He had a nose like an elongated boulder, a split below it for a mouth, and two solid black orbs under overhanging moss-covered juts for eyes. His . . . skin, if you could call it that, was the texture of a water-worn boulder, a bit rough, but not unpleasantly so. Only his eyes were shiny, but despite the fact that they were as black as night, they somehow looked kindly.
“Yesss,” Pieter said. “All rock. Pieter is tough.”
“I personally have never seen anything that could take him on in a fight,” said Rosa, and patted his hand again. “He’s figured as a bit of a hero in our histories for a very long time now. I wish there were more like him! Pieter, you will know them again if you smell them, yes?”
By way of an answer, Pieter raised his head a little and inhaled. Well, “inhaled” was putting it mildly. He sucked in air so hard that her skirt flattened against the back of her legs and Cody’s jacket flapped in the breeze he made.
Then Pieter stopped inhaling, and let out his breath in a long sigh. She had expected a fetid aroma, given what she had heard about the sanitary habits of trolls, but instead his breath smelled of nothing worse than a damp cave.
“Yesssss,” he said, looking down at Rosa. “Pieter will know them.”
“Thank you, Pieter,” she said, and turned back to the two of them. “Now if you run into trouble anywhere near here, just run for Pieter’s bridge. He’ll protect you.”
“Yesss,” Pieter agreed, nodding. “Pieter go back down now. Goats must go to bed. Then Pieter will listen to the rocks sing.”
“Thank you for coming up to see us, Pieter. Oh! And I brought you some honey from Bad Schoensee!” Rosa opened the rucksack she had carried all this way and brought out an enormous brown pot with a waxed stopper. “Here you are!” she said, giving it to the troll as Pieter reached carefully for it.
“Red Cloak good,” Pieter said, somehow getting an expression of glee on his rocky face. “Red Cloak never forgets what Pieter likes. Pieter thanks Red Cloak.”
“You deserve it, Pieter,” Rosa replied warmly. “Good night!”
“Good night, Red Cloak, Yellow-hair, and Hat Man,” said Pieter, and then, carefully cradling the enormous jar of honey in one hand, he began climbing back down into the gorge. Within a few moments he was gone. From the bottom, they could hear . . . well, if rocks could hum, that would be the sound of it. Something like gravel falling, but somehow holding a tune in it.
“Hat Man?” said Cody, as they turned to go back to the encampment. “Hat Man?”
“I never know what he’s going to decide to call people,” Rosa chuckled. “I think he’s never seen a hat like yours before.” Cody was wearing his white, broad-brimmed hat as usual, so Giselle could understand why Pieter had taken that as the mark of his individuality. “The first time I ever saw him, I was wearing the red cloak that my mother made for me, so that became my name, so far as he was concerned. He calls Hunt Master Gunther ‘Face-Moss,’ so I think you got off lucky, Master Lee.”
“Reckon I did, at that,” Cody chuckled. “So . . . trolls is generally bad?”
“Almost always,” said Giselle, before Rosa could answer. “There are all manner of children’s stories about them, and they generally end with someone getting eaten.” She glanced over at Rosa. “I thought that daylight turned them to actual stone, though.”
“It does. Sunlight never falls in that gorge,” Rosa pointed out. “Pieter knows every inch of it, and every place where it might be dangerous for him to venture. So if you are ever pursued by a troll, you should do your best to get somewhere that sunlight will fall.”
“I’ll keep thet in mind,” Cody responded, “Though I’ve no intention of kickin’ up a troll!”
“Stay out of caves, then,” Rosa and Giselle said at the same time, looked at each other, and laughed.
“Trolls sometimes guard treasure,” Rosa elaborated. “Pieter almost certainly has some. It’s not that hard for a troll to get, even without ambushing travelers. People have accidents upstream and their bodies get washed downstream. When that happens, Pieter is not in the least squeamish about picking over the bodies.” She shrugged. “At least he doesn’t eat them. He’s a troll, and it’s remarkable enough that he considers any human beings at all as friends. You can’t expect him