Just Remember - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Jesse packed the few things he had left that hadn't been smashed by the giant, and left the next day. He walked and walked, looking for a good place to live. Sometimes he stopped to help a farmer cut wood for the winter, or harvest some oats, but he didn't stay long. He didn't want anyone to have to take care of him, and he couldn't find anyplace that felt like home.

The next year Shiz found Jesse living in a cave on the side of a mountain. It was a lonely place, but there were plenty of animals to hunt in the forest, and he was warm and safe, even if the mountain did seem to rumble in the middle of the night sometimes.

“So, you've decided to live like your parents at last,” Shiz told the boy. “Robbers always live in caves, but you're not a very smart thief. You've got to choose a cave closer to people so you can steal from them.”

Jesse didn't even listen to the wizard. “Would you like some rabbit stew?” he offered politely, not because he liked Shiz, but because it was his habit to be nice.

“Rabbit stew!” yelled the wizard. “Rabbit stew? When you have all those cows on the other side of the mountain just waiting for you to eat them? What's wrong with you, boy? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of brave hero? Are you scared of stealing a little meat from the troll who keeps those cows? He isn't that big. I should think a great hero like you would want to free those cows so their owners could come and take them back.”

The next morning, Jesse asked Emer if he knew what Shiz was talking about.

“I think there is a troll who lives in a cave on the other side of this mountain, “Emer told him, “but I don't know if he stole any cows.”

Jesse wondered about the troll, and finally decided to go see for himself. Instead of hiking around the mountain, he climbed right over the top of it. From there he could see down into a pretty little valley, full of healthy looking cows.

“I wonder,” Jesse thought, “if the troll really did steal those cows? If he did, I bet their owners would be glad if I got them. They sure do look like good cows, and I bet they miss their meat, and the milk and cheese and butter they give”

Jesse sat on top of the mountain for a long time, until finally he came up with a plan.

“I'll walk over to the next town, and make sure the cows really are stolen, then I'll trick the troll and get them back,” he decided.

Jesse walked until he came to a farm. The farmer was out working in his field, so Jesse asked him if he had lost any cows?

“The troll stole them from me,” the farmer told him, “and I don't know how to get them back.”

Jesse visited all of the farmers, and each one told him the same thing. “I can help you,” he told the farmers when they gathered together to talk with him, “but you'll have to be ready to come get your cows when you hear my signal.”

“What is the signal?” the farmers wanted to know. “It needs to be something really loud so we can all hear it.”

“How about a horn?” one farmer suggested. “Some of our cows have huge horns. If you can get a cow away from the troll, you could cut off it's horn and blow that for the signal.”

Jesse thought that was a good idea, so he hiked back to the little green valley and snuck in during the middle of the night. Jesse could hear the troll's snorting snores echo out of his cave, so he knew he was asleep. Quietly he put a rope around the neck of a big old cow who had huge horns, and pulled it out of the valley, around the mountain, and tied it to a tree by his cave.

Jesse hadn't eaten anything since the day before, so by this time he was really hungry. “I'm too tired to go hunting,” he thought to himself, “and I'm going to need all my strength tomorrow when I take on that troll. I think the farmers will be so happy when they get their cows back they will want to pay me, so maybe it would be alright if I kill this big cow right now. It would make it easier to cut off his horn, and I can eat a big, juicy steak for my supper.”

As soon as the prince thought up this idea he got a funny feeling. It wasn't a nice, warm feeling in his heart, it was more like a sick feeling in his stomach.

“I'm just hungry,” he told himself, and he tried not to think about the little voice in his mind asking, “What would the King do?”

“I need to eat,” Jesse told himself instead, “and the farmers will want me to be strong tomorrow when I fight the troll.”

So Jesse killed the cow, cut off one of it's horns, then made a big fire to cook a steak for himself. As the wood crackled and the meat sizzled, he worked on the horn. He could smell the steak cooking, and it made his stomach rumble. Boy! It smelled good! But when he took it off the fire and put a big bite into his mouth, Jesse was a little disappointed. Somehow, it didn't taste as good as he'd expected, and the funny feeling in his stomach didn't go away.

When Jesse was done eating he went to work. He crawled into the back of his cave and put his ear against the dirt wall. Very faintly, he felt the mountain tremble, and he heard the snorting snores of the troll, sleeping in his cave on the other side.

Carefully and quietly Jesse began to move rocks and dirt out of the way, digging into the mountain like a gopher. The deeper he dug, the louder the snores of the troll grew, until at last Jesse pulled out a big rock and got a blast of hot troll breath and snores in his face.

“I'm through!” he thought as he quickly pushed the rock back into the hole so the troll wouldn't know what he'd done. Then Jesse waited for morning.

With the first rays of the morning sun, Jesse heard the troll stir.

“I bet he's hungry for his breakfast,” he thought.

Standing by the back wall of his tunnel, Jesse called, “Moooo, Moooo.” He knew he didn't really sound much like a cow, but he'd heard that trolls were pretty dumb, and he hoped he could fool this one.

He heard the troll stop moving, and he knew that he was listening.

“Moooo,” he called again.

“What the.....?” the troll's voice echoed through the cave. “How did a cow get in there?” Then Jesse heard the troll start digging away the dirt on his side of the cave.

“Moooo. Moooo,” Jesse called again, and he heard the troll push the big rock out of it's hole, and he saw the troll's ugly face poking out of the opening, looking for the lost cow.

You should have seen the look on the troll's face when he spied Jesse, standing off to the side of the tunnel, and you should have heard his yell when Jesse slipped his rope around the troll's head and tied him firmly to the boulders on either side of the opening.

Then Jesse ran down the tunnel, out of his cave, and grabbed the cow's horn. He blew as loud as he could. The farmers on the other side of the little green valley were listening for the signal, and as soon as they heard it they rushed into the meadow to round up their cows.

Of course, the troll had already eaten a bunch of cows, so not everyone got back all of their animals, and no one knew that Jesse had killed the big old cow the night before. But Jesse did.

After the farmers led their cows home and Jesse untied the troll - who ran away to find a different cave, one that didn't have a head-catching hole in the back of it -the farmers came to find Jesse and thank him for getting their cows back.

“Take as many cows as you want in payment,” they told him, just the way he knew they would. But Jesse said, “Thank you, but no. I don't want any more of your cows. I killed one last night, so I could get the horn, and I ate some of him. I'm sorry I did that, too. I shouldn't have killed your cow without asking.”

“That's alright,” they told him, but Jesse knew it wasn't. The sick feeling inside his stomach hadn't gone away when he filled it with food, and he knew it wasn't just from being hungry.

“You know you did something the King wouldn't have done,” the little voice in his head told him, and this time he listened.