The Huldra Hostility

by Michael Almich

  When the girls reached the lakeshore many of them jumped out and waded the canoes in. Shy was alarmed initially as he remembered the giant suckerfish creature that inhabited the lake. The girls were calm, though, and waded ashore with no issues. It certainly wasn’t like last year when Claire fell in and almost fell victim to the grotesque fairy creature that lived off the energy it sucked from its victims. Shy shivered as he thought about it.

  Daniel looked at him with a disgusted look on his face. He must have been thinking about the same thing, Shy thought.

  Tad nodded to Daniel and Shy to follow him and Meg. The girls quietly fell in behind the single file line of boys.

  The fact that the girls didn’t insist on going first made Shy even more nervous. It was like he had an itch between his shoulder blades, but couldn’t scratch it. They just came along quietly. It wasn’t like them. He turned to look back, but could only see as far as Henry and Sawyer. The former was being tripped by the latter continuously as they worked their way down the path.

  Daniel looked at Shy quizzically, and Shy simply shrugged in answer. He turned forward again and rushed to catch up to Meg and Tad, who were walking side by side and talking quietly despite the fact that the trail was tightening up. Green foliage began to close in further on both sides. Eventually even the counselors had to split up and walk single file.

  It was a bit of a hike along the Northeastern side of the camp. Eventually it turned Southwest and they emerged onto the beach and saw a festive sight. Picnic tables were lined up, stocked with food and soda. The boys ran down onto the beach from the rocks above. Finn went right for the football, and quickly two teams developed. The Cave cabin boys, who had been relatively quiet this year without Crutch to lead them, tried to join the game. Henry and Sawyer were informing them that it was going to be a private game.

  Shy heard a song he liked drift over from the radio that many of the Shore cabin girls were gathered around. One particularly cute brown eyed girl made eye contact with Shy, and smiled. Embarrassed, he quickly turned to look for the Lake girls. They were nowhere to be seen! He scanned back over the guys and realized that Ralph was also gone!

  Shy began to walk back up towards the path they had arrived on. Daniel saw him and scrambled up after.

  “Where is Ralph? And the girls?” Shy asked worriedly.

  “They were right behind us.” Daniel said as he turned to look back at the beach scene. He, too, could not see either Ralph or the girls.

  Shy had moved to where the path entered the forest, staring into the green tunnel, but scared to enter. Then, he heard something. He motioned Daniel up and they both strained to hear over the beach party noises below.

  Something was coming!

  The two boys separated, each hiding behind one of the trees at the start of the path. They flattened themselves, backs to the trees, and waited.

  Shy’s heart rate quickened and he began to run through the possibilities. Was it the girls? If so, where had they been? It couldn’t be them… there was no talking and giggling. Could it be goblins, or worse yet, reds? If that was the case, he and Daniel were in trouble. He waited and forced himself to breathe.

  The noise became louder still. It was a large group.

  Shy looked over at Daniel and the boy pointed two fingers at his eyes and then pointed in the direction of the oncoming group. Shy nodded. Daniel was going to sneak a peek.

  The dark-haired tall boy slowly slid his eyes past the edge of the tree. Shy saw stress in his eyes as he slowly, ever so slowly, inched his head past the edge of the bark. Then, Shy saw relief dawn on his face. Daniel stepped out onto the path.

  As Shy peeked, he heard Daniel say, “Where were you all? Did you take a detour?”

  The girls marched out past them with the kind of looks on their face that one’s mother gives when she finds out the reason one got detention in school. Not one of them talked. Portia glared at Shy as she walked by. Shy made a motion with his hands and mouthed the question, “What?”

  She just turned her head towards the beach and continued walking. Claire followed her, and Shy saw Ralph, with an embarrassed look on his face, following Claire. He gave Shy a sheepish grin and a quick negative shake of the head. Claire stopped in front of Daniel. She whipped out Ralph’s diary, the little book that he had been recording all their adventures so in. The book that held all their plans.

  Claire slapped the book onto Daniel’s chest and held it there until he grabbed it, but kept the pressure on even then.

