The meeting melted away.
After, Sharon couldn’t remember the details of what happened at the end. It could have been the excitement of the moment. Or it could have been all the glamours and concealment spells clashing in bursts of steel-silver and emergency-blue light as their owners drew too near each other.
Someone had suggested that they all join hands and give thanks for the spirit of companionship. Someone else–probably Mr Roding–said that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Then someone else suggested that if they were going to link hands in a circle they should sing “Auld Lang Syne”–until Mrs Rafaat pointed out that singing in the presence of Sally might be considered crass.
I don’t mind, replied Sally. I enjoy the vocal range of humans.
Eventually, they’d just shaken hands and promised to contribute to the Facebook page and come back next week. Sally had detached herself from the ceiling in a single flop that somehow landed her without a sound and nervously offered a three-clawed talon from beneath her robe for Sharon to shake. The skin was arctic cold and, as Sally carefully wound her claws round Sharon’s hand, struggling not to break anything as she did, Sharon heard the rustle of wings, heard a crunching just behind her ears and tasted a thing that could only be the feather-coated splat of raw pigeon bursting in her mouth. She turned green and locked her smile into place before Sally could notice. There was a hint of a smile behind Sally’s mask and, having succeeded with what was quite possibly the first handshake of her adult life, she spun brightly on the spot and, once she’d stabilised and got her wings back under control, carefully wrote:
Thank you for your understanding and support.
Then she was in the alley round the side of the building, there was an impression of blackness against the night and the beating of wings, and she was gone.
One person remained after the meeting filed out, and while this individual was trying to be inconspicuous, there was no denying its bulk and weight as it loomed over the biscuit table.
It had waited for the last one to leave, then said, “My name is Gretel.”
Sharon looked up and then, because Gretel was standing so close, she looked up a bit further. Features blurred before her eyes; not so much through a twisting of the light, but from a twisting of the brain, as if it couldn’t process what it was trying to see. She smelled old garbage dump and chilli sauce cutting through even the muddling power of Gretel’s cloaking spell. Resolutely Sharon thrust out her hand, palm open, and exclaimed, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gretel. I’m so glad you could come to our meeting.”
The thing called Gretel hesitated, then reached out one hand, wide enough to pick Sharon up by the skull, strong enough to crush any living thing it held. Sharon’s fingers brushed a palm of grey hairs bordering on soft quills or spikes, sticky with some orange stuff. For a moment she looked and there was…
Troll didn’t do it justice.
Troll wasn’t the word.
Sure, troll was what this was: undeniably, irrefutably troll, beneath the spell. But the mere word failed to capture the breadth of back, and the thickness of black quills covering face, shoulders, arms, hands, bare feet with yellow nails inclining to claws; elbows wider than Sharon’s waist, face rounder than a blown-up beach ball, and teeth stained the colour of the rubbish dump and sharpened on a diet of ground glass. Troll didn’t capture the stink of it; the head-spinning stench of it, troll didn’t capture…
Her eyes roamed across the creature and, no, the idea of “troll” had never extended to the extra extra extra large nightgown, patterned with garlands and puppy-dogs and doubtless the last in the shop that would stretch over Gretel’s prickly form. Sharon heard herself stammer, somewhere between the haze and the smell, “I really… hope to see you next week and that you’ll find the meetings… productive and helpful.”
Their palms parted and Sharon staggered back against the table, gasping down air.
Gretel the troll shifted uneasily. The floorboards creaked underfoot as she transferred her bulk from one foot to another, like a bus driver testing his suspension before a difficult hill. Then all at once, as if there’d only be one chance to speak and this was it, Gretel said, “I really enjoyed the food that you provided, Ms Li. That was very nice of you. I like human food but no one ever serves me not even the takeaway and I try to get the leftovers but people don’t seem to like it if I hang around their restaurants so I was wondering, Ms Li, and obviously I could pay, but I was wondering if you could maybe and you don’t even need to keep the receipts but I was wondering if anyone would mind if next time you or not even you or just someone someone in the group and I should have asked but I feel so ashamed but maybe if someone in the group could bring some pizza?”