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Mads Day

Welcome to another adventure from the Thousand Acre Woods deep within Trollheim of the NJ Pine Belt! Tales Chronicled by Jonathan Hulton... That's me! Today's tale, Bjorn and I meet a time-travelling Viking.

I was walking with Bjorn when the water erupted with a dragon ship surfacing with a man on the deck wrestling a sea serpent encircling the vessel.

We heard him yelling, "Ufda!" as the viper was hissing and bellowing from deep within his cavernous body. If the serpent had testicles, he sounded like he just lost them. Boy, he looked mad, as this crazy Viking's grin kept enlarging. A grin that would just hang in the air, bringing shivers to your spine. A grin that would stop a charging dinosaur in its place contemplating what he knew. It's not that the Great Horned Serpent dismissed the grin, for if he had seen it, he would have left already. 

His dumb luck.

He ripped a horn off and began smacking him on the nose. By now, the ship came to a stop above the waves with its wake soaking us.

I wiped the hair out of my eyes, and I looked to my left, seeing Bjorn sitting on a stump eating popcorn. 

I never learned where he got the popcorn.

He was enjoying this. The Great Horned Serpent has been plaguing Bjorn with pitfalls for years.

He was really enjoying this.

The serpent struggled, and the Viking shoved the horn right up its nose. Bjorn gave a golf clap as the sly snake escaped under the waves.

"Ho there!" yelled the fellow throwing a rope. "Give me a tug, will yah?"

Bjorn grew large enough to palm the boat and placed it on the beach. I could barely hear the Viking yelling through his fingers until he opened his hand. He leapt overboard as Bjorn shrunk back down.

 

The fellow shrunk into a comic version of himself, and he was taken aback by the sound of his voice reaching higher pitches than he was apparently accustomed to. "Well, what do you know," he said as he cleared his throat and acquiesced to its new sound. "Hello, um, where am I this time?"

"Trollheim," I said.

"Why do I—we look funny?" he asked.

"It's this dimension," Bjorn answered; "it hides us from the Pineys."

The fellow shook our hands. "Name is Mads—who may I be addressing?"

Bjorn finished the introductions before I asked, "Hmmm, where did you come from?"

"I loved how you handled the serpent…" Bjorn added.

"I bumped into him on my way to pick up a seal for dinner," the Viking answered; "we were going to share some salmon, before I was interrupted."

"So, how did you get here?" I asked.

"He pushed me into the doohickey, which launched the fizzywhig, and Bob is your uncle."

"Does the doohickey usually transport you from here to there, and elsewhere?" I asked while I leaned against his ship, pointing behind me.

He walked up and grabbed my hand again, scanned my forehead, registered my deep-set eyes, and said, "Neanderthal, with a touch of Cromag."

"What.."

"I know I can trust the Troll," he said, pointing to Bjorn; "with the rest of you, I can't be sure, but you look fine."

"Hmmm…"

"You're human; most people are 2.0"

"Sorry, you're losing me."

"Have you ever wondered why such a small class of people could control the masses?"

"OK."

"That is how they were designed."

"Designed?"

"Well yes, the automatons. They were created as servants."

"For who?"

"The Homos."

"The who?"

"The Homo Sapiens, they got lazy, and invented Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The 2.0s. 

"It was all going well, but this engineer named Gabriel gave them free will, and there was no going back. Each generation was getting a little more self determined—the only thing keeping the Homos above the rest is propaganda and division—divide and rule."

"That explains a lot…" I said, smiling.

Bjorn was investigating the ship.

"Take your Civil War, tobacco profits down, plantations freeing slaves—then wish bam boom northern textile mills hire some white un-housed slaves up north, demand for cotton goes up along with housed black slaves. Next thing you know, the self-determined 2.0s go about killing each other for these Homos.

Pops just walked off with the gal on his arm and gave Pop-Pops some raspberries…"In the end, the Homos realize it's cheaper to have white and black unhoused slaves"

"So what is with the Neanderthal stuff?" I asked.

"The Homos are afraid of you—sure in the old days they killed off a lot of you, but those who remained just are far superior, and not so laid back and friendly—friendly still, but not as trusting of those damn critters."

"We are?"

"Hell yeah, but you all keep spending your time improving the 2.0s lot in life—some learn, others find it safer being sheep or rams."

"Rams?"

"Sheep who butt heads with those who don't follow the herd blindly."

"Rams."

"Rams," he says as he jumps into the boat. "Come on in."

"Where can you go with this?" I ask as Bjorn looks everything over.

"From here to there, from time to time, inner and outer dimensions, and galaxy to galaxy in the blink of the eye."

He helped me in and asked, "Do you want to go for a ride?"

I smiled, and Bjorn pushed the doohickey, and we morphed back to reality and snapped through a prism of light and colors across the Bifröst.

 

At the end of February 2026, we are releasing the second collection of Trollheim stories in print. So make sure to come back and check when you can bring their family into your home!