  “No secret plans, huh?” She said with ice in her voice. Shy wondered how girls could make you feel so high, and put flutters in your stomach, and then the next time you see them stomp all over the flutters.

  “We will be coming with you, Portia and I, ANNNND we will be getting some of that potion you have. This is not negotiable! After we perform our skit, the two of us will slip away. We will meet you at the Lodge.” She pushed on the diary, on Daniel’s chest, to emphasize each claim.

  “Don’t keep secrets from us!” Push. “We,” push, “Are,” push, “in this with you!” Big push.

  With those angry words she turned and stormed away. Daniel watched her go and then looked at Ralph. Shy saw the boy become even more embarrassed than he had been.

  “I tried… I didn’t tell them anything. They were walking behind me and grabbed the book from my back pocket. I tried to get it back, but… well… there was too many of them…”

  He looked from Daniel to Shy, seeking affirmation.

  Shy and Daniel looked at each other, and Daniel blew out a long breath.

  “It’s OK Ralph. Nothing we can do now, and this will actually make it easier. We won’t have to worry about hiding it from them anymore. Do we have enough of the recipe left to share with them?”

  Ralph smiled, and they made their way back down to the celebration.

  ***

  After a wonderful meal, and lots of caffeinated, sugary soda, the boys were antsy. There was something in the air. Shy thought the night felt perfect, and he could sense adventure. The girls, for all the blustery, dramatic anger they had exhibited earlier, were now friendly and fun. They stuck close to Shy’s group though.

  It began to get dark, and Clancy called them all together with her squawking megaphone. Shy had noticed that the camp director had seemed almost normal. She had grilled the burgers, dogs, and brats while laughing and joking with the campers. Even once the counselors took over the grilling, Clancy had made her way amongst the groups, joining in the games. Shy had looked repeatedly for Morrie, but couldn’t find him. It seemed obvious to Shy that the professor turned camp worker had a negative effect on Clancy. Shy had even considered asking Clancy where he was, and why she acted so strange around him, but thought better of it.

  Clancy got them all situated, sitting on the beach in their cabin groups. She called the Lake cabin girls first. With a stern look at Daniel and Shy, Claire got up with her friends and proceeded to act out a well thought out skit.

  Shy thought about their skit and actually felt a little sheepish about what would clearly be an immature, and a not-as-well-developed effort as they had thought it would be. The Cave cabin boys went next. Even without Crutch leading their group, they still acted like thugs, bumping and jostling others as they made their way up to the front of the group. They passed the Lake cabin girls, and Shy was surprised to realize that Portia and Claire were missing! They had been so stealthy in sneaking off, that Shy had not even seen it!

  After the Cave boys’ performance, Shy felt his nervousness diminish. Theirs would definitely not be the worst one, he thought. Then it struck him that he never cared before whether things he did were better than others… he had never been competitive before. He decided he must be changing in ways other than just getting taller. He didn’t have much more time to dwell on this thought, however, as Clancy called him and his friends up front. Shy looked back at the group and saw Meg snuggled in tight next to Tad, sitting behind the others on a large piece of drif
twood.

  As they worked their way through their skit, they got many laughs from the group. It came to the part where Eddie chased them with his axe, pretending to think they were trees, and wanting to chop them down. Eddie was stopped by Henry, as planned, and Daniel, Shy, and Sam ran screaming like little girls right up onto the rock ledge and into the now dark woods to the laughter of the other campers. There, they paused and listened. They could hear Henry’s booming voice, and that was the cue to take the focus off their departure. Hopefully, the remainder of the skit was active and funny enough to make everyone forget they had left.

  The three boys turned back in the general direction of the Lodge. The path they had chosen to enter the woods did not lead directly to the Lodge, so they would be heading towards the Cave cabins first, and then hop onto another path to the Lodge.

  Shy had a gnawing worry growing inside. It was like not being able to watch a movie you really wanted to see because people kept walking in front of the screen. You still knew what was going on, but felt like you were missing the deeper meaning. Shy couldn’t quite put his finger on what was bothering him, but something was.

