A moment ago you were striding along Broadway, hastening toward your hotel and a hot supper. Now, inexplicably, you’re at the counter of Calhoun’s Coffee House. A queue has already formed behind you and a barista, glaring impatiently, repeats: “What do you want to order?” Embaffled, you gather your wits and buy an long espresso, then peer through the crowd for a seat. Every chair seems to be taken ....  but ah, there, second-last at the bar overlooking Broadway, one vacant spot. You make a beeline for it, surprised that it’s still empty. You hang up your white coat and, as you settle on the barstool, you glance at your neighbour, hunched in the corner -- and gasp. From forehead to chin, his face sprouts a sorrel-coloured fuzz, less a complexion than a pelt. A tattered brown longcoat drapes awkwardly from his barrel chest. He sways slightly, as if precariously balanced on his stool. Too late, you realize that you’re staring, rudely, that he has noticed you. Slowly he turns until his queer amber eyes meet yours. Your gazes lock, and the background clatter of Calhoun’s vanishes.

    “You are late,” he rasps, his leathery cleft upper lip curling ever so slightly -- in a smile, or a snarl? Your hands around your mug sting with sudden cold; your hot coffee has turned to black ice.  “But no matter,” the stranger continues. “At last, you are here. At last, we begin.”  With a meaty hand tipped with thick yellowed claws he gestures your way, and now steam billows from your mug in extravagant spirals that rise to envelope you both in a warm cocoon. In a bassy, mesmerizing growl, the stranger begins to speak:  “Not far away in time or place....

 

 

 

    “... On the edge of the world where west becomes east,  a city of sparkling towers soared from the seashore to touch the sky. There was a time when humans the world over judged this city to be the very best, the most liveable, the most harmonious place on all of earth. And then for another long while, as strife and woe wracked human settlements elsewhere, refugees washed up on its shores bearing tales of drought, flood, fire, war and famine. But that was long before the events in our tale occurred -- by then, an epoch had passed since the city dwellers were even aware that an outside world existed. Blissfully isolated in their natural enclave, protected by blue waters, white-capped mountains and vast green forests, the tower people had become indolent, and occupied themselves entirely within their skyscrapers with infinite electronic pleasures. On the rare occasions that a spark of curiosity intruded on their lives, they needed only glance through a window, to satisfy themselves with images of nature in the mirrored cladding on their towers.    Now, fully two decades had passed since the tower people last ventured outdoors, one remarkable day when someone noticed a reflection of a mysterious object washed ashore on a beach. Venturing outside to investigate, they found a small wooden craft, and within it, one small girl child bundled in a sheepskin and fast asleep on a bed of pine boughs. The people carried this child indoors, named her Claire and took turns caring for her.

    Claire grew up to be quite unlike the city natives. She was oblivious to the charms of tower life, ceaselessly restless, drawn always to the blue, white and green world without. Although of course destined to be a wage slave, she managed to steal many hours to explore the city’s perimeter with her best friend, a canine named Max.

 

 

 

 

    Late one Autumn afternoon the pals were tramping along the barrier of thorned brambles lining the city’s western boundary, when they came upon a small arched doorway in the thick green wall. With nary a second thought, they squeezed through the passage, to find their way blocked by a dilapidated sign. Claire had never learned the ancient written language, and so could not decode the message,  “Keep dogs leashed and on the path.” She and Max blithely stepped around the barrier then skipped along a footpath as it meandered through tall grasses, alongside a forest grove redolent with pine and led them onto a wooden bridge overlooking a vast expanse of wetland. It was here that they paused, in rapt wonder at the scene before them. Tendrils of mist, rendered golden by the last rays of the day’s sun, rose from an undulating landscape carpeted with rosy-pink and apple-green spaghnum moss. Scents of labrador tea, wild rose and peat moss wafted on the buttery-soft air. Birdsong rang out from the adjacent forest, while all over the surface of the bog, small creatures gambolled.

    Abruptly Max lost his dignity and, with one mad leap, launched himself off the bridge and onto the bog’s surface. He dashed madly about like a common dog, nosing the mice-holes, sniffing bird nests, splashing through the shallow ponds of tea-coloured water, yelping in delight.

