Troll Valley
hey reached the edge of the forest, where they followed two giant four-toed footprints until they saw caves and goat skeletons and, finally, the craggy slopes of Troll Valley.
There was only one troll in sight. He was in the distance, giant and hunched and grey and lumpy, and he was lighting a fire in the middle of the valley. His shadow stretched behind him for a mile.
Miika clutched the golden hewlip leaves he had collected back in the forest.
‘Why are you carrying those leaves?’ Bridget the Brave asked him.
‘Protection. The Truth Pixie told me that if you insert a hewlip leaf into the mouth of a troll then ten seconds later their head will explode. Here.’ Miika held out a leaf. ‘Have one just in case.’
Bridget the Brave took one reluctantly. ‘Fine . . . Now, follow me.’
The two mice scuttled down the side of the valley, Miika following Bridget the Brave. He kept his eyes on the giant troll, sitting with his back to them, and watched as other trolls joined the fireside gathering. All of a sudden they started singing a raucous song that boomed around the valley in a kind of chant . . .
‘That is a really bad song,’ whispered Bridget the Brave, from behind the rock where she and Miika were hiding. ‘It’s the worst song I’ve ever heard. And I once happened to witness the Elfhelm Daily Snow Music and Spickle Dancing Festival, so that’s really saying something.’
‘It’s terrible,’ agreed Miika, peeping out from behind the rock. ‘My ears want to fall off. But they must be singing it for a reason. It seems to be some kind of ceremony. Look, one of the trolls is getting up. That troll with only one eye . . .’
And it was true. As the troll song continued, a one-eyed troll slowly stood up and headed into a dark cave where she disappeared.
‘Maybe she’s gone to get something,’ whispered Miika.
‘I wonder what it could be,’ said Bridget the Brave, but the next verse of the troll song offered some clues.
‘Oh wow,’ muttered Bridget the Brave. ‘I’ve heard about this! It’s the Troll Cheese Ceremony. It’s one of the most important events in the whole troll calendar.’
‘That,’ said Miika, ‘is not a good thing.’
With heavy, thumping footsteps that echoed around the valley, the giant one-eyed troll returned from the cave, holding a huge jar of something that Miika couldn’t quite see in the fading light. But, to be honest, he didn’t need to see it. He could smell it. The smell was so strong and pungent it reached the two tiny mouse noses hidden far up the craggy slope.
‘Oh wow,’ said Miika. ‘Oh my goodness me! That smell. It’s beautiful. It’s heavenly. It’s like nothing else I have ever smelled before in my entire life.’
‘I told you,’ said Bridget the Brave knowingly. ‘But, trust me, just wait till it’s right under your nose. Just wait till it’s in your mouth!’
The Flying Cheese
iika closed his eyes and focused on breathing in the smell. For a moment he forgot he was sitting on the slope of the most dangerous valley in the entire world. He opened his eyes to see the giant troll pulling the cheese out of the jar and holding it up to the sky. And then the trolls all stopped singing and began chanting loudly instead.
Miika twitched his whiskers. He was scared.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ he said. ‘I thought the cheese would be on its own somewhere. I didn’t think we’d have to steal the cheese right from under their noses.’
Bridget the Brave was shaking her head. ‘No, no. This is perfect. They’ve shown us exactly where the cheese is. They’ve brought it out to us. And that means we don’t have to go any further into the valley. We can stay right here where they can’t see us and we don’t have to go down there and get stamped on by any giant feet. Not with you and your magic drimwicky powers, my friend. You just have to wish for it and make the cheese move through the air.’
‘But they’ll see it!’ wailed Miika, staring back at the forest, ready to run home and forget the whole idea. ‘They’ll see the cheese flying through the air towards us!’
‘Miika, Miika, Miika, Miika . . . I’ve thought it all through. The cheese will fly into the heart of the Wooded Hills, straight to the Hollow Tree. The trolls won’t find it. No one ever goes to that part of the forest. No pixies, no elves, no trolls, no one! It’ll be ours for ever. Look at the size of it! That’ll keep both of us going for an entire lifetime.’
‘But it’ll be impossible to get away with this.’
