Copper

If one was to catch the troll and hold him upright on the top of a table, Copper stood exactly to the top of Loa's highest finger. He was one hand tall, specifically one Loa hand tall. He always carried a sturdy leather rucksack with a copper thimble inside of it that he used for all sorts of hauling, and for drinking water and wine out of.

Nobody knew how old Copper was, or where he had come from. Trolls never leak that sort of information. Family backgrounds are highly guarded secrets. For instance you could have two brother trolls bump into each other on the street and they would never let on to know each other. Nobody knows why trolls are like that, although there is some suspicion that if you know the weakness of one troll, it is the same weakness of every troll related to him, which would be an excellent reason to be secretive about your relatives.

Trolls live for more generations than humans, and they usually come with the land. They can't be owned like humans, but they also can't relocate long distances without a great amount of difficulty, although it has been known to happen very occasionally. That is why most trolls live in Norway and the nearby regions. It is their origin so far as is known. The average troll will live the length of about five human lives or 350 years.

It is extremely rare to see a baby troll. Mother trolls live up in the mountains with their children who are kept away from human contact. Once old enough, they join their fathers or other adult trolls on the land and in the profession that are assigned by their troll king. You might see a woman troll on your land daily until she starts a family, then it is as if she disappears into thin air. But you can safely assume that her troll husband is keeping her hidden away some place higher up. It's not that he hides her against her will, she wants to be hidden. She wants to protect her children from the influence of humans. Troll children are not introduced to humans until they have been properly educated about them from the perspective of troll culture.

Loa and Mias suspected that Copper had a family up in the mountains, though you would not be able to torture such information out of him. But he often took more food than he could be seen eating, or filled his thimble with cheese and then snuck off during times of distraction, as if he was carrying on some sort of a second life some place else.

There had once been a red haired female troll Eva, who swept the dairy barn daily when Loa was a child. Eva was also used to help manage the cows during milking hours by jumping on their tails and swinging around from the end of the tail to kick them in the ribs if they started a rebellious stomping session during their milkings. This was important work, because a cow's rebellious stomping session in the milking station sometimes lead to a manure filled hoof landing into a full bucket of delicious milk, which of course spoils the entire batch. Everybody hates throwing a full bucket of perfectly well made milk down the barn sewage gutter because a stomping session went too far, and nobody was ever quite so good at kicking a misbehaving cow in the ribs from a swinging tail as Eva had been, so Eva's mysterious disappearance did not go unnoticed by those who milked the cows.

Trolls can't really be sweet, as it isn't in their nature, but Loa thought Eva to be entertainingly grumpy and hilariously vain. Eva was always complaining to Loa about the pettiness of the other female trolls in her bunk house, and she never showed up to the dairy barn without braiding her hair into these fantastic spinning buns or projections of various shapes and sizes and locations set upon her head with such random perfection that as a child Loa begged her for instruction. Eva made the instruction fee very expensive by exchanging braiding lessons for colourful balls of Loa's mother's wool and big blocks of Loa's father's cheese which Loa worked hard at home to earn. One day when Loa was 13, Eva just did not appear at the barn for their braiding lesson and was never seen again, which in the world of trolls meant that she was probably  'in the family way', and had retreated to a life of child rearing up in the mountains. It was also shortly after Eva's disappearance from the dairy barn that Copper seemed to go missing for various periods of time.

When on the farm, Copper spent most of his time hassling everyone with an endless stream of verbal negativity. But he was good at killing rodents, and for fixing machinery in places where it was too small for human hands to reach. So Copper was kept on hand, and paid by the chieftain in food mostly, sometimes in a bit of coins. He also kept watch for possible invaders, and he listened for gossip of King Harald's activities, lest their chieftain's land become a parcel in question for the king's acquisition. That is why Copper traveled with Loa so much. Loa delivered the milk and cheese and butter into the villages, and Copper was to eaves drop along the way.

Ugly Copper the troll's unique weakness was for things that were soft and delicate. Loa had caught him many times in the basket of clean laundry fondling her summer lace nightgown, or hiding in the Christmas Tree holding and stroking the most delicate of ornaments. When Loa went into the village store Copper would immediately bury himself into the bucket of silk fabric bolts, which was terribly upsetting the shop keeper, especially when she would dig into the bucket to unravel a roll of silk for a customer and find an ugly troll in the pile. Copper may have only been one Loa hand tall, but that was a terrifying size in the eyes of an unsuspecting shop keeper.

