Drawtober 2025: Troll Toll

A letter. Found amongst Pen’s belongings by her sister at the cottage at Hulspeth Moor two days before Halloween.

Rook,

I owe you an apology. You were right about everything. You were right about Arthur. I wish I had listened to you at the first, I wish I hadn’t been so stupid, I wish you hadn’t been so cruel. I wish—

[illegible]

I cannot find my way back to Her palace. I have tried, but the old roads do not run there anymore. I need your help—

I plan to be at Hulspeth Moor in three weeks. If this reaches you by then, please meet me. I—[illegible] anything, but you have my contrition at least. I’m sure that will count for something.

Yours,

Pen-cap

Letter never sent.

#

Dear Maggie,

Do you remember the tales we heard of Melomere? “The Sunken Land,” they called it. I always pictured Atlantis, a shell-encrusted labyrinth beneath the waves, drowned faerie towers and water-clogged barrows.

I know now that is not what they meant by sunken. For now, I find myself in the Melomere.

You may rightly ask how I know this is the Melomere, Mags. After all, at first blush this place looks much like many places in the Other Country. Rolling hills march away in all directions, their sides terraced curiously as though once covered in narrow roads engulfed now by grass. But there, the similarities end. The grass is not a vibrant green but a muddy gray, and the sky swirls with dark clouds. Between the hills, water sits in fetid pools. Flies buzz around dead trees that protrude from the water. Thank God I woke high atop one of the hills and not close to the edge of one of those brackish ponds. I shudder to think what creatures live there.

Melomere, melomere,

Where queens did gather once a year.

So very grand did that mere grow

That now ‘tis sunken deep below.

Isn’t that how the rhyme went? Does that make me a queen?

Oh, Mags, I don’t even know why I’m writing to you. I have my pack with me—the dress, the invitation, my writing supplies—but no way to leave this place, no way to reach you. I looked around the hill for the door I fell through, but I cannot find it. I don’t know if it closed behind me, or if I am too stupid to find it alone.

Or perhaps this was Rook’s plan all along. Trap me here, beneath the world. He already took Arthur, and now he wants to take away any chance I have of falling in love again. It must be dreadfully funny, watching me fumble around like this. What a laugh he must have had, trailing me for these past two weeks as I stumbled towards another loss.

I never should have trusted him. I never should have thought he was my friend.

I don’t know what to do now. I suppose I will have to move from this hill eventually. Even if there is no door out of Melomere, I will have to find shelter. There are a few evergreen trees scattered about this hill where the rot has not set in, but—

#

Later

The hill was not a hill, Mags. It was a troll. An enormous one.

While I was writing you, the earth began to shake. It trembled so violently that it was everything I could do to keep my bag and myself from tumbling to the ground. The ground where I stood twisted nearly ninety degrees, leaving me to scramble upwards towards a place that had just recently been lower than where I was sitting. Meanwhile, the neighboring hill shifted upwards, growing even larger. A craggy face appeared—long, wide nose, yellow eyes, and strings of lank hair I had taken to be algae. Those yellow eyes blinked, and an enormous hand raised up to rub sleep from them before they looked upon me where I stood upon the thing’s leg.

Fear paralyzed me. Never before have I encountered anything so enormous. I thought of all the stories I had heard of trolls—their predilection for eating princesses and unwary travelers—and felt certain I was about to be devoured.

The troll opened its mouth and let out an enormous yawn.

“You…woke me…up.” Its voice was as ponderous as its movements, sounding like a cascade of rocks rumbling down a mountainside. “You were…wandering about the back of my knee. It…tickled.”

The troll looked at me as though it expected an answer, and so I swallowed my trepidation as best I could.

“My apologies, master…er, troll. I did not realize—”

“Danny.”

“…Danny?”

“That is…my name.” The troll—Danny—yawned again. “It is quite all right. It has been…many years since I have been awake. No one…comes to the Melomere anymore. Not since it sank.”

“Have you been here since before it sank?”

Danny nodded. “Oh…yes. I have been here a long, long time. I remember when…the sun still shone upon this place. Even then, it was seldom…that humans ever roamed these hills and valleys.” He blinked his eyes, and I heard the scrape of stone against stone. “What is one…such as you doing here?”

“I fell,” I told him.

“Fell?” He looked up, then shook his head. “You are…very lucky that you landed safely.”

“Lucky. Yes, I suppose I am,” I said. And then, quite unexpectedly, I started crying.

It is embarrassing to cry at the best of times. If I had been thinking, I would have bargained away my tears to the Queen instead of my heart. I hate crying in front of anyone. It always feels like I’m giving myself away for the broken creature I am. Crying in front of Danny felt particularly humiliating, in large part because I was standing on his knee, making it impossible for him to move away and give me some privacy.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I’m so very sorry, I—”

“It is all right. I do not mind. I am…used to being damp. The fens, you know.” Danny shifted, settling into a more comfortable position. “Will you tell me what…is wrong?” And Mags, he looked at me so earnestly that I thought he really meant it.

