Ziv Wities and David Steffen

When the cars started driving themselves, we went back to the old ways. It wasn’t a slow change, the way the news made it out to be. One day we were in control, and the next we weren’t. Now they can strike anywhere, anytime, any make and any model, all with dead-eyed electronic smiles on their windshields.

The old ways help us stay safe. I teach my daughter to chalk runes around the house, double yellow lines that forbid the cars from crossing. We bring a baby stroller everywhere we go. It saved a friend of mine once, making him rank slightly higher in the car’s inscrutable calculus than the woman on the other side of the street.

Sometimes I wonder if he feels guilty.

I know I wouldn’t. I need to be there for Margot, so that I can protect her in this new world, and keep her childhood peaceful. She’s the only reason I keep going. No one else matters.

Today, Margot and I are going to the park. Margot is wearing her favorite shirt, the one with the pink stripes and the ice cream scoops, and I’ve done up her hair with matching bows. A bright rainbow of face paint covers her button nose. She skips along happily, clutching her chapter book to her chest as I push the stroller with its disguised doll.

“I’m going to see the bridge troll, Mama,” Margot tells me. I resist the urge to sigh.

“Bridges are on roads, sweetheart.They aren’t safe anymore, remember?”

“You never let me have any fun.” She pouts and stops skipping.

“We’re going to the park right now,” I point out. Margot huffs and buries her face in her book. I want to tell her not to read while walking, but that’s one battle I won’t ever win. I step to her left, between her and the road.

The book she’s reading has a troll on the cover. Its eyes glow yellow and its rocky body blends into the bridge behind it. Next to it stands a young girl with her hands on her hips. I make a mental note to skim it after she falls asleep tonight: I don’t want her getting the wrong idea.

It’s the way people thought before the cars. Some people still think it; try to take the cars down. I hear about them on the news, next to footage of their weeping parents. Margot is only curious about the cars now, but I can’t help worrying that she’ll grow up to be one of those radicals.

Margot tugs at my sleeve.

“Want to guess a riddle?” she asks.

“Sure, honey.” We’re almost at the park now. It’s isolated, deep enough in the maze of the suburbs that I can let my guard down a little.

“What has legs but no feet?” Margot asks, placing her finger halfway down the page.

“I don’t know, what?”

“I win,” she squeals, holding the book out to me. “It’s a chair, it says right here. Now you have to let me go to the bridge.”

“Not if I catch you first!” I chase her all the way to the park, roaring like a bridge troll.

There are other families at the park, and other children on the swings. Margot spots her best friend Nadia playing in the sand pit and runs off.

Across the sand, my friends Dave and Samir are chatting at a picnic bench. Samir spots me and waves me over, smiling wide. I scan the park for escape routes and hiding places before joining them.

“How have you been, Alicia?” Samir asks. His disguise of the day is all harsh lines and interlocking spirals, so dark they look like tattoos across his face. In the oldest days, it was unwise to share your true name. Now you can’t share your true face.

“We missed you at our baby shower,” Dave adds.

“Right.” I had been too afraid to leave the house that day. There had been a car victim in the news, a child Margot’s age, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. “I’ll bring your gift to the next self-defense workshop.”

Samir rolls his eyes, but I know he’s more exasperated than annoyed. After all, Dave leads the workshops. He had been a designer on the cars long ago, back when people were still actually in charge of them, but his workshops tend toward the arcane.

“I’m working on a charm.” Dave holds up a spinning, blinking object that flashes pattern after pattern. “If we can overload a car’s sensors for even a millisecond, it might swerve.”

“Do you have to call it a charm?” Samir grumbles.

“If it works, it works,” says Dave. “I think there’s a lot we can learn from the old ways.”

“They’re machines, not fairies. The way we get back to normal is by somebody figuring out who hacked into the AI, not by all of us pretending that they’re magic.”

“What about in the meantime?” I interject. “Things aren’t getting any better. Half the kids in Margot’s classroom haven’t come in since the attack by the high school; the district says we’re all moving to remote schooling.”

