Page 59 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

“Who would I tell?”

“I used to love the dances I do at the club. They’re fun, sexy, playful, and full of joy. But there’s only so many times you can shake your ass before it gets a little old. For me, anyway. It was just work, like any other work. Not my passion.”

“Ah.”

“Wushu, though, that you can perfect. You can spend a lifetime getting your foot placement just right so the flow of a movement works how it should. It sounds silly, but—”

“Sky. Why don’t you just show me?”

He nodded, then shook out his arms, rolled his neck, and did a few quick stretches. He set his feet wider, dropped his center, and for a moment he was motionless — and then he came apart into motion so fast and so total that I forgot, for the length of it, to keep breathing in any organized way.

“This is long fist,” he said. “One of our forms.”

He dropped into a stance so low his thigh ran flat to the ground and rose out of it into a turn that took both feet off the earth, his whole body laid out sideways in the air at a height I would not have believed of him, the line of him from fingertip to pointed toe one unbroken stroke against the darkening pines. He landed without a sound. He swept a leg through the space where he had just been standing and was already somewhere else.

The discipline of it was the part that undid me. Underneath the spectacle, every wild thing his body did was governed, chosen, paid for in some childhood of repetition I would never see. The flexibility alone was an education. I had known the shape of him for weeks, had mapped it with my hands and my mouth and thought the survey complete. Here was a whole further country of what he could do with it. Sky could fly, spinning through the air with his legs out and landing softly, like a cat.

I applauded. There seemed nothing else a reasonable person could do.

“That,” he said, breathless, hauling himself up and crossing the clearing toward me, “was what I did before the clubs, before I decided to leave everything behind and find myself. It was my grandfather’s whole deal, and when he passed, I just… couldn’t. I needed a break.”

“But you want it back now?” I asked.

“Maybe. I kind of forgot I had it in me. Forgot how good it feels.”

He dropped onto the bedrolls beside me, close, the heat coming off him in the cooling air. He was still breathing hard. He reached up and set his hand against the base of my horn, his thumb finding the trolgar point the way that opened the door to everything he was feeling, and his calm washed into me, his breathless joy, his energy.

Chapter 19

Sky

The next day we were met by a troll woman in the library doorway who had her hands pressed together under her chin like she was trying not to applaud. She was built like Moerrven’s sisters, broad and solid, gray hair scraped into a bun that had given up around the edges, and she was looking at Moerrven the way I looked at a 3am Denny’s after a ten-hour shift dancing.

The minute Moerrven introduced himself, she lost it.

“It is you! Runhilda sent word, but I did not let myself believe it, because of the disappointment, if it were a mistake. I am Kethilda, I have all fourteen of your novels, I have two copies of The Highwayman’s Bounty because I read the first one until the spine gave out.”

“That’s the one I never got through,” I said. “No offense to the author. I got kidnapped by actual highwaymen my first day in Qoksmere, and they looked hot from a distance, but up close the teeth were a crime scene. Every time the book said highwayman, all I could see was the teeth.”

Kethilda gasped like I’d insulted the Queen. “Oh, no, these are handsome highwaymen. Dashing ones! The captain’s smile gets an entire page in chapter three. Not a bad tooth in the whole gang, I promise you.”

“That is very kind.” Moerrven was rapidly turning the shade of blue he only went when someone praised his work to his face. “I am told you keep a collection of accounts of travels from other worlds or dimensions.”

Kethilda squealed, then quickly covered her mouth. Someone had just asked a serious question about the one thing she had cared about her whole life, the thing everyone had gently suggested she stop caring about.

“I do,” she said, making a valiant effort to look serious and composed even as she bounced a little. “I do keep a collection. Do you need to get settled first? How long do you plan to stay? Do you need lodgings?”

I glanced at Moerrven, remembering the bunkroom situation. “Do you have lodgings?”

Kethilda bounced again and made another little squeak, then cleared her throat. “We do have a cottage out back that you’re welcome to. I mean, Moerrven Mossren in our cottage, imagine! It belongs to my brother, the co-librarian, but he is off on a book-buying trip to Farrend. Surely he would not mind someone as grand as you staying!”

Instead of leading us inside the library, where I wanted to be, she firmly closed the door and waved us around the back, where there was a small barn and an even smaller cottage.

“It has a thermal spring with a tub out back, of course, for bathing, though it’s unfortunately not indoors. Quite rustic, but—”

“It’ll do. Thank you for your kind hospitality, it means a lot to us,” Moerrven said, already turning and stalking across the yard to where Clover was still standing with the wagon. I knew damn well that he always gave Clover a full and tedious rubdown, and she fully deserved it for all of her hard work, but I couldn’t imagine waiting a moment longer.

I turned back to Kethilda. “Hi, I’m Sky. While he does that, would you mind showing me the books?” I asked, already three steps toward the library.