So, I did. I told him of Arthur and how I had bargained my heart away to bring him home safely for me after the war. I told him how Arthur had left me. I told him of Rook and Cornelius Bufo and the whole wretched journey. I told him the truth that I haven’t voiced to anyone but you, Mags: that I want to feel love again. Or at least have the capacity for it.

When I finished my sordid tale, Danny leaned back against a neighboring hill. Some of the trees growing along his shoulders cracked and bent, but he seemed not to notice.

“You humans are…too hasty,” he said after a moment. “Why do you need your own heart back? I think this Rook…fellow would give you his if only you asked.”

If I had had my heart, it would have lurched. “Rook doesn’t care about me,” I insisted. “He doesn’t even like me.”

Danny frowned. “But you like him.”

“I—maybe, but—”

“You told him you wanted to thank him.”

“I did at the time!”

“He came with you.”

“To mock me!”

“Did you not…mock him right back?”

“Of course I did, because he’s an idiot.”

“He led you through…the woods safely. He traded a favor to get you a…dress and helped you retrieve that spinning wheel.”

“Yes, but—”

“And he refused the thanks you..wished to give. He would not have…done that if he did not care about you.” He scratched his chin. “You should trust me on this. I have been here…a long time. I have seen many lovers and lover's…spats. From Faerie Queens to…the lowliest swineherd, it is always the same. Hearts cannot be bought. They can only be…given.”

I opened my mouth but found no reply waiting on my tongue. Instead, my mind wove back through my journey here. Rook, telling me to be more precious with my thanks. Rook, spending a bargain to get me a dress. Saving me from the kelpie. Even further back than that—Rook dancing with me at the Summer Queen’s ball, stealing faerie cakes and leaving them on the windowsill for me under the full moon. A trickster, a thief, but not a liar. He had come with me all this way. Was it possible that he wasn’t trying to sabotage me? Was it possible that, in his own crooked way, he was trying to save me?

Danny shifted, bringing me suddenly out of my thoughts. “Something is coming over…the horizon,” he said, raising a huge hand to point. Indeed, something was winging its way over the landscape. A spot of brilliant blue against rolling gray.

Blue.

#

I cannot begin to express the shock I felt at seeing the little blue bird again. She let out a snippet of song as she neared us, drawing up short as she beheld Danny.

“Oh! I thought you were a mountain,” she said.

“That happens. Is this young mortal…your friend?”

Blue narrowed her eyes at me. “No,” she snapped. “She is not my friend. She was my captor, a wretched trickster who took my task from me and squirreled it away, and I’ve come to get it back.”

“You flew all this way for the invitation?”

“Yes!” she shrieked. “And if you do not give it to me, I shall scream so loud your ears begin to bleed.”

“How?” I asked, dumbfounded. “How did you find your way here? Did you come through the well?”

The horrid little creature snorted. “No, of course not. I took the Queen’s Roads.”

Mags, in that moment I felt like the dullest person in all existence. Because the answer—the way out—was right there. Right in the rhyme. Where queens did gather once a year. As this place was once a Court, it had to be connected to the Queen’s Roads. All the Courts are.

Which meant I only needed Blue to lead me to the door to be on my way.

“Take me there,” I begged. “Take me to the Queen’s Roads, please.”

“Why should I?”

“I will give you the invitation back.”

“You already owe me the invitation. You cannot bargain with something that is mine already.”

“Do you have it?”

Blue tumbled back in the air as Danny spoke, his breath sending a strong gust of wind in her direction.

“No,” she said as she righted herself. “Of course I don’t. She stole it from me!”

“If she…took it, then it is now…hers,” Danny said.

“That’s not fair!”

“That is the rule of Faerie.”

Blue flapped furiously. “Well, I won’t help you. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. And you can just sit here and rot and I will laugh and laugh! Ha ha ha!”

An enormous hand suddenly landed beside me. Danny held out his palm and nodded to it.

“If the little messenger will not take…you, then I would be happy to do so. I remember where the Queen’s Roads are from…here. And you may give me the invitation…instead. It has been some time since I have visited the Queen. I would be…glad to see her again.”

“No!” Blue screeched. “That’s my invitation.”

Danny hunched down to look at her better, and Blue fluttered backwards. “If you want…my invitation, then you will guide us both to the Queen’s Court. And once that is…done, I will give it to you.”

Blue flapped for a few more moments before landing petulantly in a tree beside Danny’s shoulder. She chirped something to him that I couldn’t hear, and the troll laughed in a great, booming roll that made the the trees bend and the waters ripple.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said that you and…the Rook deserve each other, for your both tricksters.” He paused, listening to her words, and then continued. “She also says that…he is gone to the Queen to ask her to…find you. In which case, we should…hurry, as you’ve already been found.”