“Maybe it would be better.” Dave places a hand on my shoulder. “She’ll still have the backyard, and Nadia can come over for playdates.”

“I just want her to get a chance to live the way we lived, you know?”

Dave and Samir give me sympathetic nods, but they don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.

I turn back to watch Margot play, hoping some of her carefree joy will stick with me.

The sand pit is empty. A half-built bridge, a pinecone troll, and a trail of sand left like breadcrumbs are all that remains of Margot and Nadia.

I start running.

At least she’s with Nadia, I think to myself. At least she isn’t alone. It pains me to make the same cold decision as a car, but Nadia is older than Margot, and age is supposed to be one of the metrics.

I sprint across streets and swing around corners with wild abandon, following the sand. Margot is out there. Margot, who I still can’t convince of the dangers of the world. In another life, I would have wanted her to stay innocent.

The nearest bridge isn’t a bridge at all. It’s actually a freeway overpass that crosses a quiet road, but it’s close enough in the eyes of a child. Margot and Nadia stand there at the edge of the shadows, their arms linked.

“Margot, Nadia, come here,” I call as loudly as I dare. “We can play somewhere else.”

“But Mama, we found the troll,” Margot says.

I get closer and see yellow in the shadows. Not eyes. Headlights.

I’m in front of Margot in an instant, spreading my arms to block her as much as I can. Nadia whimpers and ducks behind my leg, but Margot just tries to slip under my arm.

“I want to tell it my riddle,” she says.

“Margot, honey, this is a car,” I say carefully. She knows the stories, the warnings, but she has never seen a feral car in the wild before. I’ve sheltered her too well. “We talked about how they’re different now. It’s not going to answer your riddle.”

The car’s windshield changes from the neutral face that means no danger to something new: a question mark. I have never seen an autonomous car without an indicator face before.

“Sweetheart, I want you and Nadia to get back.” I use my sternest tone. When they step back, though, the car revs its engine and inches forward.

The car’s windshield displays a stop sign. The children halt.

“Okay, Margot. Ask the riddle.” My voice shakes.

She places her hands on her hips, her little chin thrust high in the air.

“What,” she demands, “has legs but no feet?”

The car displays a chair on its screen. My heart skips a beat as it starts rolling forward, picking up speed. Margot turns to me with wide eyes.

“It won, mama.”

I scoop Margot into my arms and start to run, but Nadia grabs at my leg, and we all go tumbling down to the asphalt. Margot starts to cry and I have just enough time to notice the bright red smear on her scraped elbow before the car is upon us and I have to act, now.

“I have riddles, car,” I say, desperate. “Play with me.”

The car screeches to a halt and slowly reverses until all I can see are its eerie yellow headlights and the question mark on its windshield.

“If I win, you leave me and my daughter alone. Forever. All of you.”

The car displays a red frown. I’ve asked for too much.

“Just her, then.” I wipe the tear-smeared paint off Margot’s face and force her to look at the car. It will kill us anyway if I fail here.

A green smiling face. A question mark.

The problem is, I don’t have a riddle. I’ve never really been one for puzzles, and the only games I play are the ones Margot suggests. Besides, anything I’ve heard of before, the car will also know. It knows so much. More than I do. It knows the answer to unanswerable questions. Like “whose life is worth more?”

Nadia trembles behind me.

Margot would be heartbroken if anything happened to her. If it comes down to that choice again, I know what I will do, but for now there must be another way. Samir was right: they’re cars, not fairies. But Dave was right too. Both of those things play by the rules, and both of those things can be tricked.

“You can’t kill us until you answer my riddles,” I tell it. Again, the green smile. I step forward and walk so close I can feel the heat of its engine. I try the door handle.

“What are you doing, Mama?” Margot asks, grabbing my hand with her stubby fingers. “Don’t let it eat us!”

