Dangerous Quarry by Alex Frost

Dangerous Quarry by Alex Frost

They woke just before sunrise, like eager plants anxious for the morning. The boy watched his breath curling in front of him for a moment. The father was already busy with breakfast.

Outside, hail battered the cliff-face. The boy listened intently as the sharp ice chips plinked off their makeshift porch. He bobbed his head to the rhythm in slack-jawed wonderment. His every mood flitted across his flat features; too honest and open. I could not see what I had been told to look for. There was no evil here, only innocence, which was far worse.

I watched the father say the mountain prayer, the son rushing the words between bites of food. They wished for a kindly land, somewhere to live in peace, free from mischief and terror. They asked my people for leniency, to remember our human origins. I snorted quietly. We may look the same but we are nothing alike. We are the calves from the iceberg, a new life split from the old. I don’t even remember the separation.

Later, the pair left the room and I lost sight of them for a time. They emerged weighed down with bandoliers, climbing ropes and bulging packs.

The boy pushed ahead, as children do, racing to be the first one out the door. The father gave a wry smile.

They seemed normal. Not at all what I was told to expect. There was genuine warmth here, two flames keeping each other against the cold. Yet a glacier’s worth of wisdom said that light was no longer theirs. They could not be forgiven. Yet the boy’s sweet open face begged me for it. He could not possibly know what he was part of, could he?

At the door they collected pickaxes, the flecks of yellow dust still on the tips, no doubt evidence from yesterday’s gravesite. Then the pair stopped by a shelf on the threshold, each running a hand over three wooden figures. The son seemed to grow more animated, grabbing one of the small statues and thrusting it under his father’s nose. He pointed outside, gesturing wildly, attempting to speak. The father only sighed and reached for the door. Was that grief or tiredness trickling through the gruff exterior? Perhaps tired of his own grief? I made a note of the ritual, an unusual feeling of shame passing over me at the intimacy I’d witnessed.

They left the hut whilst I was musing, and set about clearing snow from a large sled outside, its contents hidden by netting and fur.

I followed them as they trudged down into the valley. The hail had cleared and the sky was vast. Not ideal conditions for what was planned.

Snow piled haphazardly in small skifts and its light powdery fingers quested across the human road. The boy aimlessly kicked at the humped snow, trying to catch the soft powder in his arms before it fell. They seemed to be heading for the rocky peaks at the eastern edge of the valley bowl, maybe a few hours if they kept a good pace.

The weather soon began to turn, slate-grey clouds coming down from the north. The sky turned sharp and flat and featureless. The darkness helped hide my pursuit.

I had nearly been caught in a barren caldera the previous day. Overconfidence and a lack of respect for my targets. Perhaps the boy saw more than he realised before I burrowed into the loose volcanic tuff. Perhaps the flash of my skirt-tails or a wisp of hair. I saw his eyes go wide before I sank into the muck. The reek of sulphur followed me still.

I am more careful now. In the flatlands the wind whips the loose snow around me, blending my body into the landscape like a watery brush stroke.

They entered the foothills as the sun began to break through the clouds and crest the ridges.

Here the mountain’s feet are filled with caves and crevasses, the valley giving way to peaks and half-frozen tarns. The pair stood silhouetted by the dawn, waiting for the sun to rise above the topmost range.

As the sun’s first rays spilled across the mountain pools, there was a deep bellowing sound. Then a high, brittle snap, like slate cracked by the cold.

The boy turned to his father in excitement. The man nodded, a sharp bob of the head. He seemed nervous. They set off at a trot, dragging the sled quickly up the loose terrain. Rocks clattered down the mountainside in their wake but they didn’t seem to care. The father was stooped and jittery, the boy ran with reckless glee.

As they summited the next ridge I raced forward on the wind, I had to see this with my own eyes.

The tarn had a troll in it.

The unlucky creature had been caught in the reflected sunlight from the mountain pool. Such a fate always appeared cruel to me, unfair even. They become statues to mortality, stupidity and shame, publicly entombed in their final private moment.

He looked old enough to know better.

Nevertheless, a stonebound’s resting place is regarded as sacred to man, wraith and troll alike.

