Minta’s Outrage
One Furious Troll

Not long after I found out, I told Minta about the terrible treatment of young, pregnant Lisbet at the hands of her mother, aunt, and uncle: having all her teeth pulled to make room for dentures, just because…, well, just because pre-war, dark-forest villagers thought this was the best thing to do for pregnant girls and God seemed to approve—at least He did not object, not too loudly in any event; and if He were the siblings were not listening.

Minta began to shake her head about a minute into my telling and continued slowly to shake her head back and forth, long hair rustling their outraged protest at what her large ears had to endure.

Come to find out, Minta already knew.

“When?” I asked. “When did you find out?”

“I saw it happen.”

“How? I mean why? How come?”

“I knew you were on your way, and I looked in on Lisbet now and then. Just to make sure my little Wolf was okay.”

I tried to digest this; did partially. “What about her, though? Why didn’t you do something? I mean, to stop it.”

She shook her head again, as slowly. “What could I have done?”

She had a point. Nothing, really.

“Have you ever come across something so barbaric?” I asked after some confused silence. “Pulling all her teeth just because she was pregnant.”

“Oh, I’ve come across things far more barbaric than pulled teeth,” she said. “But I know what you mean.”

“Did anyone ever have her teeth pulled like this in your tribe, for being pregnant?”

“No, never. We value our teeth far too much. They must last a long time. Besides, the dentures are not made that’ll last the lifetime of a troll. Nor ones that’ll fit one,” she then added.

“Good point.” Then I said: “And then to leave the course of her suffering all up to God,” I said. I think I meant it as a question.

“Our gods are far too unreliable to leave anything up to them,” she said.

“Oh, you do have gods? I thought you didn’t. At least that’s what you said.”

“I said that? When?”

“I don’t remember. Some time ago. But you did. That I do remember.”

“Ah, yes. But what I said was that we didn’t have your God or someone like your God. Your kind of all-white old-man-in-the-clouds God. We don’t have anything like an omnipotent troll-like ruler of the troll-cosmos dishing out fates and demanding prayers in return.”

“Do yours exist? Your gods?” For some reason, I found that a relevant and rather pressing question.

“Does yours exist?”

“I asked first.”

She thought for a while: “Some do and some don’t.”

“Which do?”

“Oh, they are far too numerous to name.”

“Name five, then.”

Another troll time-out to think about that. Then, slowly, counting them on troll fingers (they have five, just like we smaller, pale-skinned humans do): “Willow, Moonglow, Water, Lingonberries, Snow.”

“Those are gods?”

“That’s five of them. That’s what you asked.”

“Do you pray to Willow?”

“No. She never listens.”

“What does she do then?”

“She kills pain.”

“How on earth?”

“We chew her bark. She also stills fevers.”

I remembered: Aspirin. Or Aspirin-like. Willow. Of course. “But does that make her a god?”

“If you mean capital-G god, like yours, no she’s not. Of course not. If you mean lower-case-g god, she is one because she was the one who told us to chew her bark to ease pain and sometimes even inflammation. Only thing she asked of us was that we do not strip too much bark off of a single of her trees; a little here and little there: she can manage growing back a little bark here and there, now and then.”

“So, she’s more than one tree?”

“Of course. She is all trees. All willows, that is.”

“What do you do for her?”

“We love her. We admire her.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s more than you do for your capital-G God; most of the time you seem to be running scared, bracing yourself for His next whim.”

She had a point. She usually did.

“And, Moonglow was it?”

She nodded. “She lights the way home across snowy fields and through winter forests.”

“A torch in the sky,” I said.

“And not only that,” she said. “The summer moon has a lot to do with making troll babies.”

“A romantic god, then?”

“If you wish,” she said, and although you cannot tell when a troll might blush—the thick brown, finely furrowed skin does not change colors—still, I could have sworn she was blushing then.

“And Water?”

“She is the giver of life, and the listener to dreams.”

“Do you pray to her?”

“No, we sing to her.”

“Lingonberries?”

“The sweetest semi-sweet berry in the world. I could eat a mountain of them.”

“You eat your gods?”

“And drink them. And ski on them.”

“Yes, snow.”

“In the moonglow.”

“In the moonglow,” she confirmed.

Silence returned and with it my personal outrage about the barbaric treatment of my mother. “I sure wish there was something you could have done, though.”

“I do too,” she said.

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