Chapter 8 #4
The child troll had attached himself to Aphid over the last couple of hours with deeply irritating persistence.
Aphid had tried the usual discouragements.
Silence. Clipped answers. The particular flat stare he had cultivated over several centuries of fae courts and used to reduce newer warriors to stammering apologies.
Torvik seemed entirely immune to intimidation. A dangerous quality in children.
“You watch everyone,” the child observed.
Aphid looked back toward the tunnels. “Observation prevents surprises.”
“You still look lonely.”
That pulled his attention back immediately, sharp as a blade turned on its owner.
Torvik tilted his massive head thoughtfully, the carved stone figure still loose in his fingers. “My grandmother says people who stand guard when nobody asked them to are usually lonely.”
Aphid stared at him. Children, he decided, should not be allowed to weaponize emotional insight. “It is possible,” he said carefully, “that your grandmother enjoys making assumptions.”
Torvik shrugged. “She’s usually right.”
“How unfortunate for everyone involved.”
The child plopped down beside Aphid’s legs, small stones skittering away from under him, legs dangling over the edge in the particular, unbothered way only children managed.
He did not leave a polite distance between them.
He did not ask permission. He simply settled there, close enough that Aphid could feel the faint warmth of him through the fabric of his clothing.
Aphid did not move away. He told himself he would have, if he had wanted to.
For a while neither of them spoke. The tunnels below exhaled their slow, cool breath upward, and somewhere in the deep, water moved over stone in a patient, eternal rhythm.
Then, quietly, almost shyly, Torvik said, “The dark whispers less when you’re here.”
Aphid went completely still. Very slowly, he lowered himself to the ground and sat beside him. He turned his head toward the child. “What did you say?”
Torvik frowned toward the tunnels below, his small brow pulling together in the serious way children's faces did when they were trying hard to tell the truth. He tapped the side of his head with one thick fingertip. “The mountain sounds wrong now. Like scratching. Something wants in.”
A chill slid carefully down Aphid’s spine, one vertebra at a time, the kind of cold that did not belong to the cavern air and did not answer to fae magic.
Torvik looked up at him. His eyes were wide and uncomplicated and terribly, terribly clear. “But it gets quieter near you.”
Aphid stared at the lower tunnels for a very long time.
He did not reply to the boy. He did not know how to.
There was nothing in several centuries of fae training that had prepared him for a troll child calmly informing him that the mountain was whispering, or that his presence dampened the sound of it.
The fae had long been accustomed to being feared. Being wanted by predators. Being hunted by enemies. Being approached by lovers. Being used as a blade when a blade was required. He was not accustomed to being, of all things, a quieting place. He did not trust it. He was not sure he was allowed to.
Beside him, Torvik seemed content to simply sit, swinging his legs slightly, his carved stone figure resting in his lap. Unworried. Unafraid. Unaware, perhaps, of how much his quiet words had rearranged.
Then, far beneath the mountain, something rumbled. Not an earthquake, or shifting stone, this was something unnatural, but somehow something alive.
The vibration climbed slowly up through the rock, through the ledge beneath them, and settled in the soles of Aphid’s boots like a heartbeat that was not his own. Torvik’s legs stopped swinging. His small hand tightened around the stone figure until his knuckles paled.
The scratching, Aphid thought grimly, had just turned its head. And for the first time since entering the Troll Realm, Aphid began to suspect the corruption beneath the mountain was not merely spreading. It was listening.
“It’s best that we not speak of these things in here,” he told Torvik.
Torvik continued to swing his legs. “Okay. What should we do? Play a game? There are tons of games me and my friends play.”
Aphid leaned his shoulder against the stone wall and glanced at the boy. “Ever played the silent game?”
He frowned. “You mean the quiet game?”
Aphid shook his head. “Silence is not the same thing as quiet. It’s probably not something you could win at. We probably shouldn’t attempt it.”
“How do you know? I may be the best silent game troll out there,” Torvik said, his voice filled with indignation.
Aphid pretended to think about it and then said, “Okay, if you’re sure you want to try. I mean, it’s okay if you don’t—”
“I can do it,” he demanded.
“Okay then. The silent game begins as soon as I’m done explaining.
You cannot make a single sound. Even your breathing must be soundless.
” The little troll started to ask a question but Aphid smoothly lifted his finger to his lips.
With a soundless pout, the little Torvik sat with his arms folded and his amber eyes staring out into the cavern looking about as happy as a turkey on harvesting day.