All life is a winking flame in the darkness. Some fires burn out slowly, some hungrily consume, but we all carry the light. And we are all equal as vessels. Which is why I could not comprehend how this sweet boy and tired father had flown in the face of this sacred tenet.

I watched as both father and son unloaded the sled, each carefully placing the tools on the ground around the water’s edge. The father set the picks and spikes down with reverence. A mock ritual before the rape and butchery of stone.

Down in the tarn the son strapped on his spikes and began to scale the troll’s legs, finding purchase in the wrinkles.

The boy scuttled across the rocky torso, tapping the stone around the heart with the greatest care. He found what he was searching for and called down to his father, passing a small basket down his guide rope. I could make out a triumphant smile on his face, such innocent happiness. Did he know the crime he was committing? Did he know the earth wept to see his hammer and chisel?

The father winched the basket back up the rope to the boy. It contained a troll’s tooth, the only material strong enough to pierce the thick stone skin.

A troll does not turn to stone immediately. The sun’s rays harden their skin first, forming a solid barrier while the rest of the creature passes through several stages of stoneflesh, or trollstein as the market traders had come to call it.

The humans were here for edelstein, petrified troll’s heart. Fortunes had already been built on the small red rock; blood money had flowed down into the nearest holdfast and spilled out into the neighbouring farmsteads before we decided to investigate.

I watched as the troll’s chest split under the boy’s hammer and tooth, steam and milky white liquid spilling from the gash. The father stood below, waist deep in the water, catching the spilt fluids in a large tub. Clearly nothing was to be wasted. His tub was quickly full of calcified troll’s blood, I could see the thin liquid shot through with clotted red gobbets. Town merchants had started brewing the blood into tea. Ingenious if nothing else.

The boy was rummaging in the troll’s chest cavity now, his arm elbow deep in stonegut and viscera. His face was dripping from the heat. The father shouted words of encouragement. The sun disappeared behind the thickening cloud, refusing to bear witness.I felt sick at the sight.

Finally the boy cried out and wrenched a small red stone from the troll’s chest. I could see the stone burning his flesh and could smell cooked meat. The rock would never lose its heat, lit as it was by the embers of the troll’s life. The local Jarls would use it to heat a bathtub.

As soon as the boy had carefully placed the stone in the basket he jammed his fingers in his mouth, ignoring the viscera now dripping from his chin. Did he not know what he’d done? Below him the father danced, splashing water against the troll’s legs. Disgust and pity churned within me.

The boy had finished the fine work, now it was time for the heavy job of quartering the creature and carting him back to their hut. Father and son now stood in the water at the troll’s feet, driving great spears into the ground to disrupt the foundations. Water sloshed and roiled around the creature’s legs, his frozen expression of bug-eyed shock suiting the scene in its absurdity.

Some time later the pair broke for a bite to eat. They sat together, the father’s arm draped across the son’s shoulders, as they shared crusts of bread. The father told a joke and the boy rolled his eyes and laughed aloud as they began to stew their remaining meat on a small stove. The boy burnt his tongue and the father laughed and consoled him.

There was still humanity here, I reasoned; capable of kindness and cruelty in equal measure. Such terrifying range. I remember nothing of my past human life, but watching this pair eat began to thaw something within me.

Perhaps my orders were too harsh.

Later they returned to their task of butchering the stone. The troll fell forward into the water, waves racing away from the corpse. The father took up the tooth and hammered it into the creature’s knee, elbow, and shoulder joints. Each piece came away with a hiss of steam and gushing liquid. The grey stone pieces floated in the water, a quirk of their creation, and the pair simply pushed them onto the waiting sled at the water’s edge.

The father lashed the stone limbs and torso to the sled himself, checking each knot twice. The troll’s sightless eyes looked up at the sky as his remains were carted off down the mountain.

Leaden weights dragged my stomach downwards as I followed the pair into the foothills. My suspicions had been confirmed but it brought me no satisfaction. How many grave sites had been pillaged before we were called to investigate?

We dismissed trollstone first as a myth, then later as clever salesmanship among the merchants. It wasn’t before a trollchilder appeared on our borders carrying the broken arm of her mother, fresh steam still puthering from the joint, that we thought to take a look.

