Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 14: Trolls

We found Einar Nerman exactly where, and when, we had left him. Half asleep, and quite comfortable by the looks of it. “Back already?” he said, and stretched, and yawned, and stretched again.

We drove back in silence, each to his own thoughts, and it was not until the following evening, once her friend had retired for the night, that Harriet and I were finally alone to talk about what had happened. We sat outside, surrounded by lilacs, fending off the occasional mosquito, drinking that sweet drink the Swedes call saft — which, of course attracted the little monsters — and wondered, to ourselves and to each other, what on earth had happened.

A faint smell of cinnamon or cardamom or both was seeping out of the house, mixing with the sweet smell of lilac. Karin at it again, and at this time of night. The woman was relentless.

“Once,” she said. “Once can perhaps be a dream, even if dreamed by two people at the same time. But twice, and like this?”

“This was no dream,” I said, everything still vivid for me.

“Athansor,” she said, as if tasting the name.

“It sounds like the name of some ancient angel,” I said.

“Maybe some ancient angel’s horse,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “And airborne without wings. No Pegasus then.”

“No, no,” she said. “He’s more ancient than that.” She fell silent for a spell. Then she said, more to herself, or to the night, than to me: “Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen.”

“What?” I asked.

“Something I read,” she said. “Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen, or something like that.”

“Chesnutt,” I recognized and said.

“That’s right.”

“I remember because I used to wonder why he spelled Chestnut so strangely.”

“With two tees at the end,” she said. “He moved the one in the middle to the end, Chesnutt.” The she looked up and seemed to address the night again: “We wished it to happen, so it was not impossible.”

“And we have now learned,” I said.

She looked back at me. “But I don’t see what Dali had to do with him. Why would he say that?”

“Well, all he said was that Dali painted him once.”

“Yes, that’s true,” she answered. “Do you think he rode him too?”

“Who can tell?”

“And you think it was the same horse?”

“Yes,” I said. “It must have been.”

“And now we have learned,” she said. “And now we have learned — what?”

Some question. We had met a man four years dead. We had ridden a large, white, impossible horse, twice — once through an unearthly snow storm, once back in time. But what had we learned?

“We have learned,” I started, but fell silent again. My mind was grasping for words in thin air. Found none, just vast, enchanted sky.

“Do you believe in trolls?” she asked.

Without waiting for a reply, she stood up, took her glass, and mine too, and headed back inside.

Trolls?

She returned shortly with a small wooden tray, bearing more saft and several freshly baked cinnamon buns, courtesy of the indefatigable one.

“Karin thought you might be hungry,” she said.

“Trolls?” is what I said.

She put the tray down on the little table in front of us. “I used to wish they were true,” she said. “As a child. Everybody knew they didn’t exist, of course, that they were just fairy tales. But I wished they were all wrong, and that John Bauer had actually seen them, that he knew where they lived, that he knew they were for real. That what he painted were portraits, not fantasy.

“I didn’t get to go to the forest very often when I grew up, but those few times that I did get to go, I looked for them. The thing about trolls, though, is that they won’t show themselves to people looking for them, so you mustn’t be looking for them. Still, you mustn’t not be looking for them, for then you might miss them. You must be on the lookout for them, but not so strongly that it becomes a looking for them, if you know what I mean, for this they will notice right away and stay out of sight. Trolls don’t want to be looked for. In fact, you must be very much surprised when they show themselves, if they do.”

She looked over at me: was I following this?

I was doing my best.

“But if you’re not alert,” she continued. “If you’re not unexpectingly alert, you might miss them. This was a real problem for me, how to look without looking. How to expect without expecting.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“See any?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t answer right away. Then she shook her head a little, took another sip of the saft, put the glass back on the little tray with a careful sound, and said, “No.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” I said. “If Athansor exists, and he does, I’m sure of that now, then of course trolls can.”

She looked at me again, long and hard.

“Do you have trolls in India?”

“We have Rakshasas,” I said. “Or had.”

“Rakshasas?”

“Rakshasas.”

“They’re trolls?”

“Yes and no. Rakshasas are more like daemons in troll form. They are never nice, however. Not like your trolls. Their fingernails are poisonous, and they feed on human flesh and spoiled food. They don’t just boil the occasional child.” I smiled at that. Harriet didn’t notice though.

“They sound like trolls to me,” she said. “Bad trolls.”

“Bad trolls would describe them well.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No.”

“How do you know about them?”

“The Mahabharata tells of Kimira and Baka, two Rakshasa brothers who ruled the jungle. I read about them as a child.”

“What is that?”

“The Mahabharata?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an ancient Indian poem, or tale, that tells the story of gods and heroes.”

“Like a fairy tale?”

“Like a very long fairy tale,” I agreed. “Our tradition says it was written about five thousand years ago by a man called Vyasadeva who lived in the Himalayas, and who some said was the literary incarnation of God. Some say he never died, that he is still alive somewhere in those mountains.”

