Nula’s face darkened, but she let it be. They ate the tentaculars without talking, and each of them found a patch of dirt and got comfortable.
They slept in shifts. Poppy woke once to see Mack sitting cross-legged at the edge of the circle. Dog sat next to him. Across the narrow band of salt and iron, a tall black dog with long fur and red eyes sat watching them. More red eyes gleamed from the darkness. None of them moved.
“Mack?” Poppy breathed the words. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “They won’t cross the circle. You can go back to sleep.”
A few hours before dawn, when it was her turn to watch, Nula woke her, yawning. Poppy crept over and sat next to her to watch the last embers of their fire.
Nula pointed vaguely toward the east. “There’s a couple of trolls over there. They already came by once, but they couldn’t cross the circle.”
“Nula?”
“Hm?”
“How come the salt and iron don’t bother you and Mack?”
“Hm? Oh … ill intent.”
“Huh—”
“We don’t have ill intent. That’s what the salt and the iron keep out. We aren’t looking to cause harm to anyone inside the circle, so it doesn’t react to us. Can’t hurt that you invited us in, as well.” She laughed.
“Is that why you can go into the Hollows too, because you don’t want to hurt anyone?”
Nula considered. “Maybe. I don’t know what keeps other things out of the Hollows, but nothing’s ever stopped me—definitely not those useless carved statues.”
Poppy grinned. “Mack’s always wanted to go see it for himself.”
Nula studied her. “What’s up with you two, anyway?”
“I don’t know. He’s angry.” Poppy rested her chin on her knees.
“Yeah, I got that.”
Poppy pressed her lips tight, as though holding the words back would keep them from being true. “I promised him I wouldn’t bargain with the faeries.”
Nula blanched. “Ah. But then you did it anyway. Yeah, that sucks.”
Poppy pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “I had to. How else was I—”
“Yeah, I get it. You had to. But you didn’t even … you broke your promise to him, and it took you about one second. You didn’t talk to him about it first or anything.”
Poppy moved her forehead to her knees.
“I can see why he’s angry at you. You … you weren’t being a good friend. And you made him small.”
Poppy lifted her face. “Huh?”
“You made him small. You know … small in your life, like he doesn’t matter.”
Poppy turned her head away. “Nula?”
“Hm?”
“What do you think that book is about?”
“Change the subject much?” Nula shook her head. “Yeah, okay. The book. I don’t know, but it’s powerful.” She paused. “Honestly, I sort of want to put it back.”
Poppy turned back to give her a sympathetic smile.
“Welp,” Nula said, brushing the dirt off her hands. “I’m going to get a little sleep before the sun comes up … but if you want my advice.” She nudged Poppy with her elbow. “And I know you do. You should tell Mack you’re sorry. You messed up, so you should own that.”
Poppy’s cheeks heated, but she didn’t have the heart to snap at Nula. A moment later, she didn’t want to anyway. She wanted to cry.
The pooka lay down under the tree and was asleep the moment she closed her eyes.
Poppy didn’t cry. She sat watching the wood, spinning the pooka’s words in her head. She could hear the trolls crashing through the underbrush—farther away, then nearer, then off in the distance again.
She wondered what they were doing. She wondered what they looked like. She briefly considered leaving the circle to go find out, but if anything happened, time might not be the worst thing she’d lose. She considered waking Mack up to tell him she was making the right choice and not being reckless, but instead, she turned her thoughts to Nula’s strange stolen book, and its even stranger rhyme.
Why was it so similar—but also so different, from the rhyme in Strange Hollow? Which one was the original? It was the center of the whole book—so it must be important.
As she was pondering how to sneak the book away from Nula while she slept, the trolls crashed out of the undergrowth. Poppy scrambled to her feet.
They were wrestling each other. The trees creaked and swayed around them as they gripped each other’s forearms, locked together by their enormous racks of antlers, drawing back, then coming together again with such force it shook the ground.
The trolls took no notice of her. They were enormous, and pale white, and except for the fact that their arms and legs bulged with muscles, they looked nothing like Poppy had imagined.
They were shaped like people, but way bigger—the tops of their antlers reaching well into the tree branches. Their faces were strange too—long and lumpy—with pointed white teeth that gleamed and snapped as they twisted their antlers first one way and then the other, shoving to try to gain an advantage.
They broke apart.
The one with the long blond braid grunted. “Gives it up, Myrtle.”
The other one chuckled and shook dark curls. “Nah. Don’t thinks I will. How ’bout you gives it up, Gregor?”
“Can’t. I likes winning too much.”
They drove at each other again, their antlers crashing together with a sound like snapping limbs. “You knows it doesn’t matter,” Myrtle ground out. “The elders won’t declares a new general until they finds out who mades the fire near the nesting grounds.”
Gregor chuckled. “S’pose you’re right. But still, I won’t chance losin’.”
“Well, yer givin’ me a headaches … and I don’t likes to waste my times.”
“Sun’s coming up soon. Truce, then?”
“Yeah. For nows. Truce.”
They drew back, untangling their antlers to stand still, both of them panting.
“Anyways,” Myrtle said. “Since the sun’s risin’, as you says, we shoulds be goin’.”
“Don’t wants to get turned to stones.”
Poppy heard herself speak before she’d even realized she was considering it. “That’s true? You really turn to stone in the sun?”
The two trolls looked over, their yellow eyes gleaming, and suddenly Poppy wished she hadn’t
