Together, we stood on the crest of a low ridge and looked out over the ruin of Oklahoma. Pale skies arched above us, raked in the east by low white stripes of cloud. Below us, a great field of splintered asphalt and concrete rolled out and into the distance: black and tan rubble strangled by wild grasses.

I was too young to have seen a working automobile from the old world, but I recognized their skeletons counting in thousands. Rusted steel frames had clustered in snarled queues to nowhere, or sometimes in prim square formations. But even in the numbers I could see, the steel remains were specks in scale to the size of the fields.

The wide bowl of the plain was too shallow (and its far edges too squat) to properly call it a valley. In my heart and memory I thought of it like a sea instead. In my imagination it was the Asphalt Ocean: the land of wide horizons where the Mister’s herds would graze each spring.

Here and there, the last few brick walls standing formed stubborn rectangles (though not a single roof had survived the annual sufferance of summer squalls and winter hail) and a hundred head of livestock sheltered against the standing leeward wall of one of those ruins a mile downrange. There, the quarter-strength herd lowed anxiously in a huddle. In my youth I held a great deal of sensitivity to the wellbeing of animals, and since then I have learned a great deal more about how the mutations affect the wildlife of our world. So I held and hold – then and now – fair suspicion that the beasts knew they were being used as bait.

There were five of us that morning. Five humans and three horses besides. And the gun – which deserves mention. Momma (my mother, I mean) stood at my left. She was wearing a short fur coat over a long dress, with a pair of bluejeans and leather boots underneath. I remember how Auntie Vaunda would nag on Momma for wearing jeans and dresses together, and how Mister didn’t like it either, but how she stuck to it in her fashion anyways. On that day, Momma was in restless spirits; she would lean into me and prod at me. She had remarked several times about the cold, and if my coat was sufficiently warm, and if I might be hungry still for breakfast (gritty corn meal patties, fried with bitter greens, wild onions and fatty meat) we’d taken early at dawn. My portion had been small, and my flannel coat inadequate for the wind, but I still objected: insisting in fervent whispers that the shivering quiet of the hilltop served for me as a perfectly suitable comfort.

Of course the unspoken thing was, none of what she fretted on was what worried her.

“I’m fine,” I insisted. Momma might have argued further, but then the Mister adjusted in his saddle and his mouth bent fractionally downward, while the corner of his eye pinched to tiny creases. By these signs, both Momma and I recognized the boundary of his displeasure, the same way we perceived taste or touch or sight. It was the sixth sense to know his anger before it came, and we shared it with every body that made their residence under the Mister’s roof. Momma and I, and Auntie Vaunda, fell quiet so that Mr. Sadiqi could issue a cough to masculinize the silence.

He was a good man. I cannot say I hold a single recollection of Mr. Sadiqi which is sour, and I probably have more ears on my head than folk for whom I can say that’s true. He always kept his hair (which was starkly and prematurely white) cut short to his scalp, his skin (the russet of Bengal mangroves) had seen enough sun to be fit for upholstery, and his broad hands tapered to long fingers which were gone calloused and crooked from hard use but still nimble in their operation. Mr. Sadiqi wore durable workman’s denims with plain squared leather riding chaps, and a clean loose linen shirt which had thick flannel sleeves sewed on past the elbow. His dust-beaten riding coat was removed to hang across the flank of his mare, and his brimmed hat hung from a cord which he tied around his neck. That is how I remember the image of the man, and though it would be fair to say I owe him everything, I am saddened by the thought that if he still lives today he would not recognize me at all.

Out of respect, it was his custom to remain afoot while the Mister stayed ahorse, and he was at that moment close and ready to the Mister’s right. He was cradling a long rifle in his arms – the barrel of which rested over his shoulder – for while my purpose on that day was to observe and be awed, and Momma’s task was to see to my keeping, and Auntie Vaunda was seeing to Momma’s company; Mr. Sadiqi attended to Mister in the office of his first hand, and was his most trusted advisor and capable subordinate in all things.

-

I am sorry to have little say on the subject of Auntie Vaunda. She was a fine woman, integral to the story of my childhood and upbringing. She was crass and kind depending on moods I could never predict. She was both strict and lax in nearly all domains opposite to my own mother’s philosophy. She kept her hair long and swept back, and it stayed there suspended like a wild tumbleweed. When I was a child I would put my fingers in her hair and become entangled, and she would be cross, and it occurs to me that I may have learned most of my swear words that way. However, Auntie Vaunda took no hand in my education beyond her own contrary view of etiquette or the proper way to fold shirts, so I fear my story will memorialize little more than her name.

-

A fair wind picked up, such that the wild grasses bowed, and the horses shuffled, and the dust made its first effort of breaking free of the evaporating dew. After another minute, the Mister cocked his head, making to spit left over the side of his horse into the brush. In this movement, Mr Sadiqi interpreted a command, and took the gun in both hands to offer it up for taking. I say “the gun” as if it were so simple an object. I suppose in the old world, it may have been. The name of the implement is “Fortitude”, and I say “is” to denote that I know that it survives and by its nature it must survive until the day that it doesn’t and then it will likely never have been at all. Whether it will was to have been, or it might still going to be – no, that’s too confusing. I digress.

Fortitude is a rifle in the long style. Its barrel is dark steel, with planed edges around the circumference, which is shaped as a hexagonal piping and extends far past the stock. The devicing is all mechanical, with a folding iron sight, a graceful lever for operating its breech loaded falling-block action, and an eager, dependable trigger. Bright brass rings grip the components of the barrel to the dark wood of the stock, and good iron pins hold the firing assembly in place. It is an instrument of utilitarian simplicity, whose only ornamentation is the name of its manufacturer blackened into the shoulder butt: “Hawpern & Gaol”.

