THE END
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, it is the very first story. So, let’s say story 1 of 6. This is a younger girl than the Lisa in “Lisa and her reflection.” Back then obstacles were puzzles to solve. Like last time, I’m going to chunk this across a few posts. Bear with me! There are some more meditations on emotions out there… and I will return to them. But right now I’m trying to listen to something a little different.
The sun had set, and the sidewalks were empty except for the cats that slipped away like shadows. A few grownups still clanged into stop signs and fell into subway entries. Since they wore such dark glasses, they never knew when it was o.k. to remove them. Lisa, though, was not afraid of the dark, and besides she was busy thinking. Trolls are difficult to deal with. She had handled them fine before. This wasn’t the first time that Sebastian had been taken off by them. In fact, she suspected that Sebastian actually enjoyed this getting kidnapped and being rescued business. But, well, trolls were trolls, and Lisa knew that she needed to think things through, which wasn’t easy given how her feet hurt and her stomach grumbled and the two words in her mouth felt like soggy cotton balls.
The trolls in Not lived close to the river, and as Lisa walked toward in that direction, she could just hear the night peepers calling out, “Here? Here? Here?” and she could see the arch of the bridge that vaulted over the river, and every once and a while she caught the flicker of a bat flitting after night colors above the streetlamps. The city’s buildings, though still large, began to thin out giving way to small courtyards, corner shops, and even parking for cars.
But what Lisa was doing more than anything was listening because you needed your ears to find the trolls. And before too long she heard it, a music mixing in with the calling frogs and the passing cars: the wildly beating ruckus of the trolls. It was the kind of music that if you weren’t careful would make you start tapping your foot, then snapping your fingers, and the next thing you knew you would be dancing all night until you happily collapsed in the morning. And as Lisa walked toward the music, following her ears, she could feel her steps lighten and her fatigue flow away.
Down an alley she went beside a convenience store and up ahead she could see a line of them. Trolls hunched over and waiting to be let into in a small black metal doorway that was hidden behind a dumpster. Standing at the door was a large potato-like shape wearing a black leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. Trolls knew that they shouldn’t smoke, but they did so anyway.
“Oh, hey Lisa,” said the troll at the door in his deep voice. He smiled with his mouth of jumbled-up teeth as he looked down at Lisa. Behind him the wall throbbed with the music coming from inside. “I thought we’d see you before too long,”
“Hm, mm-hm,” said Lisa.
“Yeah, he’s here. Go in…” and just as the troll was moving to let Lisa pass, he stopped.
“Wait a minute,” he rumbled. And with that the troll’s large smile became a frown, and he bent down to look at Lisa more closely. “What did you say?”
“Hm, mm-hm,” said Lisa, and then continued, “mmm-hm-hm.”
The troll stood back up and began to scratch his bald head.
“You are Lisa, right?”
“mm-hm.”
“But you don’t talk like Lisa.”
“mm-mm.”
“So, you can’t be Lisa. This is a problem.”
And with that the troll shouted angrily at all of the other trolls who were waiting in line, and they went gibbering off into the night. Then the large troll sat down on the curb by himself and started mumbling in his deep voice that blended in with the shaking of music coming from behind the door.
“If Lisa looks like Lisa but doesn’t sound like Lisa, then maybe she’s not Lisa. Yes, that is right. But then if I do not talk, then I am not a troll. But that’s not right. But if I do not look like troll, then I am not a troll. That’s right. Unless, I sound like a troll, and then am a troll that does not look like a troll. But Lisa does look like Lisa.”
And as if just to double check his logic the troll looked over at Lisa, who stood patiently waiting, moving her head a little bit back and forth in rhythm with the beat coming from inside the door. She was thinking if only she had her words, then there would not be a problem here.
Eventually the troll heaved himself back up.
“O.k., we’ll try again.” He looked expectantly at Lisa and slowly said, “I say: Oh, hey Lisa. And then I say: I thought we would see you before too long. Then you say…” He looked desperately at Lisa.
Lisa just sighed, and leaning down took off her right shoe. She thought she would need this, and she reached in and pulled out her lucky penny, which she held up and dangled in front of the troll.
