CLAIRE MASSEY
The Well Troll
There was once a Well Troll who liked living in his well. But we'll get to him later. First must come the Prince, because his station in life and his bossiness demand it.
The Prince was good at being bossy. When he was three he demanded that the Royal Palace be rebuilt to resemble a giant train, complete with choo choo and clickety clack sound effects. At four he demanded that the Palace be rebuilt to resemble a giant cake. And the Queen was found nibbling the stone walls in her sleep, grinding most of her teeth away. At five the Prince demanded that the Palace be rebuilt to resemble a giant horse. The servants grumbled terribly about to carry things up all the stairs. But it was only when the right foreleg collapsed that the King finally put a stop to all the re-building.
The Architect who had designed the 'Great Horse Palace' had his right leg cut off as punishment. Nobody dared mention the fact that the Prince's apartments were above the collapsed leg and that the weight of his thousands of sold gold toys may have put undue stress on that part of the building. And nobody dared mention how unfortunate it was that the Prince hadn't been in his apartments at the time of the collapse.
So the prince had grown up, fine tuned his bossiness and become accomplished at hating everything.
One morning, when the sun was still sleepy and couldn't be bothered to shine properly, the Prince was stalking through the dim forest that skirted the edge of the Palace Gardens and he came across a well. It was good timing. He had just decided that he hated his new mobile phone. He threw the phone into the well with such force that it nearly knocked the Well Troll out.
The Well Troll had been sat quite happily in his dank, mossy paradise and the intrusion of the small, plastic missile from the sky was not welcome. He rooted around in the smelly water at his feet and found the phone. It started to ring. That was too much. Its whiny wail bounced off the damp stone walls and kept smacking the Well Troll in the ears. He spat at it in disgust and threw it back out of the well.
The Prince, who had been waiting for a satisfying plop, was knocked off his feet by the flying phone; which now appeared to be made of stone. He grabbed it excitedly, he was sure it was still ringing, but it sounded like a rusty gate grating against an old stone post, somewhere far in the distance.This is brilliant, thought the Prince, anything I don't like from now on I'll chuck into my magic well and it'll be turned into stone.
Happier than he had been for years he returned to the Palace to find someone to argue with.
A lot of things ended up in the well: sausages, pillows, newspapers, a laptop, a tennis racquet, a teddy bear (which he had taken from a little girl who had got in his way), a shoe, a plate that was too small and a book entitled 'How to make friends when you really don't want to'.
And then, at last, someone did something so terrible that the Prince felt fully justified in throwing them into the well: a servant served him jam on toast without cutting it into little squares.
The Well Troll had been enjoying a nice cup of cold mud tea when he was attacked by arms and legs from the sky. He was so surprised he almost couldn't turn him to stone in time. But he managed it. Then he regretted it. The stone servant was wedged above him and no matter what the Well Troll did he couldn't get him to move.
The Prince was waiting above for delivery of his stone servant. He had decided to take him everywhere he went as an example to the other servants. He would need serveral new servants to carry him of course. But the stone servant hadn't arrived yet, tardy in his duties already, the Prince would have to him carved a little as punishment.
The Prince was getting impatient; he leaned over the well to have a look. And the North Wind may deny any part in it but it was rather a coincidence that at that moment it decided to blow in from nowhere and boot the Prince up the backside.
The Prince's fall and his nose were broken by the stone servant. He would have screamed but the Troll's magic had already landed and his voice was coated in stone.
"Why did I do that?" moaned the Well Troll. "I've no flipping self-control."
He whacked his head on the well wall. The chinking sound surprised him, there was normally just a thud. The Prince's crown had landed on the Troll's bulbous head and it seemed to be stuck. He pulled at it until he thought his head would come off but the crown wouldn't budge.
Miserable the Well Troll tried to make himself another cup of cold mud tea but there just wasn't enough room. Stone limbs were poking at him from all sides. He was going to have to move out.
Squeezing past the stone servant and the stone Prince was nightmare enough. Then the Well Troll had to find holes in the wall big enough for his lumpy fingers and toes. By the time he had climbed to the top of the well hatred and anger was spitting out of him. But it was useless. He tried again and again to fossilise the cheery green grass but without the well he had lost his power.
A servant found the Well Troll yelling and spitting at the bottom of the Palace Garden. When he saw the crown he bowed immediately, thinking that the Prince must have been turned into an ugly troll by a passing witch.
The Well Troll hurried away from the bowing servant and barged right into the gardener who immediately thought the same thing, only the Prince had such sharp elbows; the gardener bowed as low as he could.
The Well Troll ran on, getting angrier and angrier. He knocked a curtseying maid right off her feet and got entangled in the Royal washing, which she had been pegging out on the line.
The Well Troll sat in a foul tempered heap on the clean white sheets and the Prince's valet, who thought at once that this must be the Prince, as no one else could pull such awful faces, helped him to his feet.
The Well Troll had nowhere better to go so he allowed the valet to escort him to Prince's luxurious apartments. And he spent the rest of his days hating everyone and everything in the Palace; longing for his dank, mossy paradise and a good cup of cold mud tea.