Door County, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  “The father of Essie stayed where he was, underneath the mushroom rock, gloating over the dead thing in front of him. When the sun goes away, he said to himself, I will take myself forth and dance upon the back of the old troll, now that he is dead and hard and baking in the sun. And so he waited, but when the long hours of daylight were over, Essie’s father found that the fire of revenge inside him had been quenched, and his heart had grown as heavy as the stone before him, and when he crawled forth again, it was a sad and weary trudge to come out from under the rock.

  “Even the other one’s gold Essie’s father would not touch, but only he sealed the old one’s cave and hid forever that which was beneath the trees and in the hollows. For he knew that the gold of the evil troll was cursed, through the evil that lived on after him. Essie’s father took his own gold into his pockets again and came back to this side of the bay to tell his troll-wife that her cunning plan had been a good one. The old troll was no more. His own gold he buried again, but the gold of the evil one he will not take to this very day, and though it must torment him, I believe he never will.

  “And so, this is the story of the Trollhaven trolls. This is why we must be respectful, and leave trolls in the places where trolls belong, and keep ourselves to where people belong. And I ask you, and maybe you will ask that old one, Gerda, who is so nosey and rude, to leave the old trolls alone so they may grieve away their days in peace. Will you do that?”

  Faye nodded vigorously.

  “And you will tell her of the foolish old woman who was curious about the trolls and disappeared, never to be found again?”

  “I will,” she breathed.

  I felt a shiver of outrage. The old man had terrified the girl with his tale, something his father had once used as advertising, just so he could use her against Gerda.

  So what could have been a charming afternoon ended on a sour note, and when Nettie, Henry and I left the main cabin, I couldn’t wait to get outside so I could blow my top.

  But then we ran straight into Gerda.

  “That was rather interesting,” she said, “wasn’t it?”

  Chapter 11 – The Thief of Legends

  “You eavesdropped!” I said, more furious with her than I’d just been with Arnie.

  “Naturally,” she said, oblivious. “I asked him in a professional, even kindly way, to allow me to record the legend, and he was very rude to me. By eavesdropping, I have collected my research without the need to upset the old man further. He’ll never know I have it, since he’s hardly the type to read scientific journals.”

  “What did you think of the legend?” Aunt Nettie asked.

  “I have to weigh the story’s authenticity. I expected that it would be something created out of whole cloth by Arnie’s father, to use for publicity, but there’s something about the arc of the story that fits in with a certain class of legend. I’m going to have to re-evaluate it.”

  “It sounded authentic to me,” I said stoutly. From being angry with the old man for frightening Faye, I found myself defending him. “I’m no expert, but it sounded like a chapter from one of those new-old sagas based on legends. It isn’t some ditzy fairytale with a princess and a happily-ever-after.”

  “Actually, you’re right,” she said, “it wasn’t what I expected at all, and I found it quite engaging. I’m surprised.” We were going up the steps to the porch of Cabin 2 now, and Gerda came onto it with us as if she belonged. While I was groping for a way to keep her outside, she picked up my knitting.

  “So you bought that woman’s pattern,” she said, studying my work. She was rubbing the stitches between her fingers, and I wondered if her hands were clean.

  I reached for my knitting, and after making me wait a moment, she handed it over. “Very nice,” she said grudgingly. “The way you’ve managed the color changes at the ends of the rows is very neat.”

  “You don’t work in colors yourself?” I said, putting my project away in the stencilled workbag I’d gotten at the yarn shop.

  Gerda shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  By that time, we were all inside the cabin, Nettie, Henry, Gerda and myself.

  Gerda sat herself right down at the little table with me and accepted a glass of wine from Nettie, all the while dissecting Arnie’s tale – not that anybody had asked her to.

  I interrupted long enough to ask Nettie if the tale we’d just heard was similar to the one in the old Trollhaven brochures.

  “Word for word, as far as I could tell,” she answered. “Did you notice how wrapped up in the story Evaline was? She loves to hear her father tell it, and he doesn’t do it very often anymore. He still has it down pat, though. At times, he almost seemed to be singing, as if he were reciting an epic poem.”

  “He was,” Gerda said decisively. “Legends are poetry. They were memorized and passed down, word for word, through the mechanism of cadence. He was reciting it entirely by rote, but also partly by rhythm. All cultures have legends, and they all have similar themes: beware the stranger; fear your gods, and call upon them for protection; sins will always be punished, and sins can never be hidden from the gods. They have similar character-types, too. My vampire is your succubus; my ghost is your jinni. This story is a sub-branch of the beware-the-stranger parable, though it comes from the viewpoint of the stranger. That’s a twist. I’ll have to analyze my recording later.”

  “You recorded him?” I asked.

  “Naturally. I need the word-for-word version of the story as recited to make my full analysis.”

  If Arnie found out, he’d kill her.

  As she bloviated on, she finished one glass of wine and held it out for a refill from the bottle on the table between us, like I was a servant. Her fixated ideas drove her on like a freight train, grinding on down the line. I tipped the last of the bottle into her glass, giving her the dregs, and looked around to see how the others were taking it.