  Daniel slapped him in the chest with the back of his hand and motioned him on. The three walked silently, making their way to the junction of paths where they would change direction.

  When they reached the junction, Daniel asked, “Do we go to the Lodge to meet the girls, or do we head straight to the waterfall?”

  Something about Daniel mentioning the Lodge triggered a snippet of Shy’s memory.

  “Morrie wasn’t there! Morrie wasn’t at the skits… on the beach. I remember it seemed weird that he wouldn’t be there… aaaaannnd Clancy was acting normal.”

  “What?!” Daniel looked as if he couldn’t quite make the leap of change of topics. Sam just stared silently with his brows furrowed.

  “Haven’t you noticed? Whenever Morrie is by Clancy, she acts weird… strange… like she is in a trance… not natural like she was tonight. It made me look around for him, and he wasn’t down there!”

  “OK,” Daniel said, “what does that have to do with anything?”

  “He could be at the Lodge. He could know something is up, and be waiting for us.” Shy said.

  “He’s just not a good dude.” Sam surprised them both by speaking up.

  “His eyes are never happy, even when he laughs…” Shy added.

  “He feels evil.” Sam’s raspy voice lingered on the word evil, and in the dark forest Shy shivered.

  Daniel looked at them both and said, “Okaaay… so does that mean we are going straight to the waterfall? Those two girls will be pissed! I don’t even want to see them for days and days if we do this.” Daniel smiled slightly in the dark.

  “We could scout around, and see if we see Morrie. He’s probably not waiting for us… why would he be?” The lack of belief in his own statement was evident in Shy’s voice.

  “Leave the girls.” Sam spoke up again. “We can tell them we didn’t make it, Tad called us back, Clancy saw us, we got lost, whatever. We need to do this now, before I chicken out.”

  Daniel and Shy’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, spooky forest, and they looked at each other in the gloom. First Daniel nodded, and for some reason, he was smiling. Shy nodded in return, and realized Daniel must be smiling thinking of how mad the girls were going to be. Shy wasn’t sure why, but he beamed back at Daniel.

  The threesome bypassed the path to the Lodge, and continued toward the Cave cabins. Eventually they crossed the path to the bridge, and came to the junction with the river gorge path. This very same path they had walked last summer several times. The first time was with Tad. That was also the first time they heard the cry of what they now knew was a lindworm, or as Shy now thought of it, a dragon. Shy and Daniel had also run down this path at night, fleeing from pursuers. That was the night Shy first met the fossegrimen. Shy hoped that boded well for this evening. He hoped he could find the huge, rumble voiced creature that had enthralled him with his fiddle that was laced with fairy magic. Shy patted the sweets in the bulging right pocket of his cargo shorts. Then, obsessively, he touched the other pocket that had brats from the bar-be-que at the beach. He knew these gifts for the fossegrimen were a key part of their plan.

  This night, as they approached the path that branched down through a cleft in the cliffs, winding narrowly through the rock walls and giant boulders to the pool at the base of the magical waterfall, they moved cautiously and slowly through the oppressive darkness. All three were silent.

  Daniel stopped abruptly. Shy walked right into his back, and Sam followed suit into Shy’s back. It took a second for Shy to realize Daniel was pointing. He followed the direction of Daniel’s arm, and squinted only because he could see nothing at first. He continued to stare, and then he saw a bobbing light in the distance. It must be close to where the path from the forest cabins reached the river gorge path, just past where they would turn down to the waterfall ahead.

  All three boys had squatted into kneeling positions in an attempt to make themselves less noticeable. Shy’s mind raced to what his book had told him about trolls. He remembered their sense of smell was better than sight. That is why they would gather fireflies into a jar for lanterns. Shy guessed that if it was indeed trolls moving through the woods to some gathering initiated by the huldra, kneeling wouldn’t do much good. The trolls would simply smell them.

  Perhaps it wasn’t trolls. Perhaps the slight breeze kept their smell away. Perhaps they were pulled so strongly to wherever they were going, that they couldn’t stop. Whatever the reason, the light appeared to come to the river gorge path and turn north. They waited until it bobbed out of sight. Daniel looked back at the other two with eyes wide.

