Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Jane Yolen

troll?”
    â€œWell, actually you look like a bridge.”
    â€œAnd have you ever seen a troll?”
    He shook his little nubbined head.
    â€œBut you have seen a bridge?”
    He giggled. I knew then that I had him.
    â€œSo if you have never seen a troll, how do you know they exist?”
    "My mother warned me about them.”
    I allowed myself a deprecating little laugh. "Mothers! I bet she also warned you about eating tins and paper products and staying out too late at night.”
    He nodded.
    â€œI am just a bridge,” I said. “Immobile and proper. And of course, on my other side is...”
    â€œA green meadow?” he asked.
    â€œGreener than any you have ever seen,” I said.
    That did it. He upped and started over. Trit-trot, trit-trot.
    Of course, halfway there, Troll came up and grabbed the fool off and had his first good dinner in a month. Well, good dinner is perhaps an exaggeration. It was only a very little goat. Practically a kid.
    If only he had been content with the one. But the next goat I snared for him with my promise of greener pastures was middle sized.
    â€œLet this one go over,” I whispered to Troll, “and you will soon have the entire herd wanting to follow.” Even though I mentally cringed at the idea of so many trits and so many trots, I did not want my friend to die.
    But that smacked too much of planning, something trolls have no sense about. And lying, which they know nothing of at all.
    â€œHungry now!” Troll complained, and ate the middle-sized de Gruff goat right then and there.
    So when the big goat followed, with horns as sharp as gaffing hooks and a sly twist of mind, it is no wonder that my dear Troll was taken in.
    It was not the fall that killed him, of course. It was when the big billy goat of M. de Gruff lifted him out of the water. Troll was dead long before he hit the ground.
    My own fault then, you will say, that I must endure this trit-trot, trit-trot all day long. I do not, myself, accept blame. Life is like a river: forever changing. Sometimes it is at flood stage, and sometimes not.
    But if you should hear of another troll who is looking for a home, tell him there is a Bridge of Slight Consequence placed between two green meadows not far from Avignon. Fish abound in the water, and goats gambol on the hills. And if he is not too greedy a troll, he can make a good living here. Besides, he will have an excellent listener to his tales. What troll could resist that?

Brandon and the Aliens
    BRANDON SAW THE FIRST ALIEN on Monday, and he stopped for a quick look, but he didn’t tell a soul what he saw. Not at first. He didn’t think anyone would believe him. He hardly believed it himself.

    He had been bicycling home from Freddy’s house and he was late as usual, so he didn’t mean to stop at all. But when he caught a glimpse of the alien squatting partway behind a rhododendron bush next to the bike path, he had to look. Who wouldn’t?
    The alien was gray and rubber-legged, without a visible mouth, and about five feet tall, which was taller than Freddy. It was eating a live robin. Eating it, but not in any ordinary way. And there were these strange juices—as gray as the alien but lumpy, like an old moldy stew someone had forgotten to dean out of the pot—sloshing around its feet. It was pretty disgusting, even to Brandon, and he was the one in his family who liked the movies With the grossest special effects.
    He could smell the alien from where he was, and it didn’t make him want to get any closer. like burnt eggs combined with unwashed hockey socks. He blinked—and the alien was gone. All it left behind were a few robin feathers—and that smell.
    Brandon saw the second alien on Tuesday, and he didn’t tell about that one, either, even though this one was green and was finishing off a squirrel. Brandon figured no one would actually believe him about the aliens, anyway. He had a