“Just trust me, honey.” I tug on the handle again. The car hums, like its air conditioning has been left on high. The first glimpses of a plan are forming in my head. “I need to get my books from home, so I can find the very best riddles.”

With a click, the car door unlocks. I think it’s curious. Kind of like a child in that way, if the child weighed several tons and could kill with ease. Margot clings to me as I open the car’s door and climb inside, with Nadia at my heels.

The children huddle in the passenger seat, clinging to each other as I snap their seatbelt in place. I eye the manual override, but I know better. I’ve heard of people who tried that and held on. Heard what happened the moment they let go.

If we can just get home, though, I might be able to pull this off. Maybe.

I key in my address and with a sound like a sigh, the car pulls out from under the overpass.

It’s been years since I’ve been inside a car. My knuckles are white as I grip the useless wheel. Outside the window, the trees and the streets and the houses blur together.

I can almost understand why the world chose this path. There’s no traffic, no mistakes, no rude gestures. But it only feels safe from inside the car. I’ve lived too long on the outside to be fooled.

Maybe I can beat the car at its own game, instead of resorting to one of the frantic, risky plans bubbling up in my mind. I can’t come up with any suitable riddles, though, and I know my own books won’t be any help. All I know are the childish riddles I’ve picked up through my time as a parent, from playgroups and picture books.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because it was running for its life.

My house comes into view. It’s a single story, just big enough for me and Margot. Yellow painted rune-lines circle the structure, and all of the blinds are drawn shut. Weeds have broken through the concrete of the driveway. The car crushes them as it pulls up.

I unbuckle the girls and step out on shaky legs. I can at least get Margot inside. Maybe she can barricade herself somewhere, and force the car to destroy itself getting to them. But that’s a temporary solution at best.

The car revs its engine as Margot and Nadia head for the porch. It rolls up behind them and they freeze. Nadia is crying now, globs of silent tears pooling on her cheeks. Margot’s face is tight and pale.

“Stay out here, girls,” I say as gently as I can. “I’m going to get some books. Everything will be okay. I’ll bring some chalk for you to play with. Don’t worry, alright?”

Margot grabs my sleeve as I pass her. The look in her eyes breaks my heart almost as much as the look in her eyes when I have to keep going. The chalk will work, though. It has to work.

The house is quiet and still. The car’s headlights follow me through the blinds as I hurry to the shelves. Margot’s books are usually scattered around her room, but there are still a few fairy tales left where they should be. I grab them and the chalk.

Back outside, the car looms over Margot and Nadia, their nightmares made real for the very first time. It’s a small car, but they’re small girls. Too small to be dealing with this right now and certainly too small for what I’m about to ask them to do, but there’s no one else that can do it.

“Here you go, girls. Don’t be afraid.” I hand them the bucket of chalk, then turn my back to the car and hide my hands as I gesture to them what to do.

I can only hope they understand. I turn back to the car.

“I’m going to ask you three riddles,” I say, stretching my words out to buy time as the children begin to draw. I can see Margot trembling as she nears the car, but she draws anyway. So brave, my girl. “It’s the traditional number.”

The green question mark stays on the car’s display, unwavering.

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

The question mark winks out. Moments later, the car’s screen fills with text. Every inch of the windshield is covered in blog posts and thesis papers, giving me every possible answer to the unanswerable riddle. Then it shows me a green check mark.

It makes sense. The cars have always been judge, jury, and executioner. This isn’t a contest I could ever win. The car starts rolling forward and a piece of pink chalk explodes into a cloud of dust and shards beneath its tire.

“I have two more.” My voice was supposed to be firm and strong, but instead it’s high and reedy. “You haven’t heard the best ones yet. Stay where you are until you answer.”

The car indulges me and stops. I open one of Margot’s books and read aloud.

“As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives…”

This riddle is one of Margot’s favorites. She likes the way the words sound; likes the lyricism and the puzzle combined. I try not to look at her, because I know I will cry. I hope she knows how hard I’m trying to save her.