  Nettie had that look on her face, the one that’s so sweet and so entirely misleading. She was probably daydreaming. Henry was just Henry; you never knew what he was thinking.

  Just as I was about to hint that Gerda should leave, because we needed to get ready to go out for dinner, there was a sudden change in her intensity.

  “It is a mistake,” she declared, amping up, “to try to outgrow the collective wisdom that has been encoded into our very genes – the memories of others mysteriously passed down to us, their descendants. They are in here,” she said, whamming her fist into her chest, “absorbed from the very wombs of our mothers before we had heartbeats of our own. They knew,” (up with the forefinger), “because the lessons learned, the trial and error of our social structures that grew from the millennia – I say they knew what was wise and what was unwise, and before there were written records, they could only codify their knowledge in legends. This is why they matter. We ignore them at our peril. The ancient ones knew how we must treat the things that live among us and around us, even the things that try to hide themselves from us. By instinct, we know that they are there, because the wisdom of our ancestors tells us that they are there. The huldrefolk. The bjergfolk, living in their mounds.”

  “Like trolls?” I asked. “Wait – are you saying you believe they’re real?”

  The interruption jolted her, as if she’d forgotten her audience could be interactive. She stared at me defiantly. “Can you prove they are not?”

  I’d had my lectures on applied logic in college. Maybe she hadn’t. After all, she’d gone to fairytale college. “It’s not up to me to prove they don’t exist,” I told her. “It’s up to you to prove they do. You can’t ask me to prove a negative. It can’t be done.”

  “Of course it can.”

  I got stubborn. “No it can’t. Nobody can prove that something doesn’t exist. They can only prove that it does, by finding one. It’s impossible to prove that there are no such things as trolls, but I still don’t believe they exist.”

  “I have proof enough of the existence of the earth elementals to sati
sfy myself. The avalanche of legends going back through time and covering the length and breadth of the earth – ”

  “That doesn’t hold up if your proposition is absurd. Throughout history, people have believed a lot of stupid stuff. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

  She glared at me. “I disagree. The weight of the anecdotal evidence is compelling.”

  “Okay, here’s an example: I want you to prove to me that I’m not the daughter of an alien queen on Mars who had me brought to Earth as a baby to protect me from her enemies.”

  Henry guffawed, and Aunt Nettie said, “Now, Paige.”

  Gerda was furious. “You are not from Mars!”

  “Oh, yes I am. Go ahead and prove I’m not. You can’t. You can’t prove a negative.”

  “You have a birth certificate on record somewhere proving you were born here on Earth.”

  “Ah, but my clever Martian protectors embedded me in a hospital nursery and provided me with a backstory and two phony Earthling parents. Next?”

  “Your DNA is human.”

  I shook my head at her; this was too easy. “Many eons ago, the Martians colonized Earth with their own people, and we have the same DNA. One day,” I added levelly, “they will join us, and I will rule over the Earth as the princess that I am.”

  “Oh, this is foolishness,” Gerda ground out as she set her now-empty wineglass aside and stood up clumsily. She took a stand in front of me, a dumpy figure in lumpy clothing, vibrating with messianic fervor. “The things you do not know, the things you choose to laugh at, are part of our very molecules, deep-seated memories of the Old Country and beyond, all the way back to the mother of us all. Millenia have passed, and the things we instinctively avoid now are those things that killed our ancestors. They left the impressions of their agonal terrors stamped into every cell of our bodies. We learn what they have learned, and so, we survive. We see a snake. We recoil; we avoid it. Because a snake has struck at us and we know it is dangerous? No! Because its ancestor struck down our ancestor in the mists of ancient Africa.

  “Today we make analyses, we program computers, we cut everything down to a logical format, but we no longer see!” She was tapping her temple repeatedly, just missing her own left eye. “The voices inside us have been silenced, and now machines, and computers, and the internet control our lives and make us blind to the dangers of the natural world.

  “We have forgotten our own ancients, and their folk wisdom, and the fruits of their experience,” she went on, weakening now. Suddenly, she looked at the wall above the fireplace, in the direction of the bay. “We have forgotten what could still be seen if we would just look – if not for electric lights and brick walls and concrete sidewalks. We must learn to walk again, with our naked feet against the good soil of our mother earth.”

  She stood there for a moment, silent, as if she were seeing it all in front of her. Finishing her tirade with a whimper, she said, “It is all very sad.”

  “What’s sad?” Logan asked, standing in the doorway. When he realized he was addressing Gerda, his manner stiffened. Then he looked at me and said, “Mind if I come in? It’s about time we went across for the fish boil. They like to put on a show before they serve the food.”

  Gerda, blank with something I couldn’t analyze, looked at Logan silently for a moment, then turned like a robot to stare at me.

  “So he is with you again tonight. You lied.”

  Gathering whatever dignity she could, she said, “I will leave you now,” and brushed past Logan in the doorway.

  “Well, well,” I said after a few moments. “You missed a fine lecture, Logan. You would have learned a thing or two. Arnie told Faye the tale of the trolls this afternoon, and Gerda eavesdropped. She was just analyzing it for us. And then she went off on . . . well, I’m not sure what the rest of it was all about.”