 Copper had a head of long and curly hair with brown and reds that shimmered in the sun. His skin was a dark tone, but his eyes were a piercing blue. He had a good long nose with an excellent wart on it, and a stocky build that set him low to the ground, as all trolls are. Copper was amazingly physically agile and tied his walking stick and his axe onto his leather rucksack when they weren't in use. He often used the axe for climbing up the ice on the side of the mountain. Mias and Loa loved to watch him skirt across the ice with his axe as he would take off at the end of the day up the mountain with his pack full of something. He was such a small creature, yet he was fierce and brave in his own way. For Mias and Loa, Copper was that terribly difficult family member that you frequently curse, but is such a part of your daily life that you would not know what to do without them. 

Eyes Green Grey and Blue

Six months earlier;

The old woman's green grey and blue eyes were the most beautiful Loa had ever seen, and those eyes were the reason that Loa had begun following the woman whom was known by the villagers as 'Isabella Heilari', translated Isabella the healer. It was something behind the beauty of their colour, something beyond them that drew Loa in. How could a woman of her elderly age be as powerful, as beautiful, as magnetic? Loa estimated Isabella to be in her seventies, yet she moved and held herself with the grace of a dancer.

Isabella's hair was completely white, but she still wore it long. It stopped in the middle of her back, and it fell beautifully across her face when she laughed and spoke to the villagers. Isabella always had a kind word of attention for little Silla, and a suggestion about what herb might help with which minor ailment. Loa made sure to station the milk cart outside of Isabella's most likely daily haunts according to the hour that she and Silla arrived in the village.

One day Loa caught Isabella in a moment of solitude on the way out of the village beside the river. Loa and Silla boldly threw out their blanket to sit beside her and to throw rocks into the water with this entrancing older woman as they listened to the water chuckling under the bridge.

'How did you become a healer Isabella?' Loa asked with the innocence of a twenty three year old.

'It was the unfortunate result of too much love, but it was my lot in life, and I am grateful for it in my own way.' Isabella replied.

'How can love be too much or unfortunate?'

'Love can be the most unfortunate circumstance of all my beautiful young friend, and too much love is often the cause of life's greatest tragedies. But that is how one becomes a healer which is what you have asked. One loves so deeply that it is at the expense of one's own life and heart. And hopefully within the healer's sorrow, she or he finds their other life and a different kind of heart.'

'I want to be a healer too. I want to learn from you.'

'Precious child, you do not know what you are seeking.'

'But look at you. You are very old, and yet you are more beautiful than any other woman in the village. You have more than any of them within your presence, within your mind. I can feel it when I am near you. And the troll, he hates you! Look at him, he won't even come out from the hot cart and sit here in the breeze by the river with us. He would rather hide behind that dirty wheel than be close to you.'

'Ah yes the troll,' laughed Isabella. 'Hello Captain Copper Ears' she endearingly called out to him. 'Why don't you join us here along the cool breeze of the river? We have some cold lavender tea for you.'

'Bahhhhhhhhh!!!!!' writhed the troll behind the wheel of the cart. He was not even able to speak to Isabella. He could only writhe and make strange tortured vocalizations which greatly amused them all. After laughing with Loa and Silla about the trolls reaction to her invitation, Isabella's face grew quiet and serious. She contemplatively sipped her lavender tea which she had shared with the two girls beside her.

'I don't know what to say, because to have so much kind generosity as a reason to want to be a healer is rare. Right now you are seeing my power and beauty at the end of my life, but you are not able to understand the price that has been paid for it. Yet a person could not seek to be a healer with your type of sincerity without inspiration, so I know that you do not seek to be a healer in order to have the power that you see in me...... such as the power to scare an ugly troll!' Isabella laughed again and waved at the troll still hiding behind the wheel of the milk cart. Another 'Bahhhhhhh!' was hurled out, and then Isabella's face became serious again.

'I don't know what this means Loa, but I do know that there are two kinds of healers.'

'What are the two different kinds of healers?' asked Loa curiously. She suspected that this was her first lesson in one of many on her path to become a healer like Isabella was, and she was extremely alert.

'The first kind of healers are healers who live lives that are cut unreasonably short, for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. The intensity of the first type of healers' love is for a very brief time. They are like candles that burn so brightly and so beautifully that the earth could not hold onto them but for a brief moment or it might burn up from all of the love. They heal people with their brief presence in ways that last long beyond the years that they spend here.

