Minta’s Task
Meeting Odin Again

This happened some time before I was born. My Troll Mother Minta has always been unspecific slash elusive about the precise when.

She’s given me several options, all at odds with the rest: Was it a year before I was born—which I find hard to reconcile since it raises the question: how would Odin know I, unconceived as yet, would soon be on the way?

Was it six months before I arrived, which would be easier to come to terms with? Was it three months before I arrived? Or the week before I arrived. Either would work as well.

Or, was it earlier in the evening of my October birth? This would have been cutting it suspiciously close.

Yes, my dear Troll Mother has at various times resorted to each of the above and I have not been up to challenging them—which, considering that she was talking about it at all, would have been not unlike, very not unlike, looking a gift troll in the mouth.

This evening, however, I threw courtesy and caution to the wind and set out to finally pin her down. “So, Minta, please tell me. When did Odin charge you with babysitting me?”

She looks back at me over her shoulder, then mumbles, “I think it was just as you were arriving. Lisbet had gone into labor, as I recall. Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“But you were at my birth, you’ve told me that. No Odins there.”

“Yes. Yes. That’s true. So, I’m sorry, it must have been before you were born. Perhaps a day or so before. Or a year before. Yes, I think so.”

“And Odin knew that I would be on the way; unconceived as yet and not on the way yet, but soon. Is that what you’re saying, Minta? He is that prescient.”

“A week before, then. Perhaps.”

“Hmm,” I said.

I was beginning to feel like Mother Lisbet listening to my elaborate fib about robbing my barrel bank. Minta was definitely dancing around the truth, and not very nimbly either. She was not a good liar, even I lied better than her.

“I don’t remember,” was what she finally—after a long, silent minute—came up with.

“Oh, you can do better than that,” I suggested.

Another long, silent minute, which Minta didn’t end. So I did:

“There has never been anything wrong with your memory. It is amazing, as a matter of fact. You seem to remember everything, in detail. So, why are you trotting around this specific ‘when’ like a cat around hot porridge?”

She looks at me, then down at her feet, but says nothing.

“Of course you know when Odin spoke to you about me. It’s not one of those things you would forget now, is it?”

I’ve mentioned before that it’s near enough impossible to tell when a troll blushes, but at this point, I could tell. She was very much embarrassed: to the point of gallons of blood rushing to her head.

When she still didn’t speak, I tried to help her out. A stab in the dark; a good stab as it happened: “Is there a reason that you can’t tell me?”

That did help. For after another long silence: “He asked me not to tell.”

“But you’ve already told me. More than once. He asked you to babysit me, as you put it.”

“I have not told you everything,” she said.

Oh-oh. No wonder she was dancing around the hot porridge.

“Besides,” she added. “I’ve been expecting, and not looking forward to, Odin seeking me out again to have a little one-on-one about why I’ve told you too much already. He’s not a very forgiving one, is Odin.”

“Well, couldn’t you ask him? Get his okay to tell me.”

“Yes. I guess I could do that. I’ll let you know when I have and what he said.”

“How about now?”

“How about now, what?”

“Asking him.”

“He’s not on the phone, you know.”

“I realize that.”

“I can’t just knock on his door, so to speak, and talk to him.”

“And this is why?”

“He’s a busy god, Odin is.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that there never will be a good time.”

“Precisely.”

“Or a time better than now.”

“Precisely.”

She walked straight into that one and then realized that she had. “Okay, okay,” she said, swatting in my direction with her large fist. “I see your point.”

Then she fell quiet and while she didn’t close her eyes entirely, they went half-lid and distant. She was calling Mr. Odin, I could tell.

Ten minutes later she returned. “He’s fine with it,” she said.

“You just spoke with him?”

“You asked me to.”

“I know. And you just did?”

“And I just did.”

“Damn.”

“Well, I was lucky. Caught him not very busy and in a good mood. Also, I told him that you really wanted to know.”

“Did he give you grief for telling me the babysitting part already?”

