A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales by Clodia

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The Gingerbread Cave

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"The Gingerbread Cave"

taken from

A Beleriand Treasury of Childish Tales

as told to

Erestor and Melinna of Ered Luin

(because The Turtle Moves)

 

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Now consider foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is ubiquitous in literature. Any sensible story flaunts its foreknowledge for all it's worth, much as a seamstress* working in Minas Tirith may "accidentally" show off her assets while walking down the street.** Foreshadowing flirts with exciting possibilities and lets the reader know the story is safely under the narrator's control. When properly applied, it can turn a mere collection of incidents into a Plot.

And then there is reality. A confused and bewildering place where things occur apparently at random and no one knows if anything is under anyone's control. In those parts of the multiverse where narrativium does not exist, things just... happen. Details that would signal oncoming surprises in the hands of any narrator worth his or her salt are left flapping aimlessly in the random onslaught of events, rather like an untethered tent in a hurricane. Omens become ominous only in hindsight, which is 20/20.

And yet people still spend their lives trying to discover the foreshadowing of History in sacred books and the flight of birds and the internal organs of all sorts of rare and delicious animals... before History discovers them. This is because most people, whether they know it or not, are instinctively Ibidians.*** Unfortunately, reality is Xenoian.†

The important thing about foreshadowing is that it only works in stories. Reality isn't nearly organised enough for that.

 

*

 

The story takes place in olden days, among dark woods and hills. It ends somewhere else and it began long ago, but at least this part took place in a cave near the Mitheithel river, not far away from the Great East Road.

One of the recurring literary tropes concerns caves.

A party of weary travellers caught out on a rainy night will always look hopefully for an inn or a friendly farmhouse, no matter how wild the wilderness in which they may be travelling. And while inns and friendly farmhouses are hard to find in this part of the world, caves are not. Nine times out of ten, though, caves are also occupied.

This particular cave contains trolls.

Elsewhere in the multiverse, trolls are metamorphorical rock-based lifeforms subsisting on a stony diet, for which Nature has provided them with diamond teeth. As a result, troll-hunting used to be very popular in certain sections of society, before survival of the fittest caught on. It is said that Nature is a mother, and this is true, but those of her children that survive are the stuff of a poor psychiatrist's avaricious dreams.

These trolls are carnivorous and will take care of any hunting going on nearby, thank you very much. Mutton is good and beef is better, but manflesh is best. It is not generally known what they think about elf-flesh, possibly because most elves are bright enough not to take refuge in suspicious caves.

We are about to find out.

It was not a dark and stormy night. The trolls were in their cave, however, since the unhappy effects of sunlight on rock-based lifeforms means that trolls are nocturnal in almost all parts of the multiverse. Over the years, the cave's location had made it prime real estate in trollish terms, although it had been deserted for some time before certain universal instincts had prompted the current occupants to set up their den there. For a troll's cave, it was surprisingly homely. All the bones had been swept to one side. Such plunder as had already accumulated was tidily arranged on new pinewood shelves. Even though the cave had no windows, there were curtains. They were pink. It was clear that, given half a chance, someone would add lacy frills. If they ever found out about cushions, there would be no escape.

"Sam," said the someone and poked her mate. "Dere's someone tryin' to get in."

Psammite turned over, grunted something unintelligible and went back to sleep. Garnet sighed and considered her options. The scuffling noise outside the cave suggested that someone was definitely trying to open the big stone door.

"Nex' time, we goin' to lock dat," said Garnet to herself, thinking of the pebbles lying sound asleep at the back of the cave. For a moment, her thoughts dwelled fondly on little Phyllite and Gneiss, curled up together in the pinewood pen that their father had constructed only last week.

Then she heard the noise again.

"Psammite!" she said and shook him crossly. "Get up!"

"Dur?"

"Dere's someone at der door," said Garnet. "Listen."

They listened. After a while, Psammite said, "It stuck on der brambles."

A steady stream of curses could be heard on the other side of the stone door. Garnet nodded.

"Sam!" she said, as a terrible thought struck her. "It want der pebbles!"

They looked at each other in horror. Then Garnet crept to the back of the cave where Phyllite and Gneiss slumbered in happy ignorance of their mortal peril, dreaming their slow, dark dreams of stone and mountains and twitching now and then as avalanches cavalcaded through their sleep. Meanwhile Psammite took up position behind the door, ready to pounce on the intruder. He had a club in one hand and a sack in the other, because there's no point in turning down a free lunch. With a sound like that of a thousand fingernails molesting hitherto innocent blackboards, the door slid over the stone floor...

