by Bjorn Kurten
The lake was the center of their world. Like everything else, it had its spirit, and Tiger knew that spirit. Perhaps it was in a dream, but he had seen it, rising like a frozen mist out of the lake and collecting itself into a shape greater, more awe-inspiring, than anything he had imagined. Then he knew that the spirit of the lake must be the Guardian of the mammoth. Immense and powerful, white like the hoarfrost, the spirit carried spear-points on his tusks. Tiger saw that he was also the Guardian of the black tiger, for the two were one. Tiger and mammoth formed the upper and the nether shape of the mist. To Tiger, it seemed right that Trout Lake was the abode of this spirit. It meant that the Guardian was a friend to the Trout Lake people and would permit them, like the tiger, to hunt the mammoth and eat its flesh.
The lake was for fishing. There were crayfish, easy to catch, but not much to eat, except for the tails and claws. Small trout could be taken barehanded in the becks that fed the lake. In early winter, when the ice was still thin, pike could be stunned with a blow as they glided underneath. But the ice was often treacherous. One of the older boys fell through, and the lake never gave him back. They knew then that the spirit of Trout Lake was angry. The Chief offered his finest mammoth tusk, and the lake received it and was appeased.
The great time for fishing was early summer, when the nights were short and light. That was when the salmon came up the river to spawn, fighting their way up the rock-filled cataracts Trout Lake spilled into. They came in vast numbers, as their Guardian decreed, and very little sleep was had by anybody for a whole moon while the tribe caught and stored the fish. Early summer was the best hunting season. Bears, wolves, lynxes, and foxes were also keen on the salmon, and with eyes for nothing but the bounty of the river, they were easily bagged. This was a time for feasting and for filling the larders, which had been depleted during the late winter and spring. The spirit of the lake was in his best mood, and the villagers responded with their traditional rituals of love and gratitude.
The lake was for rafting and swimming, too. Tiger taught Marten to swim, and they both taught their little sister, Godwit. These three were the only surviving children in the Chief’s family; several others had died in infancy. Yet there were always many children in the village by Trout Lake, for men and women took pride in their families, and the grief of frequent death was fought by bringing forth new life.
The lake was a mile long, and half as wide. By day it was deep blue, a festive mirror for the sun. By night it was dark and dim, reflecting the moon and the stars. When Tiger walked along the shore, the moon would follow him above the trees on the other side of the lake, always at the same place by his shoulder. He told Marten about his discovery, and they walked together, watching the moon and its obedient reflection, while owl-calls broke the stillness, and distant snorts revealed the presence of elk in the gathering dusk. Always full of mischief, Marten ran in the other direction, shouting, “The moon is going with me! The moon is going with me!” Tiger, much offended, ran after him and gave him a buffeting. But sure enough, there was the moon in its proper place, and the two boys could not agree about whose moon it was.
Then a light breeze whispered in the trees and rippled the surface of the lake, breaking the moon’s reflection into a long path of dancing light fragments. The boys stood still, experiencing the wind. They knew that the great trees, tired of their long stillness, had started to wave their branches. The breath of the forest walked the lake. “Now the animals will come,” whispered Tiger.
They lay in wait behind a boulder, but the only animal they saw was a lynx, moving like a shadow through the alders. For a moment its round, unblinking eyes stared at them. Then it was gone, as silently as it had come.
After a snowstorm, the lake was a virginal white sheet. Soon, though, it was crisscrossed by animal tracks, and Tiger and Marten would read the story of what had happened in the night. Once they found the carcass of an elk that had been killed by a wolf pack. The boys scared off the wolves and worked hard to drag the half-eaten animal back home.
As they grew bigger, the boys took longer excursions. Exploring new parts of the forest, they looked around warily. They did not fear wolves or hyenas, though it was true that the Guardian of the hyenas was reputed to be wicked. Perhaps he was just a ghost pretending to be a hyena, not the real Guardian at all. In the stories, he always came out badly in the end. Trying to trick others, he got tricked himself. So maybe he was not really dangerous.