To the best of my knowledge, this company does not, and never did exist.

But returning to the course of things, the Mister took up his tool from Mr Sadiqi and began to inspect it carefully: it seemed as if his thick fingers only knew gentleness for that rifle. While his horse snorted under him he searched Fortitude’s contours thoroughly to his satisfaction. In that way on his saddle, with his broad hat and grim countenance, with his leather bandoleer over crimson flannel and his broad belly turned away from the women, he painted himself against the sky as a conqueror. I have to admit, it was a strong effect.

But I was liable to make trouble for myself if I was caught staring at either Fortitude or Picadillio (which was the name of his horse), so I watched the far plain instead. I assumed that the Mister had caught sight of our quarry from his perch, and I made a desperate effort for several minutes to mark their sign as well. What did I know? I was still a child. Between the passing time and the absence of explanations, I was growing impatient and moody and it was only my mother’s good sense and firm grip which kept me silent long enough for the trolls to cross the horizon.

“They see us,” Mr Sadiqi declared calmly. The figures were small yet, and hard to spy.

“Yep,” the Mister replied.

“They’re nervous,” Mr Sadiqi cautioned, “and they’re not as stupid as they look.” He was careful to sound like he was speaking for his own benefit.

“Stupid enough,” the Mister rebuked. “And the distance is good. I’m in no hurry.”

Over the next quarter hour, Auntie Vaunda would be the last to spot the trolls and was unable to restrain herself from making imaginative and inaccurate descriptions to Momma who made little reply other than to find my hand and grip it tightly. I meanwhile, was beginning to discern their shape.

I have named the creatures trolls because I am the inheritor of two thousand years of western history, and the zoological traditions of mythology have frustrated the good efforts of common society to fix upon a single definitive title for their monstrous genus. For example, you and I are prepared to understand that a troll is an anthropoid large in size, with mean manners and ugly in countenance. Just the same way, I might conjure the impression of a goblin with the same words excepting to his stature, which consensus calls small. An ogre likewise is not much different than our troll, though whether larger or smaller, I’ve heard presumptions either way. You get the picture, whether it’s orcs or kobolds, gremlins, imps or bugbears, we’ve devised a hundred sound means to call the same sorry animal. The only good reason to choose troll out of all of them, is on account of the short one having been nine foot in height, and the other ugly son-of-a-mutt standing at ten.

“My God,” Mr Sadiqi scratched at his nape in discomfort. “Look at them. They must nearly be twenty.”

“Hm,” the Mister grunted, lifting Fortitude and settling the butt against his shoulder. He seemed dissatisfied with its positioning and readjusted. He did so again.

Mr. Sadiqi stepped away from the Mister and waved me forward, so I pulled my hand free from Momma and followed. He leaned close and pointed out across the fields. His voice kept low.

“You see there, now,” he said, “that’s about as big as they get.”

I nodded, watching the trolls as they stalked towards the herd. There were yet a half league out from us, but easterly and moving west. I saw them set a predator’s casual jogging pace, the sort which presents leisurely in its physiology, but eats up distance in a way which induces your heart to anxiety. As they moved towards their prey, they would make a token effort to hide behind automotive corpses, or tumbles of bricks, or tangles of wild grasses, but they made no pretenses for our benefit. They stared back at us with wide flat-toothed grins, as if daring us to ride out and meet them.

“They keep growing taller,” Mr Sadiqi continued, “I’ve heard it said they might even grow forever. But here they’ve only had twenty years to do it, so that there is just about the limit of what to expect. You notice how skinny their arms and legs are? Like scarecrows. That means they’re starving, but they keep growing anyway, which in turn just makes ‘em hungrier, and that’s likely made ‘em half mad and half dead.”

I nodded again, eager to please him, eager to listen and learn. Like most any boy, I wanted to be a man; and at that time, being a man meant knowing how to fight monsters.

Their skin was sallow gray, and they had dark tufts of hair on their forearms, and on the back of their heads, and at their groins. They were naked as the breeze, which would have been obscene, but neither presented any signs which would attribute them a sex. Their noses were smashed flat to their face and their mouths were too wide, and their knuckles were heavy and muscled and cruel. But despite their ugliness, those trolls looked near enough to human that I could cross my eyes and call them cousin.

I shuddered.

The Mister had clambered down from his mount. I assume he had realized his shot had been untenable from horse-top. It would have galled him to reveal to us his limits, but he would not have borne the effect of being seen to miss either. He dropped to one knee in the dust, growling in frustration as he raised Fortitude and held his cheek close to the breech. Then he lined up one eye to the sights and took a controlled breath.

I should have had the sense to cover my ears. Then again, Mister would have cost himself nothing to warn us. His weapon was the crack of thunder and a kiss of white smoke. The lever worked to spit a brass casing spinning into the air, and he rolled a second bullet from his palm and into the breech before my ears had the thought to start ringing.

Mister set the action fast as he took aim again, which I almost plugged my ears in time for. Crack! Recurred the rifle.

The distance was far enough that Mister hoisted up off his kneeling before the first bullet even struck. It took its admittance through one side of the larger troll’s skull and made its exit out the opposite. It crumpled mid stride as blue mess spattered out onto the dirt.

The other troll skidded to a halt. Dumbfounded it regarded its companion just long enough for the second round to punch through its hip and knock it spinning on its heel.

“Blessed be Diana,” Auntie Vaunda spoke in awe.

Momma and Mr. Sadiqi shook off their surprise and clasped their hands in prayer. “Blessed be Diana,” they echoed with reverence.

I opened my mouth to join them, but then I stopped. The Mister and I met each others eyes. I expected him to be angry, but instead he looked baffled. Then he cleared his throat in embarrassment and turned away.