The car, of course, has its answer the instant I’m done reading. The number one appears on its screen. This time, though, it’s an angry red.

“Very good,” I say, glancing at the girls and their chalk. “Just one more, and then we see who wins. One more riddle and the game is over.”

A red timer appears on the car’s screen, ticking down from thirty seconds. It wants me to stop stalling, but I just need a little more time. Thirty seconds will have to be enough.

I wait for the last five seconds before I speak. The silence is as solemn as the grave and is punctuated only by the scratch of chalk and the steady hum of the car’s engine.

“My last riddle for you, car,” I say, “is: how are you going to get out?”

For a long moment, longer than ever before, the screen is blank.

Then the car rears forward, headlights ablaze. I can’t help it—I close my eyes. If this doesn’t work, then it’s all over, and I won’t watch my daughter die.

There is no scream. There is no crunch. There is only silence.

I crack open the eye and see the car frozen in place. It skidded to a halt just inches from poor Margot’s face, but—thank God—she is unscathed. Nadia is panting with effort. Her hand shakes as she grinds her piece of chalk into the last mark on the rune, a simple do-not-cross indicator that signals to the very core of the car’s programming.

Margot runs to me. I hold her tighter than tight, burying my face in her soft hair. I wish I could stay this way forever, but it’s not safe, even now.

I bundle the children into the house as the car revs its engine and spins its wheels uselessly within the circle. It flicks on its high beams and the light spills through the closed blinds.

Nadia stands by the door and stares at the ground.

“You left me,” she says. “You ran with Margot.”

“Honey, I’m sorry.” I crouch down to her eye level. Only then do I see the nail marks on her inner palms, where she clutched the chalk so hard she nearly bled. Without her help, my daughter would be a smear on the pavement.

I place my hands on her shoulders. She looks up, her eyes wide and tearful and, I realize for the first time, the same shade of brown as Margot’s.

“I won’t ever leave you again.”

Nadia takes one of my hands. Margot takes the other. I lead the girls deep into the house, where the thick walls will protect us, and pull out my phone.

Dave can help, and Samir, and they will know other former programmers who will know more and more. The cars are connected, but we can be too. Our solidarity gives us power. And now, if I have to, I will join the charge.

For Margot.

For everyone.

3000 words

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by James Bridle’s 2017 art piece “Autonomous Trap 001,” which features a self-driving car trapped by a salt circle. I saw his piece when I was in college researching the UX design of self-driving cars (such as windshield displays to communicate to pedestrians), so I immediately started thinking of all the other ways this technology could be connected to folklore. The story itself came from wondering why a car would need to be trapped in the first place.

Lauren Ring (she/her) is a perpetually tired Jewish lesbian who writes about possible futures, for better or for worse. Her short fiction can be found in Pseudopod, Nature: Futures, and Glitter + Ashes. When she isn’t writing speculative fiction, she is pursuing her career in UX design or attending to the many needs of her cat Moomin.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #71B: “Unstoned” by Jason Gruber

edited by David Steffen and Ziv Wities

At sunrise, I spy on the humans as they arrive. They mill around on the black sand beach; their children splash in the pea-green waves. So many children, born of their brief lives, shorter than those of the elves, shorter by far than mine.

The humans clutch their schematics rolled in their fists. They await the elvish shipwrights, who arrive late in their tattered finery, patched velvets and scuffed leather boots, and usher the humans, bowing, through the filigree gate to the shipyard.

They cannot see me in my house on the hill, which the elves call a cave, ignoring the unsupported dome, the graceful archway entrance. I built my house to wall off a place for myself in this world with no other trolls in it. And in a clever nook in the back wall, behind the hearth, I hide my secret treasure: a schematic for a ship. If I could build it, then the elves would understand: we are not as different as they think. If I could build it, could speak to them with my hands in a language that they understand, then they would remember: the trolls were artists, before we were soldiers.

