A peculiar tree, to say the least, the old boojum tree with its skinny trunk kept Odin and Punga protected from the oil trolls’ eyes. Creamy yellow flowers releasing the scent of honey adorned the bare-boned tree. The pleasant fragrance brought them a sense of comfort.
Odin and Punga watched as the females exhausted themselves with their feverish spinning and high-pitched screams. Now silent, they sat and braided their frizzy hair into their figure eights; once again, the male trolls found them pretty.
While the oil trolls gathered their females and leather stretchers, preparing to travel, Odin spoke to Punga about the feared bog troll, the keeper of the catacombs. Only this troll would perform the gruesome labor of mummifying oil trolls. It was possible the bog troll of these legends could be Zote. Perhaps he had mummified the dead trolls just buried. If so, maybe this tribe of oil trolls could lead them to Zote’s secret cave. There was no better choice than to follow them.
In the blackness of night, they watched the oil trolls move eerily across the sand, their eyes gleaming red. Punga thought this frightening mass of bodies uglier than any six-legged insect he had ever seen. Their claw-like feet were similar to the tarsi of an insect and he feared it would be easier for them to trudge through the sand, even with their odd wobbly gait. Odin was sure they did not need their tracks or the chieftain’s lonely chime to follow these trolls; it was enough just to follow the odor of their sweating bodies and the sound of their loud hog-snorts.
After tracking the oil trolls deep into the night, Odin gradually felt the sand under his bare feet morph into mud. The oil trolls had hobbled back into the bog’s grove of stunted black spruce where the wet soil became clay-like. Now tired from the long journey, the tribe of trolls dropped down and began hobbling on their knuckles. Their distorted feet and bulging knuckles left deep prints in the stiff mud. Odin felt the outline of their tracks under his feet, making it easier to stay at a safe distance.
When exhausted, oil trolls drift into a grim mood. They become cranky and then, in time, even crankier. Eventually, a number of them erupted in a heated quarrel, punctuating their disagreement with pushing and cursing. Frustrated, the chieftain broke up the fight with a level of violence far in excess of the original fight. When the disgruntled trolls finished insulting each other and their chieftain, they tended to their injuries, grumbling and whimpering as they crept deeper into the swampy bog.
Punga and Odin were having serious doubts as to their decision to follow these exceedingly stupid trolls, but they were now at the point of no return. Odin kept himself concealed behind bog trees adorned with gigantic drooping flowers, unaware that under the trees, spongy mosses bred ferns with fingers. Feeling Odin’s bare feet upon them, the curious ferns curled their wet fingers up and around his ankles. Triggering memories of the blood sucking red algae he had recently escaped, he frantically kicked the ferns away.
Odin thought of his mountain. The kind trolls of Mt. Grieg kept their feet bare, so in the meadows they could trot respectfully on the soil pregnant with spring’s new life. Here, in the black water bog, he was fearful where he placed his feet.
Odin followed the trolls onto a trail covered with sphagnum moss. In the spongy moss their tracks sprang back as if never there. Now he was forced to follow the oil trolls at a dangerously close distance.
Deeper into the bog, fog captured the scent of fermented sap secreting out of rotting bark. Slight breezes carried the odor of decomposing flesh masking the sap’s musky fragrance. Odin’s nose stung with the biting odors. He moved past swamp water that squirmed with parasite-infested eels. Creatures of the night, the eels heard Odin’s feet hitting the ground as he passed their pond. Swarming out of their eel pit, they gathered at the pool’s edge, waiting for the husky troll to drop to his knees for a taste of their water. Odin sensed something wicked about this black-water pond and was careful to keep a safe distance from its rim.
Odin was well aware that the lifeblood of the bog was its fog. In its damp recesses, the fog bred its own life forms. Suspended in the heavy mist, breathless whispers spiraled into weeping, then into angry growls. As they moved deeper into the woods, explosive yelps like those of a wild dog sliced through the putrid vapors, possibly from a pack of hungry animals or a gang of crazed trolls.
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The fog’s sinister persona frightened Punga more than growling dogs or oil trolls. Worried that the fog might wrap its wetness around and suffocate his little body, the Jerusalem cricket scurried into his friend’s thick whiskers.
