Long before there were men on Earth there was a mountain so high that its top was forever hidden in the clouds. It was called Whitehelm, and at its tip, in a tiny hollow in the black rock, was a peaceful valley.
There the mountain people lived. Trolls, they were called. They were half as tall as houses, and their skins were harder than stone.
Their king had a crown of iron and lead. In its center was the Fire Opal.
The Fire Opal came from the center of the earth. It shone with all colors, even at night, when the clouds around the mountain reflected the glow. The trolls said that their ancestors had brought it with them when they came up from the center of the earth.
One day, the old king crumbled away as old rock falls into dust, and the new prince was to be crowned. His name was Tyran Ogg.
He didn’t particularly want to be a king—he wanted to lead an expedition to explore the lands down below the mountain.
To tell the truth, he was bored with the valley too. He wanted to go to the moon. He used to look up at it on clear nights and wish he was there, because it was bleak and rocky, the kind of place that trolls love. And of course, as trolls were half stone, they could talk to rocks and mountains, so he felt sure that it would be wonderful to have a chat with the moon.
If only we could go there, he thought.
Then, just as the archbishop troll was placing the crown on his head, the Fire Opal fell out with a plop! and started to roll down the valley.
“Quick! Stop it!” cried the archbishop, and the prince and his soldiers dashed after it. It bounced and rolled and, at the very edge of the valley, stopped.
“Don’t nobody breathe,” said the sergeant of the guard, tiptoeing toward it. He reached out—and next moment all they saw were his toes, swinging on the edge. Ogbuff, the palace cook, jumped forward and grabbed at the guard’s ankles.
Prince Tyran Ogg caught the cook’s collar. Then the edge, with three weighty trolls on it, gave way. Those who dared to look saw three figures getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared into the clouds, with the Fire Opal glittering among them.
“They’ll be killed!” said someone.
“No,” said the archbishop. “Trolls can stand anything. But I don’t think they’ll be able to get up again. The Fire Opal will go on rolling until it reaches the center of the earth, where it came from.”
Down through the clouds tumbled the trolls. Ogbuff saw the ground coming toward him uncomfortably fast.
Thud! Bonk! Crash! The three trolls bounced and tumbled through the pine woods beneath Whitehelm Mountain, smashing trees and leaving large dents in the ground. Luckily, trolls are almost indestructible, so Prince Tyran only had a slight headache when he reached the bottom and crawled out of the crater he had made.
His crown of iron and lead had been knocked over his eyes, and he stumbled around for a while, wrenching at it. Then he found the sergeant of the guard, hanging by his heels from a tall tree.
They discovered Ogbuff the cook sitting up to his ears in a pond, blowing bubbles.
But no one found the Fire Opal.
“I thought it bounced over that way,” said the sergeant, pointing toward a thick forest. They were still quite high up, and the countryside was spread out like a map before them.
Prince Tyran peered up through the clouds around Whitehelm and shivered. “Now we’re here we’d better go after it,” he said. “I don’t think a troll has been this far down since we came from the center of the earth. Come on.”
They tramped gloomily through the dark wood, three shadows against the trees. Their great heavy feet boomed like drums.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
It started to grow dark, and a big orange moon rose above the forest. The prince gazed up at it, his dreams still filling his head.
Ogbuff was the last in the line, trying to look all ways at once. After a while he began to hear things. There were the trolls’ footfalls—and something else. Tramp, tramp, tramp. Tramp, tramp, tramp, thud! Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, thud! Thud!
“Argh!” he cried, and cannoned forward into the sergeant, who tripped up and fell onto Prince Tyran. “There’s something behind us!”
“Good evening!” said a voice that seemed to come from very high up.
The prince peered up and saw a tall shape. It looked very much like a pine tree, until he got used to the light and saw that what he thought were pine needles were really whiskers around a gnarled face. “Don’t you know your history?” he said to Ogbuff, who was trying to burrow in the leaf mold. “It’s a wood troll, a dryad. They’re practically related to us.”
“I’m sorry I startled your fat friend,” said the dryad in a voice like branches creaking in a high wind. “My name is Arcantrellhyrodollomenemon. I saw you land.”