I stand well back from the morning sunlight, so buttery and so thick that I want to spread it on the toast I have made over my small fire. But I cannot touch the light, cannot even approach it. This is one of the things that people know about trolls. They cannot abide the light of day.

A human woman steps onto the raised platform of marble traced with copper. The elves take the schematic from her. She doesn’t know what to do with her empty hands. Her children dance in excitement; soon they will have a pleasure craft of the finest elvish craftsmanship. The wagons are drawn up all around, a breeze off the sea snapping the tarps that cover them. I smell salt, a mineral like the ones of which I am made. This is another thing that people know about trolls. They are made of stone.

Anyone who has tasted the iron in blood can tell you that elves have some stone in them as well.

The artisans raise their hands while their assistants whip off the tarps. The schematic is tacked in front of the artisans, but they do not need it. The truth is that most customers are not inventive. I have read their discarded dreams after they sail away.

Stonework floats up from the wagons, magically light. I recognize each of the pieces, the beakhead and the figurehead, the tiller and the keel, because I built them all. Every piece used in this shipyard was crafted by me, alone and unknown. I am proud of them. Each fits in its assigned place, no matter which other pieces are chosen to surround it. Every time I watch, I hope that the customers will notice this. But that is not what they came to see. The pieces do not matter. It is the assembly that is the performance. It is the performance that justifies the price.

I never tire of watching the elves build a ship from my stone. It could be done a piece at a time—I could do that, but I am not permitted—but instead the artisans flourish and the stones fly, and at the end, all at once, the pieces become one. In this ritual there are traces of what we and the elves once were, before war ruined us both.

A shadow darkens my door and Florin calls in to me. I do not hear his approach in time to hide. Though it would do me little good anyway.

“Troll,” he says—I have given them an approximation of my name that lays easy on their tongues, but they do not use it—“troll, are you in there?”

A small joke for a small man. They are all so small, with pinched, narrow features, hair that they trim and tousle and pile up atop their fragile heads. The height of children, and alike in cruelty.

Florin is joking because he knows that I could not be anywhere else. The stoning is triggered by threat, of which the sun is but a part. This is how they, soft as they are, defeated us: my peoplewent to stone when injured and the elves smashedthem when they thought thembut statues. Not one troll was killed soft, and only I, who refused to go to stone, I, born with a flaw, a darkness in me that disdained surrender, I survived.

I could kill Florin, and many others, before they brought me down, but there are better ways to die. There is still a chance to write my people’s history in some other ink than blood. If only they will let me build my ship.

Florin is a shipwright—he could speak for me with the others—and so I answer him. “What do you want, Florin?”

They have long since decided that my directness is rudeness. They ignore it. They do not wish to understand that among my people—before the war, when there was such a thing as my people—circumlocution was a sign of disrespect.

Florin’s face edges around the hand-smoothed post of my door. He was too young for the war but he still carries the reflexes of prey. “I felt the heat of the day and thought you might like a cool drink.”

So it is to be this game. The hardening begins at my edges. I was told that this is how human skin reacts to cold by my friend Gunter, who was lost in the war. A traitor, his people called him. He was my friend.

“Thank you, Florin. Please leave it outside.”

“I want to see you enjoy it,” he says, his hand trembling as if I might snap it off. As if flesh is worth eating. In his hand there is a cup, and in the cup there is, of course, milk.

A third thing that people know about trolls, and that Florin knows also: milk is poison to our people. Not as useful a weapon as some think—it will not kill me—but a wonderful joke.

My knuckles are stiff now, as are my toes. If I cannot work, I will lose what worth I have to them. “Please leave me be, Florin.” My tongue is thick, tumbling their slick speech end over end. “I only want to work.”

“That’s not all you want, troll,” Florin says. “The foreman has told me of your desires.”

“One ship,” I say. “That’s all.”

“What beauty do you think a thing like you could create? All you know is slaughter.”

I do not argue. That is all he knows of us. Eventually he goes away.