Bridget the Brave shook her head. ‘Impossibility is just a possibility you don’t understand yet. Remember? Nothing is impossible. Not now you’re drimwicked. And trolls are stupid. They’re even more stupid than elves. They’re even more stupid than humans. And that’s saying something. They are really, really, really, really, really stupid. And anyway, they can’t see very well, so it’ll be fine. Even if they were looking in this direction they wouldn’t see us up here.’ She turned away from Miika and looked back towards the fire and the trolls and the noise of sudden excitement down in the valley. ‘But, Miika, you have to be quick! They’re about to eat it!’
And Miika saw that it was true. The one-eyed troll, illuminated by the orange glow of the fire, was getting ready to break up the cheese.
‘Now, let’s be eating the Urga-burga,’ she said, in a booming voice as rough and hard as the rocks all around the valley.
‘YES, LUMPELLA!’ shouted the trolls with great noise and enthusiasm. ‘LET’S BE EATING THE URGA-BURGA!’
‘Now,’ whispered Bridget the Brave in Miika’s ear. ‘Do it now before she divides the cheese. Now! Now!’
Miika was already doing it. He had closed his eyes and was focusing on the smell of that most incredible cheese as it trembled in Lumpella’s giant hands.
‘WHAT BE HAPPENING, LUMPELLA?’ asked one of the trolls, as the giant piece of Urga-burga cheese shone with magical blue light.
‘SOMETHING BAD BE HAPPENING!’ said another troll, who also only had one eye. (Most of the other trolls had two eyes. Apart from the one with three.)
‘I CAN SEE IT BE BAD, THUD,’ said Lumpella, as the cheese rose out of her hands towards the sky.
And the trolls all stood up and tried to grab it. Thud managed to reach it and hold on for a second before the large chunk of cheese shot out of his hands and flew through the sky like a giant blue meteor, over Miika and Bridget the Brave’s heads and fast over the distant pine and birch trees.
Miika saw, in his mind, the cheese travelling over the dark forest, and the Truth Pixie’s cottage, then turning sharply east as soon as it reached Elfhelm. He saw it flying over the Street of Seven Curves and Reindeer Field and Vodol Street, over the Tower and the Daily Snow headquarters, through the trees, past Bridget the Brave’s home and beyond the fallen branch, all the way to the Hollow Tree. Then, in his mind, he let go and opened his eyes.
‘You did it!’ squealed Bridget the Brave.
‘I, um, yes, I, um, wow, I think so,’ said Miika, bewildered and breathless. ‘I really think I did.’
‘Let’s go and look!’
So, they scurried up the craggy slope and back into the forest, as the trolls ran about in all directions, bumping into each other and staring frantically up at the sky.
‘THIS BE BIG, BIG BAD,’ one said, before accidentally stepping on the fire. ‘OW!’
The ground thundered with the force of the trolls’ footsteps. Rocks and stones fell all around Miika and Bridget the Brave, and dust rose in clouds, making them cough and splutter as they scrabbled back up the valley. Eventually the air cleared and they were free, scampering back through the forest towards the Hollow Tree, in search of the best cheese in the universe.
The Best Taste in the Universe
’ve never tasted anything like it,’ said Miika. He and Bridget the Brave were back in the tree hole, staring at the large chunk of Urga-burga they had broken off from the even larger chunk that was sitting in the Hollow Tree, seven trees along. He took another nibble. ‘It is so creamy but also firm. So tangy yet sweet. So nutty yet also fruity. Smoky but piquant too. Strong and yet also delicate. Light and pleasantly heavy. It’s a cheese made of opposites – like tasting everything good in the world all at once.’
Bridget the Brave nodded an I-told-you-so nod. ‘Exactly. It is more than cheese. It is life. You can say what you like about trolls. And they do have their faults – like rampant destruction and murder and world record-breaking levels of stupidity – but they do know how to make really good cheese.’
‘But they’ll find it eventually. They’ll smell it out. They’ll find the Hollow Tree.’
Miika remembered the fear he had felt when his mum had shouted to all her baby mice about the stolen mushroom.
Bridget the Brave shook her head. ‘Trolls actually have a very bad sense of smell. Well, that’s what I’ve heard. They have these giant ugly noses which are utterly useless at smelling.’ But Bridget the Brave didn’t seem entirely convinced by her own words. ‘Besides, they hate leaving Troll Valley. And even if they did, they would never suspect two little forest mice, now, would they?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Miika. ‘I just have a phenomenally bad feeling that stealing a mountain of cheese from trolls is going to have . . . consequences.’
Bridget the Brave considered. ‘Which is why we should keep on eating the evidence. Morning, noon and night. And the great thing is . . . it will never run out.’