The spirits of the trees and rocks were always kind. If you broke a branch or chipped a stone, all you had to do was tell them you were sorry. They would calm down right away.
The boys were a little afraid of Trolls and ghosts, even though the Chief assured them there were none around. It was always comforting to come up on a ridge and see, far away, the blue sheet of the lake.
There was a cairn on the crest of one ridge, and they decided to make this their house. They would move here and live as hunters forever. Perhaps someday, when they bagged a bison or a mammoth, they would invite the tribe to a feast.
Among the boulders Marten picked up a broken spear with a curious stone point. He knew it must be very old, for the shaft came apart in his hands and the point fell off the moldering wood. “Look, Tiger!” he said. “If we make a new shaft, we’ll have a real heavy spear. I bet you could kill a mammoth with it.”
Tiger ran up to him. “That’s treasure,” he said, for he remembered stories about buried Troll treasure. “Let’s roll the boulders to the side and see if there are more.”
The two boys heaved mightily, sweat breaking out on their foreheads. Finally, the boulder rolled away. There was something underneath, and Tiger started scraping at the soil. Suddenly he stopped, in terror and disgust. It was the skull of a man, yet not quite a man. He had a bony face with two owl-like, round eye-sockets staring blindly beneath the heavy ridge of his brows. A few teeth were left, and the skull seemed to grin at them with a wide-open gape, as if ready to devour them.
Tiger and Marten ran away in a panic, and stopped only when they had reached the forest. Trembling, they looked back to find out if the terror was stalking them, but there was nothing to be seen.
“It was a Troll,” said Tiger.
“He was lying down under the rock,” said Marten. “Do you think he was waiting for us? Do you think he will come after us now that we’ve taken away his rock?”
This possibility had struck Tiger at once. “Maybe not now while it’s light,” he said.
“But tonight when it gets dark?”
“Yes, then he may come.” It was a dreadful prospect.
“We’ll be safe in the house,” said Marten.
But Tiger had already come to a decision. “No,” he said, “We’d never be safe. There’s only one thing to do. We must go back and put the rock on top of him again, so he can’t get out.”
Tiger turned to go back. Marten hesitated, but when his brother had walked a few steps, he caught up with him. In silence they climbed to the crest again, watching for the Troll, but when they came to the cairn, the skull was in the same place.
“He’s just dead,” said Tiger. “He’s not going to harm us. That’s what the Chief would say. He only wants us to put back his rock, so he can sleep again.”
The boulder slid back easily.
“I’ll make a new shaft for his spear, and we can give it back to him,” said Marten.
“That’s a good idea. Then he’ll know we’re friends,”
They made the new shaft as fine as possible, using twine to fasten it to the point. Proud of the result, they slid the spear under the rock and covered the place with stones so nothing could be seen.
“Now he’ll be friendly,” said Tiger.
“Poor old Troll,” said Marten. “Think of him lying there, never having any fun.”
“I know,” said Tiger. “Let’s come here every day and play. And let’s keep it a secret. Then he’ll know we are watching and won’t let anyone disturb him.”
So the sha
dow passed from Troll Cairn. They came back, not every day, but often. They went to Troll Cairn by devious routes, intent on keeping their secret. Once a terror, the Troll became a friendly spirit. In this place, Tiger was Chief and Marten henchman. They hunted, bringing their catch of squirrels, hares, birds, and once a fox to the cairn for dressing and cooking. And they always slipped a few pieces of meat, or berries in season, into the cairn for the Troll.