Then I added, “It mostly about Lord Krishna.”

“Krishna,” she said. “Like Jiddu.”

“And unlike,” I said. “It tells the story of the Pandavas, who are powerful rulers, and their fights and wars and victories and adventures.”

“And trolls?” she asked.

“Rakshasas, yes.”

“Did you believe it?”

“What, the Mahabharata?”

“Yes.”

I had to think about that to answer truthfully.

Nobody read, or heard — for it was often read to children, especially by their grandparents — the Mahabharata with the conviction that it was not true. It all took place so long ago that anything could have walked the earth then, who’s to tell. Yet, had I really believed as I read, or as I heard Madhuri reading? True, Madhuri could talk to snakes, so wasn’t anything possible? Still, did I actually believe?

I could hear Madhuri’s voice again, reading to me by the soft light of a candle, sitting on her small stool by my bed, me under the cover, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing of the room, seeing only the story as it unfolded in Madhuri’s beautiful sky of a voice, breathing trees and rivers and kings and princesses and battles so clearly that I could hear the men shout and could almost feel the cuts of swords, so clearly that I could smell the lotus petals as they fell from the exquisite hands of maidens onto clear pool water in preparation for Lord Krishna’s bath.

But, and that was the question, did I believe?

I looked at Harriet looking at me, waiting for my answer, understanding, it seemed, my silence.

I heard Madhuri’s voice again: “After Arjuna had left for the Himalayas, his brothers and Draupadi continued to live in the Kamyaka. They missed him sorely, and they had no idea how long he might be away or whether or not he would ever return. But they knew they would only be successful in their fight to regain the kingdom with Arjuna’s assistance. Thus they prayed for his safe passage to the mountains and for his success in gaining the celestial weapons.” And so I realized that I was sure, as I heard her then, that Arjuna would find the celestial weapons, and there was no trace at all of the untrue in me as I followed him up into the foothills in search of them.

“Yes,” I said, finally. “I believed it. Every word of it. To me, and to most Indians I think, the Mahabharata is not a fairy tale at all, but a book of our ancient history.”

“So you believe in trolls?”

“I did,” I said.

“But do you? Now?” She meant the question, urgently.

I thought of the word the snakes use for trolls, or what must be trolls — Hara: he who can move rocks — and as I did I knew that the snakes didn’t make them up, in fact, I had never known a snake to lie.

“Yes,” I said then. “I believe in trolls.”

“Can you drive?” she asked. Mischievously.

“Why, yes. I can.”

“I want to go back.”

“To the shieling?”

“I want to look for them.”

“Mr. Nerman’s car?”

“Why not?”

“You must ask him first.”

“He’s asleep.”

“He’ll be angry.”

“He’s asleep.”

“We don’t have the keys.”

“I’ll get them.”

She got the keys and I swallowed my scruples.

I had some trouble driving with the steering wheel on the left — which meant shifting with your right hand — but after a few fits and starts I got the hang of it.

I have always had the knack of knowing exactly how to get to where I’ve once been. I remember roads traveled, very clearly. Harriet apparently did not, and objected to a couple of my turns, but she — as she had proved the night before — was a not-to-be-entirely-trusted navigator, and once she recognized the dirt road heading into the forest she said no more.

“I’ll shut up now,” she said.

When we reached the shieling — and not really to our surprise — we found Athansor waiting, huge and white against the brown and black of forest. We parked and stepped out. I locked the car. God knows why, who’s around to steal it? I thought. Habit, I guess. Besides, what would Mr. Nerman say if it went missing?

Athansor, shifting, shook his head and neck, then continued to watch us walk toward him with dark, unblinking eyes. A little impatient to get going, was the impression I got: would we hurry it up, please.

I had taken for granted — once we saw him again — that, as before, he knew precisely where we wanted to go, and that if we mounted him he’d carry us there. This, however, was not to be.

This time Athansor did not kneel. He simply waited for us to reach him, then turned and slowly walked into the forest, inviting us to follow.

This is where Harriet and I later disagreed. I could hear him clearly as he made his way over twigs, and moss, and stones. Harriet swears he didn’t make a sound. She was sure about it, she said, for she had found it amazing that an animal that size could walk so quietly, so soundlessly. She could hear her own progress, she said, and my feet too, but not a single noise had come from Athansor. Yes, she was positive about this.

True, he was walking quietly for a huge horse, but I heard him all right. I heard branches bend and swish back into place once he’d passed. I heard him breathe and sometimes snort like horses do. I heard his hoofs strike soft ground with a rustle and a muffled landing for each step, while she heard nothing of him.

We never resolved that.

But, be that as it may, he made his way into the forest and we followed. For a mile or more, perhaps two. We didn’t speak, we only followed, deeper and deeper into the denser and denser woods, watching his high and broad backside undulate softly forward, a white schooner almost, we in its wake.

