"Slug, Wart, Belch . . ." The Queen enjoys the names she gives us. She has to suppress a grin, inappropriate to the occasion of sending forth her Tax Trains.

After roll call, twenty-one trolls bow ponderously and prepare to turn massively away from the face of the Most High Indwelt of the Supreme Trait, Her Sovereign Ilf Majesty.


"Not you, Botch."

What does she want with me? Her attention is perilous. We trolls are pulled from the clay banks of the Syxis and twisted into clay life by her power. This is her Trait, and she has more of it than any other Ilf. That’s why she’s Queen. She can untwist us back into dust, too.

She steps all the way around me, saying nothing.

Queenie--I feel free to call her that in my mind, the only place words can move, since I have no mouth, just a place where I open to Swallow--Queenie summons me for Swallowing jobs more than any other troll. She also watches me more.

Surely she can’t have discovered that I know more of words than the rest of my kind. I hide the books I sneak from her dusty, unused library inside the clay flesh of my belly, where even she cannot see. I don’t know why I’m the only troll able to learn letters and understand more words than my name and Queenie’s orders: Come, Go, Stay, Smash, Swallow. I’ve watched her make other trolls, and I think I spent extra time in the storm of her power. Maybe she slipped up with me.

She makes us each with a black, black hole inside. When I Swallow, it feels as if I open out, then close on whatever--or whomever--she has commanded me to Swallow. And they go Elsewhere.

"All right, Botch. Go."

A Tax Train is waiting beyond the gate: an Ilf captain, guards, functionaries, a long string of saddle and packhorses. I hate Tax Train. Queenie’s Law: They pay or I Swallow, no exemptions.

We crest the green Elder Hills and descend into the West Reaches. The earth becomes more and more bare until the rock and clay stand forth. The land here is like me, flesh of my flesh.

The Ilfi, Banshhhh, and Mortals here are miners, wailers, and dryland framers. None fails to pay Tax.

The Ilf miners are cheerful, joking with their fellow Ilf guards. They turn over a third of their gold, copper, silver, sapphires, rubies. They have plenty, even after they’ve traded with caravans for barrels of nectar and sweet wine.

The Banshhhh are surly, but they wail up winds that our Windsmith traps in iron pots. Queenie will deploy them to harry her enemies.

The Mortal farmers are the ones I like. They have a song about being made out of mud. I am made out of mud. I feel happy among the mortals.

I fear for them, too, because Queenie’s command made my flesh and my flesh is bound to her command: Collect or Swallow. Trolls don’t speak, breathe, bleed, breed, feed--or choose.

Last turn, Mortal harvests were bad, and I can see it has been another bad season. They are required to leave the standing stalks until the Tax has been gathered, just as they are required to have their large clay corn or bean jars counted and sealed after harvest by the Ilf sheriff. The stalks are fewer than they should be, and shorter. The ground is dry and cracked.

The first few farm families pay, though one gaunt wife weeps the whole time, clutching her two thin children. But better to weep than be Swallowed. Then we come to Mikkel’s farm. I like Mikkel. He sings the mud song and laughs, and he always offers me beer, even though he knows I don’t drink or eat. The Ilf guards take his beer readily enough. There’s no beer this turn.

"I have no Tax. We have eaten all, and now we starve." Mikkel simply stands in the dust. His wife and child are nowhere to be seen. He knows he will die, and he has sent them away. The Ilf captain and I stomp down into his storepit. We see that only three jars were sealed, and all have been opened and stand empty.

Mikkel’s words shiver in me. That means he’s lying--it seems that words and truth quarrel if they are at odds, and something in my power-twisted flesh feels it. I cannot tell the Ilf captain because I cannot speak. For the first time, I am glad to be mute.

What has Mikkel done that he is willing to lie and die for? Has he hidden enough to feed his family after he is gone?

We all three know what the captain must now order. "Botch, Swallow."

I fight the power that is opening my jaw, opening the black not-space within me. I fight until it bursts and I feel I am splitting. I feel Mikkel’s cry inside me. I will not close on him. I will not. I keep opening until . . .

"Botch! Here!" I fall toward Mikkel’s voice. I am not Elsewhere, and I am not Not. Mikkel is laughing, weeping.

We are in a cave with three corn or bean jars, a jar of hard-gathered pine-nut oil, strings of drying thornpads, a few fist-size jars of beer, and Mikkel’s small daughter and wife. I see by her belly why Mikkel was so desperate: if she starves, she and the baby will die a-birthing.

"What did you do, Botch? I am . . . alive!"

I shake my head. Even if I could speak, I could not explain. I Swallowed more than I knew how to do, and we have not come out nowhere. We have come out where Mikkel’s heart is.

"Come on, Botch. Here." He thrusts a beer jar into my hand. Trolls don’t drink because we are sustained by power. But what will happen if I Swallow this beer?

I decide to find out.