That trollchilder was the first troll to talk to a wraith in three glaciers; many of us had long since thought they were consigned to myth. Yvetta was her name. She was a rusty orange colour, with veins of blue cobalt crisscrossing her face. We had seen nothing like her before, a creature seemingly made of the very earth we worshipped. She spoke eloquently on our shared beliefs, calling on us to respect the fire her race carried as if it were our own. She spoke of losing her mother, first to the sun and then to the miners. Perhaps I had heard something of that same grief in the father’s sigh, but surely there could be no excuse.

We agreed, as hurriedly as our careful nature would allow, and vowed to investigate the rumours regarding two troll miners living in a hollowed-out rock on a distant mountainside. If they were indeed guilty, we would deliver them to the trolls.

We are not a violent people and force does not come naturally to us. Yet these two humans, hauling a broken troll corpse from his grave for their profit, surely deserved a punishment. Would they be eaten alive, or boiled first perhaps? The thought made my insides convulse. There was still the problem of the boy; he wouldn’t know why his life was ending. That didn’t feel like justice.

The pair made slow progress on returning, the son was tired and his pack swayed with an almost drunken delight. The father occasionally stopped the sled and spoke softly to him, whispering and patting him on the back. They continued like this for some time, ignoring the loudness of their breath and the harsh scrape of gravel that announced their presence to the world. Every creature and race above the ice had heard of their transgressions, and yet they plodded across the world oblivious to the reputation they had earned.

Their recklessness was soon rewarded.

The cliffs and drumlins of the foothills featured few clear pathways and only one route could sustain the heavy sled and its cargo. And a single finger from the stonebound carcass could elevate a simple farmer to a powerful landowner. It was these two insurmountable facts that surely brought the bandits, hungry men with slack jaws and deep-set eyes.

I watched as the father and son halted in the middle of the road. Night was closing in now and the humans would soon begin to need light to see. In the murk, the group of men approached. Some held crude weapons but the man in the front held a heavy purse in his hand. I crept closer.

Offers were made, first for the cargo, then for the heartstone and finally for the tooth. All three were refused. The son was huddled under his father’s arm, the man’s hand resting on the boy’s fur hat. They had their backs to me, these two that had defied earth and fire for the sake of momentary wealth, and I could not make out their expressions. They could ill-afford a fight here, hemmed in by a sheer cliff and a deep roadside ditch. Yet they seemed set on keeping their prize, no matter the cost. Could I let them die here, killed by their own kind?

The men behind the leader smiled at the father’s defiance, it was clear they had come for a fight regardless. Stone axes, staves and clubs were raised and the father hefted his pickaxe. The boy held the troll’s tooth at his side, knuckles white in the gloom.

I moved closer to the cargo, as close as I could bear to the roaring heat of the troll’s open wounds. Some of the curling entrails had already frozen as acrid-smelling stonegut but the rest blazed with heat. My sympathy for the pair waned but I had to know more; what had driven them to this, did they know the severity of their crimes? Death here would rob the world of justice. I sighed.

The boy turned slightly to look behind, and I was already moving, diving quickly down into the snow-filled roadside ditch.

The bandits took the hesitation as an invitation and rushed forward. I saw the father crack the flat of his pickaxe against the side of the first attacker’s head, before ducking the swipe of a club and driving the heel of his hand into another man’s windpipe. I was surprised at such violence tempered with mercy.

The boy stood atop the sled, frantically slashing the tooth toward two attackers circling the cargo. He looked unused to the practised, calculated violence his father meted out. His eyes were wide with fright and his small hands shook precariously.

I waved my hand and a sharp crack issued from the cliff-face, a hunk of rock ripped from its home. One of the men harassing the boy tried to evade the boulder and was pinned in place, the other was not as fortunate and was crushed beneath the uncaring stone. The force of the impact toppled the boy from the sled.

And so the boy was pinned with a dagger at his throat, and a new deal was made for the cargo.

The father knelt in the road and cried for his son. The man’s thick furs covered most of the damage, but I could see patches of red clotted hair covering a great number of wounds.

I padded back onto the road for a better view.

Light from the troll’s glowing carcass lit the standoff. Life was wagered and the two men made their offers accordingly, sizing up value and risk, as if they weren’t both carrying the same fire. The father had taken no lives in the skirmish and, despite the steaming body of the troll on his cart, he carried an air of dignity and pride. The boy shook in the bandit’s grip, teeth chattering, eyes bulging.