Then he was gone. I may have looked away for just a second, and Harriet said she may have too. When we looked back — if indeed we had looked away — he was gone, and suddenly the forest was as dark as I’ve ever seen the Swedish summer night. It was as if the horse had illuminated our progress, softened the night, for now our eyes took their time adjusting to the lack of white horse. Finally they did, however, and we made out a large rock, covered with moss, to our right, then trunks and trunks surrounding us so densely they seemed to approach. To our left, as our eyes adjusted further: a faint lifting of the night. We both saw it and made our way toward it. As we got closer we made it out: a small clearing.

Then trolls.

Not huge ones, not the twelve- or fourteen-foot ones of Bauer’s paintings, but trolls nonetheless. Not small though, don’t get me wrong, eight feet tall, perhaps nine: big. All of them. There were five I think, perhaps six, but who has the presence of mind to count accurately — to count at all — at a time like that?

Trolls. Twenty or so feet ahead, they stood abreast perhaps ten feet shy of the clearing, that lighter night behind them, so at first we only saw the dark outlines of several, oddly arranged mossy trees with long hair. Then the center tree shifted and said something in a deep voice that sounded more like stones touching than voice. The tree to his left replied and shifted his stance as well. Moving trees. Became trolls.

Harriet seized my arm and held on so hard it hurt. I turned her way and despite the dusk could see her face quite clearly. Eyes wide, but not in fear. Mesmerized.

“They are…,” she said, or whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

Stones touched stones again, and the center troll — maybe a touch taller than the others — took a long tree-like step toward us — no, not really a step: a gliding, but that wasn’t it either, he did have feet, and they did move — then he stopped, halfway between us and his comrades, surveyed us for quite some time, as if preparing an address, then spoke directly to us: and I could finally hear.

It took some time — well, it may only have been a matter of seconds, but long seconds — while I darted back through memory for the key to the sound. Those stones. That familiar touching. Those watery sounds. Like some distant waterfall.

Then I recognized them for what they were: snake talk.

“You wish to see us,” he said.

“You speak snake talk,” I said, too amazed to fully grasp it.

“I speak troll talk,” he answered. “The snakes stole it from us, and now they claim it as their own.”

“But the snakes I know,” I began. “How could they have? They live thousands of miles away from here.”

“You are Nachiketa?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Athansor tells me you are from a land of tigers and many gods?”

“Yes,” that was one way of putting it.

“And still you don’t know that we walked the Earth long before the first snake slithered?”

“What is he saying?” asked Harriet.

I answered, not her, but the troll.

“I have heard the tales.”

“Tales,” he said. Almost sneezed. “Tales.”

When I didn’t answer immediately, he spoke again: “Why are you here?”

The water running over shifting pebbles and stones of his snake talk struck me as so natural, so of the Earth, that I had no problem believing that the language did indeed belong to them, that the snakes had borrowed it, or stolen it as the troll had put it. Failed to return it in any case.

“My mother…,” I began.

“What is he saying?” Harried asked again, tugging at my arm.

“What is she saying?” he rumbled and pointed at Harriet with an enormous hand.

“She is wondering what you are saying?” I told him. Then I quickly turned to Harriet, “He is telling me about snake talk, how it is really troll talk, and,” I added, “he is wondering what you are saying.”

“Why are you here?” he asked again.

“My mother wanted to see you,” I said.

“Who knows Athansor?” he wanted to know.

I didn’t understand the question, and I told him so.

“Who of you two,” again pointing with this large hand, first at me, then at Harriet, “knows the horse?”

That was an interesting, if odd, question, one that brought back a candlelit Indian night of me under the covers and Madhuri reading to me from the Mahabharata about Bhima’s first encounter with Hanuman and explaining to me — between passages, and with an understanding that twinkled in her eyes — that of course Hanuman looked like a monkey now, but when he was larger than the mountains and had leaped the oceans to come here, he had really been a white horse, larger than the skies. And his name then, she added, had been Atha-Sari, the veil of the world.

Atha-Sari, I thought to myself, or must have said aloud, for the troll waterfalled again.

“Atha-Sari? You know him by that name?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ve heard that name.”

“Who of you knows him?” he wanted to know again.

I turned to Harriet. “Have you known Athansor before?”

She didn’t understand.

“He wants to know which one of us knows Athansor. Have you seen him before last Christmas?”

“Not before the snowstorm, no,” she said. “When he was Phantom.” Then she added, “You?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I may have met him as a child, in Madhuri’s stories.”

“Is it you?” asked the troll again. “Or is it she?”

“What does it matter?” I asked.

“It matters,” he said, and I could see that he was not about to elaborate.

“She never met him before the snowstorm,” I said. Then I said, and realized, at the same time: “I met him in many dreams as a child.”

“What snowstorm?” he wanted to know.

“Last Christmas,” I said, “New York, on our way to…”

“New York?” he interrupted.

“It is a large city, in America.”

“I’ve heard of America, and now that you mention it, I think I’ve heard of New York. What snowstorm?”

