“Yes!” Tub pleaded.

“And Friday? What happens on Friday?”

“I don’t know, man! Something about the head stone? It shows up on Friday or something?”

Jack’s shoulders raged up and down. He forced himself to back away, as if afraid he might accidentally tear us to pieces, and in a swift motion pulled his mask back over his face. With those emotionless glass eyes in place, he withdrew both swords from their scabbards, twirled them once, and held them with trembling fists. Then he leaned back and bayed like a coyote through the metallic filter of the mask. The pipes overhead buzzed and shed filaments of rust. Tub and I held our ears.

Before the shout finished echoing, Jack whirled around and decapitated a doll with his left sword and sliced the handlebars off a bike with his right. Both items toppled into the mouth of the oven. Jack did not pause to bask in this impressive feat but instead stomped across the cave, sheathed his swords, picked up the burlap sack, and marched into a side tunnel. He vanished into the darkness.

I watched the doll’s happy face melt into a disfigured blob.

Tub helped me up.

“That uncle of yours is going to kill us.”

“I know,” I said.

Tentacles enveloped our shoulders, more than we could count, each quivering suction cup attaching to our flesh painfully and pushing us forward.

“There, there, nothing but a spot of dirt. Just some good-natured roughhousing between boys, eh?” His sigh was jittery. “Goodness, this is trickier than I expected. But worry not, dwarfish brave ones. We’ll be at the training ground in three stones, no longer.”

“Three stones?” I mumbled.

“Apologies, apologies.” Blinky whisked us into the dark tunnel through which Jack had vanished. “Stones are a troll measurement of time. It’s quite literal. Three stones being the amount of time it takes an average troll to eat three stones. In other words, not long at all.”

“You eat rocks?”

“Not if it can be avoided. It’s a bitter meal for the sophisticated palette. But culinary preferences are of little consequence right now. Hurry along.”

Blinky’s eyes emitted a pale red light, just enough for us to see by. Up ahead we heard the jangling of Jack’s armor. He wasn’t waiting for us to catch up, that was for sure. What’s more, I no longer wanted to catch up. Maybe my uncle had been valiant in saving my father from a life beneath the world’s surface, but the forty-five years spent down here had twisted his mind, turned him into a madman.

I put on the breaks and held back Tub with an arm.

“Feckless little leprechauns!” Blinky cried. “Your temerity shall be the death of me! Oh, why do I allow this life of conflict to interrupt the cozy solitude of the scholar? Favor me, runt animals, by continuing on?”

“Explain,” I said. “That’s all I ask.”