Manti was a rare albino troll and an ancient witch. She came from ancestors whose genetic makeup created tall, erect mountain trolls. Manti could have been regal for a troll; however, her mother, while pregnant, drank milk from a goat that had eaten the lupine plant. The toxic lupine that passed from the milk of the goat to her mother caused Manti to be born with the trunk of her body, legs and arms malformed.
Because of her misshapen body, Manti, as a young troll, was determined to learn the healing power of the roots, seeds, and plump mushrooms growing in the bog below her home in Mt. Grieg. Against her parents’ wishes, she chose to live in the fertile bog in order to gain knowledge of its extraordinary secrets. Her twisted bones were the result of ignorance. Manti’s entire life was a quest for knowledge; nature was the master chemist and her tutor.
Manti made her home in a massive yew tree. The tree’s gnarled, fluted trunk appeared as a hundred elegantly twisted pythons slithering upward and then instantly petrified into purplish-brown bark. The trunk’s base spread out like a gigantic clawed foot which, after years of weathering, created a huge hollow. Riddled with numerous holes, the bulbous trunk appeared as a giant skull with enormous eyes. Five thousand years old, the yew’s twisted limbs resembled the old witch. The tree wrapped its gnarled brown arms around the ancient witch like a friend protecting her from the harsh elements of the wet bog. Manti believed the yew tree to be a powerful guardian against the forces of evil.
Her yew tree harbored a grand fireplace made of round river rocks. Although Manti’s body was crooked, she was still strong and over the years had developed a tenacious nature. To build the fireplace, she carried one stone each day from a nearby river to her home. At night, the warmth from the fireplace gave Manti and her little weasel friend, the fisher, a sense of peace and comfort.
Strings of mushrooms in bizarre shapes and colors, orchids, lilies and bulbs hung drying from the tangle of roots above her head. These filled her home with a multitude of aromas. Manti collected these plant cuttings for their healing properties. She also kept the teeth of otters, opossums, skunks and raccoons hanging from braided vines; with these, she devised imaginary games. In the center of her tree was a crude table of white pine at which she sat for hours jotting down recipes for medicinal purposes. A prominent tool on her table was the mortar and pestle she used to grind seeds, roots and a few carefully selected dried bog worms and green beetles. Nearby, hanging over her fire, sat a black- iron pot in which rested a wooden spoon. This was necessary to the preparation both of her potions and her meals.
A tapestry of skins, gathered from dead animals discovered in her bog, blanketed the walls. Manti arranged the skins with the animals’ kinship in mind. The skunk and river otter were together since they were friends in life, but the tricky raccoon hung from the roots in an area all by himself.
Manti adorned the skull’s vacant eyes with colorful lanterns that she kept lit all night. The lanterns’ warm reds, calm greens and cool blues flickered with a magical aura.
The pastel softness of the lights sometimes lured an occasional troll near her tree home. Manti always knew when these strangers approached. She raised white geese as feathered watchdogs. Headstrong and intelligent, these plump birds could be ferocious when protecting their territory.
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Clever with plants, Manti cultivated a barrier of special herbs around her massive tree trunk. When brushed against, the herbs emitted a powder that caused trolls to become sleepy, befuddled, and totally lose all memory of their current circumstances. When alerted of an approaching stranger, Manti was certain she could find him lying near these herbs surrounded by honking geese. Those wandering trolls who crept near her home could then be easily led away and laid down under a distant black spruce to later awaken, wondering how they got there.
Over many years, Manti diligently kept a journal in which she kept a record of her sorcery. Thus, she carefully described her secret concoctions and explained the benefits of the bog’s abundant cures. However, this was a difficult task, as the albino witch had weak eyes. In order to see well enough to write in the journal, she wore two pairs of glasses made of fine crystal. One pair she set directly in front of her pink eyes; the other, with some adjustment, she arranged on the tip of her very, very long nose.
The witch had complete faith in the power hidden in the smallest seed. She dedicated much of her time to saving the bog’s plants and bulbs for their medicinal worth. Her potions often included six-legged, crawling creatures and, from time to time, a bumpy skinned toad was blended in. Witch’s butter, a black jelly-like fungus she collected off rotting bark, was used as a blood tonic. She learned to distinguish magical fluids and powders that healed a troll’s body from toxic spores and seeds that destroy.
When Manti heard of some malady, she would bring her remedies to the villages of mountain trolls nearby. These peaceful trolls trusted her wisdom and accepted her odd appearance, even her crooked smile. They were always grateful for her healing herbs.
Manti protected the black water bogs from the oil trolls whom she loathed. She was impatient with the oil trolls’ constant waging of war and destruction of the environment. She never used the crude oil so worshipped by the oil trolls and on which they depended for their power. Using nothing more than a lantern fueled with plant oil gathered from her swampy bog and candles of beeswax, she kept the darkness out of her massive, hollow tree root. Manti burned a particular dry bark and the scat of her pet fisher in her fireplace. This mixture created a smokeless fire and did not give away her secret home nestled in the bog’s woods.
White skin and pink eyes kept the albino witch out of the sun’s bright glare. At night, under the luminescence of the moon, Manti went to work. As was her usual custom, she would carefully lower her twisted body and crawl through the bog on hands and knees. Crawling had the benefit of keeping her close to the small mushrooms and seeds she collected. She preferred to move along a fen’s edge exploring the green mosses that hid tiny insects.
She kept her body dry and warm from the night’s dampness with skins from river otters or skunks. Most of the warmth in her cloaks came from the skin of the slow marsupial opossum. In the evenings under a full moon, draped in skins, the old witch down on her hands and knees appeared as a curious animal meandering through the bog.
Although Manti’s eyesight was poor her hearing was excellent. With imposing pointed ears that protruded out of her wild white hair, she recognized the squeak, hiss or howl of each creature that lived in the bog. After a drenching rain, life within the bog’s soil quickened and fertile seeds squirmed; she could actually hear the stirring of the seeds awakening to the joy of sun and water. The melodious tones of the growing plants composed Manti’s favorite symphony.
Hard-working throughout her years, Manti’s toughened, malformed hands had extraordinary strength and yet were gentle enough to balance a blue robin’s egg on her gnarled fingertip. Her long and strong nails, like the bird claws they resembled, were her tools. They helped her dig through the damp, sticky mire for grubs, bulbs, precious roots and burrowing insects, all used in her recipes for medicine and food. Whenever she reached into the warm, moist soil and felt its life-giving energy pulsate against her weathered old hands, she knew the soil held power, like a fertile womb propagating new life.