I was coming to that, I thought, but did not share. “Last Christmas morning we were going to Christmas Mass when the sky fell upon us. Nothing but snow. We were lost and seemed to have been moved to a different city. Truly lost.

“Athansor, his name was Phantom then, came to our rescue, but then delivered us into the hands of a congregation of thieves and almost got us killed, well, almost got me killed, sacrificed in stage play. They would have, if I hadn’t known snake talk.”

“Troll talk,” he corrected.

“Troll talk,” I corrected. “Would have, if I hadn’t know troll talk to enlist the help of a small pride of cobras. Would have been one head shorter now.”

“Maybe his idea of a joke,” suggested the troll.

“Whose idea of a joke?” I didn’t quite follow.

“Athansor’s.”

What do you say to that? Perhaps Pearly Soames’ idea of a joke, but he had been quite serious about it. Athansor didn’t strike me as the joking kind. I truly didn’t know what to answer, so I said, “Maybe.”

I suddenly realized that the forest was dead quiet, no birds, not a single note of song. No movements. No wind. They commanded respect, these trolls, I thought.

And into this foresty silence Madhuri read to me from long ago: “Hanuman replied, ‘That form cannot be seen by you or anyone else. When I leapt over the ocean, things were quite different than they are now. It was a different age, and everything was greater. Now that Kali-yuga is about to begin, all things have diminished. I can no longer display that gigantic form because every being must obey the dictates of time. I am no exception. Therefore, please do not ask me to reveal that form.’”

But in her story Bhima had insisted: he wanted to see Hanuman in his ancient form, and eventually Hanuman relented and expanded his monkey form to massive proportions, to the size of a mountain. But, said Madhuri, we all know that he was really a horse. He was Lord Krishna’s white horse, Atha-Sari. And this was a horse I got to ride in many a dream, into many a great battle, against many an army where I slew millions with my sword, and millions more with my spear, and more millions still were trampled by Atha-Sari’s hoofs, thirsty for blood that they were.

Lord Krishna’s horse.

And only then did I make the connection: Atha-Sari, Athansor. Surely.

“Yes,” I said. “I know him.” But not in snake talk.

The troll waterfalled.

“Sorry,” I said, then said it again in his tongue.

“So, it’s you?”

“I rode him as a child in my dream,” I said.

Then he did smile. Well, it had to be a smile. It was a grimace with many teeth that made me feel good. Also, the tip of his tail still rested peacefully on the ground. Had it begun to twitch or whisk — were my dreams to be believed — I would have run, knowing the attack would be imminent. But that was not the case. He was all smiles, and even the others, the whole band I guess, made friendly movements behind him, with large mouths.

Then the troll turned to his comrades and asked for something, I didn’t catch what. They did, though, and soon something seemed to pass from one troll hand to the next and was at last brought to the troll who had addressed us. He turned to face us again, then covered (moved-shifted-glided) the remaining distance to Harriet and me. Stirred his way for us, might be a better way of putting it. Either way, here he was, looking down at me, hand outstretched, and a beautiful tiger’s-eye, dark and watching, nestled in his huge hand.

“I don’t think he meant to have you killed,” he said, sounding as conciliatory as water and pebbles possibly can. “He knew that you knew troll talk. Besides,” he added, looking down at his hand and the gem nestled in it, “he wants you to have this.”

I looked again at the silent stone, so small at first in that giant paw. Once I took it, however, it grew to the size of a small egg that shone with a light of its own, and I could see Lord Krishna wink at me when I shifted it in my hand.

Harriet moved towards me to get a better look, but the troll shifted his gaze threateningly — this moment must not be disturbed — and the long tail twitched just enough to tell her: stay put. Which she did.

Instead I turned to her, and held out my hand.

She looked at the stone and then at me and then at the troll. “What is this for?”

“A gift from our friend the white horse,” I said.

“They know him?”

“Yes.”

“What did you talk about?”

“He kept asking which of us knew Athansor.”

“And?”

“And, I remembered.”

“You know him?”

“I think I do.” Then “It’s a long story,” as the troll shifted what must be construed as impatiently, and without making a sound, tail at rest again, though.

“She wants to see trolls?” he asked, or stated, and pointed at Harriet, a curious habit apparently not at all impolite among them.

“Yes,” I said.

“So be it,” he said, and turned and pointed, “You, and you,” at two of his four comrades.

They came up to us, as silently and mysteriously as their apparent leader, and without any ado we found ourselves on tall, and very comfortable, shoulders. And then we moved.

Moved soundlessly and quickly over hills and around lakes, through woods and marsh and field, to arrive — after what could have been hours but was most likely only a matter of minutes — at a steep, foreboding mountain, bearded with pine and moon shadow. At a loud rumble from the leader an undetectable door slid open to the darkness within and we moved through and into a musty warmness, pulsing almost with life and now with soft light, too, once the door had closed behind us. Features seemed to grow out of the rock and into a hallway, then into a room, then into a hall, huge and expectant, for it filled with eyes, each large and paired, and turned in our direction.