I am to report to the foreman every evening after sunset. It is his rule, and yet he is always angry to be late for dinner. The rule serves no purpose but to remind me that I obey.

His office is a tarpaper shack set on a slight ridge overlooking the docks. It reeks of asafoetida, which the elves know as “food of the gods” but which we call “stinkgum.” It is a good spice, when used with discretion.

My knock rattles the door in its frame. Cheap wood, which will not last even one of their short generations. I could fashion one that would be a better fit.

“Finally,” the foreman says, already half up, a satchel dangling from one shoulder. He is pale as milk and as pleasant, a wispy elf who would not have lasted to adulthood in the heat of the war.

“The sun—“

“I know about your damned sun problem,” the foreman says. “That doesn’t mean I want to wait on you all night.”

He thinks that the stoning would rid him of me. This is a thing that people know about trolls, but it is wrong. I would return to life, one day when their children had grown old. We all would have.

I plead my case. I have been pleading it for years. Stone is patient. But even it can be crumbled by the wind, given time enough. “I wish to apply again—“

The foreman looses a fluid stream of borrowed human cursing. It is not a tongue I have been able to master. Gunter spoke Trollish.

“Listen to me, troll. Listen, because I am trying to help. You do one thing, and you do it well, I’ll grant you that. It serves a purpose. It pleases the humans and it keeps you alive. Do not draw attention to yourself by trying to reach above your station!”

I know that to the humans, I am a token. My survival helps them feel better about tipping the scales for the elves during the war. As if I represent my people. As if I can fill the void that was left when they were shattered.

“I understand, and yet—“

I do not have words to tell him that art is the only hope my people have left. Such words would only wound the part of him that is shamed at what the elves were forced to become. It is one thing to think that you would murder to survive, and another to do it. They say that they did not, that the stoning is what doomed us, but they still smashed us, they did not let us stay statues. Some of them knew. Some of them still know, and my survival is a reminder that all righteousness is conditional. I understand this, but it cannot be spoken.

“This is the last time,” the foreman says. “I will explain it to you once more and then that’s it. You cannot build the ships. You do not have the sense for it, and even if you did, you cannot make them light. They would sink without the magic.”

He is wrong. He does not understand stone. But still, he speaks as if to a child. I wonder what would happen if I rooted to the floor here, if my stone feet sank into the dirt. It seems impossible that I will ever leave this place, this very moment. The stoning is coming for me and I welcome it.

The foreman tires of waiting and leaves with a warning not to touch anything.

An hour after moonrise, I have loosened enough to go to the shipyard. The tide is coming in, lapping at the green-slimed struts of the pier. The stars have something of the paradox of mountains, their seeming permanence and creeping change. When I am alone with them, I do not feel so alone.

I have seen how favors work among the elves and humans. They are similar peoples, and I do not blame them for finding common cause against us. One way that favors work is that one of them will owe another, but I have nothing to trade. Another way is that one of them will be fond of another, and will help him without expecting anything in return.

I could be liked.

I work harder than I have in centuries. Cutting, polishing, stacking. Despite the time I spent frozen, I finish all of tonight’s work and half of tomorrow’s before day drives me home. I see the sun boil up over the surface of the water, far out over the ocean. Though the wind blows always from the west, and the elvish ships will sail without a hand to guide them, no one has ever found the other side. It is too far, and there were wars to fight.

The next night, I finish my work not long after moonrise. By now, the revel will be in full bloom. I ornament my body with thick paints that I have compounded myself, in vivid oranges and greens, the colors that my mother loved best. I would look absurd in the flowers that the elves favor. I will do this as myself or not at all.

They stare when I enter the field, my heavy feet in the thick grass leaving mats that seep mud. The music does not falter, because music is the one shining survivor of their heritage. The dance does. Perhaps this is good. I am not much of a prancer.

