Free Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo Page A

a contraceptive pill for fleas, it won’t kill the bugs, just prevent their eggs from hatching.” I give a silly laugh.
At the other end of the line there’s a long silence. Then I hear Angel’s voice.
“Thank you.”
Then again he’s silent for a long time.
“I don’t understand why you’re . . . telling me all this.”
“No reason.” It’s my turn to pause. Our conversation’s full of black holes that whole universes would fit into. Then I manage to say it:
“By the way, have you found out what trolls eat yet?”

ANGEL
    When I bought a disposable syringe at the pharmacy, they looked at me as if I were a heroin addict.

LEEA VIRTANEN (ED.), THE STOLEN GRANDMOTHER AND OTHER URBAN LEGENDS , 1987
In the Tapanila district of Helsinki, a neigborhood of detached single-family homes, a mother had put her infant of less than one in its baby carriage for a nap. She pushed the carriage into the garden and kept an eye on it through the window, going out every now and then to see how the child was.
She began preparing food in the kitchen and, for a moment, forgot to check on the baby. Then the sound of her child crying came into the kitchen, but it stopped abruptly, and the mother carried on peeling potatoes. When the soup was on the stove, she went out to bring her child inside.
She nearly fainted when she saw the baby was gone. Instead, there was an almost newborn troll youngling, wrapped up in the baby carriage’s blanket. A neighbor had seen a dark shadow slinking out of the garden. The child was never found.

ANGEL
    Oh, this amazing anthelmintic.
Just over a week’s flown by, and there haven’t even been any bad side-effects from the toxic reaction. He’s a whirlwind now—all energy and vigor—bright-eyed, bounding about here and there like quicksilver. He doesn’t seem to be suffering from being indoors—perhaps because he’s a natural cave-dweller.
Ever since Palomita fed him that cat food he’s consented to eat it occasionally, but only the same brand and not always that. Fortunately, he’s now consented to have quails’ eggs in his diet, provided I hide them around the apartment—in a large Iittala glass ashtray, or four of them making a nice little four-leaf clover-shape in a sofa cushion, or on the window sills behind the curtains. Sometimes, when I get carried away, I make little hiding places out of gloves, cardboard boxes, and coffee-pot tops and secrete them around the flat. He goes after the items, smells them, digs into them, and goes into unbounded rejoicing when he finds the treasure. And then he sits down to slurp the eggs, first cracking them neatly into two halves with his fingernails and then lapping up the contents without spilling a drop.
Of course he still has a need to hunt, but I live in hope that I won’t have to find any new pet shops. The ones I’ve been to already I can’t imagine visiting for months.
Actually, his coat’s not shiny yet—in fact it’s looking very matted and distempered. I do hope the reason isn’t the Program tablets or the anthelmintic. But I can really tell: he’s healthy and happy.

PALOMITA
    Pentti’s in a hurry. Grabbing something from the bathroom, he kicks the clothes hamper over, and the lid rolls away with a clatter. I freeze, seeing the cover of the magazine Mikael gave me gleaming through gaps in the laundry.
But he doesn’t notice, he just rushes out through the door, and I sink down on the floor, my heart in my mouth. I’ll have to find a new place for the magazine. I don’t want to throw it away, for I’ve so little that’s my own. Every page is a letter, every picture a little colored doorway out of this apartment.
I have a long think. I’ve no cupboard or drawer of my own. Though Pentti never takes a towel or sheet out of the cupboard himself, he once pulled all the things down and ordered me to put them back more neatly. Then it comes back to me how, when I was playing hiding the stone with Seppa and Miranda once, no one found