Our bearers carried us a little farther into the vast chamber, then put us down, gently, and, like I had seen Athansor do, awayed away.

“Trolls,” said our host to Harriet, and revealed with a sweep of his hand what struck me as a congregation.

“Trolls,” I translated.

“I can see that,” she said, surveying the hundreds of stares. “Many trolls.”

Then she turned to me and asked, “This is happening, isn’t it?”

I did then what I had seen done in movies sometimes, and in cartoons, but had never seen done in real life: I pinched her and she squealed a little and held my eyes with her astonished ones.

“So we are not dreaming.”

“No, I don’t think we are,” I said.

“Oh, Nachiketa,” she said, and looked back out over the hall and the many large eyes turned her way. “I should be terrified. In the fairy tales we will soon be boiled and eaten, but they mean us no harm, do they?” She looked at me. Not quite for assurance.

“No,” I said. And I knew that to be true. “They mean us no harm at all.”

The leader said something I didn’t catch to someone I didn’t see, but soon two chairs were brought, just about our size. “For children,” he waterfalled.

And so we sat down, to what I was soon to realize was a reception. For the many eyes — all with trolls to go along with them, now that our eyes had begun to accept what they saw — were forming a line, and at a word from what I to this day think of as their leader (though he wasn’t) they came, one by one: to shake our small hands with their very large ones, which actually meant that we shook one of their fingers, and more importantly, especially for the she-trolls (females seems an inappropriate word), to touch Harriet’s face.

She jerked her head back at the first approach, the first large, black, hairy finger that reached for her cheek, and the leader growled just enough to freeze her stock still in her chair. But the finger meant absolutely no harm, and, from what she later told me, delivered the gentlest touch she had ever experienced.

One by one the she-trolls, and many of the — I want to say men, but that’s equally inappropriate — many of the he-trolls, after the formal greeting, touched her perfect skin in awe, and longingly, by the looks in their eyes. Harriet soon relaxed and seemed content to have the whole world of trolls touch her for themselves.

“She would make a wonderful sacrifice,” the leader bent down and rustled in my ear.

My heart sank like a stone and for a dark, exploding moment I panicked. I swung my head to face him and only then did I catch his smile.

“It’s a joke,” he said, when he saw my face.

“Some joke,” I answered.

When I looked over at Harriet to see if she by any chance had caught or felt my alarm, I saw that her eyes were shiny and full and that her cheeks were moist with a trickle of tears. She looked very happy.

Stirred by what I saw, I took another look, for something was out of place, or very in place, and then I saw it: her face. It was longer that of a fifty-year-old woman with traces of wrinkle, but of a girl many years younger and with milk for cheeks. I should not have been surprised, I guess, for most things were possible in Athansor’s world, but I nevertheless felt the earth shift while I tried to ignore the leader, who wanted my attention again and was now tapping the top of my head with a persistent finger.

I looked up at him.

“This is my wife,” he said, and pointed directly at a huge tree of a troll in a waist-to-floor skirt of leaves and a shirt of water-lilies. “The queen.”

As she wayed her way towards us she kept growing until, standing by the leader’s side and looking down at me, she was nearly twice my height, and quite a bit taller than her husband. If she was the queen, was he then the king, their ruler? Something told me not. By the sudden silence in the hall I knew that these trolls were ruled by his wife.

I stood up and she offered me a long finger. I shook it and she smiled.

I told Harriet, who — seeing the line stop and back off in deference to their queen — looked in my direction with a wondering frown. “She’s their queen,” I whispered. She, too, stood up then, and shook the queen’s finger.

“Friends of Athansor’s are friends of ours,” she said, which I translated to Harriet. Harriet smiled in return, and I realized that she had no idea that she had lost thirty or so years by coming here, or that at least her face had. I wondered in passing what age my face might be. I was myself, that’s how I felt, but there were no mirrors to tell about my face one way or the other.

A large chair, I guess you would have to say throne, was rushed to our side and the queen sat down, while her husband remained standing. Then the line reformed at a wave of her hand. I saw by the leader’s expression that his wife, indeed, ran things here, something I suspect he may not have meant for me to notice.

Once the last of the line had greeted us and returned to the greater droning of the hall, a space was cleared directly in front of us, like a stage, and the entertainment began.

Two acts into the performance, which had all the indications of being quite impromptu, what few notions I had formed about trolls during the greeting ceremony now had to be revised; or perhaps I should say that the deeper notions, those that tugged at me though they didn’t make much sense, were confirmed.

Trolls are huge and look awkward and clumsy, there’s no doubt about that; except, as I had already noticed, they could walk — glide may be the best word — without making a sound.

And clumsy is the one thing they are not.

The first act was a pair of jugglers. I have never seen anything like it. Not before, not since.

