We feast on jerky and dried fruit, oatmeal we cook on the gas stove, or rehydrated stew and canned chili. As we nibble and drink, we flyt. It’s an elaborate game of back-and-forth riddles and insults, the more rhythmic and poetical the better. Unferth introduces myth and history into it right away, so we’re not insulting each other so much as creatively dragging Sanctus Grim’s parentage through the mud or making fun of Fafnir and Loki and Sigurd Dragonslayer or, more frequently than is fair, Thor Thunderer.
The game continues until I fall asleep in the middle of his triumphant verse, and we pick it back up in the morning. Between laps, between sparring matches, we keep up the back-and-forth, though he wins every time.
On the third afternoon he takes me out tracking. He shows me how the forest should look, what’s normal as a baseline, before he starts pointing out deer paths and scat and frost-covered tracks. We spend little time with such signs, as trolls themselves are both exceedingly obvious and nearly impossible to detect.
I’m to look for exposed rocks first of all, as trolls turn to stone under the sun and prefer to find natural stone where they’ll stand out less. A giant boulder in the middle of a field won’t keep any troll safe. When there’s no stone in sight, I should begin with water, since like all living things they have to drink, and soft earth holds footprints. If there’s a deep-enough river, a troll may even hide from the sun below the surface. The oldest may go hours without air. He’s heard of troll mothers pushing their already-calcified youngest sons into lakes and rivers to hide them from other trolls or Thor’s Army. Not this far north in the winter, he adds, because of the thick ice.
We also keep our eyes open for shallow caves carved into the hillsides or overhangs, and check the ceilings for smoke sign. Trolls scatter the ashes of their fires but rarely rub out the char marks.
“Trolls cook their food?” I interrupt, appalled.
“If their mother is wise.” It’s the troll mothers who determine a herd’s behavior, he says. In all troll species that gather into such family groups it’s the case, but especially with the greater mountain trolls. If the mother is smart, she’ll teach her sons wider vocabulary and to use simple tools or paint with mud and scar their own bodies for decoration. A triumvirate of ancient, shrewd troll mothers was responsible for the Montreal Troll Wars in the first place, able to command their own army and even negotiate with Thor Thunderer.
I thought such things were only legend. I thought the stories of peace talks were exaggerated, but Unferth is too grave as he explains it for that to be the case.
Lucky for us, he’s not heard of troll mothers working together since the burning of Montreal.
I wonder if in the end it will be the heart of a mother I take back to the Alfather.
Abruptly Unferth crouches down with a tight wince, favoring his left leg. He scrapes a finger through dead leaves, revealing grayish dirt. “Do you know, little raven, how trolls came to be?”
I do, but say, “Tell me.”
He pauses just long enough to let me know he sees my dissembling, then begins. “In ancient days, when the frost giants pressed south hard and harder against our gods, the brave northern kings who carved out livings at the bases of glaciers begged the gods for a weapon against them. Thor, who loves men, asked his cousin Loki Changer to use what magic he could to fashion it. And so Loki drew fire from the earth and pressed it into the chests of thirteen men.
“But the fire burned the men, devouring them completely. Loki turned to the goblins-under-the-mountain, who were no friend of his but owed him. The goblin queen set her best smiths to discovering a solution that would allow the monstrous men to hold the fire in their hearts without burning. Yet even their skills, even their mountain forges and moon-silver tools, could not find a way.
“As intrigued as she was frustrated, the goblin queen sought out Freya, the feather-flying goddess of magic, who is herself a daughter of goblins and of elves. And Freya, always twining her fingers into the strands of fate, looked far into every future and smiled. The queen of dreams took the fire of the earth, formed it into a brilliant charm, and put it into the heart of a woman. The magic overwhelmed the woman, but she kept her mind. That woman became the first troll, the mother of all trolls. From her were born the race of trollkin, monstrous as their monstrous mother.
“Freya said to the goblin queen, ‘Only magic as powerful as the earth’s fire can hold such creatures alive, and the only fire as strong as the earth’s belongs to the sun.’ And so to balance the magic, the troll mothers and their children were cursed to transform into stone whenever the sun cast its light upon them, that the rock of the earth itself might contain their inner fire.”
Unferth’s voice fades and he waits expectantly. I say, “If that’s the case, where did cat wights and iron eaters come from?”
He smiles. “Early experiments the goblins performed with tundra cats and monkeys?”
I laugh to think of elegant elves and crystal-boned goblins fussing with a basket of cats.
“So you believe they evolved as the rest of us did,” he says, combing through the brown leaves again with his fingers.
“Why not?”
He tosses a fistful of leaves away in frustration.
I kneel beside him. “What are you looking for?”
“Last winter this was a path they used to travel to the ruins of Montreal. There were frequently prints. It must be nearer the creek than I remembered.”
“I’ll find them.” I crash ahead, stomping through the low growth with my boots, not waiting for him.
Unferth calls after me, “There’s another story that the trolls were born the bastard sons of fallen Valkyrie.”
I stop, my back to him. His tone says he meant it obnoxiously, that he’s needling me. And so I slowly turn around and make as vicious a face as I can. “Then I should be very good at hunting them, shouldn’t I?”
My voice rings between us, light and sharp, and Unferth’s eyes pinch in a secret smile that never quite touches his mouth.
It’s becoming my favorite expression of his.
The next morning—two before my birthday—Unferth packs camping gear and all manner of weapons and leads me southeast toward the ruins of Montreal, to show me the damage greater mountain trolls can do, and maybe even find one so I can begin to appreciate their real size and malice. Only to watch from a distance, though I want to get in his face and insist I’m ready now, I’ve been training all my life for this. I suspect that is exactly the opposite way of convincing him. Ned Unferth needs poetry and action, not impatience.
We hike at least fifteen kilometers with troll-spears and heavy packs, and despite the winter I’m glad my coat is tied over my pack instead of around my shoulders. The therma-wool shirt Unferth provided is plenty warm, and sweat stings my eyes.
The forests are thin but wild, with thick underbrush and cold, leafless branches that clatter together in the wind. We tromp through fields, some with evidence of fifty-year-old farms: half-buried giant tractor wheels, silos missing all their tiles and roofs, crumbling troll-walls graffitied with the thorn rune, which has always signified a warning that here be trolls. Most of them are faded or obscured by weeds. A few walls still protect farmhouses and barns, whose broken windows reflect the light like eyes.
At lunch we break to spar with the troll-spears and for me to find at least three places a mountain troll might hide from the sun amidst the abandoned traces of humanity.
As evening approaches we climb to the top of a hill from which we can see in the distance the ruined skyline that used to be the city of Montreal. Blocky buildings that were in fashion sixty years ago and the dark gray and brown of trees grown up in the streets, gaping holes from the bombing that destroyed half the city before Thor Thunderer and the troll mothers made their treaty.