“We didn’t see you,” said Tyran. “I’m Tyran, prince of Whitehelm, and this is Ogbuff, and this is the sergeant of the guard.”
“I know the sergeant,” said the dryad. “He landed upside down in my beard. You thought I was a tree, I think. Are you by any chance looking for a large shiny object?”
“Yes!” said Tyran. “Have you found it?”
“A large shiny thing dropped through my roof just before you landed,” said the dryad. “We can’t have this, you know, damaging people’s property. . . .”
“It’s the Fire Opal from my crown,” said Tyran. “Have you still got it?”
The dryad scratched his beard with a noise like distant thunder. “Well now,” he said. “A funny thing, it bounced out of the door and rolled down the valley.”
“Which way? Which way!” chorused the trolls.
The dryad pointed, and as they hurried off they heard him call, “Don’t damage any trees! I’ll tell my relatives down the valley to look out for you!”
“What’s he worried about trees for?” puffed Ogbuff as they pounded over the pine needles.
“He’s half a tree himself,” said Prince Tyran. “The dryads herd trees like cattle, and they can talk to them, like we talk to rocks.”
As the three trolls hurried after the opal, creaking noises sounded from the forest around them, and once or twice they saw eyes high up in the trees. The dryads were taking no chances of having their precious trees harmed.
Eventually they came to a place where two paths crossed. “I wonder which way it went?” said Tyran.
What looked like a perfectly ordinary tree stretched out a branch to point and said, “That way!”
“Thank you!” said the prince.
They were very glad to get out of the forest just as the sun was rising. Ahead of them were soggy green meadows, pierced with tall rushes, and in the middle of the valley was a wide brown river.
“I say, you people!” bellowed a voice from out in the middle of the water.
“It’s a water nymph,” said Tyran.
“Um,” said the sergeant. “I always thought they were—well, girls, with long hair and that sort of thing.”*
Indeed, the nymph was nothing like that. His head and shoulders and beard were all rush green, and he held a stem of mace in one hand. In the other was a fish, which he bashed around in the water to attract their attention.
“You stone people!” he bellowed. “Come here!”
Tyran and the others splashed out to the nymph. He smelled of riverbanks.
“Are you looking for a large shiny pebble?” he said.
“That shiny pebble is really our Fire Opal,” said Prince Tyran. “Have you got it?”
“It bounced straight into my private pool, nearly knocking me over,” said the nymph angrily. “I don’t know where it is now—it rolled on down the river, I suppose.”
“Look, it’s very important to us,” explained Tyran. “We’ve been following it all day. It’s our Crown Jewel, you see.”
“In that case I might be able to find it,” said the nymph. He squinted at them. “I suppose you’re the kind of people who have to breathe air all the time?”
“We’re stone trolls,” said Tyran proudly. “We can hold our breaths under molten rocks if necessary.”
“Hmph,” said the nymph, and dived, shouting, “Follow me!”
Tyran, Ogbuff, and the sergeant tramped along the riverbed after the nymph—trolls can’t swim; they’re much too heavy.
The water nymph told them he was in fact Icon, the king of the river. Every now and again he stopped to speak to the fish which swam around him like an army. The water was chilly and full of these fish, which swam round and round the trolls with uncomfortably hungry expressions.
“This river must be our own Trollwash,” said the sergeant in a cloud of bubbles, and they all thought of the little stream that ran out of the mountain.
When Icon finally swam up to the surface again the trolls all tramped up the bank until their heads poked out of the water like rocks.
“The current’s rolling it on down to the sea,” said Icon. “Was it very valuable?”
They all nodded gloomily.
“It’s very big, the sea,” said Iron. “It goes all around the world. There’s caves at the bottom of it, deeper than that mountain you live on.” He saw their glum expressions. “Look here,” he added quickly, for he was a kindly soul, “I’ve got a friend who lives in the sea, salty sort but nice chap. Sea troll, you know. Tell you what, we’ll go and see him.”
All that day the trolls followed the river king down his river until the water got saltier and saltier, and the fish got bigger and the surface above them got greener.