“A bit. Not as bad as I had feared.”

“So, in essence: You’re welcome.”

“You want me to thank you?”

“I don’t see why not?”

She reflected on that for a while and then agreed. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“It was the day before you were born.”

Then she began her telling.

:

He called on me one day and asked me to meet him at the three rune stones, where I had met him once before, the first time all those years ago. I told you about that.

“He called on you?” Could not help myself.

Minta frowned, but did answer me as she continued her telling.

When Odin wants to, he can speak, loudly, in your head. He can do that. There is no doubt about who it is, it is Him alright.

Minta, he said. I’ve got a job for you.

Well, at first, that loud voice took me by surprise and it took me quite a bit of gathering my wits enough to answer sensibly. Soon enough though I said what kind of job.

Meet me at the runes, where we met before. You remember?

Of course.

When?

Now.

So I disappeared myself from the cave and appeared myself at the runes. He was there, waiting. He had probably called me from there, is what I thought at the time, and still do.

Minta, he said.

Odin, I said and curtsied.

Oh, knock it off, he said.

I knocked it off.

I have a job for you, he said.

I didn’t answer, waiting for more.

Tomorrow night, he said, a human child will be born to his mother Lisbet in the small town of Örnsköldsvik. Do you know that town?

No, I said.

Well, there are not many of these towns down there, you’ll find it easily enough. There is only one hospital, and only one maternity ward. He’ll be born to his mother Lisbet in the evening tomorrow. This is your project.

What do you mean, Odin?

The boy is your project.

When you say project?

Are you familiar with the concept of a guardian angel? he asked me.

A little.

Well, and then he laughed, you’re his guardian troll.

I’m to babysit a human child?

You’ll not only baby-sit, you’re to child-, teen-, man-, old man-sit this human.

That could take years. I mean, it will take years.

I’m well aware of that, he said.

What if he lives to be a hundred?

Then your project will take a hundred human years, Odin extrapolated for my benefit.

Are you sure?

Am I sure? Is that what you’re asking of your god? Am I sure?

Now that you put it that way, I apologized.

Of course I’m sure, said Odin. Never been so sure of anything.

I had never heard of anything like this before. A troll guarding a human for a full lifetime, but that was obviously what Odin was asking of me. And this, quite urgently, begged the question:

Why? I asked.

Odin took a long, slow look at me as if deciding whether to kill me quickly or slowly. Then he said, he’s important.

How? I dared.

Again, that dangerous look at me.

Both humans and trolls will benefit. Even the gods. Even your Odin will benefit. And without him, or in the event of his too early, as in untimely, demise, before he’s done what needs doing, both humans and trolls, even gods are in danger.

Of course I wanted, needed to know more, but since I had barely survived two of Odin’s lethal glares, I was pretty sure I would not survive a third.

So I said, well, I said nothing. I nodded.

But then I did say, When you say guardian angel?

Make sure nothing bad happens to him. Guide him up to at least seventy, and in good shape, in a good place, with time on his hand. Having lived a full human life, he will have seen and experienced enough to ask the right questions and to arrive at the right answers. We must allow that to happen.

An old man’s musings? I ventured.

Precisely, said Odin. An old man’s musings. Well put. Your task is to pave their way. Make sure they happen.

Any tips? I asked then.

You’re bright and quick, said Odin. You’ll know what to do.

And do I did, as you know. I attended your birth, and our fates have been married ever since.

:

“Oh, man,” I said.

“You could say that,” she said.

I thought back on my nearly drowning at eleven. “You’re a good guardian troll,” I said. “You saved me from drowning.”

“Don’t remind me,” she said.

Of course, this threw the doors wide open to a battalion of questions clamoring for answers. Especially:

“What am I supposed to accomplish as a musing septuagenarian?”

When she didn’t answer, I added, “Benefitting both humans and trolls and gods.”

Now she answered:

“I don’t know,” she said. “But you had better accomplish it very well after what you’ve already put me through.”

::