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Oaklyn
It takesanother full day of searching, but I finally round up all the herbs I need, grind them together, and make a paste. Bradoc is with me every step of the way, and when we’re not searching, I’m returned to the hut with the kidnapped troll women. By the time I finally rub the paste into his wound, suffusing it with a little dryad magic, he’s looking lousy.
“You need rest. Sleep,” I tell him.
“I have things I must do,” he says.
“And first among them is rest,” I reiterate. “Healer’s orders. The paste won’t work if you run yourself ragged.”
He looks annoyed, but he finally nods in acquiescence. “I will sleep now. But I will return tomorrow, with the others. You and the women will be claimed in the afternoon.”
Claimed? I do not love the sound of that. “Wait, is this the marriage thing you mentioned?”
“Yes. All of the women will be selected by men of worth. The ceremonies will take place tomorrow night.”
“We’re being married offtomorrow?” I can’t keep the horror out of my voice, and Bradoc misinterprets it.
“Do not worry about not being chosen. We need females, even human ones.” He turns to leave. “Now we should both rest.”
I lean against the wall, keeping my distance from the three troll women. They’ve mostly ignored me, talking amongst themselves in their odd troll tongue. I imagine they know what’s about to happen, since it seems to be a tradition among their kind. They don’t seem especially worried about escaping or anything.
But I am.
If I can’t figure a way out of here tonight, I’ll bemarried off to a troll.
As soon as the sun sets, I try to open the door of the hut, but of course it’s barred from the outside. I throw my shoulder against it a few times, just in case, but it doesn’t budge. I even try to appeal to the other women—if we all hit it at the same time, it might give, because let’s face it, they are big ladies—but they either don’t understand me or don’t care to try.
They just sort of grunt and curl up to sleep. Maybe I have some sort of negative mental stereotype of trolls fed to me by fairy tales, but I thought these women would have more…verve. More fire. More desire to get the fuck out of this hut. Instead they just seem large and sort of placid, like cows.
Maybe that’s their nature, or maybe they recognize the futility of my efforts. Whatever the reason, they don’t help and the door doesn’t budge.
By the time the sun rises, I’m still sitting on the floor of the hut, back against the wall as I wonder how to extricate myself from this mess.
I take comfort in knowing that even if I somehow end up involved in a wedding, I can still escape later. I mean, it’s not like it would be legally binding. I could still find a way down the mountain and back to Haven’s Hollow and my real life. It wouldn’t be that hard to pretend my troll husband doesn’t exist.
I snort aloud at that thought. A few days ago, I was an enthusiastic cryptozoologist determined to wander the mountains and find magical folk. I was hoping I might even meet a full-blooded dryad and learn more about myself.
Instead, it looks like I will havean actual troll husband. Talk about more than I bargained for. Nothing in any of my books mentioned this as a possibility.
And some wedding day this will be. I’m in bloodstained hiking clothes and I’m tired, hungry, and dirty. Worst of all, I stink, even after my swim in a beautiful mountain pool.
Not exactly my bridal dream, but I guess it doesn’t matter, since this will hardly be a real wedding. If it happens at all. Bradoc guaranteed someone would choose me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they tossed me in a livestock pen and forgot about me until slaughter day.
The morning passes slowly in the hut. The troll women do what they always do—chat with each other and ignore me—and I mostly kill time by trying to imagine what a troll wedding might be like.
I suspect some sort of large, savage feast will be involved. Maybe the slaughter of a young deer or something. And will we be married as a group, or will we each get an individual ceremony? Will the whole village come to witness the event?
By the time we’re released several hours later, my tension in through the roof. Bradoc is there to let us out, along with some of the other troll men. He speaks to the troll females in their shared language, and the women don’t seem to react much. They nod and file out of the hut calmly, evidently resigned to their fates.
Bradoc leads us to a small platform thing in the middle of the village, like a speaking dais. The four of us are paraded up there in front of all and sundry, while a handful of male trolls stand in the middle of the crowd. Bradoc stands behind me. “I will translate for you,” he says in a low voice.
A man steps forward toward the platform. He’s not as tall as Bradoc, and seems a bit older. Still, he looks extremely strong and fit, with light brown hair that is braided back from his scalp.
“That is Rokahn,” Bradoc says. “He has been waiting for a wife for many seasons. I promised him his pick of the women from this raid.”
Rokahn speaks and points to the troll woman on my left. She’s tall, of course, with a tumble of black hair and dark eyes. The horns on her head are long and delicate; I could see how she might be considered a beauty among her kind.
She nods at her selection and says something, then steps off the platform and joins Rokahn. I guess the process really is that simple. Two other troll men step up in succession and claim the remaining troll women, leaving me the lone female on the dais.
