The Great Troll War

We all nodded and the Troll sighed deeply.

‘Troll parents see vegetarianism as a sociopathic eating disorder,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s deeply shaming, and cave prices plummet if a veggie is thought to be in the area. My parents were actually pretty good, for Trolls,’ she said. ‘Barely beat me at all and only left me outside in the winter for a week, not a month, as is normal to toughen us up. They were seen as overindulgent parents, but I still loved them. Dad conducted the Trollvanian Petraphonic orchestra. The sound of twenty per cent of the Troll population tapping rocks together is something to experience. My mother used to solo on river pebbles. She could tap like an angel and often reduced audiences to tears.’

She picked up the bowl and licked out the remains of the macaroni cheese.

‘The thing is, all Trolls were once vegetarian. We were a peaceful race, harming no one. But a Troll named Qurrgg suddenly took a liking to meat, and the usually placid community fell to his power. The veggie trolls were maligned and pushed to the edges of society. We remain hidden these days, frightened to even think about cooking up a creamy mushroom tagliatelle, much less make it. Have you ever had moussaka?’

‘Yes.’

‘We used to clandestinely meet in forest clearings to secretly conjure up a moussaka and other non-meat specialities. We had to smuggle ingredients in. Then, one evening, on ravioli night, we were denounced. I was charged with making pasta “with intent to consume”, and possession of an aubergine, a charge which was dismissed as they couldn’t prove I was going to eat it. I, and by extension all the other vegetarians, were sentenced to a life of unpaid domestic work with no possibility of moussaka.’

She gave a doleful sigh.

‘How did you escape?’ I asked.

‘We were called to the front line to man the mobile food kitchens – a thankless and disgusting job, as you can imagine – and that was when Mr Zambini appeared. He said you would help us out, so I abandoned my post, found somewhere restrictively small to hide and made my way over just before the Button Trench was filled. I guess no one was expecting to see a Troll driving a Mini. Is there any more of that macaroni cheese?’

I nodded to Tiger, who went and fetched another helping.

‘So,’ I said, ‘tell me more about that.’

I pointed at her hand, and the message written in black Sharpie:

Contact Jennifer Strange in Penzance and tell her everything. She will not harm you.

She looked at her hand, then at me.

‘You’re Jennifer Strange, aren’t you?’

‘I am.’

‘Ha!’ she said. ‘I knew you were using made-up names.’

I pulled down the handkerchief that was covering my face. There was no point to the subterfuge now.

‘Your kind has a Hive Memory, so you can understand how it might pay to be cautious.’

‘The shared memory only runs through individual strands of Troll society,’ she explained. ‘My memory only feeds into the other veggie trolls. Before I got in the Mini I could feel them, y’know, in my head, doing stuff all round the country. Back in Trollvania we used to share memories to hone survival strategies – and swap recipes. But once I was in the Mini, I couldn’t feel them any longer. Do you think that’s weird?’

‘I can’t think of much that isn’t weird about all this.’

She paused for a moment.

‘If I tell you all about your Zambini friend, can you offer a safe haven for all the veggie trolls? We’re only 6.66 per cent of the Troll population.’

‘How many is that?’ I asked, thinking I could find out how many Trolls there were in total. But she cocked her head on one side and looked at me as though she didn’t really know what I was talking about.

‘Trolls prefer to work in percentages, fractions and ratios, as it allows a clearer overview of stuff, rather than getting bogged down in specifics.’

‘Can you give us an example?’ asked the Princess, who was aways interested in figures.

‘Well,’ said Molly, ‘if the Troll agree to spare ten per cent of humans from the pot, then we can say that without needing to count you all first, which would be time-consuming and tricky, since you spend a lot of time scurrying around and screaming idiotically. Here’s another one. I represent twenty-five per cent of the creatures in this room, right?’

We nodded. There were four of us: Me, Tiger, the Princess and the Troll.

‘Okay. Now, if the seventy-five per cent of creatures in this room that belong to the subset “non-Trolls” agree to share a cake of unit one, what would be the numerical value of each share?’

‘.333,’ said the Princess, before adding: ‘Actually, the 3s would go on for ever.’

‘And if you recombined the cake without eating any, would the sum return to unit one?’

‘No,’ conceded the Princess, ‘by my reckoning it would come to 9.9999 recurring.’