    Laughing at her friend’s antics, Claire felt a sudden chill, and drew her cape closely around her. Perhaps because she’d been watching Max; maybe because no mother had ever warned her to be careful -- or perhaps it was due to the waning light and the swirling mist --  she failed to observe a figure creep out from below the bridge. This newcomer was short and stooped, with a rather large head covered by the hood of  a black greatcoat that draped over his thick body and brushed the ground. The stranger stood for a moment, alternately glowering up at Claire and glaring at Max racing about. And then in one silent leap, the troll was on the bridge, and before Claire had time to register his presence, he clubbed her on the back of the head, slung her over his back like a sack of chestnuts, leapt back under the bridge and vanished through a trapdoor. The earth closed in his wake.

~~~~~~~~~

    At the far side of the bog Max had befriended a giant dragonfly with iridescent blue and green wings, and was joyfully bounding alongside the creature as it swooped in great circuits over the bog. The pair of them were far away when Max spotted the attack on Claire. He raced to the rescue, to arrived mere seconds after the ground had swallowed his friend and her assailant.

    A kilometer away in the tower city, Max’s wail echoed off the mirrored walls and reverberated back through the bog, where it sent the mice skittering into their holes and struck the birds dumb.  Max ran in frantic circles over and over the spot where Claire had vanished. When he could run no more he collapsed, spent, and lay prostrate in the dirt, sides heaving. His broken heart thundered so loudly in his big chest that he did not, at first, hear the soft flutter of wings overhead or the words whispered urgently in his ear.

 

 

    When Claire came to, she found herself immobilized in the vice-like grip of a stranger’s arms. Her face was buried in thick folds of wool rank with the stench of smoky humus; she struggled to breathe. Bolts of pain shot through her head. She was trying to make some sense of this predicament when, abruptly, her stomach lurched,  as if one of the tower elevators had broken free of its chains and begun careening downward with her inside. As she fell clear of her captor’s arms, she realized that she was not falling as much as she was shrinking, with a vertiginous sensation that seemed to go on forever. At last Claire found herself sprawled on a dirt floor in what seemed to be a cave lined with peat moss. The cave’s surfaces radiated a soft phosphorescence, and as her eyes adjusted to the green glow Claire realized, with a jolt of terror, that  she was face to face with a black ant, exactly the same size as she, and that it was regarding her with multifaceted black eyes that seemed to glint with malevolence. Mesmerized, Claire watched its mandibles open, wide enough to engulf her head -- and then it lunged. In mid-scream Claire felt herself being yanked clear and tossed away, by a creature she could only describe as a troll. The troll sprang at the ant and began whacking the creature with a cane. “MINE! She’s all mine! Away with ‘ye,” shrieked the troll. The insect fought back viciously, jaws clacking and eyes glowing red, but when the troll took hold of one of its hairy antennas and began twisting, it backed down. Claire watched, stunned, as the ant retreated deeper into the cave followed by the troll, who bashed it on the head with every step. 

    Claire realized that she was free. She leapt to her feet, scurried backwards until she hit the side of the cave, then felt her way with her hands, eyes fixed on the combatants, as she scrambled away along the wall. She stumbled when the wall gave way to an opening that looked to be a tunnel -- and without another thought, she picked herself up and fled for her life along the narrow passage.

    Claire flew through the labyrinth as fast as her feet would take her, veering right, veering left as new tunnels branched out, clambering up a level then sliding down. She was desperately tired when, suddenly, the earth before her shook, the ceiling cracked and massive dirt boulders crashed down in her path. Immediately in front of her the massive form of an earthworm smashed out of the side wall, undulated across her path -- so close that she could have touched its soft  hide -- and then, with a last flick of its pointed tail that sent a fresh avalanche of debris crashing from the ceiling, bored into the dirt on the other side of the tunnel and vanished. Before Claire’s eyes, the holes left by the creature sealed, and silence descended.  

