Back at the lean-to, the girls were constructing chain mail from soda can pop tops, a very clever project, I thought, with proprietary pride. Then I saw Kayla's innovation. Instead of aluminum, her chain mail was made from paper gum wrappers.

She looked up, saw me, and got an impish grin. Before I could protest, she pulled a lighter and her perfume mister from her pocket. She coated her mail with Flower Power. "To peace," she said, and lit it on fire. The whole thing burnt to ashes within seconds.

I could barely see through my allergic tears.

"Kewl!" said one of the younger girls. "Can we burn ours, too?"

"I'd like a word with you, Kayla Marie," I said, and took my daughter's hand to pull her outside. I forgot how to count to ten and was well into my lecture when I heard Cookie's monstrous laugh, followed by a child's horrified scream.

"Got one!" Cookie cackled.

"Oh no!" Kayla screamed, breaking away from my grasp. She ran up the hill, toward Cookie. "Murderers!"

I didn't have to see to know we had trapped our first troll.

I was sound asleep when I heard the camp guards sound the ram's horn. I heard booted footsteps approaching my teepee, and barely managed to rouse myself before a woman in a plated copper tunic thrust her torch before my face and said, "You'd better come out. When we did the bed check, we found a few irregularities."

"What type of irregularities?" I asked, stifling a yawn.

"Well," she said, keeping her cool. "The troll has been sprung, and, uhm…"

"Go ahead," I prompted. "Tell me." How bad could it be?

"I'm really sorry to report," she said with an expression so flat I could have used it as a mouse pad, "we think your daughter did it. She and the troll are missing."

I jumped up from my bed of skins and pulled on my light mail nightie and some sandals. I preferred sleeping au nature; because of the chafing factor. I lit a torch and rushed out to search the Jeep first, then climbed up to the tree house, then checked the arts and crafts lean-to. Empty.

I decided to look for her in the cave and headed down the pathway into the forest. The guard stomped along behind me. A breeze wavered our torches, but other than an occasional owl call and the mutter of leaves and pine needles in the trees above, the night was quiet.

The cave was too low for me to stand up straight in it. I crouched over and shone my light in the crevices as I explored. Mud caked on the knees of my nightie. The guard waited at the cave entrance, maybe to spare me embarrassment.

I caught sight of the tip of Kayla's eco-green sleeping bag, peeking out from under a rock overhang. I made my way toward her and crouched down until I could see beneath the overhang.

It was Kayla, all right-her Flower Power scent brought tears to my eyes-but there was something else, something dank, sour, and wild. I saw then that there were two bumps covered by the sleeping bag. One of them moved and I saw a hairy tuft and agate black eyes as a horrid little troll lifted its head and stared into my light.

My daughter was sleeping with the enemy.

I reacted instinctively and went for my weapon. For a wild moment, I wasn't sure who I wanted to slice up more, and I did my best to convince myself this was all something much more innocent than it appeared.

My hand groped for my knife, but I didn't have a knife sheath on my chain-mail nightie, which was strictly for trips to the latrine. All I had on my hip was an entrenching tool. I unhooked it and shook it in the air, making an unrecognizable screeching sound and knocking down a few nearby stalactites.

Kayla's head popped up beside the troll's. "Oh, Mother," she groaned, and covered her head again.

I stopped shrieking.

"Wolf?" the guard called from the cave entrance. I recognized Gladys Badger Woman's voice. "Wolf Woman? You okay in there? What's going on?"

I got a good grip on my entrenching tool and counted off breaths, breathing in for four counts, holding for four counts, and breathing out for four counts. My torch hissed softly and spread a layer of carbon on the ceiling of the cave.

"Never mind," I called. "I'm fine."

The troll stared at me with the jail-yard stare of a hundred boys trying to psych out their girlfriends' mothers, that look that says, "You don't know what she does when you're not around, and you can't stop her." Reflected flames flickered in its black eyes.

My inner warrior was all set to deal with the situation. Let Kayla wake up with hot troll blood splattering all over her. Let her see that she was never too far away either physically or emotionally to escape my protection. How dare this hairy little slug think he was good enough for my daughter?

"What's that noise?" Kayla asked sleepily.

I tasted blood and realized that I'd bitten my lower lip with one of my surgically enhanced canines, an occupational hazard. I also realized I was growling.

I dug a small hole in the damp clay floor with the entrenching tool and stuck the torch in it, then crept toward the sleeping bag and the waking troll on my hands and knees. We had not broken our staring contest since its head rose from the sleeping bag. I wanted my hands around its neck in the worst way.

I knew if I hurt the damned thing Kayla would never forgive me. She was still mad that I'd stomped a spider in the house three weeks ago.

The closer I got, the worse its stench grew, though nothing could match the stunning strength of Flower Power. The troll's b.o. was almost refreshing next to Kayla's perfume. In fact, it startled me to realize I found it rather intriguing. I did my best to put any thoughts of intrigue out of my mind as I prepared myself for battle.

The troll sat up.

It was short and dense. Its head was shaped like an eggplant, with the tuft of dark, dread-locked hair rising from the stem end, its small agate eyes under a shelf of brow in the middle, and its broad, thin-lipped mouth across the big round part at the bottom. Ears like flyswatters stuck out on either side of its head. Its neck was invisible. Its shoulders were impressive under all the stinky, filthy hair. Even its muscles had muscles. It crossed its arms over its broad chest and dared me to come closer by flicking an agile, snake-split tongue at me.

My growl grew louder. I crept forward, right across my daughter's sleeping bag, until the troll and I were almost nose to nose. If you could call that little button a nose.

"Grrrr!"

It smiled and licked my nose like a grateful puppy. Disarmed by its friendliness, I didn't react for a second when it copped a feel. Not easy to do through mail, even light mail.

If it did that to me, what had it done to my daughter? Kayla's tender heart or not, nobody touched me without an invitation! Choose your issues, the counselor had said. Protected species or not, the beast was about to become troll sausage. I jumped on the troll, calling on my totem wolf to give me strength.

"Mother!" Kayla screamed. "Stop that this instant! Leave Sticky alone!"

There was something intoxicating about wrestling with the troll. The narrow confines of the cave forced us totally into each other's personal space. I found myself straining to breathe in its scent, and began to wonder if it exuded some sort of pheromone that interfered with my warrior abilities.

Pretty soon I had lost track of my original goal of killing it and concentrated solely on the pleasure inherent in roughhousing. It was pinching me, hard enough to hurt, and I pinched it back and felt proud to hear it gasp at my strength. Then it licked me with that tickly tongue, and now I gasped because I realized I was getting slightly more excited than was appropriate for a woman who thought she was being licked by a dog.

The troll was a worthy opponent, one of the few I had wrestled with recently who possessed a strength equal to mine. I couldn't help but be impressed by his power. In some ways, we were equals. We rolled around without letting go of each other. We smashed into walls and rocks and each other. He tickled my armpits with a stocky finger. I laughed. I couldn't stop.