Without the flute’s music, the branches seemed to withdraw, leaving an open path through which Odin spent the day safely passing. The arrival of night and the sinister nature of the bog brought Punga out of Odin’s beard to share his friend’s fear. They were relieved to see the full-bodied moon drifting from behind the clouds. She hung overhead like a gigantic lantern lighting their way. As waves of fog rolled across the bog, she weaved her moonbeams into its mist creating a filmy light that exposed a path giving Odin some sense of direction.
Echoing throughout the bog, the hysterical laughter of a loon caught Punga’s attention. Frightened, he crept back into the safety of Odin’s beard and nestled against his warm skin. Punga feared all birds; to them, he was just a tasty meal.
Just ahead, Odin spotted a body of water shimmering in strands of moonlight. A white lacy mist floating over the water appeared as a veiled face hiding an aura of evil. Vapors carried the sulfuric stink of crude oil. The odor awakened some primordial recall in Odin’s senses. He was surprised that the scent kindled a fear that lay deep within his being. Without a doubt, they were in oil troll territory.
Again, Punga heard the haunting call of the loon drifting across the lake. Adorned in her gown of black and white feathers, she had settled down in her nest. He knew she was lamenting her loneliness for her mate. Feeling safe, he crawled out of Odin’s beard.
Punga’s sense of safety did not last long. When he drew his first breath outside of Odin’s protective beard, he, too, smelled the obnoxious odor. He followed Odin’s gaze and saw the lake that lay deep in the quagmire of an ancient peat bog. Its still surface gleamed like black glass. Punga spotted a rainbow of oil floating on its surface. He realized the odor was coming from bubbles of methane percolating up from the lake’s depth and breaking its mirrored veneer. Dancing and bursting across the lake, the bubbles released planet Ode’s oldest odor. It reeked of a vile life form and sent shudders up his round belly. The twisted rocks nestled along the lake’s edge seemed to move and melt into distorted shapes. Punga feared the rocks were creeping closer and circling, preparing for an attack. Tugging on Odin’s beard, he whispered, “I have a bad feeling about this place.”
Punga sensed the lake had the power to fascinate its prey, possibly pulling them into its inner sanctum. But Odin, unaware of the lake’s magnetic pull, continued to trot toward its slick surface. As they neared the lake, in the dim moonlight the rocks took on the form of large animals looming over the shore. To their horror, they saw phantom horses emerging from the rolling mist. Long wooden poles anchored along the lake’s edge held up brown fossilized bones draped with horsehides. Odin, standing back in astonishment, watched as the mystifying apparitions nodded ghoulish heads in their direction, beckoning them to come closer.
Ignoring his fear, Odin sat down at the lake’s edge, his tired eyes taking in the sight of jagged bones. Their images reflecting off the water mirrored a lost species. He recalled the legends of oil trolls and horses. For eons, the once plentiful horse roamed planet Ode. Over time, mindless oil trolls sacrificed thousands of horses in this lake saturated with crude oil. Ultimately, the horse became extinct. They displayed the horsehides to signal the presence of their ceremonial lake and to warn unwelcome trolls. Odin stood up and shook his head in disbelief. The empty-headed superstitions of cowardly oil trolls did not frighten him.
For the moment, Odin’s thoughts turned to his hungry stomach. As he took dry bread from his pack, he recalled how his sister leached bitter acorns until they were sweet and ground them into flour for baking. Odin ate the bread and drank water from a nearby spring, avoiding the polluted lake with its blanket of oil.
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Exhausted, Odin found a tree trunk hollowed out like a cradle. He crawled in and fell into a deep sleep. Moonbeams stroked his face as his mind reeled with dreams of the banshee. Her smooth voice emerged from a green mist that floated forward and backward, rocking him with gentle arms. The dream’s haze drifted into spasms of attacking horse heads that flashed square teeth.
Overhead, the kindly moon suddenly vanished and left Punga watching over Odin in the darkness. Soon hunger sharpened Punga’s senses and he set off night crawling in search of the bog’s swarming insects, hopefully all smaller than him. After a short distance he came upon a mass of peat that felt different under his six tiny tarsi. His bulbous body was somewhat clumsy so he climbed ever so slowly up on a bulge in the peat soil. Suddenly Punga stopped, vague fear tugging at him. The thought of food escaped his mind.
A slight breeze blew across the mound of peat and carried the fog away. Punga found himself looking squarely into the face of a dead troll. He fell backwards, his round body rolling and tumbling down the mound. Gradually, he regained his composure and, in his usual oafish fashion, righted himself. He returned to investigate the mound. A dead troll lay in the black soil with his face turned up and eyes closed, as if asleep. The preserved troll, mummified by the acidity of the bog’s peat, had skin as dark as the night.
Punga crawled back to wake Odin and show him what he found. Odin, still in the realm of his green mist dream and trying hard to remember what the banshee was saying, found Punga annoying. Though still dazed from his confusing dream, Odin pulled himself together and followed his friend to see why he was so excited.
Punga lead him back to the strange-looking mound. Odin, shocked at the sight of a face sticking out of the black peat, fell to his knees. He soon recovered enough to help Punga remove layers of decayed peat, exposing the preserved head and body of a male troll. Wrapped tightly around his neck was a rope. Odin wondered why the leathered face appeared peaceful, as if resigned to his fate. The mummified troll held a spear in his hand, perhaps the victim of war or a cruel sacrifice.
Ancient oil trolls clearly worshipped this lake, rich with underground pools of oil. Odin thought they likely fought wars to control it. The male troll could have been one of their sacrificial offerings. Was Laelia now one of the victims lying under the stagnant peat?
The wise little cricket reminded Odin that Zote held Laelia for ransom and he would keep her alive. Odin hoped he was right, but he also knew the cruel troll was dull- witted and unpredictable.
The whimsical moon, once again revealing her round body, boldly cast her light down on another mound of peat. Trapped in the decayed sphagnum moss, Odin recognized the small, blackened body of a young female troll. Blindfolded, her feet bound, and a leather strap around her neck, she also appeared to have suffered death by strangulation. A cape made of wolf fur wrapped around her shoulders suggested she was of royalty. In her right hand, up against her chest, she held a ceremonial flute made from the bones of a great bird. Her skin was also leather-like from the tannic acid that thrived in the graveyard of peat. The coffin in which she lay was decomposed sphagnum moss that stifled oxygen. Here the ravenous jaws of bacteria could not flourish and her flesh and bones remained. Buried with her was the mystery of her premature death. With Punga grasping his beard, Odin trotted away from the silent graveyard, the peat bog’s timeless tomb for unfortunate trolls.
Strikes of lightning lit up a twisted path, which he followed deep into the bog. In the distance, Odin could see flickering lights that he recognized as “corpse lights.” The lake’s fermented rot gave off a lighter-than-air gas with the odor of rotten eggs. Lightning skirting over the swampy waters ignited bubbles of this methane gas. It burned pale blue and danced across the black waters like crazed ghouls.
Odin was grateful for the mysterious corpse lights as it made his escape out of the peat graveyard a joyous moment. In spite of his fast trot, he could not shake off the lingering smell of rot and swamp gases that stung his nose. Black oil, mummified trolls and horsehide skeletons spun around in his head. Traveling the entire night, he was reaching a point of exhaustion. Punga once again whispered in Odin’s ear, “Be careful of what lies ahead.”