Grunk's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Grunk woke rested, but the debt waited. He crouched by Thrum's feet and studied them. Gray stone, cold as the floor, fused to the rock beneath. He pushed. Nothing gave. He wedged his shoulder under one leg and heaved until his back burned. The old troll did not move an inch. "Feet are set," Thrum said. "You cannot lift stone with more stone." Grunk sat back, breathing hard. Brute force had failed. He needed to know how deep the stone went, and whether anything could soften it. He thought of the moles, of roots and water and patience. "I need to see what stone does to a troll," he said. "Before it takes all of you." Thrum was quiet a long moment. "Down the slope," he said. "Where the old ones went to sit. They never got up." Grunk went. Below the cave, in a hollow of dead grass, he found them. Troll bones, huge and yellow, stacked where the giants had settled. Cracked ribs leaned like fence posts. Skulls watched from the weeds. The legs were worst. Every one ended in a lump of gray stone, still fixed to the ground where the troll had died sitting. He knelt by the nearest. He worked his fingers into the seam where bone met stone. The stone was not solid all through. Near the surface it flaked, thin and brittle, like old bark. Water had gotten under it over years and split it. That was the trick. Not more force. Water and time, working from the edge in. Grunk came back at dusk. A forest troll waited at the cave mouth, moss and twigs woven into his hair. Groof. He carried a skin of water and set it down without a word. "Thrum sent word through the trees," Groof said. "Said a stubborn one needed hands." Grunk did not ask how a still troll sent word. He poured water along the seam of Thrum's right foot. Then he wedged a splintered rib bone into the crack and tapped it. Groof leaned his weight beside him. They worked slow, wetting and prying, wetting and prying. A flake broke loose. Then another. The stone shell cracked open. Beneath it Thrum's foot was gray but soft, the flesh half turned. Grunk pulled the shell away in pieces. He did the left foot the same way. It took until moonrise. Thrum planted both feet on the floor. He pushed against the wall. He rose, swaying, for the first time in years. His legs shook and would not yet hold a step. But he stood. "Debt paid," Thrum said. Then he looked down at his trembling legs, and quieter: "Cannot walk. Not yet." Grunk had his safe place to sleep. He also had a standing troll who could not march, and a full moon now risen in the cold sky.