“I can’t come any farther because of the salt,” said Icon. “But just you walk ashore and I’ll call him.”
The trolls clomped onto a lonely beach, noisy with surf and seagulls. Icon put his hands together and gave a long deep call. Nothing happened for a while, and then something started happening in the sea.
The sea bubbled and hissed and suddenly, with a snort that silenced the seagulls, a large sad head bobbed up. It was blue and covered in scales, with a crown of brown seaweed tilted over one ear.
Icon cupped his hands together and called, “These stone trolls are looking for their Fire Opal. Have you seen it?”
The head nodded.
“Off you go,” hissed Icon. “He doesn’t say much, but he’s a decent chap at heart.”
The trolls said their thank-yous to Icon, then waded awkwardly out through the surf until it closed over their heads. You might think it is quiet under the sea, but it is very noisy; they heard the roar of the tide and the clanging of bells in drowned churches far away, the swirl of water over rock and the sound of fish.
The sea troll swam slowly toward them. “Come with me!” he boomed, in cloud of bubbles.
“It’s rotten cold,” said Ogbuff, shivering. “And wet,” he added.
“My feet ache,” moaned the sergeant.
“Not far,” said the sea troll.
He led them down past sunken wrecks and goggle-eyed fish, while the water around them got greener and greener. Finally he stopped at a deep crevasse in the seabed.
“Went down there,” he bubbled, then he blinked slowly at them and started to swim away.
“Hey!” said Prince Tyran, but he was gone.
“It’s dark down there,” said the sergeant dubiously.
“Deadly dangerous, probably octopuses, you know, and sharks,” added Ogbuff.
“Cowards!” said Tyran, and jumped into the crevasse. He sank for a long time, past dark fish with lights on their snouts and luminous teeth, until he landed with a slight bump on a round rock. He groped around in the dark; there was a slight click! and the dark shadows were lit by a blue glow.
It was the Fire Opal!
Prince Tyran had landed on one of the giant oysters that live in the deep, and it had swallowed the opal. He could see it inside the gaping shell, next to a big pearl.
Ogbuff and the sergeant floated slowly down into the glow.
“We thought we’d have to follow to make sure you weren’t being eaten by sharks,” explained Ogbuff.
“Look at this!” said Tyran. The trolls clustered round the oyster and stared. Within the shell, the beautiful gemstone shone with a translucent splendor that seemed to reflect the beauty of the sea around it. By its side the pearl looked almost dull.
“You know, I think it’s still trying to get to the center of the earth . . . ,” began Ogbuff, but Tyran wasn’t listening.
He reached carefully into the oyster and grabbed the opal. But he nudged the pearl—and there was a snap! and the opal went flying out of the shell and rolled away behind some rocks. Tyran’s arm was caught in the shell, but the skin of a stone troll is very hard and strong, and after he thumped the oyster a couple of times it let go. After all, he hadn’t been trying to take its pearl away so the oyster didn’t mind too much.
Meanwhile Ogbuff had followed the opal behind the rocks. He found a cave there. It led downward.
“My feet really do ache,” moaned the sergeant.
The Fire Opal rolled on down through one cave after another with the three trolls in hot pursuit. They bounced down great tunnels and leaped rivers of molten lava, scurried through caverns glittering with diamonds and garnets—and all the time the Fire Opal was just out of reach, tumbling steadily onward to the center of the earth.
Ogbuff was puffing along behind the other two when they suddenly disappeared. He didn’t have time to stop before he too had blundered over the edge of a deep hole.
He landed in a river of molten rock—there’s a lot of that toward the center of the earth. But trolls are almost indestructible, so to Ogbuff it was like floating in warm treacle. The swift current carried the cook on. Bobbing ahead were Prince Tyran and the sergeant, across underground planes of boiling mud and steam. It was pleasantly warm.
This must be where we trolls originally came from, Prince Tyran thought. It’s nice. Great pools of sizzling metal roared and gushed around him as he drifted peacefully.
After a while the trolls heard a distant squeaking noise. They looked up—and this is what they saw.
