Collecting his thoughts, Odin began to explore the moonlit site trying to understand the mystery behind his sister’s abduction. So focused on following the old raven, he was unaware of how deep they had moved into the bog. Their kind moon had kept them company and provided welcome light. The friends continued to search the sky for the raven, but he did not return. With no sign of the raven, their only hope was to follow the tail tracks embedded in the fen’s muddy edge.
Odin paused to watch the sun’s orange glow appear slowly above the horizon. Like a loyal friend, the sun wrapped warm arms around him, drying the bog’s dampness clinging to his skin. He stood still for some time, absorbing the sun’s energy. Punga, thinking his friend was dazzled by the sun’s bright glare, yanked on Odin’s beard bringing him back to the moment.
The tracks led down a shadowed path to an age-old riverbed. Footing on the riverbed’s satiny mud was slippery and squished between Odin’s big toes. He followed the tracks most of the day until they turned to the riverbed’s steep bank. Trotting up to the river’s edge, he moved over a maze of twisted roots that shuddered under Odin’s pounding feet.
Angry oinks drifted from slits within the hairy roots. Upon hearing their hoggish grunts, Odin, with Punga in a deep sleep, ran from their threatening snarls. When he finally stopped to catch his breath, he was a long way from the river and the tracks were nowhere to be found. He knew it was fortunate that the sun had come up and the oil trolls were tucked away after their night of prowling. But he was now lost in the bog and he had the nagging feeling that something was watching him.
Odin turned around. Silhouetted in black, their branches reaching out like giant claws, stood fossilized trees. Growing out of their rotten bark was a cluster of purple mushrooms, each resembling a large tongue. The tongues slid slowly over sharp teeth. Odin was certain the mushrooms were watching him with tiny eyes that blinked yellow.
Backing away from the mushrooms, he was unaware of the watery fen behind him. Slender shoots of red algae sprouting at the fen’s muddy edge surrounded him. Excited by the troll’s presence, the algae’s feet-like tubers spread across the acid-rich soil. Cold and bloodless, the algae whipped their long stems around his legs. Odin felt their sticky sap on his skin while their thread-like tubers sank their needle-sharp teeth into him, sucking nourishment from his body. Wrestling to escape their strong grip, he pulled the tubers away and saw puncture marks. Cursing the swampy bog in his loudest voice, Odin ran out of the patch of algae and down into a hollow of soggy mud. Stopping to regain his composure, he discovered more tail tracks under his big feet.
The tracks headed toward a path lined with trees that had moss growing on only one side of their trunks. Odin knew this was heading north, but what did north mean to him? After following the tracks for some time, peat moss sprouting its green mass across the soil began to swallow Zote’s trail.
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Everywhere Odin looked, moss ruled over the swampy bog. Like a charlatan, the bog hinted of trickery and Odin felt he was one of its fools. Without any tracks, he was uncertain of which direction to take. Since his little friend was sound asleep, he took it upon himself to head north.
Night, dressed in black and moving in its quiet manner, took command over the bog. Odin was well aware that night had a life of its own and seemed to be working against him. He was glad to have Punga finally crawl from his beard and anchor himself on his shoulder.
White fog crept in with the darkness. Circling Punga, it carried within its vapors something wicked, alerting the little cricket’s sixth sense. Fog gave birth to its own spirits, whispering and gliding above the treetops and awakening the prowling instinct of all bog creatures. The swamp echoed with the quiet tempo of crawling insects and bristled with scaled bellies slithering away, avoiding sharp-clawed animals digging into their nests. Odin, unfamiliar with the bog’s sounds and moods, kept his eyes forward, afraid of what he might see.
In the foggy darkness, Odin was lost in the depths of a musty-smelling burrow lined with rows of decaying trees. Segments of the trees’ wrinkled trunks were bloated into massive bumps riddled with small holes full of squirming worms, hissing at each other and demanding more room.
Odin was certain the night’s blackness carried fiendish spores in its mist. Within the thicket of dead trees, he could see spores swelling with moisture and taking root. As if triggered by his presence, they instantly sprouted into vines with quivering tendrils. Ripened vines, braided into twitching flesh, hung from the dead tree branches like wet ropes threatening to circle his throat. Surprising Odin, they dropped low and began to weave their tendrils into his thick hair, all the while biting into his skin. His throat tightened with fear so painful it ran hot through his body. The vines, tightly threaded within his hair, began to lift him up. With all his strength, he pulled at the writhing tendrils and freed himself. With Punga hanging on, he lost no time sprinting out of the snarl of vines festering on the branches of decayed trees.
As the night drifted away to blacken the sky somewhere else in the far reaches of planet Ode, a new day emerged. The sun touched Odin’s face with kind hands and chased away the fiendish spirit that floated within the fog’s vapors. Its brightness drove Punga into the thickness of Odin’s whiskers once more to sleep.
Soon wispy clouds curled and rolled overhead blocking out the sun’s warmth. In the bog’s deep shade, Odin sat down and pulled the lapis flute out of his pack. His melody was light and breezy like the wind as it drifted over the tops of the dwarfed spruce. Ahead were thickets of branches that crisscrossed his path. They appeared as purplish snakes spewed out by the wind, then made rigid with time. Odin thought he saw the branches bend and quiver with the flute’s sweet music. He put his flute away, not wanting to encourage the bog’s evil spirits.