This is one of the things that people do not know about trolls: that we have music, too. We were forming orchestras when the ancestors of the elves were banging sticks on rocks, but each of us can sing but one note of our own, like the wind moaning through a cavern; we cannot make music alone.

I have never been to the revel before. It is not as bad as I imagined. The stares are more puzzled than accusatory and no one throws anything. Now that I am here, I wonder why it is that it seemed so impossible before. I have not been forbidden the revel. The war is centuries gone and my people are too. If there are friends to be found, they are to be found here.

I could have a friend.

Nothing that they know about trolls has prepared the revelers for this moment. I slog through the soft field, flowers painting pollen on my legs, looking about for someone who will meet my gaze. My neck is stiff. Wouldn’t that be a joke, wouldn’t it be an appropriate end, if I became a statue in the midst of their joy? The last troll, pouring milk in the grog one last time.

I find a group that appears more jolly than the rest, though it is hard to tell; I do not often see elves anymore who are not afraid of me. These are young, and falling over each other with laughter. I try to approach them casually. My foot gets stuck in the mud and I almost fall. If I had crushed them beneath me, that would have been the end, that would have turned me to stone right there.

“Look at this big fellow!” one of them says. Her gown, little more than a few haphazard wreaths of flowers, is wilting. Her eyes are filled with stars and, seeing them, I feel something stir, something for which this soft language has no word. Something deeper than it can encompass. The fellow-feeling that gave us strength. I thought it died with my people. She says, “Where did you come from, big fellow?”

“He’s the troll from the shipyards, Delilah,” another says. His top hat is slightly crushed. He doffs it to me. “The last troll. How rare! I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance. We couldn’t do it without you.”

There is an edge to his words. Intoxicated by stars, I am unable to comprehend it. And now they are talking over each other. “Would you like a drink, troll?” “Are you enjoying yourself, troll?” “Is it true what they say, troll?”

I roll my name around in my mouth. They could pronounce it if they tried. They might wish to know it.

“Do you see the irony here?” It is the top hat again. His face is flushed with the distinctive pink of flesh. He is not addressing me but the entire group, in which I am not included. “We have been dependent on humans ever since the trolls’ war made beggars of us.. And yet, because of this troll, our shipyard is the most profitable in elfdom! Doesn’t it disgust you? Isn’t it all so delicious?”

“Get out of here, troll.” Like magic—and perhaps it is—Florin is here. “Go back to your cave. Leave the light. This is no place for rock-biting cretins like you.”

Is the voice truly Florin’s, or is it my own? The stoning can cause dreams. Rainbows coat all I see, warning me that my eyes are becoming prismatic. I feel sick. That is one feeling trolls have in common with elves. I rockslide away, their words no more than buzzing in my hardening ears. I have lost command of the language. I cannot speak to them anymore.

There are many productive hours remaining to me when I return to my workshop. I put them to use, pouring myself into precision, stacking bits of ship as high as I can. And then, when I can do no more and there is little time left, I go to the docks and I hide the extra parts beneath the waves. The sea will not harm them. Not for a long time. As it cannot harm me.

A year passes and I do not try again. I no longer watch the ships being assembled and I no longer trouble the foreman or the revelers. I am silent and I work. That is all they have ever wished of me, to disappear. I am the dregs of a nightmare. I am the price they pay for what they have done. Once, that was enough for me. No longer..

I do not care what is permitted. I do not care if they see, or know, or remember who we were before we were slain. What I do now, I do for me. For my people. There is no longer a place for us in the world they have made? Then I will find another.

Evening of the last day comes and I begin. It is slow, working piece by piece, alone and unknown. But I know and I love stone. I revel in the perfection of each piece as I fit it to the next, sealing them with spittle and secret arts that I alone remember. What I am creating is not the beauty of the elves, ethereal and delicate. It is the beauty of the mountains and of the stars, a solid and slow beauty that is ever-changing for those with eyes to see and time to spend. It is the beauty of my people, and like me it is the last.

Elvish writing is ink-scarred paper or finger-trails in wax. Trolls record their speech in stone. I write my name with my ship.