The bandit chief offered little. He would take the trollstone and the boy as insurance, in exchange the father would keep his life. Would this be justice for the desecration I had witnessed?

A troll’s family would regularly seek out their stonebound, to talk and laugh like nothing had changed. The body in the cart would not get such treatment, that familial rite was lost along with the flesh.

No. I had seen enough, the justice of men was not equal, it was steeped in greed. Perhaps it would be poetic for this family to be torn apart for the sake of a few coins, but we had made a promise to Yvetta. I would surely be delivering the two humans into a worse fate by giving them to the trolls. I stood up and revealed myself.

Before the bandit chief could slash with his knife I was upon him, freezing his arm to the bone with a light touch. The boy broke free. The rest of the bandits felt the air around them plunge into sharp, biting cold. Some tried to burrow into the ground, clawing at the earth for some respite against the numbness. All around the sled was chaos, then the air plunged again and the group collapsed into frozen comas. I gathered my skirts and turned back to the sled.

The boy and his father were still standing, still very much alive. They were close enough to the sled to feel the warmth. The stood without fear, something like astonishment in their eyes. I felt that thawing feeling again, a heat building where I suppose my heart used to be. Then, without a word, the boy launched himself at me. I stumbled back but his little hand caught mine for a split second. It was enough.

Whatever was frozen within me cracked, an echoing in the depths. The melting heat washed over me and I remembered. I saw the boy as a baby, pink and screaming as he clutched at a finger; my finger. I saw the father, face over a steaming brew, sharing his breakfast with a woman. Sharing his breakfast with me.

Now I could feel the cold. The thought shattered the warmth of my reverie. Wraiths don’t feel the cold. What was I now?

Both humans were trying to talk to me but I couldn’t hear the words. The cold was pulling me down into sleep. My son. My husband. The words were too large, too heavy to voice. I never got the chance.

As I felt myself slipping into darkness I saw cold blue faces in the snowy hills. I pushed the two humans back towards the sled and grabbed up the troll’s tooth amongst the folds of my dress. I couldn’t go back, not like this. I had to know more.

My vision tunnelled downwards and the cold took me away.

The two humans danced through my dreams. I swam in wide childish eyes containing a lifetime of memories. A reflected blaze of solstice celebrations, glaring grey of the torrid sea. My husband gave me a fish-eye arm ring for yuletide. My son gave me flowers he’d picked himself.

I was shaken awake, senses immediately clashing with the groggy dream. My face and body were numb but I could feel the frigid air on one finger, burning like a glowing coal.

Yes the trolls had recovered the body, but the humans had seen too much. The more they knew, the more they could use against us, was the argument. My people were furious but my feelings were too muddied by confusion and grief to make sense. An avalanche of questions tumbled through my mind, but the father and son, my family, fractured any coherent thought. And with my thoughts still among the humans I was confined to the halls of my people, forbidden from roaming until the trial was complete.

The wraith part of me still felt disgusted at their actions but that cold pragmatism was slowly retreating to a weak voice in my head. I wondered at the size of their lives after my transformation; how long did they take to grieve? I realised I couldn’t remember their names. If I could latch on to a name I might be dragged from this cold embrace. With this frustration came rage at the injustice of it all, and so as the Thirteenth Night festivities began, I snuck back into the human realm.

I realised that none of my kind had made the trip across during my arrest, which left me wondering at the method of justice that would be brought to bear on my family. My boys. If the wraiths now refused to get involved, what deal had been made, would the pair even face a trial? Were the trolls on the warpath? I had to know.

I blew past the outlying farmsteads and skirted the edges of the central holdfast, slowing at the scene playing out in those cobbled streets. Humans waved torches and walked in procession, led by two figures in gaudy robes. I made out wooden ears and masks. This must be what they think of us. There was dancing, singing and open-hearted joy on those faces – again my thoughts turned to my two graverobbers. Did they think all wraiths were full of joy and grace? What did they think of me now?

The remaining lowlands passed quickly, surprised sheep and cows barreling out of my way as I sped onwards to the steep escarpment where the two humans had their home.