  Shy stepped in front of Daniel, and said, “C’mon.”

  He didn’t wait. He felt exposed where they were. He wanted to get down to the waterfall.

  Shy moved quickly and turned down the path that cut into the cliffside. He could feel the other two boys behind him, and so he kept going, working his way down among the damp rock. The rushing noise of the waterfall became increasingly overpowering. It wrapped Shy in a false sense of security since it hid the sounds of their approach.

  Eventually they reached the bottom. Shy slowed and the others came up next to him. He slowly looked around. He was waiting for his vision to catch, to feel the slowing, the blurring that signified the Glamour. He found nothing, and slowly moved forward. The beach of the pool at the bottom of the waterfall lay ahead and around a cliff to the right. The second time they had found the fossegrimen it had been there, on the beach. Shy was now passing the exact spot he had seen the creature the first time. Something made him stop. Some whiff of a tune, lingering in the air.

  Shy knew he couldn’t really hear anything, the waterfall was simply too loud now. Yet, he felt it, deep inside. He stared at the cliff, and after a second or two, he felt the Glamour’s pull. He stared harder. This Glamour was much stronger than what he had seen through down here previously. He continued to push through with his vision, and eventually felt a pop in his head. There, on his stool, sat the hulking creature that was the fossegrimen.

  He heard a sharp intake of breath from Daniel next to him. The fossegrimen slid his fiddle from under his chin, and set it on his knee. The creature shifted on his absurdly undersized stool. Shy could not understand how the stool could possibly support his weight. Shy figured the creature had to be at least five hundred pounds. It had black skin which highlighted the orange-hued hair.

  It stroked the lapels on its too small green jacket, but said nothing. Daniel elbowed Shy gently. Shy tore his stare from the creature to look at Daniel. Daniel didn’t turn his head, but motioned Shy closer. Shy remembered the food in his pockets. He took out a cookie and brownie from his right pocket. They were slightly crushed. From his left he took out three greasy brats.

  He placed the haul in both hands and held it out in front of him. Slowly he took several steps forward.

&n
bsp; The fossegrimen had its eyebrows arched. Shy swore afterward that he heard its stomach rumble in hunger. Shy watched as it slid one meaty hand under itself onto the stool and pushed up its bulk like Shy had seen very pregnant women do. Once standing, it stretched, all the while keeping its eyes firmly locked on Shy.

  The creature began to amble slowly toward Shy. Shy blinked and the creature was instantly in front of him! Shy jumped slightly, and a little yelp erupted from his throat. It had covered thirty feet literally in the blink of an eye!

  It quickly grabbed the brats, and one after another shoved them into its mouth. Shy saw perfectly white teeth, but was forced to turn his head as pieces of food erupted from the fossegrimen’s mouth as it coughed and sputtered.

  “Hhhhhmmmmm…. Hoooooo…” rumbled from it in satisfaction as it finished the brats.

  It then eyed Shy again, as if reading his mind. It had very piercing eyes, very deep. Shy had noticed that many of the fairy folk had expressive eyes. Its eyes slid down to the sweets remaining in Shy’s outstretched hands. Again, moving so quickly that Shy jumped a little, the fossegrimen had grabbed the sweets and was shoving them into its mouth. It turned as it was finishing and ambled back to its stool. The stool groaned but held, as it plopped down.

  The creature licked its fingers that were almost as big as the brats. Shy wiped the food flecks from his face, and then, for a moment, both parties just stared at each other. Then, the fossegrimen spoke, “Hhhhmmmm, rrrhhhhmmm, rrrhhhooooo… A boon you seek? HA! I see, I know! In exchange for this most wonderful feast, you would have some answers, young one?”

  “I….” Shy started, but his voice caught. “Yeah.”

  For the first time it turned it’s gaze on Daniel and Sam.

  “You have found the elusive butterwort plant… hmmmm, hooo,” It said softly to itself. “These young ones also have the sight, do they?”