Motionless at first, like small, windless, side-by-side trees, they faced us without expressions. Each had a crouched helper who began the act by tossing each a stone, the size of an orange perhaps, which they each deflected with a quick move of fingers to the other, who as nonchalantly flicked it back: two stones were in play.

The helpers then tossed them a second pair of the smooth stones, slightly larger, which were similarly incorporated into the dance. And so, by pairs — I lost count at about ten — and of ever-increasing size, a cloud of rock was forming between and around the two jugglers, whose hands were now moving too fast for the naked eye to see follow.

To this amazement the helpers added perhaps five more pairs of, well, they were small rocks by this time — small shiny melons — which were all received with the same wonderful dexterity and strength. In the end I could do nothing but gawk at the simply unbelievable whirl of mineral, arm, and finger.

Harriet, too, had trouble believing, for her mouth had come open and would not close. Her eyes did not blink, and she certainly did not return my glance.

Then I stole a glance to my left, at the queen and her husband, to confirm that this was indeed extraordinary (surely this was not commonplace). But when I saw the queen dozing behind half-closed lids I realized that she’d been there, done that quite a few times: commonplace, then, apparently.

I returned to the man-impossible, troll-commonplace. The helpers had now run out of stones, but the cloud still formed, shaping now with building speed, and with the growing thunder of feet stomping: softly at first and then, hundreds of them, harder and harder, while the two jugglers, hidden behind the swirl and dance of stone, began to chant in not-quite snake talk. I could only make out the occasional word like “Forest” and “Stream” and “Cloud” and “Mountain.” It could have been a prayer.

The stones then formed an arch of whirlwind that spanned the air between them in strata of size, into a bridge of flying stone in the midst of growing thunder.

Then (everybody seemed to know exactly when; not a single foot hit the floor in the dead silence), the arch of stone changed direction toward us and the queen and then formed a pyramid at her feet, built from large to small, the two smallest stones landing last, one atop the other.

The jugglers re-were still and silent trees, expecting nothing. Not bowing.

No one clapped or gave any other hints of appreciation.

“Fine,” said the queen, awake now. “Fine.”

Fine?

The jugglers vanished into the crowd. The two helpers and two other trolls — the helpers’ helpers? — collected the rocks, and then the a cappella choir took their places in front of us and began their chant.

These were — and I counted them — an even dozen of what must have been young she-trolls, with voices so un-troll like, so pure and clear that you drank — or swam — them rather than heard them.

The only thing I have ever heard since that even resembles, or rather, makes a feeble reference to, this music, is the Bulgarian choirs which also sing a cappella and weave mysterious fabrics in the air. Still, that comparison does no justice to what we heard that night.

Voices like that had no business leaving throats like that, but then again, as Harriet later told me about them touching her cheeks: “How can something so ugly be so gentle?” To which she had added, answering herself: “Perhaps they are not ugly. It’s all a matter of viewpoint, isn’t it? Of what you consider ugly. To each other, I’m sure they are not ugly at all. We’re probably hideous to them.” I told her I very much doubted that they found her hideous, but she didn’t answer, just touched her cheek.

My question, hearing this choir (although choir seems a little incongruous), ran much along the same line: how can something so ugly, how can throats so hairy, so coarse, produce such astonishing sounds? And I answered myself in a similar vein as well: perhaps the only drawable conclusion is that they are not ugly at all, their throats are not coarse, that is simply my misconception. It’s all a matter of viewpoint.

I have never heard twelve-part harmony, not before, not after, and I am to this day not sure whether there were in fact twelve distinct melody lines — for who on Earth can count beyond four or five — but I do suspect that each of these trolls wove their personal path across the space between us and them.

Magic is another word that doesn’t quite describe it.

If the jugglers’ dance was rock, then this was twice the dance of voice. Even the queen was wide-awake and stayed so: this was apparently a little out of the ordinary then. Her husband was smiling, too.

Harriet had yet to close her mouth, and her eyes were wide and alert, astonished, like mine, to take in such wonders.

They stood still, these twelve voices, their feet at rest, their legs and arms at rest, and nothing rustled their leafy skirts. Shoulders, ears, tails, hair, all at rest. Eyes closed, only lips and tongues in motion, and below that, golden vocal chords.

Were there melodies and counterpoint, statements and replies? I honestly don’t remember. I believe there may not be a human ear in existence that can, at least on the fly, analyze and break into parts the fabric that arrived, fully woven, into ours, and, like a magic carpet, found and lifted us and brought us along.

Over waters. Over snowy fields under star-spangled winter skies, a trillion ice crystals humming below. Then up and out into space itself, looking for and finding the winds of light to fill our sails. This was music of the gods, the way they intended it, the music I am sure Lord Krishna remembers fondly when he looks back upon his youth.

Then came one long simultaneous intake of air into twelve pairs of lungs and twelve notes emerged: crystal clear and in so precisely the same pitch as to be wholly indistinguishable one from the other; and this single note, this perfectly multi-layered single note, spread like a fabric, like a sheet of ice if you will, that extended in all directions quite endlessly until with the same unearthly coordination it simply ceased into silence.