The experience of being loved by one of these healers lasts those who receive their love over the course of an entire life time. If you have been loved by one of these healers that had a very short life, you will be a reflection of their love and life force for the remainder of your life. You are left with a responsibility to reflect that love out into the world on their behalf. It is a huge honour to have been chosen by one of these powerful healers to be loved in this life, as they were able to only choose a very few people to love because of how short their life would be. The healer trusted you with something precious. You can never be the same person you were before you have been loved by  and lost this kind of a healer in your life. They become a part of you forever. You are like an echo of their love.'

'What is the second kind of a healer?' Loa was fascinated.

'We are the long suffering healers. Our light doesn't burn as brightly as our brother and sister healers that predecease us, but it steadily burns right down to the very end of the wick. It keeps burning in the absolute worst of circumstances, and with every injury and betrayal, which become the common place of our lives, if we survive them, a little more power to scare trolls is gained.' 

Loa and Isabella laughed again at the mention of the troll's fear.

'A long suffering healer has their entire life to reconcile themselves with the fact that probably every person they will ever reach out to in love, in service, in kindness, in healing, will most likely eventually betray them, abandon them, drop dead on them, or move away in order to fulfill their own destinies because of receiving enough love from them. Are you sure that you are interested in this sort of a painful and morbid lifestyle Loa?'

'Maybe not.' she replied feeling the soberness of her friend's life. 'But why do I see you smiling so much? Looking so full of happiness? You look happier than any woman I have ever seen.'

'I have learned to find my joy in the souls of the people that I brush paths with every day, and with the animals that share this land with us, and in the beauty of nature that surrounds me. I have learned to have everything within the nothing, to be grateful in the reality of my fleeting presence here on earth. I know that I am still reflecting the love of one of the brightly burning healers who lived for a very short time, and that is enough for me to continue finding the joy of my life within the simplicity of my breathe.'

Isabella continued, 'Not that I am without sorrows, as there are times that sorrows overwhelm me, but I find my comfort in the brevity of each moment. I don't want to waste the love that was invested in to me so long ago. For him, I stay to reflect the beauty of the love that he so generously gave to me, and to give love and healing to those who often later betray or reject me. Because if I only gave in order to receive, I know that it would be of very little value, certainly not enough value to be honourable in relation to what the brightly burning healer gave to me during his brief life.'

Loa felt like her head was floating. Isabella's words made her so curious, so excited, yet at the same time afraid. It was difficult for Loa to imagine Isabella as a young woman, a young woman whom perhaps had lost a lover in her youth? Or maybe it wasn't a lover. Maybe it was a brother. Loa did not want to ask. She just wanted to sit there quietly with Isabella and Silla and to take in the beautiful smell of the side of the river, with the wild flowers growing beside them, and feel the breeze on their skin as it billowed up their skirts, exposing their legs to the warmth of the sun. The three of them laid back on the blankets and were quiet, even Silla, who seemed to sense the importance of that moment.

'Baahhhhhh!!!' writhed the troll from under the cart.

The three of them burst into fits of girlish laughter on the blankets and the water kept noisily bumbling across the river bank and under the bridge.

Fjords

The metallic taste of starvation was fresh in her mouth.

They had been climbing for too many hours.

She was so much weaker than him, but she did her best to keep up.

"He won't know you." whispered the ugly troll that trailed them.

"How can you say something like that? Of course he will know me." she replied.

"That is part of the trade, the child's life in exchange for your memory of each other. Weren't you listening?"

Their ascent up the mountain passage toward the port was so many hundreds of years ago that Loa hadn't been taught that humans and trolls were supposed to pretend not to see and hear each other.

"It will be sorrowful." he mocked.

"Kjeft!" she replied. It means shut up.

The soul she trusted most led the way and carried their treasure.

"You alright?" he asked.

"I'm okay, how is she?"

"I think she is getting hungry. We should stop for a bit."

They set themselves down on a rock that Mias cleared off. Their beautiful little Silla cheerfully picked up a small collection of stones to play with on this make do platform in front of an astounding back drop of the fjord below them. As Loa dug into her bag for what was left of the food, Mias gently put his hand on her knee, feeling every bit as much of the pain and the beauty as she was.

"We are alive. It is so much." he kissed the top of her head.

She knew it was true, but she also knew that the pain ahead of them would be impossible to survive.

"We have now." she said quietly, bravely smiling through her tears and breaking up the small bits of cheese.