Moving Pictures

o’ the morning. We want trolls. They’ll still be up and about and they’re dab hands at the underground stuff. Take the next right. We want the Blue Lias and—oh, bugger .”
    It had suddenly dawned on him that he was going to be required to talk.
    And in public.
    You could spend ages carefully concealing your vocal abilities from people and then, bingo, you were on the spot and you had to talk. Otherwise young Victor and Cat Woman would be molderin’ down there forever. Young Laddie was going to drop him in front of someone and look expectant and he’d have to explain . And afterward spend his whole life as some sort of freak.
    Laddie trotted up the street and into the smoky portals of the Blue Lias, which was crowded. He threaded his way through a maze of treetrunk legs to the bar, barked sharply, and dropped Gaspode on the floor.
    He looked expectant.
    The buzz of conversation stopped.
    “Is that Laddie?” said a troll. “What he want?”
    Gaspode wandered groggily to the nearest troll and tugged politely at a trailing strip of rusty chain mail.
    “’Scuse me,” he said.
    “He bloody intelligent dog,” said another troll, idly kicking Gaspode aside. “I see him in click yesterday. He can play dead and count up to five.”
    “That two more than you can, then.” This got a around of laughter. 23
    “No, shut up. I reckon,” said the first troll, “he trying to tell us something.”
    “—’scuse me—”
    “You only got to look at the way he leaping about and barking.”
    “That right. I saw him in this click, he showing people where to find lost children in caves.”
    “—’scuse me—”
    A troll brow wrinkled. “To eat ’em, you mean?”
    “No, to bring ’em outside.”
    “What, like for a barbecue sort of thing?”
    “— ’scuse me—”
    Another foot caught Gaspode on the side of his bullet head.
    “Could be he found some more. Look at the way he running back and forward to the door. He one clever dog.”
    “We could go look,” said the first troll.
    “Good idea. It seem like ages since I had my tea.”
    “Listen, you not allowed to eat people in Holy Wood. It get us bad name! Also Silicon Anti-Defamation League be down on you like a ton of rectangular building things.”
    “Yeah, but could be a reward or something.”
    “—’SCUSE ME—”
    “Right! Also, big improvement for troll image viz-ah-viz public relations if we find lost children.”
    “And even if we don’t, we can eat the dog, right?”
    The bar emptied, leaving only the usual clouds of smoke, cauldrons of molten troll drinks, Ruby idly scraping the congealed lava off the mugs, and a small, weary, moth-eaten dog.
    The small, weary, moth-eaten dog thought hard about the difference between looking and acting like a wonder dog and merely being one.
    It said “Bugger.”

    Victor remembered being frightened of tigers when he was young. In vain did people point out that the nearest tiger was three thousand miles away. He’d say, “Is there any sea between where they live and here?” and people would say, “Well, no, but—” and he’d say, “Then it’s just a matter of distance.”
    Darkness was the same thing. All dreadful dark places were connected by the nature of darkness itself. Darkness was everywhere, all the time, just waiting for the lights to go out. Just like the Dungeon Dimensions, really. Just waiting for reality to snap.
    He held on tight to Ginger.
    “You needn’t,” she said. “I’ve got a grip on myself now.”
    “Oh, good,” he said weakly.
    “The trouble is, so have you.”
    He relaxed.
    “Are you cold?” she said.
    “A bit. It’s very clammy down here.”
    “Is it your teeth I can hear chattering?”
    “Who else’s? No,” he added hurriedly, “don’t even think about it.”
    “You know,” she said, after a while, “I don’t remember anything about tying you up. I’m not even very good at knots.”
    “These were pretty good,” said Victor.
    “I just remember the dream. There was this voice telling me that I must wake the—the sleeping man?”
    Victor thought of the armored figure on the slab.
    “Did you get a good look at it?” he said. “What was it like?”
    “I don’t know about tonight,” said Ginger cautiously.
    “But in my dreams it’s always looked a bit like my Uncle Oswald.”
    Victor thought of a sword taller than he was. You couldn’t parry a slash from something like that, it’d cut through anything. Somehow it was hard to think of