Foothills eventually gave way to sheer cliff faces and, further up the track, I could make out a beaten steel porch and a door, set into the rock like a small green portal. The slit windows in the cliffside were shuttered but no light was spilling from their edges. The place appeared empty.

I crept forward, blending with the snow and rock, and peeked through a shutter.

The cave dwelling was empty, but the father and son had clearly been here recently. It was barely a blink since I had last peered through this window myself. Now the moonlight illuminated a very different scene. The stone floor was slick with what looked like troll’s blood; a whitish substance flecked with dark spots pooled at the foot of a table. I eased the door open and padded slowly inside.

As I opened the door I remembered the wooden figures on the threshold, they had seemed important to the pair somehow. The detail was astonishing. Three figures occupied the shelf, shrine-like, with dried petals scattered around their feet. A man, a woman and a child. The runes for family were carved neatly into the shelf lip.

The female had been handled recently; bloody fingers had gripped her long enough to stain the wood. Yet the petals remained undisturbed, as if she had been placed carefully back in position. She was a striking figure, with long, flowing hair that had been captured mid-flight, and I found myself lost in her face for a moment. The contours of her dress were bunched up in wooden ripples and an exquisitely detailed arm-ring stood out on her bicep. Fish heads capped both ends of the ring and their sightless eyes stared unflinching back at me as I studied the craftsmanship. She had been crafted with love; I had been loved.

My thoughts were interrupted by a heavy crunch of snow outside. I concealed myself again, flattened against the rock and wood hallway, as a troll pushed through the doorway. The large creature, a female, made an unsubtle scraping noise as her rough skin ground against the wooden beams. I went unnoticed as she bundled herself into the kitchen.

The troll’s eyes alighted on the fresh-smelling liquid. Her bulk shoved chairs and tables aside uncaringly as she crossed to the mess, all the while sniffing and rumbling in her throat. She dipped a finger in the substance and raised it to her nose. I could see the liquid was steaming faintly and contained lumps of what appeared to be food. At once the rumble broke into a loud gurgle, like rocks dropping into a stream. She was laughing.

The laugh continued as she hopped from foot to foot with excitement. Then, with a jerk of the head that indicated she’d clearly remembered something, she hurried to leave.

And as the troll’s large hand reached back to close the door, I made out a beautiful ring on her finger. The two fish heads stared knowingly back at me. My ring.

I put out a hand to steady myself. Here, standing in their hallway, I finally had an idea of what had driven my family to such horrible pursuits.

I left the dwelling and went outside, looking up the mountain track. Two small pairs of footsteps stood out in places, almost lost among a sea of churned snow where heavier feet had fallen.

As I sped up the pathway, wind whistling past my ears, I could make out strings of steaming red and white liquid in the snow. I could see no signs of fighting but amid the tumult of large footprints it was hard to be certain. The sky was beginning to lighten now, the first inklings of morning visible in the uppermost cloud banks. At least that would scare off the pursuing trolls.

The track eventually opened onto a grand outcropping, projecting out into the valley below from the mountain’s craggy spine. In the blueish light of morning I could make out two shapes in the distance, the humans were crossing the open ground of the outcropping. I was flying now, blowing loose firn behind me like a runaway star.

I ignored the way the troll prints diverged from the path and cut back up into mountains. I ignored the fact that one of the humans was clearly spitting up troll’s blood. In that moment I wanted to explain to them that I understood; I had seen the carvings. I didn’t get the chance.

High above, in the backlit stony spires, there was a sharp crack that split the morning air. I could make out a troll standing on a ledge, wielding what appeared to be a hammer. The humans turned to look up at the noise, just as the troll disappeared into a dark crevasse.

A perfect circle of stone suddenly came away from the rock far above, and morning sunlight rushed down onto the father and son in a neat spotlight.

There was a high, brittle snap, like slate cracked by the cold. I remembered the sound and began looking for trolls, but my eyes were slowly, inexorably drawn back to the two humans. A thick cry of grief issued across the mountainside.

My husband held our son, tendons standing out in his neck as he screamed in anguish. His tears skated down the boy’s frozen torso, an uncaring statue now taking up the space our son once occupied. I had never seen the fire taken from someone still living, but that day I saw two flames extinguished on the mountain.

* * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Alex Frost 2024