It became a place of benevolent magic. Often Tiger felt that the Troll was somewhere about, resting comfortably on his new spear, enjoying their play, but always ready to turn a terrifying face toward any danger that might threaten them. So it was that Troll Cairn, and the image of the Troll who had lived at Trout Lake in ancient times, became associated with Tiger’s happiest memories. Yet when older men talked about the Trolls, their stories were far from reassuring. Tiger and Marten would prick up their ears, but though the men were always ready to bandy the most blood-curdling tales, only a few had actually seen living Trolls, for most of them had come from the far south with the Chief a few winters before Tiger was born.
The boys’ father, Chief of the tribe, never said much about Trolls, and only smiled at the stories. In his presence, their terror was quickly dispelled. He was an unbeliever, or at least that was the image he presented. Of course, he would spit three times if a hoodie crow flew across his path. If a cuckoo was heard from the south, he would refrain from hunting until the spell had been broken by another calling from the north. His automatic response to a thunderstorm, or some other display of the forces of nature, was a quickly mumbled incantation to the Black Tiger. But if asked about this, he would doubtless have answered that they were nothing but sensible precautions, like refraining from sitting down upon an anthill or standing in front of a charging rhinoceros.
He distrusted what he called sorcery, and that was why there had never been a shaman at Trout Lake. In his youth he had had a violent quarrel with the shaman of his clan. It had happened after the killing of the black tiger. Arriving home with the trophies of the hunt—the tiger skin and the single scimitar tooth—he had been dismayed by the shaman’s insistence upon ownership of the tooth. This would have been right and proper if there had been two tusks; for the custom of the clan was that the hunter took one and the shaman the other, in acknowledgment of his spiritual help. But this tiger had only one tooth, and the Chief was outraged at the idea of giving it away.
He had been a very stubborn young man, and had voiced his rage before the whole clan. The memory still aroused the Chief’s wrath. “I soon told off that old good-for-nothing,” he would say, getting up and striding back and forth under his own roof, his head bent to keep clear of it: the Chief was a tall man. “He couldn’t cure the old Chief who broke his leg in two places when we went on that mammoth hunt with the Falcon Hill boys, and he died within a moon. When we ran the rapids of Little River, he was so drunk with black wine that he lost his hat and his spear. Some medicine man!” The business had ended with the Chief and a party of friends going north to start a new settlement. “The Shaman cursed us when we went off, and said we would all be dead in a winter and a summer. That was fifteen winters ago, and look at us now! No good to anybody, he was, and the next summer at the Meet I heard he was dead. So there you are. No curses or spells for us, thank you!”
That was how the clan of Trout Lake came into being. Trolls had lived there before, but they were long gone, and the new settlers soon made friends with the Biglakers, their neighbors to the north, intermarrying to further the friendship.
THE HUNT ENDS
A icel jor que la dolor fu grans
Et la bataille orible en Aliscans
—Chanson de Guillaume d’Orange
The only time Tiger actually heard his father talk at any length about Trolls was near the end of the mammoth hunt, when they were far away from their usual hunting grounds. The land was new to the Chief, and on that last evening before the strike he had betrayed some uneasiness.
“We may be in Troll country already,” he had said. “We are getting close to the coast where they live.”
“There are some bad stories about them,” murmured one of his men.
“Mostly old wives’ tales,” said the Chief. “I believe the Trolls are more afraid of us than we of them. Still, in their own land, you never know. Of course, they should be easy to spot. They are white, you know.”
“You’ve seen them, then?”
“I have,” said the Chief.
“You never told us, Father,” said Tiger, and everybody turned to listen. The Chief pulled his beard, his face wry.
“Well, you remember we moved into this land winters ago. Back south there are no Trolls any more, though there may have been in the days of my grandfather—but he too had moved in from much farther south, maybe even from the Land of Flints.
“Long ago, just after we’d settled at Trout Lake, I went out to scout some of the land to the east, and met a party of Trolls. There were just three of them, one ox and two bitches. You might have thought they would resent me for being in their land, but they didn’t show any fight. They were trying to talk to me. Of course they can’t make the sounds of Men. And they were grinning all the time, flinging their hands about their faces. They looked funny, but they were armed, all carrying big spears with very crude points made out of this kind of rock.” And he pointed to the elephantine granite hogback beside which they had put up their camp. Tiger nodded knowingly.
