Free Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

wasn’t there yet.
    “I’m going to eat your life, Jack,” said the troll.
    I stared the troll in the face. “My big sister is going to be coming down the path soon,” I lied, “and she’s far tastier than me. Eat her instead.”
    The troll sniffed the air, and smiled. “You’re all alone,” he said. “There’s nothing else on the path. Nothing at all.” Then he leaned down, and ran his fingers over me: it felt like butterflies were brushing my face—like the touch of a blind person. Then he snuffled his fingers, and shook his huge head. “You don’t have a big sister. You’ve only a younger sister, and she’s at her friend’s today.”
    “Can you tell all that from smell?” I asked, amazed.
    “Trolls can smell the rainbows, trolls can smell the stars,” it whispered sadly. “Trolls can smell the dreams you dreamed before you were ever born. Come close to me and I’ll eat your life.”
    “I’ve got precious stones in my pocket,” I told the troll. “Take them, not me. Look.” I showed him the lava jewel rocks I had found earlier.
    “Clinker,” said the troll. “The discarded refuse of steam trains. Of no value to me.”
    He opened his mouth wide. Sharp teeth. Breath that smelled of leaf mold and the underneaths of things. “Eat. Now.”
    He became more and more solid to me, more and more real; and the world outside became flatter, began to fade.
    “Wait.” I dug my feet into the damp earth beneath the bridge, wiggled my toes, held on tightly to the real world. I stared into his big eyes. “You don’t want to eat my life. Not yet. I—I’m only seven. I haven’t lived at all yet. There are books I haven’t read yet. I’ve never been on an airplane. I can’t whistle yet—not really. Why don’t you let me go? When I’m older and bigger and more of a meal I’ll come back to you.” The troll stared at me with eyes like headlamps.
    Then it nodded.
    “When you come back, then,” it said. And it smiled.
    I turned around and walked back down the silent straight path where the railway lines had once been.
    After a while I began to run.
    I pounded down the track in the green light, puffing and blowing, until I felt a stabbing ache beneath my ribcage, the pain of stitch; and, clutching my side, I stumbled home.
    The fields started to go, as I grew older. One by one, row by row, houses sprang up with roads named after wildflowers and respectable authors. Our home—an aging, tattered Victorian house—was sold, and torn down; new houses covered the garden.
    They built houses everywhere.
    I once got lost in the new housing estate that covered two meadows I had once known every inch of. I didn’t mind too much that the fields were going, though. The old manor house was bought by a multinational, and the grounds became more houses.
    It was eight years before I returned to the old railway line, and when I did, I was not alone.
    I was fifteen; I’d changed schools twice in that time. Her name was Louise, and she was my first love.
    I loved her gray eyes, and her fine light brown hair, and her gawky way of walking (like a fawn just learning to walk which sounds really dumb, for which I apologize): I saw her chewing gum, when I was thirteen, and I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.
    The main trouble with being in love with Louise was that we were best friends, and we were both going out with other people.
    I’d never told her I loved her, or even that I fancied her. We were buddies.
    I’d been at her house that evening: we sat in her room and played Rattus Norvegicus, the first Stranglers LP. It was the beginning of punk, and everything seemed so exciting: the possibilities, in music as in everything else, were endless. Eventually it was time for me to go home, and she decided to accompany me. We held hands, innocently, just pals, and we strolled the ten-minute walk to my house.
    The moon was bright, and the world was visible and colorless, and the night was warm.
    We got to my house.