  “I bet it was her genetic memory theory. If it was confusing and garbled and full of overblown terminology, that’s probably what it was. I have to admit, I’m glad I missed it.”

  “I think she believes in the trolls,” I said.

  “She was always a crackpot. So immersed in her work, she lost all sense of reason.”

  I heartily agreed, and yet it was beginning to seem like piling on. I don’t like feeling like a meanie. Maybe I was a bit fey at that moment, but I felt a wave of pity for Gerda right then, and I regretted being witty at her expense. She’d just walked out the door to spend the evening alone somewhere, and here I was with my favorite aunt, already making friends, about to be escorted to a feast by someone who was probably Gerda’s fantasy man.

  “Well,” I said, “at least she has a mission in life, and she’s totally sincere about it.”

  Logan reacted to something behind him, turning around and saying, “Yes, we are,” to somebody outside. “Across the street, at the Weatherwood Inn.”

  “How nice,” I heard Gail say. She had come up onto the porch and was standing close to Logan, with Arnie just behind her. “We’re going over there too, for the six o’clock boil. Shall we all walk over there together?”

  Nettie and I retired quickly to the “necessary” to powder our noses and pat our hair, then we went back to the group and left the cabin.

  Outside, like a recurring theme, Matthew rode up on his bike and dismounted in a ballet-like move. I hadn’t seen him coming. He greeted us, then went about unstrapping his saddlebags.

  “Been out shopping?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I needed some stuff,” he answered.

  Still part cop, Henry told him, “You should put a reflector on the back of that bike. You were almost invisible in the dark.”

  Matthew acted surprised. “Damn. It must have come loose and fallen off. I’ve been doing some rough roads today. Thanks, man. I’ll get it replaced right away.”

  “And use your headlamp,” Henry added, passing him by and heading for the Weatherwood Inn.

  “Didn’t notice it was getting dark,” Matthew said to me as I walked by, since Henry was already crossing the street.

  “Gotta be more careful,” I said in a husky whisper.

  In response, he twisted his lips into a rueful smile, and I tried to blink back the way that look affected me. I began to realize that his sudden charm was something he could almost use as a weapon. It was arresting, and I suspected he knew it.

  Logan took my arm to keep me moving along. By way of silent apology to him for completely forgetting he existed, I let him keep hold of my arm until we were walking up the front steps of the Weatherwood Inn.

  Chapter 12 – Dinner

  Our combined group, Nettie, Henry, Logan, Gail, Arnie and I, sat in the Weatherwood Inn courtyard with about fifty other people, watching the flames shoot into the air as a can of kerosene was thrown onto the woodfire beneath the pot, causing the dramatic boil-over. After that we followed the crowd inside while the strainer-basket full of cooked food was carried inside by two strong men.

  Our group of six asked for adjoining tables, and the hostess was able to accommodate us, since nobody had been seated yet. Then we lined up at the serving station with our plates in our hands and were given big chunks of steaming whitefish, along with boiled potatoes, cole slaw, drawn butter and tartar sauce. On the tables waiting for us were baskets of homemade bread.

  By the time the cherry pie and ice cream came we’d all gotten friendly and cheerful. It wasn’t the right situation for intimate conversations, which was fine with me, but I sensed that Logan was a bit disappointed. I still felt a little bit off, both from hearing the troll legend, which hadn’t been the sweet tale I’d been expecting, and my verbal duel with Gerda afterward. I made a resolution to smooth things over with her the next time I saw her and tried to leave it at that, but I couldn’t shake it off.

  Away from Trollhaven and strange Danish legends, Arnie was a pretty nice guy, but as the evening wore on, I couldn’t tell if Gail was flirting with Arnie or Henry. After a while, I caught on to the fact that she had conceded Log
an to me, which was disconcerting, to say the least.

  It seemed to be a habit with Gail to give out a spicy vibe whenever she was talking to a man. The only thing good about that was that I could sense Nettie finally waking up. Gail’s overtures to Henry were getting to her, and I considered that progress. I made it a point, when it fit somehow into the conversation, to mention Nettie’s obnoxious neighbor, Duke, and the way he kept launching amorous attacks. I played it out as a funny story, but I definitely had a hidden agenda.

  I had already made up my mind that Henry was the man for Aunt Nettie, and I decided the correct method of counteracting Gail’s soft-paw technique was to make Henry jealous.

  “So I was looking out the front window and there he was again, trying to get close to her in the driveway, first thing in the morning before she’d even had her first cup of coffee. He must have it bad. She doesn’t even dare to stick her head out of the house or there he is again, asking her why she won’t marry him. What exactly was he saying to you anyway, Aunt Nettie?”

  I wasn’t sure she’d play along, but I was thrilled when she did. “Oh, he’s been pestering me for years. Ever since I lost my husband.”

  “This is your neighbor?” Henry said, suddenly alert.

  “We’ve lived side-by-side for decades. Randy – my husband – never liked him, but I try to get along with all my neighbors, especially the ones on either side of me.”

  “How hard do you try to get along with him?” Henry asked quietly, and my heart sang.