“You don’t mean the bitches carried spears?” interrupted one of the men.
“They did indeed. And very hefty they were, too, broadbodied and almost as tall as the ox, though much shorter than we. But there was certainly no fight in them—rather the other way around.” The Chief smiled a little. “I tried to talk to them—civilly, as we talk to strangers to show we mean no harm—and gave them the open-hand sign. But they only grinned more, and all of a sudden ran off.
“I’ve thought many times about what happened next, and I still don’t know for sure. It could be that they put some spell on me after all. Thinking they might gather more Trolls, I went the opposite way. But it was late in the evening and I didn’t go far before lying down to sleep.
“That night I dreamed that one of the Troll bitches followed me and came down on top of me to make love. And as if I had been hard at it all night, I didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky. So it may be true that Troll bitches can cast a spell and make a man tired from love’s labor without him even knowing what he’s done.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a dream,” said one of the men, smiling.
“Whatever it was, I was none the worse for it,” observed the Chief. “But strange it was, and I put it down to sorcery. That’s why I’ve kept out of Troll country ever since.”
“She came down on top of you?” asked one of the men.
“Yes, she rode me—in my dream,” added the Chief hastily. “I once heard that Troll bitches are keen on men, but that they have wolf teeth in their vaginas, and when you’re through they bite off your cock to keep you from giving pleasure to other women; but that’s all rubbish. Neither is it true that they suck you dry and never let go until you’re dead. I was none the worse afterwards.”
“Well, I heard some Troll stories at the Meet,” said another man. “Do you remember the people from up north? They seemed to know a lot about Trolls.”
“Ye-es,” said the Chief with some hesitation. “They haven’t been at the Meet before—must have moved in from somewhere else. They kept rather to themselves, didn’t they?”
“I talked to one of them. He didn’t say much at first, but we had a hornful of wine, and he became quite genial. Lynx, he was called, and Shelk was the name of his chief.”
“Oh, Shelk!” cried Tiger. Everything at the Meet had been new to him, but that man had made an impression. “He had that amber necklace…and a bracelet of bear teeth. He did look high-and-mighty.”
“If Lynx was right,” said the first man, “Shelk must be
quite a wizard. He told me that Shelk could be in two places at the same time and often was.”
“That’s foolish talk,” declared the Chief.
“Yes, but I wasn’t going to say so. That fellow looked like one who takes offense easily. You’re right, though, about them being newcomers. He told me they’d moved in from the southwest and didn’t know much about this country. In fact, he asked a lot of questions and was grateful for the information I gave him. He told me they didn’t want to trespass on our hunting grounds or those of the Biglakers, so I told him our landmarks.”
“So they have moved in up north?” asked the Chief.
“That’s right. He said it was getting crowded where they came from. To the north there are only Trolls, so they thought it would be a good place.”
“And what are they proposing to do about the Trolls?”
“He said they are vermin and should be killed off. In fact, they had already cleaned up some Troll settlements.”
“I don’t like that,” said the Chief decisively. “The Trolls are bound to make trouble if their territory is invaded. So far we’ve had no trouble. Let them alone is what I say.”
The Chief shook his head gravely. But Tiger was thinking about something else. Abruptly he said, “There was something about the Shelk. He looked a little bit like a Troll himself.”
The Chief laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Tiger. The Trolls are short and white, and beardless. Shelk was tall and black like us, with a big beard.”
“But there was something about his eyes,” said Tiger, and he cast back his mind, trying to remember what had suddenly made him think of Troll Cairn and that long-dead face which had looked up at him from the ground. The eyes…But the dead Troll had no eyes, only the empty sockets beneath a scowling brow. That was it! Shelk had a brow like that. Tiger shuddered a little at the memory of that imperious frown.