I am done well before dawn. The work goes more quickly than I expected. So I wait. I have time. The ocean is wide and it will be a long sleep.

When the gray begins to leach out of the sky, light waking in the black sand beach and on the tips of the pea-green waves, when the first of the customers have arrived and marvel to see me, daring the sun, proud and alone, when the shipwrights are still stumbling from their beds, and the stars overhead are sleeping, and my people are all dead but I yet live, I launch my ship.

3200 words

Jason Gruber lives in Birmingham, Alabama and if you spot him in the wild, talk to him about cooking or show him pictures of your dogs, he’ll like that.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Trolls

written by David Steffen

Trolls is a 2016 DreamWorks animated romantic comedy adventure film for kids, based on the lucky troll dolls that were popular in the 80s (you know, the little naked dolls with the giant flourescent hair?).

Trolls are tiny creatures of nearly endless happiness, spending all of their time singing, dancing, and hugging. They also have fast-growing prehensile camoflauging hair which was admittedly pretty neat. Twenty years ago, all of the known trolls were held in captivity by a race of much larger creatures called Bergens, who live in nearly unending unhappiness but who discovered that they can be happy for a short time if they eat a troll. So the Bergens rounded up all the trolls and kept them captive in the center of their town, and once a year on the Trollstice holiday, the Bergens have a feast of trolls and as a result have a day of happiness.

But on that fateful Trollstice twenty years ago King Peppy (Jeffrey Tambor) led the trolls on their escape, burrowing out of their enclosure and out of the Bergen city before they could be eaten. The Bergen chef who was in charge of preparing the Trollstice feast was exiled into the wilderness. Twenty years have passed and the trolls still live free in the woods, unharrassed by their former tormentors.

On this momentous anniversary, the trolls are having a bigger celebration than ever to celebrate. Only one troll is opposed to the festivities–Branch (Justin Timberlake), a strangely uncolorful, unjoyous troll who refuses to sing or to dance and who has a reputation of being a paranoid crackpot because he is constantly raving about the dangers of being discovered by the Bergens. Branch’s worst fears come true as the exiled chef from all those years ago sees the fireworks of the troll celebration, and captures a pouchful of trolls to win her way back into the good graces of the Bergens. Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), daughter of King Peppy who had led the trolls to escape all those years ago, ropes Branch into helping her rescue her friends.

I got the impression that the audience of the movie is supposed to find the carefree joyous attitude of most of the trolls endearing, but I found it anything but. It can be a wonderful trait to find happiness wherever you go, but I found it very hard to have a great deal of sympathy for the trolls’ plight in this movie which was brought on by ignoring Branch’s solid advice and insisting on partying in the loudest possible fashion despite their deadly enemies being less than a day’s walk away. It’s one thing to celebrate, and another thing to do so in a fashion that seals your own doom as you avoid thinking critically about anything. Branch’s paranoia and grumpiness was portrayed as though it were a character flaw, but if anyone had listened to him, no one would have been in danger, and even without that I wouldn’t say it’s a character flaw to not want to participate in what appears to be the PG version of a giant drunken frat party. Besides Branch, I did have some sympathy for Poppy, since she was the only troll inclined to actually take some initiative and try to make things better.

I did feel sorry for the Bergens, and wondered what it is that made them so unhappy. Maybe a dietary deficiency that messes with their brain chemistry, and the only readily available dietary remedy is troll-flesh? I… generally had a lot more sympathy for them, as horrible as they were supposed to be. And, again, the movie completely lost me with the implication that the Bergens really just need to loosen up, because apparently dancing solves depression?

I’m sure a lot of kids will love this movie, and probably some adults. But, I guess I’m more of a Branch-at-the-beginning-of-the-movie sort of guy. I was a little surprised they went with this moral for a kid’s movie–usually morals for kids movies are pretty unobjectionable (if not remarkable) but this one felt way off the mark.