No one moved. No one breathed.

“Fine,” said the queen.

That, I thought later on, was the understatement of a lifetime.

The choir, like the jugglers, did not bow, nor move, but simply dissolved into the surrounding forest of troll. In a way I felt a little cheated, a little incomplete, in that I did not get the chance to thank them each individually for that magic, but that, apparently, just was not done.

And, as I said, I had to revise whatever prior notions I had about trolls — or re-affirm my deeper ones.

A third act was assembling. It was apparently to be a dance of some kind, and since I now knew what level of artistry to expect, I was bracing myself for something impossible, when a quick pattern was rapped on the front door and the queen’s hand came up as a signal to stop.

A messenger opened the door and exchanged whispers with the guard outside, then returned to what I still thought of as the leader, and his queen, with the murmured news.

“Athansor,” the leader leaned into my ear, as if that was all that needed said.

“Now?” I was almost incredulous.

“Almost dawn,” he said. And that, I saw, was supposed to explain everything.

I turned to Harriet. “We have to go.”

She did not want to move either, that was plain, but when I repeated have to, and quite urgently, she sighed and stirred.

At a snap of her large, loud fingers, the queen had something brought to her. She held out her hand, and it was dropped into it like a little silver snake. Then she nodded, folded her fingers around it, and rose. She turned to Harriet — who rose too — then stooped down to give it to her.

Harriet, upon seeing what it was, lowered her head a little and allowed the queen to place the gift around her neck. It was a chain, silver or white gold, with a single crystal sparkling, almost humming, on her chest.

“Oh, thank you,” said Harriet, “Thank you,” and I translated.

The queen smiled and muttered, “For a true wisher.”

“What did she say?” asked Harriet.

“For a true wisher,” I said.

Harriet looked up at the queen and I could see on her face that she wanted to ask questions, many, but none came out. Then the queen nodded, first at me, then at Harriet, and turned away from us in a rather magnificent sweep that said goodbye. After a few steps she turned again, and bowed to Harriet. As graceful a gesture as a tree has ever performed. To me she spoke: “Thank you.”

Then she turned again and left.

Her husband led us outside, and lifted first Harriet, then me, up onto Athansor’s large back, effortlessly, as if we were nothing but children (which, of course, to him, we were).

“You have made us very happy by coming,” he said to both of us.

“What did he say?” asked Harriet.

I told her, and she smiled at him.

He smiled back, then turned in that sweeping movement that said goodbye. And then we were off.

Off so quickly that we didn’t even have the opportunity to look back and wave, since we were elsewhere within a breath or two. Then, forests, lakes and fields later, we were back at the shieling and Mr. Nerman’s car, shining with dew in the morning sun.

As was his habit by now, Athansor kneeled to let us off. Then, without as much as a glance in our direction, he trotted off into the forest and was gone.

We drove back in silence, and among many other things I was wondering what to tell Mr. Nerman about borrowing his car.

As luck had it, Mr. Nerman was still asleep when we got back to the inn. Karin, however, was awake and at it, and insisted on feeding us what looked like a dinner to me, since we looked so hungriga (which I took to mean starving, and which Harriet with a smile confirmed was exactly what the word meant). Truth is, Karin was right, and I dug in to the fried potatoes and eggs with a vengeance. I felt as if I had not eaten for days.

I turned to Harriet and was a little surprised to see her normal, current face returned, the little wrinkles around her mouth shifting in the sun as she chewed the toast and swallowed the coffee.

“Did you notice…,” I started, but saw that she had not heard me.

“Did you notice?” I said again, louder, and her eyes shifted from far away toward me, looking for the source of voice.

“Notice what?” she wondered finally.

“Your face. In the hall.”

She considered that, gazing off again into distance. “I noticed their fingers,” she said after a while. “They were so gentle.”

“Not the age?” I asked.

She didn’t understand.

“In the hall, when they came by to touch you, your face grew younger,” I said.

She didn’t answer at first, only looked at me as if to unmask me somehow.

“Seriously,” I said.

“How young?” she asked.

“I’d say the face of Queen Christina,” I answered, truthfully.

“Ah,” she said, and touched her cheek, which seemed to remember and confirm. “There was something so…,” she looked for the word, “so elating about their touch. Maybe that was what I felt?”

“I can’t say,” I answered honestly. “I didn’t see it change. Nor did I see it change back. But I saw it when they touched you. You were like a young girl again.”

“The touch,” she said. “The gentlest.”

Then I remembered the queen’s parting words: For a true wisher. Whose wish, I wondered, had rejuvenated her face?

Was it Harriet’s wish, returning her to the days of Hollywood? Was it my wish to see my mother my own age? Or was it the wish of the trolls, wishing with their fingers to touch the perfect skin?

We had almost finished our breakfast when Mr. Nerman sauntered into the kitchen, looking sleepy still.

