Very good point. Maybe they don’t! At any rate, as I said, I like that it’s not clear — the troll’s a bit more “alien” than we usually see them portrayed, and I like that take on it.

It’s a troll. Do trolls even have gender? If so, are their genders the same as human genders? It appears to be unclothed and I don’t see any signs of primary sexual characteristics (not that I’d expect to in a story meant to be read by children as well as adults, but if Barry wanted the troll to be clearly one gender he’d probably have put pants on it and let people assume that something was under them.)

(Is the troll female? I’m thinking of her as one, though I like that it’s a bit ambiguous.)

(Also, I love “runrunrunrunrun”…. priceless.)

If, say, Mirka’s father were a lawyer and she DID know a bit about contract law… that would make a very interesting twist in the story!

Barry is too skillful a storyteller to do that as an asspull.. If it was important to the plot that Mirka’s father was a lawyer, then he’d have told us by now, just as he told us, many times, how important knitting was to the plot

I don’t know what direction you’re coming from in this discussion (seeing as how I’m not you), but I just want to lay it out there that I’m talking about this as if it’s a hypothetical situation. Of course the troll is in charge and he does set the rules, and he can say whatever he wants. But I also think that if Mirka knew a bit about contract law, this could go differently, and I wonder how it would go. Is it possible she might know about it? If so, how much; if not, what would that do to the situation? Basically, it’s filling in the holes of a backstory and making the tapestry more complete in my mind.

I still think that it’s underhanded of the troll to talk right over top of her (of course, it is his nature), and not explaining it all at once. If he wasn’t an evil creature, he’d allow Mirka a second chance to either leave or knowingly bind the contract. But he is an evil creature.