... and Garnet, standing guard over the pebbles at the back of the cave, remembered she'd meant to get Sam to sort out the hinges only yesterday...

... and a dark figure stood silhouetted against the bramble-meshed doorway.

"Gosh," it said. "This place has changed a bit."

Whereupon Psammite jumped out, popped the sack over the intruder's head and slammed the door shut. And at the back of the cave, Phyllite and Gneiss woke up.

It has been said that an angry baby troll can scream loudly enough to shake, if not mountains, then at least any reasonably sized hillock resting on particularly nervous geology. Two baby trolls could probably bring down a small village. The sound reverberated around the cave, causing shelves to rattle and bits of stalactite to tinkle onto the stone floor, before it returned as an echo that would have made a nuclear explosion proud. While Garnet devoted herself to hushing their little gems, Psammite slabbed‡ himself down on their wriggling visitor and put both hands firmly over his ears.

For a while, noise happened.

Silence returned a short eternity later. When Psammite risked taking his hands away from his head, he could hear only Garnet's cooing, interspersed by the happy gurgling of Phyllite and Gneiss. He breathed a sigh of relief and got up from his unwilling seat.

"What dis, den?" he said, shaking the intruder out of the sack.

They stared at it. A worried face surrounded by ruffled dark hair stared back at them. It had obviously worked out that it was in the kind of trouble most people only run into once.

"It an elf," said Garnet, looking almost as surprised as their unhappy visitor. "What an elf doin', wantin' der pebbles?"

"Er," said the elf, carefully. "What pebbles?"

In their pen at the back of the cave, Phyllite and Gneiss, who possessed an auditory apparatus of the sort available only to the extremely young or to creatures that prey on other creatures at the bottoms of very dark mine shafts, overheard this reference to themselves and started jumping gleefully up and down. "Us! Us!" they shrieked. "Elf! Want elf! Want elf now!"

The adults flinched. Psammite prepared to put his hands back over his ears. "Shh, shh!" said Garnet hastily. "Bad pebbles! Soon we has nice elf-flesh. First I find how to cook it –"

"Must you?" said the elf, sounding rather pained.

This was ignored. "Roast," said Psammite, with all the confidence of a troll whose grandfather had once been fortunate enough to encounter an elf alone on the Ettenmoors and had been dining out on the tale ever since. "Roast elf very good."

"Hrm," said Garnet, regarding the elf thoughtfully. "I t'ink maybe hotpot –"

She broke off. Beyond the cave, someone was calling out in a singsong tone.

The elf took a deep breath. "Tr– mmphm, mmph, mmph!"

Psammite, with great presence of mind, had clamped his hands over the elf's mouth. He looked around for another sack, while Garnet crept back to the pinewood pen to keep Phyllite and Gneiss quiet. The calling had stopped.

A moment later, someone just outside the door said suspiciously, "Erestor?"

If absence of noise were tangible, Garnet could have made a blanket from the silence inside the cave. She could have stuffed cushions with it.‡‡ The trolls held their breath. Even the pebbles had stopped jittering and waited in breathless anticipation.

Someone thumped on the cave door.

"I know you're in there," said the voice. "There's thread all over the brambles. I only just mended that tunic, you know."

The elf in Psammite's grasp had ceased to wriggle and was beginning to look rather embarrassed. Garnet risked leaving the pebbles to their own devices and tiptoed forwards to slide the door open, just a crack, so that the thinnest possible sliver of daylight crisscrossed with bramble-shadows leaked into the cave's cosy darkness. Maybe they could lure the elf's friend inside...

"If those aren't fresh bones, I'm a Noldo," said the voice, sounding even more suspicious. "Who's there?"

Silence.

"I'm not coming in, you know. You might as well tell me."

Garnet gave up.

"We – er – just nice peoples," she said hopefully. "Come in! Have – er – tea party!"

"Are you trolls?" asked the voice. "Where's Erestor?"

"Er – him at tea party too!"

She nodded to Psammite, who took one hand away from the elf's mouth while making a vigorous strangling gesture. The elf glanced nervously at them. "That's right, dear," it said weakly. "A tea party. Nice trolls. Er. Such charming children – mmph, mmphm!"