“Ah, you have a lucky penny like Lisa. But I am not falling for your trick this time. No way.” He turned his back on Lisa, and stared at the metal door.
Lisa made sure to keep her eyes off of the troll. She balanced the penny on her elbow, and with a quick move of her arm she caught the penny in her hand. The sound of this made the troll look back over his shoulder. So, then Lisa took the penny and flipped it up in the air and the troll’s eyes watched it go up, and his eyes watched it go down.
“Hmm, but maybe the trick won’t work this time.”
Lisa balanced the penny on her nose.
“Beside this Lisa maybe isn’t even Lisa.”
And now the troll was turned back around and watching the coin move this way and that, until finally Lisa stopped, and once again dangled the coin in front of the troll.
“Um, maybe you let me try and play with the penny, not-Lisa. Yeah? O.k.?” and the troll held out his leathery hand.
Lisa tilted her head to one side, as if thinking, and then dropped the penny into the troll’s out-stretched hand.
And then, just like that, the troll began to shrink. Like a deflating balloon he shrank, and as he shrank his voice, for he was speaking, got higher and higher, and he said, “Ha! I knew you were Lisa all along. You didn’t fool me. No way!” But soon all that was left on the sidewalk was a brown seed about the size of lima bean, and next to it was the shiny, copper penny.
Lisa reached down and picked up both the bean and the penny. The penny she put back into her shoe, and the bean she put into her pocket. She would plant him back in some dirt beside the river later. It worked every time. Trolls loved lucky things, and if that lucky thing was your birthday, well… Give a troll a real birth date and you can make them as old or as young as you wanted.
With a determined sigh, Lisa pushed open the heavy, metal doors, and was hit by the loud music that came from within. It made her hair stand up, and her feet tap, and inside was a large dusky room that was filled with trolls. There were trolls swinging from a chandelier, and trolls sitting under tables. There were trolls doing somersaults on the floor, and trolls sliding down the banisters that led up to a balcony. Everywhere there were trolls, and everywhere there was mischief of one sort or another being made, and at the far end of the room, up on a stage musicians in tank tops, sunglasses and black hats played out the music that filled the air.
Lisa knew just where to go. She turned to the steps, and, avoiding the trolls who were bumping down them on their bottoms, she climbed to the top. There along one wall was a sofa. And lying on that sofa, asleep, was a boy, a boy named Sebastian.
Lisa walked over to the sofa and knelt down beside it, and then leaning in close to Sebastian’s ear, she let her two words whisper out, “Come home.”
Sebastian’s eye’s fluttered open, and he looked up at Lisa and smiled. “I knew you’d miss me,” he said. Then looking out at the room he said, “They’re kind of crazy, but they are my friends,” and saying that he stood up and stretched, and Lisa stood up, too, and Sebastian said, “But it would be nice to get back home. Can you take me back?” Lisa nodded, and took Sebastian’s hand and they started to walk down the steps.
But suddenly Sebastian started, ran back up the steps, and came back with a small furry animal cuddled in his hands, somewhat like a hedgehog only soft. “I almost forgot this. It kind of belongs to the King. The trolls and I sort of borrowed it because it looked so cute.” With every breath from Sebastian’s speaking, the animal pulsed out a soft glow, and he scratched it gently behind its head. “It’s called a Verb, and it likes to go between things and connect them up. I’ll give it back to the King tomorrow, o.k?”
Lisa rolled her eyes and nodded. She once again took Sebastian’s hand, and walked him home. And the next day they took the Verb back to the King, and all of the colors were quickly latched back down to where they belonged. The grey was pulled down from the sky and stapled on to the roads. New colors were grown for the flowers and glued back on. And everywhere, like birds migrating home after a long winter, the colors drifted back, until soon you forgot that they had ever gone missing. And yes, when the Verb was returned to the King, Sebastian and Lisa recovered her suitcase and found Willy just where Lisa had left them there on the counter next to the salt.
In fact, Willy and the old lady had become friends, but Lisa was always careful to keep her new collection of words closed up tight whenever they went to the shop for ramen because some day, she wanted to use them to create a garden. A garden that would be just for herself and maybe someone of her choosing. And that is just what Lisa did, but that is another story.