Odin, trying hard to ignore the fog’s elusive spirits, moved through its haze, avoiding detection but careful not to lose the sounds and odors of the tribe. Out of the corner of his eye, Odin saw shadows floating toward him, then close to his face. The shadows’ breath was warm and rancid while busily trying to suck his own breath. Punga, smelling whiffs of the stench on his friend’s whiskers, quickly crawled out of his beard. Above Odin’s head, Punga saw phantoms frolicking in tight circles, froth bubbling from their lips. When they saw the little cricket, shrill screams escaped from their throats. Spitefully, they darted at him, then backed away squealing with insane laughter. Swooping down again, the fog-phantoms teasingly spat green slime onto Odin’s hair and down his beard, spilling over Punga. Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the ghostly forms vanished. Some unknown cry sent them into the bog to haunt the caravan of oil trolls.
Odin sat down to control his trembling body while shaking his fist at the ghouls. He was determined not to give the demons the satisfaction of getting the best of them. Carefully, he helped his cricket friend clean the disgusting slime off his little body. Grateful that the ghouls were not devourers of insects, Punga climbed onto Odin’s shoulder. Looking into the woods he realized, to his horror, that they were too close to the tribe. He yanked on Odin’s beard, still wet with slime.
They watched as the chieftain halted his caravan directly in front of two paths. Unbeknown to Odin and Punga, they had followed the oil trolls to a graveyard. The forked path led into a cemetery—a dump heap for the remains of demons. White sand was now replaced with oily black soil. Anything might happen here.
Excited by the presence of the tribe of oil trolls, the ghouls now whirled violently over the forked path, loudly lamenting their lost souls. Their maddening cries sent fear stabbing at Odin’s stomach; he could actually feel the pain. The ghouls’ screaming and the fog’s stink threatened his courage; he wanted to flee. But Punga, anchored atop his head, was busy watching to see which path the tribe would take.
Gathering his wits, Odin watched the tribe lay down their stretchers. He noticed on one of the stretchers lay a naked and un-mummified body of an oil troll, one that had not been buried in the sand. He crept closer to watch as the oil trolls selected a barren tree. There they hung the body of the dead troll from one of its grizzled limbs. Left hanging, it was quickly devoured by vultures. The ravaged oil troll would leave no trace of his existence except in vulture scat.
After this gruesome deed, the oil trolls, whining with high-pitched oinks, turned around in their bizarre gait and headed in the direction of the canyon. They would again travel through the white sand and back to their own black water bog. In the mud and mossy crevices of an ancient river the trolls, as was their nature, would again conceal their bodies as twisted roots along the river’s edge. Odin now knew this tribe traveled to the forked path to bury their disgraced dead and were not going to lead him to Zote.
Two paths—which should they take? The paths swarmed with the spirits of dead oil trolls who had been unable to make that decision. In the evil-smelling mist suspended over the swamp, their souls hung in limbo. The time for these lost trolls to make up their minds had long passed. Now, in the bondage of mire and muck, their search for peace of mind was impossible. This haunted place, wet with wormy soil, created a fog so dense it carried the vaporous forms of oil troll souls. Unable to choose, their spirits evaporated into the perpetuity of the fog and its cold droplets. The fog’s droplets ultimately fell back into the swamp’s rotting soil where the spirits of indecisive trolls were transformed into mindless worms.
Odin and Punga watched as the spirits’ restless images swooped over the forked path, searching hopelessly as ghosts are wont to do. A hissing chorus of convulsive shrieks, their voices sliced through Odin and Punga’s psyches. The forked path was a place where things are and yet are not.
Spooked by the phantoms and hearing the mournful weeping of spirits floating in limbo, Odin began to succumb to the grip of depression. He trotted away from the two paths and his thoughts turned to Laelia. He could almost hear her soft humming while she worked. Memories of his sister and her gentle nature were in stark contrast to the
mad cries of the suffering spirits. Odin’s senses screamed. Again, he wanted to flee from these frightful ghouls as fast and as far as his strong legs could take him.
Punga knew Odin’s temperament and tugged at his beard to remind his friend he had a decision to make. Two twisted paths stretched out in front of them and there was no turning back. Only Odin could decide which path to take. The path chosen would affect not only his and Punga’s lives, but, most importantly, Laelia’s. If he was unable to make a decision, Punga knew that Odin would live, along with the other haunted spirits, in the perpetual limbo of the forked path.