Miika ate some more. ‘It really is delicious. But if it will never run out, how will we eat the evidence?’
Bridget the Brave flapped her tiny arms in frustration. ‘You and your questions, Miika! Questions, questions – they’re fine, of course, but they don’t taste very good. Unlike Urga-burga.’
He thought about what his sister Yala had said just before he left his family. ‘If you find enough cheese to live on, you will never – and I repeat NEVER – want for anything else. That is as good as life gets.’
And maybe this was it. Maybe this really was as good as life got. Maybe he should stop worrying. Maybe he should just hang out with his friend and eat scrumptious cheese for ever. But something wasn’t right. He had a feeling that he couldn’t quite understand. A kind of sense, maybe because of his drimwick powers, that trouble was coming.
As he took another bite of delectable cheese, he really tried to believe that everything was going to be okay.
How the Stars Shine
he next morning, in the fireside warmth of the Truth Pixie’s cottage, Miika tried to ask the pixie a question without giving too much away.
The Truth Pixie was busy painting a picture. It was just an entirely white canvas which she was covering in white paint. ‘I am calling this one The Inside of an Elf’s Head. It’s very minimal.’
‘It’s, um, beautiful,’ Miika said. ‘Yes, very minimal . . .’
‘Liar.’
Miika finally got to the point. ‘Do you think everything is going to be okay?’
The Truth Pixie paused, her paintbrush in mid-air. ‘What kind of question is that?’
‘A worried one.’
‘What is it that you’re worried about?’
‘I . . . I can’t tell you. But I just need to know. About the future.’
She pointed the paintbrush in the mouse’s direction. ‘Miika, I am a truth pixie. Not a fortune-telling pixie. I know a lot of things, of course, and I’m very smart. But I don’t know all the things that haven’t happened yet.’
Miika sighed, his tail drooping like a string that had lost its balloon. ‘I just need some words of reassurance.’
‘Well, I can reassure you that terrible things will probably happen.’
‘Great.’
‘Terrible things always happen.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But good things will also happen. Because that is what life is. You need the bad to know what good is. You need the dark to know the light.’
Miika thought of how Urga-burga cheese tasted. All the opposites mixed together, complementing each other like in life itself.
‘I mean,’ continued the Truth Pixie, ‘think of a night sky. The stars wouldn’t shine without all the darkness around them, would they?’
Miika twitched his whiskers.
‘So, bad things and good things will happen. But the good things will feel even better because of the bad things having happened. And sometimes good things grow out of the bad things.’
‘Right,’ he said, his tail curling up into the shape of a question mark. ‘Thank you. I think I feel a bit happier now.’
‘But happiness,’ said the Truth Pixie, standing back to get a better look at her painting, ‘has nothing to do with good things or bad things.’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘No. I once knew a pixie over in the Eastern Lakes who was the unluckiest pixie you could imagine. She was so unlucky. Once she fell down a well and her wings broke off and she was stuck down there for a whole week. But, you know, she spent the whole time singing the old pixie classic “I’m a Happy Pixie, A Really Happy Pixie (Oh, Yes I Am)” with a big smile on her face. Right there, at the bottom of a well! And that’s how they found her, because they could hear her happy song from across the fields.’ The Truth Pixie sighed. ‘So it just shows you, my little mouse acquaintance, that it’s not what happens to you in life. It’s how you choose to deal with what happens. And you’re not like me. You haven’t been cursed to be one thing for ever. You can change at any moment. You can switch from truth to lies and lies to truth. You can switch from worry to calm. From timid to brave. From selfish to kind. You don’t have to be what other people think you are. And really, if you think about—’
But she didn’t utter another word. In fact, she couldn’t. Because just at that moment she was knocked right off her feet.
And just at that same moment Miika was sent flying into the air. And the Truth Pixie’s pot of white paint splattered all over the floorboards.
‘Now, that was not normal,’ said the Truth Pixie, picking herself up and rushing over to the window to see what had caused the gigantic thud. ‘Well, this is interesting . . .’
Miika’s heart raced as he lay flat on his back. ‘What’s interesting?’
But then he lifted his head just enough to be able to see across the room to the window. To see, beyond the garden, the end of a giant, grey, dusty, hairy troll leg sticking out from below a shawl of goatskins and an equally giant, grey, dusty, hairy troll foot landing with another—
‘It’s a troll!’ said the Truth Pixie. ‘And it’s heading for Elfhelm!’
