Page 68 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

He wasn’t menacing. If he had been pacing, breathing smoke, sharpening something — fine, great, I’d have known where I stood. Instead, the enormous red-orange catastrophe that had plucked me off a public road in front of my troll boyfriend lay across the door to the cave with his chin on his claws, watching me like I was a television he hadn’t decided whether to turn off.

The cave was nice. I’d always pictured a dragon’s cave as a deep, dark hole, with a pile of treasure, bones of his victims, and the lingering aroma of past mistakes. But the cavern went up and back farther than the light from the cave opening reached. He had a soft, warm glow about him, and when I dared to move closer, being near him was downright cozy.

If you could ignore the teeth and claws and the kidnapping, anyway.

The hoard was deeper back, and I hadn’t explored it, out of respect for the teeth and claws. But it was pretty even from a distance, a glittering slope of jewels and precious metals heaped against the far wall. And, near the top, catching the light, a stack of books.

They were familiar books. I’d have known those spines anywhere, because I’d spent a week and a half reading them in a wagon. The Highwayman’s Bounty. The Stonewall Bride. Half of Moerrven’s backlist, dragged up a mountain by a giant lizard with excellent taste.

“You know he’s losing his mind right now,” I told the dragon, for maybe the ninth time, resuming my pacing because pacing was the only cardio available. “Moerrven. He doesn’t do feelings very well, but we’re working on it. But I see you like his books.” I pointed, and the dragon looked.

“Or do you not read your hoard?” I rounded on the dragon. “Do you even get that? He’s down there thinking I’m dead or being digested, and you’re up here just staring at me like a weird stalker.”

The dragon looked at me.

The dragon, I was increasingly sure, was a little irritated with me. There was a quality to the staring now, a flatness around his molten eyes, the expression of someone waiting for you to finish.

“Don’t give me that,” I said.

He heaved himself up, and my heart gave a big stupid lurch, because he was huge, and even more intimidating when he moved, scales sliding over muscle, wings unfurling and stretching to the walls of the cave before folding back in. He crossed the cave with a clink and a drag, lowered his huge head, and dropped something at my feet.

A piece of paper, slightly singed.

I picked it up. It was another flyer, with the same bad drawing of my face as the one we’d found on the pillar. Except this one was newer, the ink still sharp, and at the bottom, where the last one had said only reward for true word, this one had a number. An actual sum. A genuinely embarrassing amount of money for the safe return of one twink.

I looked at the slope of gold against the wall, which contained, conservatively, the GDP of a small nation.

I looked back at the flyer.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “This is what this is about? You are sitting on a Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of treasure, and you snatched me off a road because somebody put a bounty on me? You want the reward?” I waved the paper at the hoard, at all of it. “Buddy. Babe. You have so much gold. You have a gold problem. This is like a billionaire stealing a coupon.”

The dragon’s tail twitched.

And then the rest of that flyer caught up with me. Somebody at the Court of Feravael was willing to pay a fortune for my safe return: the same court where Pip was, right now, with the Queen’s people and their amazing treatment and an entire palace full of professionals whose actual job was finding lost humans.

For one whole second, I thought about encouraging this. All I had to do was pat the big guy on the snout, tell him yes, buddy, go collect your coupon, and I’d be air-mailed straight to my best friend, door-to-door twink delivery, no wagon required.

Then Moerrven was there again, the picture I’d been trying not to look at for a full rotation of the planet: him on the road below me, getting smaller, running after a dragon like he could catch one, his arms reaching for me long after there was any me left to reach. My stomach went slow and sour, and it had nothing to do with hunger. He was down there right now, frantic, tearing across the county with no idea whether I was alive, and he’d already buried one person he loved.

Pip was safe, and Pip knew I was coming. Moerrven only knew a dragon had taken me. Moerrven first, then Pip. That was the order, and it wasn’t even close.

“It’s ridiculous,” I told him. “It’s genuinely ridiculous, and also—” My stomach picked that moment to growl, loud and tragic, echoing off the stone. “—also, I am starving, okay. You ate three of my hand pies, and that is my very favorite flavor. And believe me, I’ve tried them all. Have you tried the Bog Hollow variety? Fuck, those are good. Anyway, now I’ve just made myself hungry.”

Another tail twitch. Enough with the tail twitches. I was becoming hangry, and hangry Sky was a force to be reckoned with. I mean, for a normal-sized human person.

“I am going to need a meal, and I’m not seeing a kitchen up here. What’s the plan? What do I eat? Do I eat this?” I snatched a gold coin off the edge of the hoard and held it up, a thing I had absolutely not been authorized to touch. “Am I supposed to eat gold nuggets? Because I have a lot of feelings about my dental work and none of them are positive.”

The dragon watched me, and I lost it.

“I want to go home,” I said. “I want to go home, and I don’t even know which home I mean anymore. I just want Moerrven to hug me and maybe let me spank him for letting me be captured by a dragon, and then I want him to tell me he loves me, even though I’m not sure if that is even the slightest possibility since he’s still mourning his wife.”

And then I had an idea, the way I have all my best and worst ideas, which is suddenly and with total commitment.

“Okay. New plan. You’re going to fly me down.”

I flicked the coin back onto the hoard, no dental sacrifice today, and marched up to the dragon. Up close, he was the size of a building, and warm as a space heater. He watched me come with what I’d swear was alarm. But I was a man on a mission, and the mission was a grumpy troll, so I grabbed a ridge of scale at his shoulder and hauled myself up onto his neck like I was mounting the world’s most illegal horse. I straddled the broad, burning column of him, pressed both palms flat to the scales, and opened my mouth to demand my ride.

But the second my bare hands touched the scales, something shifted beneath me, and it wasn’t the dragon standing up to take me home.