Manti was pleased that the chimney smoke had worked as planned, leading this mountain troll to her yew tree. She remembered his parents and he could be none other than Odin. The banshee foretold his arrival.

  Odin, trying to steady himself, reached ahead to open the gate when out of nowhere a feisty fisher charged at them. It was just too much for Punga; he scampered down and burrowed as deep as he could into Odin’s whiskers. Punga’s fear of the aggressive geese and the weasel-like fisher would keep him frightened and in hiding for some time.

  As Odin opened the squeaky gate, only one thought came to his mind—the gate needed a dose of goose oil. The next moment he was on the ground unconscious.

  With crippled fingers, Manti dug into the leather pouch she wore around her neck. Inside she kept a powder made of ground seeds. Manti gathered these seeds from the yellow jasmine that she cultivated in the bog’s peat. They were an antidote for the befuddling herbs. As Manti looked down at the fallen troll, she saw the thick red beard that grew so handsomely around his face, a perfect place to sprinkle her remedy.

  Manti ran her twisted hands over Odin’s beard as she applied her antidote. She was surprised to hear what sounded like an angry protest coming from something other than Odin. She discovered a cricket, now covered with yellow powder, hiding deep in his whiskers. Manti knew about the harmless little cricket and ignored his angry complaints. After dusting him off with a soft goose feather, she invited Punga to sit on her shoulder.

  Meanwhile, the antidote seemed to have little or no effect on Odin. Manti knew her intuition was correct; his injuries were more serious than those inflicted by the hypnotic herb.

  Punga overcame his fear of the geese and fisher and rapidly tried to explain what happened. His explanations were a bit confused due to his excitement, but between the bite marks and Punga’s descriptions, Manti knew that a poisonous snake had bitten Odin.

  In spite of her deformities, Manti was remarkably strong and resourceful. She went back into her home and collected a blanket made of animal skins. Returning to where Odin lay, she rolled him onto the heavy blanket and then proceeded to drag him into her hollowed-out tree root. Once inside her cozy home, with much effort she rolled the unconscious troll onto a goose-down mattress that lay flat on the stone floor.

  The witch now turned her knowledge to the healing powers swimming and breeding in the bog’s swampy black waters. Manti’s ancient yew tree grew close to a weed-choked lake that sheltered the black leeches necessary for snakebite treatment. She invited Punga to go with her into the bog to collect the carnivorous worms.

  The moon, Manti’s soul mate, came out from behind a cloud and spilled her gracious glow to light Manti’s way. With Punga hanging on to her wiry hair, she limped down to the small lake. Upon reaching the lake’s edge, Manti pulled her cloak of opossum fur up high above her knobby knees and slowly waded into the shallow water. When Punga saw her crooked legs, a pang of sadness struck his tiny heart.

  With great difficulty, the old witch lowered her deformed body into the still water, allowing the leeches to discover her warm skin. With sharp teeth, the leeches attached themselves to Manti’s legs and arms to suck her blood.

  Punga was silent as he witnessed Manti collecting the leeches. Afraid of the lake’s dark water, he wrapped himself up in her thick hair, careful not to fall in.

  Content with the number of leeches attached to her body, Manti crawled out of the lake. She moved as rapidly as her stooped-over body would allow back to her home. Casting a backward glance as she entered her yew tree, she saw her friend the moon disappearing into the bog’s endless drama of night.

  Once inside, she carefully pulled the hungry leeches off her body. After cleaning Odin’s snakebite with alumroot, she used a sharpened mollusk shell to cut a small incision in his ankle at the location of the snake’s puncture.

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  She introduced several of the leeches onto the wound. Each had three jaws, and each jaw had one hundred teeth that appeared like tiny saws. The parasites sank these razor-sharp saws into the wound and gorged on Odin’s blood.

  Manti, again using her sharp shell, carefully cut a small slit in each leech. The leeches continued to suck as the blood dripped out of their quivering bodies. Never feeling full since the cut released the blood, they continued to bite and suck instead of detaching themselves from Odin’s flesh. Eventually the leeches would rid him of the toxic venom.