They were really floating about on the inside of a large circular cave—it was as though the center of the earth was a great round room and they were on one of the walls.
In the middle of the round space, a large creature sat turning a handle. There were a lot of cogwheels round the handle and a long thick axle that disappeared into the floor. The axle turned slowly on a large ball bearing, but the ball bearing was the Fire Opal, now glowing with a bright-blue light.
“Is this yours?” said the creature who was turning the handle. He peered at them through the mist.
“Er—yes, sir,” said Tyran.
“You’re trolls, aren’t you? It was trolls who took the bearing away—centuries ago, you know. They came right down here, took one look at the ball bearing, and picked it up.” He pointed at the Fire Opal, now blushing all the colors of the rainbow. “It’s very difficult, you know, keeping the world turning without it. It squeaks and shakes, and needs oil.”
“How long have you been turning that handle?” asked the sergeant breathlessly.
“It’s a family tradition. I’m Gravendersop the 1045th.”
“The Fire Opal has been the crown jewel in our crown for centuries,” said Tyran. “We’d be lost without it.”
“We followed it all day from our mountain,” said Ogbuff.
“At great expense of our feet,” added the sergeant.
“Well, perhaps we can come to some agreement,” said Gravendersop the 1045th.
“For the opal we’ll give you—um—a ton of gold,” said the prince.
Gravendersop the 1045th went on operating the world-turning handle with one hand and rubbed his nose with the other. “There’s lots of gold here at the center of the earth,” he said at last. “Only it’s better when you get near the surface. It’s brighter.”
“How about diamonds and emeralds?” asked the sergeant.
“No thank you. They grow like weeds down here.”
The trolls huddled together and whispered among themselves.
“Well, what do you want for the opal?” said Tyran at last.
“I’ve been turning the world round ever since my father—Gravendersop the 1044th—passed away,” said Gravendersop. “I’ll give you the opal if you’ll do my turning for me for five minutes while I take a break, then find a suitable rock to take its place.”
The trolls agreed and climbed up the machinery to the handle. It took the three of them to turn it, while Gravendersop sat down beside them and lit his pipe.
“Phew, this is hard work,” gasped Ogbuff.
“Don’t slow down,” said Gravendersop. “If you do the world will stop, there’ll be earthquakes and floods, and everyone will be flung off into outer space.”
“The five minutes are nearly up,” panted Tyran Ogg.
“Well now,” said Gravendersop, “I don’t think I want to start turning the world again or go and hunt for another stone. I think I’ll have a little holiday. . . .”
“Here, come back—” began the trolls as he started to walk away. Gravendersop had cheated them!
For a moment they let go of the handle—
—And the world stopped.
There was a click from the machinery, the Fire Opal bounced out, and the trolls were whirled away on a great gust of wind. There was nothing they could do about it.
They heard Gravendersop yelling at them as they bounced past him, but they could not stop as they were hurled away through the tunnels. Faster and faster they went, spinning in the wind until they shot out of the ground like bullets.
In the distance they could see Whitehelm Mountain, but it was moving. Everything was spinning off the earth now that it had stopped, and with a crash the mountain rose like a rocket. The trolls went too, up through the clouds and away from Earth.
It seemed to Tyran Ogg that he was roaring through space for days before he landed upside down in a heap of dust. He crawled out spluttering.
In front of him lay a wide valley of white ash, full of craters. In the distance he saw a line of jagged mountains, and above them, hanging in a skyful of stars, was the earth.
He was on the moon! His dream had finally come true.
A moment later the mountains landed with a thud, bouncing trolls all over the place, and the Fire Opal smashed into some rocks.
None of the trolls were hurt, of course, because they are almost indestructible. There’s no water or air on the moon, but that didn’t bother them, because they only breathed when they felt like it. The first thing they did was put the Fire Opal back in Tyran Ogg’s crown and proclaim him king of the moon, which, because it was so rocky, was a real paradise for them.
They never found out what happened to Gravendersop the 1045th, but since the world is going round he must still be turning the handle.
Or maybe now it is Gravendersop the 1046th . . . ?