Troll: A Love Story (21 page)

An animal.

An animal?

But the signal’s clear. We’re on our way now, and I’m a prisoner.

YRJÖ KOKKO,
PESSI AND ILLUSIA
, 1944

“Have you ever seen a human being?” Illusia asked Pessi one day.

“Once, yes, I did once see a human being,” Pessi replied.

“What was he like?” Illusia went on.

“He was very much like you and me,” Pessi said. “But I didn’t stay looking at him long.”

“Why not?” Illusia inquired.

“He was so big. I saw him over there on the heath, by a sandpit where the birds were having a bath. The heather was just coming into flower, the blue-winged butterflies were peacefully sucking its nectar, when, all at once, I was standing face to face with a human being. Then I took fright.”

“Why did you take fright?”

“He looked me straight in the eye, and fear poured out of his eyes into mine.”

ANGEL

The sky ahead’s growing lighter. It’s five
A.M.

We’re deep in the forest, in the midst of the kind of untouched treeland you can’t even imagine if, all your life, you’ve been confined to the fake woods adjoining cities—the so-called nature reserves that, in reality, are more like parks: embroidered with paths, cleared of undergrowth, illuminated, provided with benches and full of trees almost all exactly the same age. But this forest’s another thing. It’s gloomy and tangled, it cascades violently upward from its mossy floor to the sky, as if the earth were thrusting it out of its breast and bursting with the effort. It’s full of struggle. Species fights against species, a creeper’s suffocating a tree, a twig’s thrusting moss aside, for everything’s in short supply: light, air, food.

In the midst of all this green-and-brown chaos we advance quickly and almost silently. Nothing but my panting breath and the crunching of my hopelessly clumsy trekking boots trouble the dawn twilight, as Pessi and the big male lead me along indistinguishable pathways. They’re troll paths, imperceptible to the eye. But what seems an impenetrable-looking thicket or an unclimbable cloven rock is, on closer look, a shortcut. We go forwards as if the trees, rocks and thickets are a mist we’re melting through, as quiet, capable shadows.

No human being can catch us, not on foot anyway.

MARTES

A man’s wanted for homicide.

Wow.

That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I did want to damage him, of course, have criminal charges brought against him—the info was pure self-defense. But now it looks as if some other party’s driven the whole thing off the road.

I’ve no idea what’s happened, but what of that? Wherever Mikael is now, or soon will be, he’ll not be ringing clients or disputing rights about the pictures I’ve so carefully made inaccessible to others on my hard disk and my backup CD. Stalker’s already commissioned outdoor advertising. Every Finnish city’ll soon be showing on all three sides of every triangular hoarding three different pics of a lasciviously grimacing dancing troll, rampaging in a leap, dance-step, or position of impossible flexibility—nursed in his tightly fitting Stalkers and looking like black lightning frozen into a still.

UNO HARVA,
ANCIENT BELIEFS OF THE FINNS
, 1933

Like domestic animals, human beings can be lost in the forest, especially if they happen to tread on a “forest-elf path,” or a “sprite’s field.” The folk of Rukajärvi tell that a person who has walked across a “forest sprite’s tracks” will never find his way home again. In Estonia a belief has existed that when külmking—“coldshoe”—who “mostly wanders the forests” has “been on the face of the earth,” someone may step on his tracks, whereupon the person, even though his own home be in sight, will not find his way back again. The same belief has prevailed among the Finland Swedes: “he has trespassed on the forest sprite’s ground” or “stepped on a troll track”; nor is this fancy, which has prevailed with the Russians among others, unknown in Sweden.

Many examples show that in those times, especially since such happenings could occur on your own doorstep, what was in question was not going astray in the great forest but falling into a weird condition where everything was otherwise than in our world.

ANGEL

In the shade of a fir tree between blocks of mossy rock, the cave looks like a narrow black mouth.

The sun has risen beyond the forest. Slanting rays are filtering misty golden streaks through the spruce twigs and dappling the moss with glowing spots.

