The White Hind
Welcome to another adventure from the Thousand Acre Woods. A place on the edge of Trollheim deep within the mysterious NJ Pine Belt! Tales Chronicled by Christopher Jonathan Hulton...That's me! Today's tale, Bjorn and me are called on to a magical quest.
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I was walking with Bjorn to Mrs. Clevenger's tavern when a white hind came bounding across our path just before Pasadena. Now, it is not every day that a white deer just runs past you. Neither is it when your friend offers you a peanut butter, jelly, and mayonnaise sandwich. One is magical, and the other is just, wrong!
"Did you see her?" I asked.
"I did; though it is no questing beast," Bjorn said.
"It's better than some farcical aquatic ceremony, with a sword…"
"Yeah, cheater!"
We both woke up that morning with an urge to visit the Pine Witch's tavern. He was coming up from Trollheim when I met him after the S-turns at the fork on Pasadena Road. If you asked either of us why we were going there, we had no idea… Oh, half-formed reasons appeared, but vanished quickly. The only thing that remained was the urgency of our trip that day. Plus a weird hankering for pickles…
So when we saw her bounding across, it triggered something. Something left behind after last night's dreams that wasn't swept away by the morning dew's broom. It was like a nagging sensation coming from under the rug in the corner of my brain…
We opened pursuit without knowing any more than a greyhound knows why it chases hares.
I say instinct, Bjorn says curiosity, but we both agree we chased it in our dreams last night. I remember a sense of desperation about the chase between the Sandman's legs and over the moon made of cheese.
We ran past the tavern up Mount Misery Road. When we got to the crossroads on Butler Place, the Green Man waved down at us from his bench made from a railroad tie stretched across two boughs, and laughed. I had a sinking feeling as his laughter echoed in the hollow in between my ears. I was reminded how Gawain almost lost his head to the Green Man's challenge; or was it Gawain that killed the knight chasing the Questing Beast? Either way, I feared we might be screwed…
Just past the Spring and Fall observatories, she came to a dead stop before the bridge at the Green Fox Swamp.
She looked at us and then to the little clearing before the bridge that led down to the water. There was the happiest little fawn, no bigger than a cat.
She walked over and nuzzled him, revealing his other side. Mounds of tumors were obstructing his vision. He was Nobbi's son.
Nobbi is the current animal master. A sort of ambassador between the animals and humans. He is the largest buck in Trollheim, but he started out as a runt filled with mange and ticks when I began feeding him Idun's apples I got from Gramps. Like Uther, he was not ready for the job his son would flourish in. He had seen his father killed, like Gawain, and his mother rejected him afterward. He followed behind his sisters at a distance reserved for strangers. Whenever he tried to get closer, his mom ran him off. So when he got old enough, he kicked his mother out of Trollheim with his grandmother.
Don't get me wrong, Nobbi is attentive as his father was to him with his bucks, does, and wives, but he needs the isolation of his pain from time to time. Plus, he never learned to share those apples…
Like man, deer are also led by the wounded hearts. Name one emperor, king, or president in the last five thousand years who didn't come from a broken family.
Then again, every so often, every family has its Perceval to heal the fisher's wounds.
I once was blind, then I could see.
We were led down to the river. His mother had called out to us in our dreams.
We brought the young Oisín back to Peggy's tavern where she fed him some apples dipped in sugar, butter, cinnamon, turmeric, pepper, nutmeg, and garlic. Some sugar and fat to get some meat on his bones and the anti-inflammatory to knock back the tumors. Little old Sniffer (because he went about with his nose twitching in the air, all the time, even after he could see again in that eye) just gobbled them down. When you got to know him, he was the happiest, carefree person you ever met, and the tumors just vanished because he never saw them.
If you like this tale, hit the share button below or just even tell your friend the old fashion way, with your mouth. Come back next week for our next tale.
We are releasing our second collection of Trollheim stories in print, named Trolling About. It will be available on this website at www.salemhousepress.com and Barnes & Noble. Pick up your copy today, pretty please with sugar on top...
Make sure you pick up the first collection of tales too...
Fiction/ Illustrated Fantasy/ Mythology / Scandinavian Myth/ Norse Sagas / Scandinavian Folk Lore / Coffee Table Book
Paperback: $45 | Hardcover: $65 | PDF eBook $5
Buy now link...
Following the Harry N. Abrams, Inc. tradition of the series that created Brian Froud's and Alan Lee's Faeries and Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, we present you with what would have been the next book in the series: Trolls: A Compendium. Trolls—do you think you know what they are? Could you be wrong?
Trolls within Scandinavian lore, myth, saga, fantasy, and folktales are actually anything magical within our northern neighbor's culture. Richly illustrated in this volume are the tales of faeries, dwarves, nissen, huldras, gods, Jotuns, draugar, ghosts, and more. Also, this book introduces our readers to the world of Trollheim, populated by Nattrolls that escaped the 17th-century Swedish colony within the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Narrated by Christopher Jonathan Hulton, who lives in the Thousand Acre Woods just after the Civil War, their tales are filled with Native American lore and tales of their neighbor, the Jersey Devil.
Preview: Google Books
Hardcover: $65.00
PDF (non-flowable, best on tablet, desktop, or laptop) eBook: Download a copy onto your device today! Only $5.00
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