Miika felt fear flood through his whole body. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Oh no.’
hy would a troll be heading for Elfhelm?’ said the Truth Pixie.
The question swirled like a cyclone in Miika’s mind. Why WOULD a troll be heading for Elfhelm? Why WOULD a TROLL be heading for Elfhelm? Why WOULD a TROLL be heading for ELFHELM? WHY WOULD . . .
‘Oh no,’ said Miika, jumping to his feet. ‘Oh no. Oh no. OH NO.’
The Truth Pixie was confused. ‘Miika? What’s the matter? I mean, apart from the giant troll? Why have you got a guilty look on your face?’
‘I’ve, um, got to go,’ he squeaked.
And Miika ran. He squeezed himself under the yellow door and kept running as he headed down the path that wound through the trees, all the way to Elfhelm, following the giant footprints in the snow.
A Cheese Thief
he troll was standing in the middle of Reindeer Field. All the reindeer and about a hundred elves were looking up at him. It was one of the trolls Miika had seen by the fire. One of those with only a single eye. Thud. That was his name.
Miika darted through the crowd of elves to see what was going on, and just then the troll began to speak in his booming voice.
‘I BE HERE WITH A WARNING!’ he said.
Father Topo stepped out of the crowd. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’
‘WELL, TROUBLE BE WHAT YOU BE GETTING, YOU EVIL LITTLE BUMFLIES!’
‘I can assure you,’ said Mother Harkus, covering one of her school pupil’s pointed ears, ‘that we are not evil and we are not bumflies and we’ve done nothing to upset you. We are just living happy, peaceful lives.’
‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! BE TELLING THAT TO THE TROLL WHOSE HEAD EXPLODED IN THE TOWER!’
‘Ah,’ said Father Topo. ‘I know the incident you’re talking about. But that was over a year ago now. And Elfhelm was a very different place back then. We had a tough leader.’
‘VODOL.’
‘That’s right. But now things have changed. We don’t lock people up in the Tower any more. And, as Mother Harkus just said, we are just trying to live peaceful lives. Plus, technically, it wasn’t an elf who made that particular troll’s head explode.’
Miika said nothing. He wondered if Father Topo was going to tell the troll that it was, in fact, the Truth Pixie who had done that, when she had been locked in the Tower with Nikolas. But Father Topo wasn’t the type to land anyone in trouble, not even the Truth Pixie.
‘So,’ said Father Topo, ‘we are all very sorry about any trouble that has happened in the past. Just as I am sure you trolls are sorry about all the rampaging you have done over the years. But these are better times. These are happier times. Let’s put all that behind us. Let’s not worry about things that happened years ago, shall we?’
This made Thud very angry. His bearded face turned a bit red and he smashed his big brown teeth together. ‘YEARS??? IT BE YESTERDAY!!!’
Miika gulped, and hid behind the feet of Mother Mocha, from the Bank of Chocolate.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Father Topo.
And then it came. The word Miika had been dreading. And in the loudest voice Miika had ever heard.
‘CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEESE!’
Noosh turned to her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. ‘Did he just say cheese?’
‘Yes,’ said Father Topo. ‘I believe he did.’
‘WHO STOLE THE URGA-BURGA?’ roared Thud.
‘What’s Urga-burga?’ asked Noosh.
‘I believe it is a variety of cheese,’ said Father Topo. ‘Listen,’ he said, addressing the troll. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. No one has stolen anything from you. Elves don’t steal.’
‘And certainly not cheese,’ said Moodon the elf. ‘My wife makes very tasty cheese and she shares it with everyone.’
‘Thanks, darling,’ Loka told her husband, squeezing his hand. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
But Thud wasn’t having any of it.
‘ONE OF YOU HERE BE A THIEF! IF THEY WHO BE A THIEF DOES NOT BE SAYING THEY BE A THIEF THEN THERE BE TROUBLE. IF NO ONE OWNS UP, THERE BE A HUNDRED TROLLS HERE BY DARKNESS AND WE BE SMASHING EVERYTHING!’
Miika’s little body started to shake like a birch leaf in the breeze. This was all his fault.
Then another person stepped forward. And this person spoke in a voice that Miika recognised instantly. It was the voice he knew better than any voice in the entire world.
It was Nikolas. The human boy. He was walking across the snow, passing Blitzen and Dancer, to get closer to Thud.
