The Duel
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 has had enough. There is just not enough room in this town for him and the Great Horned Serpent. One of them has to go.
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There comes a point in every Troll's life when they act like a tree and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Well, for Bjorn, Dodge was anywhere he couldn't dodge the Great Horned Serpent's practical jokes.
Well, Bjorn was not ready to move, but he hated having that wily old serpent for a neighbor. Also, there was no chance the Wurm was moving either…
So he took a chapter from Mani's playbook: "The kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." If heaven was all in the perspective, then for Bjorn he was going to have the vantage point on him. If he played his trees right, the old dragon would never cross his path again.
It would be a massive battle to rival the epic battles of Enki versus Tiamat and, even greater, Thor's triumph over the Midgard Serpent.
Good thing Bjorn was related to the serpent's sworn enemies, the Thunder People, through Thor. That is on his mother's side…
To start with, Bjorn dug a tunnel John Bowker could drive his wagon through at the bottom of 21 Lakes. He balanced a robin's egg at its mouth, so that the slightest tremor would knock it in. He then sat back with a good book after eating some beans and waited for him.
Now, the one thing snakes can't resist is eggs. Especially blue, beautiful, and tasty robin eggs, when the blue is so blue that the sky commits suicide, instead of admitting failure of the one job it was created to do. As the snake went for the egg, it rolled down the tunnel with him following it through ever-narrowing dimensions. After a mile, he could barely poke his head through the narrow hole; the egg shot up into. Above him sat Bjorn in his outhouse after his bean dinner.
Now the serpent couldn't let this go to no avail. So he hid in Bjorn's compost and waited for him to get a can of worms.
Once he was safely onboard his boat with Bjorn none the wiser...
...he grew to his full size, bursting the can and sinking his boat.
Then the Great Horned Serpent went to swallow a mouse on the banks of the Disappearing Pond; It turned on him and opened its mouth so wide he swallowed a flock of passing geese and the serpent's head.
Bjorn transformed back into a hill giant and brought him to a Troll Scout jamboree on Mt. Everest where they used him to teach knots to the boys for the weekend.
Next, Bjorn grabbed an apple off a branch and was flung back and forth over the pond, smacking into a catbrier patch on one side, and scraped down a honey locust on the other.
The battle ensued for a month, with too many pratfalls to tell about in one sitting, and to keep you riveted to your seat. So we will leave you with the final straw that broke the bank.
Bjorn went fishing with an ox tied to his pole. The Great Horned Serpent knew better than to fall for this old trick Thor used on his cousin. So he came up behind them and swallowed Bjorn in his boat along with the ox. Then he was stretched out like a balloon as the ox grew to its real size.
He was spread out upon the earth, and Bjorn did not see him ever again. It was Babe, the giant blue ox that was visiting the Jersey Shore from the Midwest. In the end, Bjorn lifted his head higher out of the water (with the ox's help) than Thor lifted the Midgard Serpent.
After that migraine, the Great Horned Serpent left Bjorn's happy little world alone.
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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