    Swallowing hard, Claire took her bearings. She estimated that she was two centimeters tall. She had been assaulted by a troll and attacked by an ant. She was now lost in an underground maze apparently populated by massive worms --  and who knew what else. Looking about her, she saw that she was near the junction of three branches off the tunnel in which she stood. Two of these  seemed much like the places she had been, but at the nether reaches of the third she thought she could see a brighter light. She set out that way, walking carefully now. The tunnel soon widened, the dim green light gave way to a warm amber glow, and Claire gasped as her route opened onto a vast atrium. The glow came from a soaring domed ceiling adorned with diamond-coated stalactites. Claire stood spellbound beneath the sparkling ceiling and her mind flooded with old fairy tales passed down from the ancients  -- stories of of dancers twirling in ballrooms lit by chandeliers, of combatants fighting to the death in coliseums, of orchestra halls filled with music and light.

    Claire’s brief reprieve from fear ended as  the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She spun around, and for the first time saw that the walls of the atrium were lined with grottoes, built on multiple levels that rose nearly to the ceiling. Scores of people were now emerging from these, and with the slow steps of sleepwalkers were approaching Claire. She stood, frozen in fear and indecision, in the centre of the arena as they surrounded her. 

     “Hello,” said a man with a trim gray beard, wearing a pinstriped suit and red nick-tie.  Claire felt that she could not speak lest she shriek, and so merely nodded at him.  A young woman with smooth black hair and a dress made of woven cedar bark placed her hand on Claire’s shoulder and looked at her with sorrowful eyes before turning and shuffling back to her cave. A  yellow-haired girl in a red dress and sun sandals, no more than six, approached shyly to reach out and tugged Claire’s jacket. “You woke us up. Thank-you,” whispered the little girl. And then the crowd parted to make way for a grey-haired woman  in jeans, hiking boots and a turtleneck.

    “Hello, Claire, my name is Helen,”  said the woman briskly. “You’re wondering where you are.” 

     Claire nodded, uncertain whether she should trust the woman, baffled about how the woman knew her name.

    “You are in Thraldom, the dungeon below the wetland,” said Helen. “It’s where the bog guardian suspends those of us who disobeyed his rules.”

    She gestured at the crowd with a sweep of her hand.

    “All here broke the rules. I picked a wild rose. That soldier cut out peat moss to make bandages, for what people once called World War II. The little girl threw away a candy wrapper. The man in the suit took a pee over the bridge. That woman in the cedar dress is from the first nation at this place and she’s been here the longest --  I gather she picked and ate the troll’s supper. What was your transgression?“

    My transgression?” echoed Claire, puzzled.

    “Your transgression!” boomed a voice from above. The people from the caves shrank back against the walls, and melted into their holes, leaving Claire alone again in the centre of the arena. The troll stood on a platform at one end, and as he spoke he grew in size. “Your transgression, Claire, is clear. The sign said no dogs off leash, no dogs off the path. But you! You and that slavering beast thought yourselves above such rules. And so you let his great muckle paws tear up my garden. You let him frighten my mice. His hair contaminated my water. And you! You thought that was all very amusing.”

    The troll strode toward Claire as he spoke, until he towered directly over her, his face a black lacuna within the cape. “Well, young Claire, it’s not so funny anymore, is it? You’re not giggling now, young woman. Now you are mine --  forever.”

    With that, the troll picked up Claire between his thumb and forefinger, held her away from him as if she were vermin, then tossed her up, up, up, onto the top terrace of the far wall, into the mouth of a grotto that opened up before her.  The twinkling diamond ceiling pulsed yellow and red, piercing her eyes and very being. As unconsciousness descended upon her, as she entered the timeless, ageless stasis of Thraldom, Claire saw through her fading vision the troll spin and vanish. A faint  green luminescent outline glowed where he had stood..

 

 

    On the bog’s surface, a few meters above where Claire lay, Max became aware of an insistent voice in his ear. “Get up, get up,” it said. “Get up before he gets you!” Max roused himself and sat up, then leapt in terror as he felt the ground beneath him tremble. He jumped onto the bridge just as the trap door opened, and by the time the troll emerged Max had pelted back along the now-dark footpath and ducked through the opening into the city.

    The dragonfly dove from above, darted around his head and came to a rest on his nose.