“We borrowed your car last night,” said Harriet. Quite cheerfully.

I doubt many things could have woken him up quicker, or more thoroughly.

“You what?” Then he patted his pockets for the keys, which did not tinkle a response, and a small panic rose to his face. Then he spotted the keys on the table.

“Borrowed your car,” she clarified. “Just for a drive to the shieling.”

He looked at her for some time, then at the keys — which were closer to me than to her — then at me; then seemed to add two and two together, to arrive at: he relaxed a fraction. “You drove?” he said to me. It sounded a like a very short prayer.

“Yes,” I said. Then he relaxed all the way.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” she said. “You slept so sweetly.”

He didn’t answer. Still recuperating.

“Nothing happened to it,” she added. “Nachiketa is a good driver.”

“Please don’t do that again,” he said. “Not without asking me first.”

“I promise,” she said.

He sat down to his own little mountain of fried potatoes and eggs, and I looked out the window, at the lilacs, at the birches, at the many birds, and across the wide, wild lawn toward the little creek at the end of it. So much morning.

And Athansor?

Later that afternoon we all piled back into Mr. Nerman’s car and headed back to Stockholm. He had an appointment with his publisher and Harriet had promised to visit the Wachmeisters, she told me. As for me, I was booked on a flight for London the following morning.

Before we left, we thanked Karin profusely and Mr. Nerman gave her a present of a hundred Swedish Kronor. That seemed like a lot of money, by Karin’s reaction, and she promptly refused to take it. It took quite a little persuasion to get her to finally accept. So much, in fact, that Harriet quietly shook her head when I reached for my own wallet to follow suit.

Karin waved with her entire body as we pulled out of the driveway and headed onto the main road. I waved back, as did Harriet. Mr. Nerman did not; he was again busy driving his amazing new Volvo Amazon.

Harriet was quiet most of the journey. Mr. Nerman, who by now had told us all there was to tell about his car, at least twice, was quiet as well, concentrating instead on the drive. I sat in the back and wondered about Lord Krishna, whether he’d ever been a horse and what he would have looked like if he had.

Or if he knew Athansor.

We stayed the night at Mr. Nerman’s apartment, a nice three-bedroom flat in the part of Stockholm called Ostermalm — it’s like the Upper East Side, said Harriet, though a bit more stuffy. Old money. And old money, in this town, she added, is old: centuries.

In the morning, before the taxi arrived to pick me up me for the ride to the airport, Harriet sat down with me in Mr. Nerman’s living room, and took my hand in both of hers. Her strong, dry fingers felt like a small embrace. My hand was very happy.

She searched my eyes and said, “Do you think I’m a horrible woman?”

Those were not the words I had expected, and I guess my face showed it.

“For why?” I said, aware of my grammatical bungle, though not sure how I had managed it.

“For why?” she repeated, and laughed. “Can you say that?”

“Not really,” I said.

“For because,” she said. “For because I won’t admit to being your mother.”

“But you have,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “To you, but not to the world.” She fell silent. Then, after some reflection, she added, “Would it make you happy, Nachiketa, if I did?”

And there it was: the question I had not really dared to ask myself over these last few years, but that had lurked, unasked and mostly undisturbed, like some ocean trench, in the bottom of me.

I let the secret out then, into the open: I let Harriet announce me to the world, to the papers, to the radio reporters, to the television stations, to the millions of the world who now wanted to see me and touch me and know me as the son of Harriet Brown, and I saw the crowds waiting in London, as I touched down from my brief flight from Stockholm, and the crowds waiting for me in New York, and the mob waiting for me outside my apartment, waiting for a glimpse of me leaving or returning, and the reporters with their blinding flashbulbs stalking me like they have stalked her; and I saw my face on a rainbow of front pages, shielding my eyes from their glare, running away perhaps, or turning back to smile with an effort; and I saw a life wrested from me and thrown to the maws of curiosity, and suddenly it was brilliantly clear to me that this was the last thing I wanted.

Harriet remained quiet, and when my gaze returned, I saw that she was still studying me for my response.

“No,” I said then, with conviction. “It would not make me happy. You have told me, and that is enough. And you have shown me, with your own life, what would happen to mine if you did tell. It is none of the world’s business. And, perhaps,” I said, looking at the mob of reporters lingering still in my mind, “perhaps your silence has been your greatest, and ongoing, gift to me.”

I knew then, when she reached out and pulled me close to her, that she knew exactly what I meant. “I would like to claim that your protection had been my intention,” she said close to my ear, “but it wasn’t. Still, I see now that it was for the best, even for you.”

I nodded.

“I am happy, Nachiketa, to know you,” she said. “Not only as my son, but as you: as a strange, snake-talking Indian boy with blue eyes.”

Which pretty well summed me up.

I was still nodding slowly, a little drunk with the sudden intimacy. “And I am happy to know you,” was the most original thing I could think of.

© Wolfstuff