Free Trollhunters by Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus Page A

lean-tos offered up strange works of art: foreboding crests printed on rawhide, stones polished so that they glowed as if lit from within, bizarre
periscopes and outlandish metronomes and other devices. Steam billowed from shop fronts where glowing metal rods were hammered into shape. Cauldrons of mysterious goo were stirred and poured into
crude wooden bowls. And everywhere there was bartering: misshapen coins going from tentacle to paw, satchels of croaking frogs traded for jars of lightning bugs, and seemingly indistinguishable
rocks scrutinized through a magnifying glass and set upon scales before their cautious exchange.
    Crawling, stomping, and slinking through this demented metropolis was a pageant of beasts of indescribable variety. The first to notice me was a trio of ten-foot behemoths pulling behind them
the remains of a car frame with every square inch wrapped in Christmas lights. The three trolls were of alarming complexion, sported gray beards down to their knees, and were identical aside from
the pattern of their scars. Actually, there was one more difference: only one of them had an eye, a bulging sphere that flicked around with birdlike sensitivity. The cyclops saw me and held up an
arm to halt his companions, each of whom had a single empty eye socket. When the eyeless ones began to yammer unhappily, he removed the eye, which looked wrinkled and dry, and handed it to the left
one, who stuffed it into his own socket. In this slow fashion, they each took a turn staring.
    I stood up, dripping sewage. I could dash past them, but was I safer right here?
    From somewhere nearby came the earsplitting answer. It was ARRRGH!!!.
    I raced at the left troll, currently eyeless, and though he swiped an arm in my direction, I ducked beneath it and found myself barreling down a main avenue. Suddenly there were trolls on every
side of me, their bizarre anatomies brushing across my skin. Some were gargantuan, and I dove between their legs. Others were less than a foot high and scurried about like vermin, clambering over
one another and rattling tiny shields and sabers. Some wore threadbare capes and tattered gowns complete with frayed insignias. Others wore makeshift tunics of thistledown and thornbush. Most,
though, were naked, and I saw them as a blur of colors: jet black, burnished bronze, pink as tongue, red as blood.
    Bursting from the crowd, I found myself inches from a butcher counter. I collided with it. Carcasses swung wildly. A noseless, cross-eyed troll wearing a dirty apron and holding a rusty butcher
knife bellowed in outrage. I backpedaled into a mass of hungry customers, who at last had time to notice the human invader in their midst. Deafening foghorn bellows were joined by high-pitched
snarls and resounding grumbles. Answering their call, from two aisles over, was ARRRGH!!!.
    Pelted arms and scaled hands and chilly tentacles tried to hold me in place, but I wriggled free, rolled beneath the butcher counter, and shot out into a side alley, cutting through a family of
pudgy blue trolls with skeleton wings that flapped in agitation. A six-foot mass of yellow hair—which, oddly, was topped with a pair of lit candles—slumped down the alley toting a
pig’s head on a stick, which I assumed was a kind of scepter before I saw him nibble on it. It was a snack. I veered away and came upon a line of crude wheelbarrows filled with goods. I
skittered aside and butted into a troll so withered his ribs poked out from his flesh, each one adorned with bejeweled rings that jangled like a tambourine as he squabbled his dissatisfaction to a
troll resembling a giant, armless worm. There was a gash in the worm’s stomach, and I thought it was a stab wound until four smaller worms poked their heads out of the marsupial pocket.
    Both trolls halted their argument and looked at me.
    “Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “It looks good. Really. I wish I had my wallet.”
    It did
not
look good. The wheelbarrow was