Two shadows emerge from the rock, so imperceptibly they seem to have precipitated themselves from darkness to light. They come quite close, nostrils twitching, and their strong animal smell is like Pessi’s but wilder, more pungent, muskier. And one of them reaches out with his nailed paw, making me freeze, for those daggers could rip my stomach open with a single swipe. But the paw doesn’t maul me. It goes into my jacket pocket, and the prehensile, skillful, sensitive fingers seize the lilac-colored plastic lighter.

When the troll lights it, I see it’s not handling one of these for the first time.

Sunrays are beginning to flow into the cave entrance like a warm fluid. The trolls’ pupils narrow so much that they almost disappear completely, and the sprites turn and withdraw into the cavity. The big troll swings the barrel of his gun with the tiniest of economic gestures, and I understand.

Pessi has come to my side; his tail’s trembling and twitching, and he looks up at me expectantly.

Far off somewhere a cuckoo calls.

I take his hand and step inside.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART I Dusk Crept Through the Greenwood

ANGEL

http://www.finnishnature.fi

ANGEL

http://www.netzoo.fi/mammals/carnivores

ANGEL

IIVAR KEMPPINEN, FINNISH MYTHOLOGY, 1960

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

AKI BÄRMAN, THE BEAST IN MAN:

ANGEL

ANCIENT POEMS OF THE FINNISH PEOPLE

ANGEL

YRJÖ KOKKO, PESSI AND ILLUSIA, 1944

ANGEL

A.W. CHALMERS, THE HIDDEN TRAILS OF MANKIND, 1985

ANGEL

A.W. CHALMERS, THE HIDDEN TRAILS OF MANKIND, 1985

PALOMITA

ANGEL

SELMA LAGERLÖF, “THE CHANGELING,” FROM TROLLS AND HUMANS, 1915

ANGEL

C.B. GAUNITZ AND BO ROSEN,“VERTEBRATES,” THE ANIMAL BOOK, 1962

ANGEL

MARTES

ANGEL

“A TALE OF A BEAR AND A TROLL,” INARI-LAPP FOLKLORE,

ANGEL

“WILD BEASTS HAUNT OUR CITIES,”

ANGEL

PART II There Flared a Wondrous Glow of Light

MARTES

ANGEL

MARTES

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

ECKE

DR. SPIDERMAN

ANGEL

DR. SPIDERMAN

ANGEL

ECKE

ANGEL

DR. SPIDERMAN

ANGEL

LEEA VIRTANEN (ED.), THE STOLEN GRANDMOTHER AND OTHER URBAN LEGENDS, 1987

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

ECKE

BARTON WILLMAN, THE BLACK AND THE INVISIBLE: A FANTASY ROMANCE, 1985

ANGEL

HARTO LINDÉN, “THE EFFECTS OF HUNTING ON THE GAME STOCK,”

ANGEL

ANNI SWAN, THE MOUNTAIN TROLL AND THE SHEPHERD GIRL, 1933

PART III Who Cares If Brightness Makes Me Blind

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

“CALVIN KLEIN STIMULATES OCELOTS,”

ANGEL

ECKE

JUKKA KOSKIMIES, “HIERARCHY IN THE ANIMAL WORLD”

ECKE

ANGEL

ECKE

ANGEL

ANCIENT POEMS OF THE FINNISH PEOPLE, VII. 1. 375, 1929, “THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL TO THE TROLLS”

ANGEL

MIKAEL AGRICOLA, PREFACE TO THE FINNISH TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS, 1551

ANGEL

ANGEL

EXCERPT FROM THE TELEVISION PROGRAM IS A PREDATORY ANIMAL CRUEL? (OCTOBER 19, 1999)

ANGEL

TROLL TALES, EDITED BY THE FINNISH LITERATURE SOCIETY, 1990

MARTES

ANGEL

AN EXCERPT FROM THE JOURNAL OF YRJÖ LUUKKONEN

ANGEL

PALOMITA

ANGEL

MARTES

PALOMITA

ANGEL

ECKE