  After some time, the witch applied a plant rich in menthol on the slimy leeches. The heat emanating from the plant’s juices caused the leeches to detach themselves and fall off Odin’s ankle. Now Manti must hope that he had found her in time.

  As Odin lay unconscious on the mattress, Manti worried that he might die. She sent her pet fisher to the top of her tree root and asked him to remove the branches and leaves so there was a hole over where he lay. If the troll should die, his soul would escape through this opening.

  Manti kept her lanterns lit and continued to watch over him, never letting her pink eyes rest. His labored breathing and weak heartbeat concerned her. She gathered powdered foxglove to make a potion, and the hollow stem of a lily to blow the potent powder into his nostrils. She hoped the powder would instantly enter his bloodstream and then strengthen his heart.

  Before inserting the stem, she decided to look up his round nose. Immediately disturbed by what she saw, Manti adjusted her two pairs of glasses for a better look. Mushroom spores had entered his nose and grown on the soft palate of his warm, moist mouth. The spores formed fruiting bodies that sprouted roots in his sinuses. Now the miniature mushrooms were obstructing his breathing. This mountain troll was not used to life in the moist bog and was an easy target for the airborne spores.

  Time was of the essence as Manti entered her bog once more. The moon, curious as to her friend’s behavior, decided to sneak from behind a cloud and reappear. She suspended her ample body just above the swampy bog, lighting the way for the old witch as she gathered the healing plants.

  The ingredients for this cure, like all of Manti’s potions, thrived in her peat bog. One ingredient was the oldest plant on planet Ode—the lichen. Its scaly nodules spread across the branches of black spruce and crawled over rocks. She used a scraping stone to collect the lichen. Back inside her home, she combined the lichen with a pinch of mugwort kept in a copper jar. The bark of cinchona added quinine to her mix. After carefully grinding all this into a powder, she completed her recipe with a tiny drop of goose oil kept in a small vial.

  She stuffed a generous amount of the powder into Odin’s large troll nose, immediately curing this common troll ailment. Now she was free to blow the powdered foxglove through the lily stem into his nose.

  Hours later, spread out on the mattress, Odin opened his eyes and saw an old female troll bending over him. Her skin was as white as her coarse, bushy hair. She was watching him closely with what looked like a rabbit’s pink eyes and smiling down at him with her crooked smile. Overhead, he saw an opening in the crown of the magical tree, the exact one the little fisher had previously opened up. Through the opening, he could see the family of pulsating stars belonging to the Milky Way scattered across the black sky.

  Odin’s attention returned to Manti; somehow, this age-old witch made him feel safe. He noticed she held in her hand the body of a cabbage caterpillar. After crushing it and collecting its oil, she rubbed it on the snakebite to deaden the pain. Watching Odin closely with one of her glasses sitting on the tip of her nose, Manti handed him a piece of bark from a willow tree and asked him to chew on it; the willow secreted an enzyme that would further help relieve his pain.

  Odin reached out and touched her misshapen hands. He saw that they were hard like wood and pitted with scars. Her fingers, like gnarled branches, were stained dark from digging in the bog’s black soil. On each finger, Manti wore a ring. Each ring had a special stone that contained certain powers. She removed one of her rings and slipped it on Odin’s finger. It was the lapis lazuli; his flute was carved from this same stone. Manti explained that the dark blue stone protected her from evil and would do the same for him.

  Even in his dazed state, he now recognized the albino witch who lived a secret life in the bogs below Mt Grieg. This must be Manti. He recalled his mother speaking of her powers. The witch’s knowledge and kindness were well known.

  Manti knew the snakebite was actually a good omen, since it brought Laelia’s brother to her. Exhausted from his ordeal, Odin closed his eyes and once again slipped into a deep sleep. Manti told the little fisher to climb up and cover the hole in the webbing of roots above her home.

  She waited patiently until Odin awoke. When she saw his alert blue eyes, she was certain the young troll was strong enough to travel. The ancient witch, as stubborn as her geese, was determined to join Odin and Punga in their search for Laelia.