Friends, I'd like to share a with you a rare secret: a method for hunting trolls practiced by the most ancient of nomadic Nordic cultures, spoken mouth to ear, father to son, mother to daughter, and them to their children in turn. Damp with ages, replete with wisdom and mysterious pragmatism, it is an archaic lesson almost lost but for one lineage, descended from the heroes of old, and here it is, spat to the world.

You may be curious as to how I came upon this hallowed heathen method. Well, why else am I writing?

~September the fifth, in the year twentyhundredandnine

The day was turning, eve was coming, the sky was darkening, and I underneath it, treading a rocky, rooty path between the evergreens. It was not long before I came upon a wizened, windburnt old woman perched upon a rotten tree stump.

Now, this wizened, windburnt old woman spoke to me in earthy tones, brilliant words hissed between vile, blackened teeth. "Aaaach! Aach. What is in that sack upon your back, beardless one?" she snorted. Perhaps they were not brilliant words yet, but they would be, given time.

"A low whistle," I answered. "Tuned to D, but it's tunable. It was made by a good man in Alba, mayhap you have heard his name? Domnahl na Gr--"

"Take it out."

"What?"

"Take that whistle out of that sack upon your back, and play me a tune."

So I did. It was wonderful epic, intricately personal, grandly constructed, but she just sat there hunched on her tree stump, shaking her head. "No. No, how very very wrong."

"How can it be wrong? You didn't give me anything to be right about."

With that she threw her head back and cackled up to the pines. "Foolish beardless boy. You cannot begin to comprehend what is right and what is wrong, but I know, because I have scuttled with the beetles and soared with the birds. Aach! I have run with the deer and hunted with the wolves and leapt and swam with the fish, and you cannot even play a right tune. Aachahaha!"

"Oh. I...and what tune--"

"This tune," she screeched, snatching my whistle from my hands, spinning it into her own, beginning a wonderous melody.

It was slow.

That was a B. E. Another E. This is easy. Eff, Gee, Eff, Beeeeee. Bee, Eee, Eee, Eff, Gee, Fee, Eee, Deeeeee. And then she played it again, and again, and again, and again, and all the forest seemed to be joining in. I turned on my heel. There were trolls everywhere. Wherever I looked, there were trolls. I span frantically, but they had circled me, huge and big and middling and tiny and hairy, and stinking of swamp and dankness.

"Get away from me. Stop playing, hag. Stop playing!" She was dancing now, bare feet stamping on her tree stump, and the trolls shambling closer with every step.

"Stop, you old dog! Stop..."

There was a huge face in front of me, eyebrows like curtains, hair like something else, greeny-brown and rank. My breath caught, which was my first mistake.

My second was not moving.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

It's hard to write the sound of airborne vomit, but that's pretty close. There was a splattering and a spattering next, and whether I passed out through holding my breath, or taking one I will never know.

~September the sixth, in the year twentyhundredandnine

Humility has arisen somewhere within me, and I have learned several very, very important things. Do not stop and listen to old women on tree stumps. Do not forget to play slow. Do not linger in Scandinavian forests, and...

Don't hunt trolls.

~September the seventh, in the year twentyhundredandnine