The two boys had thrown themselves through the next archway and down a vast set of stairs as the ogre prepared for his leap. They heard him stomping, they heard his mindless yowling, they could hear his pause and his mucoid sniffing.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, the flame picked out details of things around them—the side of a house with a steep, steep roof, a house encrusted with some kind of convoluted carving.

Gregory and Brian breathlessly charged down a shoddily cobbled street. Snarth bellowed behind them as he leaped to the foot of the stairs.

“House!” screamed Gregory, and he pulled off to the left, grabbing at Brian’s sleeve as he passed him. The two scurried through the door and through the empty stone chambers within. They stood shivering in a back room that had no windows, the rumble of Snarth’s angry breath echoing in to them as he stooped before the minute doorway.

“This is great,” whispered Gregory. “Superb choice.” And then, as if swearing, he said over and over again, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Brian said, “Look. There must be other windows we can crawl out of. On another side of the house.”

Gregory nodded and stepped quickly through to another room, this one bare like the last. They went up a flight of stairs.

In the upstairs rooms, windows looked from gables and walls out to the back of the house—but they were thirty feet off the ground. Gregory leaned out of the casement and twisted around to look upward. He couldn’t see anything above them. The light from the lantern illuminated only the leering gargoyles that perched on every corner, that slithered over every lintel, that squatted on every gable of the house opposite.

Gregory crept to the front window. Below, he could see Snarth standing, his arms crossed impatiently, snorting suspiciously at the air. They could hear his breath, the whine of air through cavernous sinuses and stalagmites of snot.

They waited. The ogre hunkered down and stuck his nose through the door. He stood again, scratching his chin. He paced a few steps to the left, then changed his mind, and paced a few steps to the right.

And then, quick as lightning, he grabbed on to windows and began climbing. He heaved himself upward.

The boys stumbled back; they ran for the stairs. The ogre charged up and started fumbling his blunt fingers around in the room. They threw themselves downward, slamming into walls.

Out the front door. They ran for a side street. Snarth had his arm stuck in the window. He teetered there. Smelled them. Started to yank his arm out.

They were running through an alley. Found it led right back to Snarth’s cavern. He was thumping down the street toward them.

“There was a door on the other side of the cavern! There was a little door!” Brian screamed.

They crossed the floor of Snarth’s den. Brian was redfaced; he had fallen behind. Gregory had always been better at running. He had won the school marathon. He tugged at Brian. Brian was slow.

Snarth had reached the entrance of the cavern. He leaped.

They were crawling, stooping, and running, tripping…Gregory had found the little wooden door in the wall. “Brian!” he shouted. Brian was there at his side—Brian banged his nose on the edge of the door, his glasses fell—the ogre was right behind them—Brian gasped—but his glasses landed on his crumpled sleeve, and he grabbed them, and went around the door, and felt Gregory pull up on his collar—and he ran forward—and tripped over a stair—and the blunt fingers came scuttling up toward him—and he scrambled on hands and knees upward.

It was a spiral flight of stairs. The hairy arm shot around the bend. Brian and Gregory could hear the soft shuffling of his fingers behind them. They fell over each other, and their packs rattled wildly.

But they were far enough up that he couldn’t reach them.

They crawled on up for ages, gasping for breath, until they heard the angry cries of the ogre far below them. Then Gregory rose and unslung his pack. Brian leaned against the wall, feeling slick sweat prickle in all of his pores, feeling his body shudder at each stampeding heartbeat.

“Okay,” said Gregory, “so it wasn’t a great idea to try to get past Snarth.”

Brian didn’t respond.

“What? Are you mad at me?” said Gregory. “You’re mad at something.”

Brian just said, “We need to figure out how to get around him.”

Gregory nodded, his light hair hanging limply over his eyes, darker than usual with sweat.

He made no cracks.

They kept on ascending the staircase.

They emerged from a splintered door in an old foundation a few hours later. The foundation, lined with bulging stones, had been filled with spiky bushes and ferns in the summer. The ferns had withered, and the bushes were reduced to crackling skeletons, easy to push aside with a well-placed foot.

The two pulled themselves out of the pit and peered around them in the twilight to get their bearings. They were on the side of the mountain; the ground was steeply pitched. Tall pines crowded thickly around them on the slope, turning dark blue in the falling darkness. A late bat swung above their heads and disappeared into the top of the pines.

Gregory suggested, “We should probably make a campfire and settle down for the night. There’s no way we’ll find our way back to Uncle Max’s or Kalgrash’s in the dark. And we don’t know what’s waiting for us back at Uncle Max’s, anyway.”

“Okay,” said Brian. “Maybe we should move away from the door to the caverns, just in case someone else uses it.” He considered for a moment, staring blankly at his shoe. “We can scuff the pine needles to make sure we can find our way back in the morning. If we want to.”

“Yeah, I’m not particularly looking forward to a walk down all those stairs and another battle with Snarth, myself.”

“Yeah,” said Brian unhappily.

They set off, Brian dragging his foot determinedly to make a dark trail in the dirt. The woods were silent, save for a bit of wind that occasionally rattled branches and set pine needles rustling. Gregory shivered with the cold.

After a while, they came to another clearing. Night had definitely fallen. Many stars were out, although to one side a great bank of softly moonlit clouds obscured them. The two gathered sticks and made a fire; they had learned how during their disastrous stint as Cub Scouts. Most of the time had been spent spelling out the Pledge of Allegiance with alphabet noodles.

The fire going, they heated up some of the food that the servants had packed in their rucksacks. Then they spread out their bedrolls on either side of the flames, crawled in clumsily without taking off their overcoats (it was very chilly), and lay staring up at the sky.

Gregory looked at his friend across the flames. Then he said, “Hey. We’re risking our lives together.” He held up his fist. “This is what friends are for. Thank you.” When Brian didn’t say anything, he continued. “At least we know that normal is out of the question for us now. Suits and nine to five. Now we know we’ll have to really do something with our lives. You can go on to become a famous journalist. I’ll be the world’s first skateboarding bishop.”

Finally, Brian smiled. He said softly, “I guess once you’ve had breakfast with a troll, there’s no going back.”

Gregory nodded. He settled down in his bedroll. “Good night,” he said, and Brian answered, “Good night.”

They both curled up in their blankets, crooking their hands beneath their faces. Whenever a root or a stone became intolerable, they would rustle around until they had eased the ache. The fire dimmed. Once, Brian woke up to see a raccoon staring at the fire, but he faded back to sleep.

Above them, the stars revolved. For a time, they were not the stars of Earth. A second moon rose above the mountain. But in the deepest part of the night it faded and, by dawn, the sky was back to normal.