The Face in the Frost

Shrivel, shrink, squinch, and squibble
Dwindle, dwilp, melt, and dribble,
ZALAMEA ALCAZAR!'

Roger and Prospero shrank and shrank, until they looked like two odd chess pieces standing by the brown sloping sides of the boat. They made faces at each other, laughed a little, and then climbed aboard.

Inside the low, echoing wet-dirt tunnel, the noise of the rushing water was weirdly magnified and distorted into a hollow tinny roar. A shout or a hand­clap came whanging back at you immediately from a low curving roof. Prospero and Roger, sliding farther and farther into this claustrophobic gloom, stood on the high ornamented poop of their absurd ship and watched the shrinking half moon of light cast by the lantern they had left on the floor of the cave. Two tiny alcohol-burning stern lamps cast a flickering moth-light on the wizards, who now turned to the task of keeping up their spirits until the Actaeon sailed out into the sunny lake.

The ship itself was entertaining, because it was so incredibly detailed: There were gleaming rows of brass cannon, nickel-plated swinging lanterns that worked, and, in the captain's cabin, rows of books, real books, mostly on nautical subjects. Even the purple liquid in the little flattened decanter turned out to be wine. Though they were, if anything, too small for the ship, the wizards still thought of it as tiny, and were endlessly fascinated by the discovery of new details-a cupboard that opened on scrolled brass hinges, a box within the cupboard that held delicate jade-and-ivory chessmen. The wheel of course, worked, and Prospero had roped it down, so that the ship would follow the straight flow of the current. Though all the lamps, lanterns, and candles on board were lit, the sides of the cave could not be seen, and periodic flashes of magic lightning were needed to assure them that the little bobbing toy was still in the middle of the stream.

As the Actaeon sailed on into the noisy darkness, Prospero and Roger heard faintly disquieting sounds: the plip! that might be a clot of earth falling from the ceiling into the water, the splop! that probably was a small water animal sliding off some unseen shore into the stream. And, there was another sound, one which was harder to single out from the others and define: It was only a little different from the normal rushing-water sound, yet it was there-a hissing and foaming that was getting more and more distinct. At first, Prospero thought 'Rapids!' and shivered. But, it was the sound of water flowing through something, not over it. He got up from the powder keg on which he had been sitting and motioned to Roger, who was up on the quarterdeck, trying to compute the speed of the ship. Together, they went to the forecastle and stood peering into the blackness ahead. The little swinging lamps that hung near them were not much help, so Prospero and Roger struck their staffs together-a bright red light, dripping like a fireworks flare, hung around them for a few minutes, and by that garish light, they saw a mesh of some kind strung across their path. It was held by a rigid black square frame that was awkwardly jammed into the tunnels rough walls at a point where the opening was lower and narrower than usual.

Prospero and Roger struggled with the capstan, but the anchor was either decorative or stuck. The ship drifted on, yawing a little in the current, until it bumped-more gently than Prospero had hoped-against the strange wall. Prospero set off another flare and suddenly realized what the obstruction was: It was a window screen. His window screen. He saw the place where he had scratched with a nail 'Bedroom SE Corner,' and he remembered the theft, the broken cellar window of three years before. Roger stared at him with understanding and fear.

The ship bumped against the screen, and the water shed through a thousand tiny openings. As Prosperos eyes got used to the dark, he saw that there was a little ledge nearby on one side of the tunnel. And behind it was the deep blackness of a cave. Now, from the cave came a scrabbling, grunting clumping sound, and out of the ragged opening crawled a hairy, angular shape. Two red eyes glowed in the darkness. Prospero could have lit the tunnel for a better look, but the magic was not endless, and anyway, he knew what the thing was. So did Roger, who gripped his own staff tightly.

And now, a sneering gritty voice:

'Well, well. I hear this noise, so I says to myself-fresh fish! But, it ain't, it's a couple of little men in a toy boat!'

Prospero leaned over the side and shouted: 'We are wizards, troll! And, if you don't let us through, this thing we'll turn you into a rock at the bottom of this stinking, filthy, sloppy stream!'

The troll snickered, a nasal snortling sound. 'If you're wizards, you can blast your own hole in my screen, can't you? But, you ain't done it because you can't. So, I think I'll have some nice stewed wizard, or wizard dumplings, or'-here he held up the tiny white bones of some animal and rattled them-'wizard gizzard!'

'Troll,' said Prospero quietly, with both hands on the rail, 'I am going to turn you into lead. A few centuries from now someone will find you and use you for a lawn ornament!'

'Oh, shut up, you mouthy little bug!' said the troll. 'I'm going to watch you a few minutes, and then-' He twisted his hands as if he was wringing out a cloth.

Prospero closed his eyes and tried to think. He had been reading about trolls the night Roger came, but now he could think of nothing that would help him. He couldn't even grapple physically with the troll, since the spell that made the two men smaller lasted till sunset, which was at 8 P.M. that day. His watch said five. Picking up his staff and throwing it down in anger, he turned to Roger, but Roger was gone.

'All right,' said the troll, lowering his webby feet into the water, 'you two ain't no fun no more. You'll probably taste like water rats, but ...'

A hatch clattered behind Prospero and Roger reappeared, carrying a length of rope from which a four-pronged grappling hook hung. Standing a little back from the rail, Roger whirled the grapnel whistling around his head, and then he let it go. The hook raked the screen but fell into the water, and Roger quickly started to reel it in.

The troll was still sitting on the muddy bank, his feet in the sloshing water.

'This is more like it,' he said. He clapped his hands, and when he pulled them apart they went thock like suction cups. 'Climb to the top and fall over, and then I can rescue you!'

Roger threw the grapnel again, and this time the pronged iron went chunk! into the screen-two spurs were wedged tight. Now, Roger whipped the rope around the mainmast and started to pull. Prospero suddenly saw what was going on, and in a second, he was pulling too. A large ragged piece of the screen ripped out, crumbling as it fell and spattering the deck with red flakes of rust. The troll stood up and started to stoop forward, but Prospero gathered all his strength and blacked out the tunnel. For several minutes, the place was absolutely dark-it was filled with thick, palpable, gross darkness, and while the murk lasted, the little boat slipped through the hole. One scuttering wire scraped the bottom of the hull from one end to the other, and for a sickening instant, the boat slowed. But then, it bobbed through, wallowed sideways in the current for a bit, and straightened out to steer its course down the middle of the fast-flowing stream. The troll still held his eyes and screeched, for he thought he had been struck blind. Roger and Prospero were far downstream when the lights went on again.

3

3

After more than two hours of uneventful drifting, the Actaeon rounded a sweeping curve, and Prospero, who was sitting on one of the bow chasers, saw a blue twilight glimmer ahead. He pointed this out to Roger, who was poking a straw into the touch hole of the other brass cannon to see if it really was bored all the way through.

'Oh yes. The lake,' said Roger without looking up. He was determined to be nonchalant until Prospero asked him one question. 'All right,' said Prospero, drawing a deep breath. 'How did you know