Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘A Hive Memory could be useful,’ said the Princess.

‘Yes and no,’ said Tiger. ‘Within each memory-sharing tribe there are no secrets, double-dealing or lying. On the downside, card games within the Hive Memory affiliation are almost impossible, telling jokes pretty much pointless, and they have to binge-watch a TV series all at the same time to avoid spoilers.’

‘That’s true,’ I added. ‘When Bergerac came out on DVD, a Troll named Urgry watched it the night before they planned to do so and ended up being stoned to death by those in her affiliate for filling their heads full of spoilers.’

Trolls were particularly fond of crime TV shows from the seventies and eighties, with Murder, She wrote , Columbo and Bergerac being their favourites. They watched them again and again, as the aforementioned Hive Memory discouraged them from watching anything new because of the whole ‘spoiler stoning to death’ issue.

‘I’ve not heard of Bergerac ,’ said the Princess, ‘but that’s easily explained: Mummy said TV was for the dull and uneducated – a princess’s place is on the telly, not watching it.’

The Princess’s upbringing had been horribly sheltered, but had lent her a very peculiar skillset. She could quote Tacitus, differentiate seventeen bottles of expensive mineral water by clarity alone, was able to guess the value of a tiara at forty paces and could skilfully project shallow indifference into a room long before she’d entered. All this, but she didn’t know how to open a window, use a telephone kiosk or boil an egg.

‘ Bergerac was actually a really good TV series,’ I mused, ‘but well before my time. The series seven set were the only DVDs we had in the orphanage. We played them hundreds of times until they got scratched, then just re-enacted the stories from memory. I got to play Bergerac’s ex-wife Debbie, which was kind of fun. We performed episode three at the Courtyard Theatre in Hereford.’

‘That’s the one where the diamonds got stolen,’ said Tiger, something of an expert.

‘And,’ I added, ‘John Nettles sent us a nice note when he found out and donated a new minibus to the orphanage.’

‘Who’s John Nettles?’ asked the Princess.

Tiger and I looked at one another. As far as anyone in Mother Zenobia’s orphanage was concerned – nuns, children, everyone – there was no greater star than John Nettles. 5 5 As you might have guessed, John Nettles played Bergerac in Bergerac . He later found success in Midsomer Murders . But just so we’re clear on this, he wasn’t in Murder, She wrote or Columbo .

‘He’s the—’ I began, then: ‘Never mind.’

‘So how about it?’ asked the Troll Husband, who was still waiting for an answer. ‘The skinny handmaiden or your life?’

‘Looks a bit bony for a snack,’ said the Troll Wife, sizing up the Princess expertly, ‘unless you like your humans crunchy and lacking in nourishment.’

‘Not for a snack, silly,’ said her husband, ‘as a pet . They can be quite adorable – although sometimes you have to pull their tongues out to stop them squeaking.’

‘Okay,’ said his wife, ‘but remember to feed it this time – oh, and you must keep the males and females in separate cages or they’ll breed. And – yes, agreed – the babies can be very cute but before you know it some fool will give them names and we’ll be stuck with them, like, for ever .’

Trolls were, dismayingly, quite happy to keep humans as pets and, equally dismayingly, weren’t very diligent when it came to looking after them.

‘Hang on, what about me?’ said Tiger indignantly. ‘Why is Jennifer’s life threatened and not mine?’

‘You’re too small to be troubled with,’ said the Troll Wife in a dismissive manner. ‘It would be like you threatening a Dorito. How about it?’ she added, turning back to me. ‘For we will cross this trench eventually, make no mistake about that .’

‘No deal,’ I said without hesitation.

‘Then you shall be devoured,’ said the Troll simply, ‘and while alive. Probably raw as a snack,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘dipped in humus – no, wait, dipped in toejam. Jam, made of toes,’ he added, in case I mistook his meaning. ‘Nummy nummy.’

‘You do what you have to do,’ I said.

‘What she said,’ said the Princess, pointing at me.

‘And I’m not a Dorito,’ said Tiger.

‘Sorry,’ said the Troll Wife, whose mind had wandered, ‘did you say something? I was just wondering: do you have to use people called Frank to make frankfurters – or can it be anyone?’

I decided not to answer and we turned and walked away from the Trolls and the Button Trench.

‘Thank you for not handing me over,’ said the Princess once we were out of earshot. ‘I’m really not cut out to be a bony snack.’

‘We don’t do deals with Trolls,’ I said.

‘If I’d been the old me, the Princess me, the obnoxious me – would you have traded my freedom for your life?’

‘If you’d been in your princess body rather than the body of a malnourished servant with lank hair and skin complaints that don’t seem to go away no matter how diligent the cleaning,’ I said, ‘they would have asked you for me – and I’m sort of thinking you would have given me up.’

‘Without hesitation,’ said the Princess in a sombre mood, ‘and probably asked for a receipt to claim on my Princess Insurance. Goodness, I was so utterly obnoxious back then. Is royalty always this bad?’

‘I don’t think it’s being a royal that does it,’ I said. ‘Just the ridiculous abundance of wealth, opulence and levels of undeserved privilege that go with it.’

The Princess nodded her head in agreement. She had matured quickly during the search for the Eye of Zoltar as it had been an adventure that would have taught even the most narrow-minded and utterly indulged child a few things about teamwork and sacrifice. Perhaps the Princess’s ex-sorceress mother, who instigated the bodyswap and placed her in my care, sensed the Trolls were coming, and engineered the trip to not only keep her safe, but actually do her some good. Nothing like a bit of jeopardy and loss of prestige to make the overprivileged understand the important things in life.

We walked back to where I’d parked my Volkswagen Beetle, the only link with my parents. I had been left on the front seat when barely two months old late one December night, wrapped in a blanket, the engine running, the heaters on. Often, foundlings are left with talismans to identify them if their parents return to claim them. The Volkswagen was that talisman. If they had wanted me, they would have returned and presented the spare ignition key as proof.

They never did.

I opened the car door and took the sword Exhorbitus 6 6 The sword that Jennifer wielded when a dragonslayer. It was called ‘Exhorbitus’ owing to the unreasonably high cost of manufacture. Tell a swordsmith they’re making something for Dragon or magical intent and they’ll always add three noughts to the bill. from where I wore it on a scabbard on my back and stowed it using the clips on the roof lining, then tried the glovebox for about the thousandth time. It was locked, and always had been.

‘You’ll eventually want to break into that.’

It was the Princess, who knew the strong bond I had with the car.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but what if it were empty, or just full of junk?’

‘What if it’s not?’

The Sisterhood at the Orphanage had tried to trace the owners of the car through the registration but that had only led as far as the owner before last, who had sold it on: ‘to a middle-aged guy’ who paid in cash, two months before I was found in it. The new owner had not reregistered the car in his name, so there was little to go on. Although the glovebox was locked it had never been forced as the Sisterhood saw this as damaging someone’s property, and, interestingly, the car had only clocked up seventy-two miles from when it was sold to when I was found in it. Wherever I was from, I was local.