    “At a certain time and place a visitor will come to this place from the old world, the world that knew about trolls, the world where people still carry within their blood the elixir that, alone on this world, can subdue a troll,” said the dragonfly. “Listen now, and. I will tell you how to travel to the time when this person will arrive. When you find her, you must bring her here. She alone can rescue Claire. She alone can rescue all of us -- because below the bog there is a Thraldom for each species, where each of us is in danger of being eternally trapped. “

 

 

 

 

    Here the story-teller pauses, and the veil shielding you from the bright chatter of Calhoun’s thins. You shake your head dizzily and wonder -- not for the first time this strange evening -- if you are hallucinating, suffering from early dementia, or experiencing the world’s worst case of jet lag. And then you peer closely into the eyes of your strange companion to see large, round tears welling up and rolling down his fuzzy cheeks. Your comprehension takes a wild and crazy leap.

    “Max?” you venture, suspending your disbelief and surrendering your imagination to this surreal experience.

    The stranger’s big head nods.

 

 

     You and Max walk through Calhoun’s crowd as if you are invisible; clusters of laughing people part for you to leave a seamless passage. And when you emerge onto the street, you find yourselves not on Broadway, but on an eerily silent  street and strangely pristine street in some science-fiction future, dwarfed by soaring skyscrapers that glitter far above in the black night sky.

    You walk to the city’s western perimeter where Max, despite the impenetrable dark, unerringly guides you through a door in the wall of thorns. On the other side you are immediately bombarded by a shrieking inhuman voice.

    “I will get you. I will catch you, fiend,” the troll shrieks. You hear a crashing and scream coming from the forest grove beside you. You hasten through the dense mist  and onto the bridge, your heart pounding. Max whimpers beside you. You tell yourself this is just a dream, and then you wonder why you are drenched in sweat, why your palms are clammy.

 

 

 

    And suddenly he is there, a form so black that as it materializes out of the night the very starlight vanishes. The troll raises his arm, his great hand bearing a club, to strike. You draw in your breath, and trust in the dragonfly’s instructions.

    “Kneel, knave!” you declare in your loudest, deepest, most authoritarian voice, louder yet than even the voice you use as chair of your unruly board at work, louder yet than even the voice you used when your children were small -- louder yet than you thought was humanely possible. Your words echo over the bog, bounce off the trees, rise in a crescendo and come crashing down onto the figure in front of you. The troll collapses, squirms on the ground in front of you. “Forgive me, Your Honour, forgive me -- I knew not who you are,” he whimpers. “How can I serve thee?”  

    “Release Claire. Release them all. End your thrall -- and return to your own place,” you command.

    The troll wails in anguish, and writhes at your feet. “Please, please, oh please, no,” it whispers. “I will be punished if I return to my home.”

    “Obey!” you order --  and this time your voice soars into the night air and slams into the surrounding mountains. The earth trembles.

    With a shriek the troll leaps up, swirls his cape -- and vanishes. As the mist clears and the light of a full moon illuminates the bog, you see the undulating carpet of moss tear and lift, and you watch in astonishment as hundreds of miniature beings  emerge from the cracks. As each reaches the surface and stands it expands to a normal size for its species. Most of the beings vanish in a poof.

    “They’re going home,” says a small voice in your ear, and you realize that there’s a dragonfly on your shoulder.  “Back to their own time and place.”

    And then Max is wriggling and wagging and barking, and you realize that the young woman walking toward you must be Claire.  She smiles, you imagine that she’s about to introduce herself ....

 

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:

 

.    ... and with a vertiginous jolt, you awake in the bed of your hotel room, your throat parched from the antiquated 20th Century air conditioning and your head pounding with what you know will become a monster migraine. You groan and, like the warrior which you are, rise and prepare for your day.

    An hour later, showed, coifed and dressed, you gather your briefcase and prepare to leave for the day’s meetings. You draw your white coat from its hanger in the closet, and frown. The fabric is covered in sorrel-coloured dog hair.