Laelia felt Zote’s eyes burning into her skin as he watched her from the dark corner of his cave. Quietly he shuffled over to pick up the ripe red fruit he had thrown away. Kicking aside the rats and mice nibbling on the fruit, he gathered what was left of the scraps and again offered the morsels. As he handed her the fruit, she was aware of his enormous hands with yellow nails so long that they curled. His hands were filthy and rats had left their saliva all over the food. Stepping away, she was surprised by her own behavior. It was evident she either had to eat or starve. Reluctantly, she accepted the fruit, knowing she must eat to stay strong. Zote again retreated to a darkened corner of the chamber to rest on his tail.

  Carefully she selected only pieces of fruit the mice and rats had not recently chewed on. The sweet fruit melted in her mouth. Rats nibbled on her toes, waiting for her to throw morsels to them. Laelia kicked at the larger rats. She thought the rats as gruesome as their keeper.

  Unaware of how long she had lain unconscious, she tried to piece together her memories, all the while, keeping her eyes downward, afraid to look up. The thought of what she might see should she look directly into the crevices of the cave terrified her.

  However, not one to give up, Laelia gathered her courage. Her lavender eyes, alert and beautiful, studied the cavern. Its rocky walls riddled with fissures oozed an oily tar, black like Zote’s eyes. She realized that the sweet perfume lingering in the cave’s dense air was a vapor emanating from the fissures.

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  Dug into the tunnel’s stone walls were vertical tombs. Snugly held in each tomb’s niche was a body. Gray, mummified trolls, some wrapped in animal skins, stood at attention in their coffins of stone. Their lifeless eyes in empty sockets stared back at her. One of the troll’s eyes flickered with life. Fearing it would look directly at her, she instantly looked away.

  Sickening waves of fear squeezed Laelia’s heart. Zote’s home, her prison, was a catacomb. As a very young troll, she heard tales of underground tombs, a cemetery for the burial of dead trolls. The stories told of a giant troll who was the keeper of the catacombs. Within his cavern, he mummified their bodies. Some he left in tombs carved into the cave’s walls; others he carried to a sacred cave. Oil trolls, accompanied by their evil moon, collected mummies from the sacred cave. They traveled into the land of white sand to bury the bodies. She thought these were tales meant to scare young trolls, never dreaming such a place as this existed.

  Nearly faint from agonizing over why this bog troll brought her to his cave of catacombs, Laelia’s senses also struggled with the cave’s odors. Dense as smoke, the cave was saturated with a sweet fragrance and yet reeked with the cloying smell of death.

  Zote, in his clumsy manner, came out of his corner and took hold of her arm. As he led Laelia back to the cage, she walked meekly by his side. Except for the delicate protests from the chiming gold bracelets on her slender arm, all was silent. She felt safe in the cage made of twisted willow. Its strong branches separated her from Zote and his mummies.

  Laelia pulled the dirty skins under her chin and shuddered. Would she be buried alive in a deep pit within planet Ode? She feared Zote had a tomb prepared for her. Her only defense was to curl into a safe circle and let her mind escape into sleep.