The second elf's sigh was audible from inside the cave. "It's all right. There's no need to pretend. I know you want to eat us."

"No no, not eat you, it tea party –"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure I don't blame you. Things must be terribly hard around here if the best you can get is a couple of stringy elves –"

"It not hard!" said Psammite, offended. "It very good life. Very good cave, too! Lot of manflesh here!"

"Well then, I'm surprised you're willing to settle for Erestor," said the voice on the other side of the door. "He's only skin and bone. Wouldn't be more than a snack for a well-fed family of trolls like you."

"Er..."

"I bet you've never tried elf before, either," the voice went on. "Otherwise you'd know we don't digest easily. Has no one ever told you not to eat anything that glows in the dark?"

Garnet and Psammite both peered at the elf. It didn't seem to be glowing.

Still... elves...

"The thing is," said the voice, becoming confidential, "you wouldn't want to eat Erestor right now anyway. He's far too skinny. You'd have to feed him up if you wanted to get a good meal out of him, and that would be terribly inconvenient. I really don't think you've thought this all the way through."

"We have snack, then!" said Garnet crossly. "You come here, have tea party –"

"Funny thing," said the voice. "I'm much plumper than Erestor will ever be. I could probably feed a family of hungry trolls for days."

That sounded promising. Garnet gave it some consideration.

"So come to tea party?" she suggested.

"Oh no," said the voice. "Not unless you can prove you're not going to eat me."

"It tea party!" said Garnet, exasperated. "We not eat you –"

"You can't expect me to just believe you," said the voice reasonably. "You are trolls, after all. You'll have to prove it."

"How?" said Psammite, who was getting hungry.

"Tricky one," said the voice. "Haven't a clue. Unless, and this is just me thinking out loud, you understand, you sent out that skinny elf to show there's nothing to worry about. That might work."

"Er –" said Garnet doubtfully.

"Yes," went on the voice, "I'd believe him. You should try that."

Garnet looked at Psammite, who shrugged and released the elf. "Okay," he said, while repeating his celebrated impersonation of a skinny elf being horribly strangled to death. "You tell fat elf it tea party. Right?"

"Right!" said the elf and scrambled for the sliver of daylight. A moment later, it wriggled out through the brambles and was gone.

The voice, when it spoke again, sounded slightly unsteady.

"Oh well, now I'm convinced," it said. "Tea party. Right. Er. We should bring cake or – er – something. Don't you worry, we'll be there in no time. Wouldn't miss it for worlds, would we, Erestor?"

"Elbereth, no!"

As the sound of elvish footsteps receded into the distance, Garnet couldn't help noticing a scolding note in the second elf's voice. "Honestly, what were you thinking? You know trolls live in that cave!"

The first elf might have been laughing. "Gildor said it was empty..."

"That was two years ago! Next time, they can eat you. And you can – oh, I know, you can do the cooking from now on. And there's a partridge that needs plucking, so you can do that too!"

"If you say so, dear..."

Back in the cave, the trolls waited hopefully.

"Dey not comin' back, right?" said Psammite at last.

Garnet shook her head.

"Bugger."

 

*

 

Funnily enough, five months later when Psammite stumbled unexpectedly across a whole heap of naked human corpses of just the right degree of ripeness piled up in a heap near the cave, both he and Garnet immediately remembered the elves and their promise to bring cake or something to the tea party that had never taken place. Neither of them said anything to the other about it, though. That would have been ridiculous.

Because everyone knows that reality is far too complicated for that.

 

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* Hem, hem.

** A bag of scraps, lots of pins and a good, solid toadstool in case of emergencies. The ability to sew buttons back on can also come in handy.

*** A school of thought named after the famous Númenorean philosopher Ibid, who proposed that the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules.

† A school of thought named after the famous Númenorean philosopher Xeno, who proposed that the world is basically complex and random. Of course, most serious philosophers accept the intermediate position of Didactylos, who proposed that "it's basically a funny old world and doesn't contain enough to drink".

‡ A less stony creature would probably have said 'planked'.

‡‡ If she'd known what cushions were, of course.

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Chapter End Notes

All of Terry Pratchett is thoroughly readable. In this specific case, I was reading Pyramids and Small Gods, wherein may be found the philosophers and their philosophies.