Free Horns & Wrinkles by Joseph Helgerson

ears; and, for some reason, thinning hair.
    What's more, with all that horn, he had a hard time seeing in front of himself. That meant he was constantly turning his head one way or the other to get a good look at things. Afraid that he was about to crash his horn into something, he dared not run fast enough to catch me. I found that out when a blue heron flew overhead and dropped an orange tennis shoe in my lap.
    "Give me that!" Duke squawked, lunging.
    He missed, wide.
    By then I was off and running. He was yowling, for as soon as he sprang at me, his horn acted up. The old couple tried comforting him, but he shrugged them off to chase me. I soon lost him on the back side of the island, where I plopped down against a huge cottonwood.
    There were two pages inside the shoe, the first filled with Mom's handwriting:
Claire,
    Help is on the way—I hope. A river troll by the name of Two-cents Eel-tongue visited me early this morning, which was how I found out you were gone. She's on the trail of her son, a troll named Jim Dandy, and believes he's with Duke. She promised three times to help you and Duke. An honest person probably would have only bothered to promise once, but she did at least offer to send this note. I offered her a silver dollar for your safe return. Love, Mom
    P.S. Your father and the sheriff are still searching. Don't let Duke talk you into anything.
    The second page was a note from my older sisters:
Claire,
    We put that toad of yours in the basement.
Feeding time can wait for you.
Lillie and Fran
    The toad, whose name was Three, lived in a wool sock under my bed. No word of Lottie.
    I had time enough to read the notes twice before hearing Duke crash through the underbrush. I popped the paper into my mouth and had both sheets swallowed before he sprang.
    "What was in the shoe?" he demanded, grabbing the tennie and flinging it as far over the river as he could.
    "Don't worry," I teased. "Help's coming."
    "It better not be," he said, stomping off.

Twenty-two
Counting to Two

    As soon as it got dark, we pushed off, searching for the trolls. Up the river we paddled, clinging to the shadows of the shoreline so that a barge wouldn't cream us.
    Now that the ice was off the river, there was a steady flow of barges hauling grain and coal and gravel. Barges were the reason there were so many new sandbars. For the river to be deep enough to handle them, its main channel had to be dredged constantly. The sand dug up from the bottom had to be spit somewhere, and the closest place for spitting was the riverbanks. The sandbars grew higher with each season of dredging, some rising until as tall as trees or hills or office buildings. They went on and on and could have hidden anything from a small village to a pyramid.
    We spotted the trolls' green campfire about a mile above Big Rock, on the highest sandbar yet. When we pulled into shore, Jim Dandy and Stump treated us better than royalty. Biz stood off to the side of the campfire, not yet ready to throw us kisses.
    "What did I tell you?" Jim Dandy crowed when Duke held up the minnow bucket. "What did I tell you?"
    "But how did he get them?" Biz asked, his voice squeaky but stubborn, so stubborn that he no longer thought twice about talking in front of us.
    "He stole it from a little kid," I tattled.
    "I told you he had promise," Jim Dandy boasted.
    "But did he make the kid cry?" Biz asked, not won over so easily.
    "Big tears." Duke held his hands wide apart to show their size.
    "He's lying," I told them.
    "All the better," Jim Dandy answered with a laugh. "He's one of us for sure."
    Even Biz couldn't help but smile a fraction then. Seeing that, Jim Dandy reached into the minnow bucket, pulled out a wiggling willow cat, and lobbed it over the fire to Stump. Before the shortest troll could drop the fish down his gullet, Biz recovered, saying, "Wait a minute. Let's count these screens."
    Looking worried that Biz might make him put the fish back, Stump gulped it fast. At the