Raising Trolls
The Happy Mothers

“That would never happen in my world,” Minta said many years later when I told her about my parents leaving me all of a sudden that fall and then how my newly discovered brother Dag showed up forty years later.

“What do you mean?” I wanted to know. She could be enigmatic at times, my troll mother.

“Once born, we leave it to the Happy Mothers to raise the little darlings.” Then she added, “And we are not too concerned about who is the father.”

“Huh?”

“We live such long lives that fathers come and go.”

“Well, yes. I guess,” is what I managed in reply. Then I said, “What do you mean “the Happy Mothers? Doesn’t the birth mother raise the child?”

“No, not these days. Not as a rule. Well, it happens but not often.”

“Please, Minta, explain.”

She did.

“It’s uncertain when this custom started. It was long before I was born. So long ago, some say we’ve always done it that way, but that is not true.”

“What custom?”

“The Happy Mothers,” she said by way of not explaining a thing.

“What about them?”

“Fenthor, one of our wiser-than-usual elders, once told me—for, yes, I was a curious youth and asked him and others about things I did not understand—that it began several thousand years ago, maybe even before we came north, or maybe not that far back. Anyway, according to Fenthor, the story goes that some troll mothers just couldn’t get enough of the young ones, something in their blood, I guess, or troll brains, not sure, for even though they already had had basketfuls of kids themselves, some had, these would eventually grow up and if they could no longer conceive they would run out of kids to cuddle and chase and raise and then tumble into long sulks. Sulking and sulking until some bright troll decided to give them their young ones to raise, and now they were all happy again, these Happy Mothers, which is what they grew to be called. And since there were always Happy Mothers around over the years, it simply grew into a custom—not a law as such, there’s the occasional pair who still raises their own, but they are now few and far between: you get pregnant, you give birth, you hand the young one over to the Happy Mothers to raise. Win-win situation that would let you, the parents, get on with things other than kid-rearing while the Happy Mothers stayed, well, happy.”

“So, now the Happy Mothers raise all troll children, everywhere?”

“I don’t know about tribes in other parts of the world, but in ours and those nearby, yes, that’s how we do things. Yes, mostly. Yes.”

“But the parents see their kids, right?”

“Sure. Pretty much daily. But the grunt work is done by the Happy Mothers. Fulfills them, they say, and who’s to argue with that? It seems to fulfill the kids, too.”

“Well, you should know.”

“Yes, I should, shouldn’t I?”

“So that’s why they could never be parentless, I mean the small ones. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not in any meaningful way, no. A Happy Mother would always be around. Most kids, until their teen-equivalent (around a hundred years or so by your reckoning), actually view the Happy Mothers as their real parents while their real parents are, I don’t know what, aunts and uncles perhaps.”

“As I said, you should know.”

“Yes, aunts and uncles.”

“Weird.”

“Not really. The Happy Mothers are so dedicated that the kids are always well looked after and taken care of. Works like a charm.”

“Well, it obviously works.”

“Like a charm.”

“Have you ever been to Stockholm?” I asked after a fading silence.

“Of course.”

And then I remembered, yes, of course, trolls can render themselves invisible when it suits them. “How did you get down there? It’s quite the journey.”

“Walked.”

I looked at her with a mix of astonishment and suspicion. “You did not.”

“Did.”

“Must have taken you days, weeks.”

“I have long legs.”

“True.”

“What do you think of our archipelago city?” I asked her, having spent some years there myself.

“Like any city,” she said. “Not made by or for trolls. Though prettier than most.”

I nodded. “True.”

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