The Light SO BRIGHT on Whyry Pointy Drive

The troll’s name was Gritty Mars X Tin.

Not Sandy.

Sandy suggested beaches and warm toes and castles that washed pleasantly away when the tide came in.

Gritty was what remained afterward.

Gritty Mars X Tin lived at the bend of Whyry Pointy Drive, in a house balanced on a cliff where the wind never quite stopped complaining that she was there.

There was a dragon in her living room.

A stuffed, all-seeing dragon.

Dead in the eyes.

An old snorty dragon slept beneath it.

Wet eyes, this one.

But unloved, truth be told.

Replaceable.

A dead fish floated in a glass bowl that nobody had bothered to remove.

And absolutely no garden.

Gritty was afraid of gardens.

Gardens grew things without permission.

Seeds disappeared underground and came back changed.

Vines climbed walls.

Flowers opened their faces to strangers.

Worst of all were shamrocks.

Gritty distrusted shamrocks intensely.

Three leaves pretending to be one plant.

Suspicious.

Her grandmother and grandfather had left her the house on the cliff after they died, along with several pieces of furniture, some money, and a collection of dead trees Gritty considered extremely meaningful.

She believed in dead trees.

Dead trees were dependable.

They did not bloom unexpectedly.

They did not need watering.

They did not become something else.

Dead trees could stay dead.

Soon-to-be-dead trees could be killed.

And so Gritty lived among them.

Once, long ago, she had made her money giving medicine to lesser trolls.

Sometimes the medicine worked.

Sometimes it did not.

Mostly, if failed.

She didn’t care.

Blame them.

Not her.

THE GIVER!!!

Sometimes there had never been anything wrong with the lesser troll in the first place.

Shhhhh.

DISBELIEVER!!!

But Gritty had an important-looking book and a small brass plaque beside HER door.

She also had a framed certificate hung prominently where the small trolls could see it.

SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT!

And Gritty had learned something very useful:

If you gave a frightening thing a complicated name, people often paid you to explain it.

So they paid.

Her light bill.

And Gritty climbed higher onto her rock.

She bought the house.

She bought the dragon.

She bought the other dragon.

She bought untasteful lamps.

And then one evening, Gritty Mars X Tin noticed something.

Far across the darkness, another house had turned on a light.

Gritty froze.

She stared.

A light.

Why?

She shuffled closer to the window.

Another light appeared farther down the road.

Then another.

Gritty’s heart began to beat faster.

Something was happening.

Obviously.

Lights did not simply turn on because people wanted to see.

Lights meant things.

Everything meant things.

Especially when Gritty was watching.

And Gritty was always watching.

From her cliff she could peer down upon the lesser trolls.

That was one of the advantages of a cliff.

You could look down.

Gritty enjoyed looking down.

She watched cars arrive.

Cars leave.

Doors open.

Doors close.

Dogs walk.

People talk.

Lights flicker through windows.

She gathered little scraps of other people’s lives without ever being invited into them.

Then she decided what those scraps meant.

That was another thing Gritty enjoyed.

Knowing.

Or rather, believing she knew.

The distinction had never particularly interested her.

Gritty limped quickly across the room.

Past the dragon.

Past the snorty dragon.

Past the dead fish.

She switched on the lamp beside the window.

Then the porch light.

Then the driveway light.

She stood back.

There.

Now her house was speaking too.

What was it saying?

Gritty wasn’t entirely sure.

But that hardly mattered.

Someone else had spoken first.

Therefore Gritty must answer.

She peered through the curtains.

Nothing.

She opened them an inch wider.

Still nothing.

The wind moved through the dead trees.

Gritty shivered.

She closed the curtains.

Then opened them again.

She checked the driveway.

Nobody.

She checked the road.

Nobody.

She checked the lights across the darkness.

Still glowing.

Her own light glowed back.

Good.

Gritty rubbed her hands together.

The old dragon snorted.

The stuffed dragon stared.

The dead fish continued being dead.

And somewhere beneath the cliff, the ocean had gone out.

Far, far out.

So far that the rocks below were exposed beneath the moon.

Pools of seawater remained trapped between them.

Tiny crabs moved sideways through the shallows.

Barnacles closed their little mouths.

Anemones folded themselves inward and waited patiently for the water to return.

But Gritty...

How could she be?

How could she breathe?

How was she not gasping in the airless air?

She should be dead!

Shouldn’t she?

But Gritty...

Not Sandy.

Never Sandy.

Gritty Mars X Tin.

Turned on her lights.

One.

Two.

Three.

So that the world would know!

She was still there.

The troll on the rock.

The troll at the end of Whyr Pointy Drive.

The troll with the dead-eyed dragon in her living room.

The wet-eyed dragon underneath it.

The dead trees outside.

The dead fish in its tank.

Gritty Mars X Tin left every light blazing.

She shivered behind the curtains and pressed her face toward the glass.

Watching.

Always watching.

Because Gritty believed other people were worth spying on.

Not because she admired them.

Oh no.

Gritty Mars X Tin was better than them.

She knew this because she lived on the cliff.

She had the book.

She had the plaque.

She had the certificate.

She had once been THE GIVER!!!

And from high upon her rock she could inspect the little lives below and search for evidence of all the things she already believed about them.

Gritty watched.

Hoping.

Wishing.

Praying.

For someone to stumble.

Someone to cry.

Someone to become angry.

Someone to make a mistake.

Anything.

Anything Gritty could carry back into her house, turn around in her damp little troll hands, stretch, twist, rename and retell.

Because perhaps then someone would listen to Gritty.

Perhaps then Gritty could whisper:

Do you know what I saw?

And perhaps the other trolls would gather around.

Perhaps they would gasp.

Perhaps they would finally understand how observant she was.

How knowledgeable.

How important.

So Gritty kept watching.

Dead-eyed Gritty.

Superior Gritty.

Creeping Gritty.

Waiting behind the glass for someone else to live a moment she could turn into a lie about them—

and a story about herself.