Hello everyone,
I thought I'd share a story this week. It's from my book "Mythical Creatures Of The Forest", and is based on the power that we waste when we focus on memories that only create pain for us in the present. I hope you enjoy it.
The chapter is called "The Navigation Troll", and finds the three children - Amanda, Greg and Richard - looking for a way to find and save a creature known as the Earthman, who they think has been snatched away by a Feasting Tree...
“I’ve read about it in my book,” Amanda said. “There’s something here that can take us wherever we want to go to, but we have to pay him a price.”
“Pay him in what?” Greg said.
“In memories. We have to give him one bad memory from our past, and he turns it into time.”
“He turns it into time?”
“Yes, and he uses the time to take you to where you want to go. The book that Bernard…the Earthman wrote, said that the time he turns it into is equivalent to the amount of time you would have spent dwelling on it if you had kept it inside of yourself.”
“I don’t have any bad memories,” Greg said.
“I bet you do,” said Amanda. “We’ll see.”
“Fine,” Greg said. “Well how do we get in contact with whoever this is? What is he?”
“He’s a Navigation Troll. We have to walk into an area where we can all be in contact with each other, and each touch a separate tree at the same time. Then we have to give over our bad memories.”
Richard was barely listening. He was still listening to all the birds from above telling him that they should not go, that they should keep well away from where the Earthman went. There were even birds hopping along the ground and calling up at him from the ground. The bird calls were gradually becoming harsher and more screechy.
“Calm the birds down now, will you Rich?” Greg said. Richard could not hear him.
“Here’s an area,” Amanda said. There were three thin, young trees, all very close to each other, and she walked up to them.
“Hold my hand, Greg,” she said. Greg’s heart leapt, and he reached out and touched Amanda’s hand. He did not want to let go. Her hand made him feel ignited and alive when he held it.
“Richard,” she said. Richard walked up, in a slight daze, and held her hand.
“Now you two hold hands,” she said.
Greg kept his other hand by his side. Richard held his out. Greg pulled a slight face by wincing his mouth, and gradually raised his arm to grab hold of Richard’s open hand.
“Now everyone touch a tree with their knee.”
The three adjusted their legs to follow Amanda’s orders.
“Now, think of a memory, a bad memory, one that you don’t like to think about, but still lives inside of you. Then say out loud. ‘I give this memory to the Navigation Troll.’”
There was a pause. Silence.
“I give this memory to the Navigation Troll,” Amanda said, with her eyes closed.
“I give this memory to the Navigation Troll,” Richard said.
Greg said nothing, and then the earth began to rumble.
It was like an earthquake, the ground was shaking and roaring from the inside, like there was something bubbling up from very deep inside the earth, and in the middle of all three children, in the small space that was there, began to emerge long black hair, on top of a fleshy, grumpy-looking face of a troll, followed by a short, stocky body that was covered only by a pair of dry, dirty shorts. The figure was shaking with the earth, and it emerged, with eyes closed, not moving its limbs at all.
Then its eyes opened, and the three of them broke their grip with each other.
“You called?” the troll said, opening its eyes and pulling out a little notepad and a pen from a pocket in his shorts.
“Yes, we want you to take us somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Wherever the Feasting Tree lives.”
The troll looked up at Amanda. It had very large eyes, and a permanently sneering and scowling mouth.
“Extremely dangerous, and very far indeed. That will cost you, dearly.”
“How much?”
“Well, by my calculations you just need a bit more. Your memory was a good one. I am yet to take it. I only take payment when all terms are agreed. The memory from this lad, here, was ok,” the troll pointed at Richard with his pen.
“But this one, this lad, has offered nothing. I still need a good, dark memory, and he hasn’t given me anything at all. If he provides one, then it can be used to take you to where you need to be.”
“I told her already, I have no bad memories,” Greg said.
“Oh, but you do, lad, you do. What about when you were beaten up that time at school?”
Greg’s body stiffened up.
“I wasn’t beaten up. How did you know about that?”
“I can see it. It’s under your skin. It’s always there, isn’t it? It’s always with you.”
“Yeh, but I need it,” Greg said.
“How so?”
“It stops me getting beat up again.”
“Does it?”
“Yeh, because of that I started getting my brother to teach me how to fight.”
“Ah, very good,” said the troll, writing something down on his notepad. “So what you mean is that the event made you learn to fight, it brought you closer to your brother, but the memory of it, the darkness of it, the pain that still lives inside you, do you still need that? Do you still need to think about it in the same way? Do you still need to hold on to it? Do you really feel as if you are at peace with it, or does it give you nightmares? Are you terrified of it happening again?”
“I’m not terrified. But I don’t like it. I don’t like the feeling when it creeps up on me sometimes.”
“Then give it to me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to give it away. I want to keep it.”
“But why? Do you secretly enjoy it?”
Greg stopped, and thought about it. Perhaps he did. Despite him not liking it, something inside him, very secretly, did enjoy feeling victimised, hard-done by, hurt, harmed by circumstances beyond his control. It was a strange, sick kind of enjoyment, a self-inflicted suffering that he was strangely addicted to.
“Maybe. Maybe I do like it.”
“Maybe it gives you a sense of self. If you hold on to that memory, it makes you feel like you really exist.”
“Yeh.”
“So do you still want it?”
“I feel vulnerable without it.”
“Do you still want it?”
“No, no I don’t. You have it. I’ll give it to you as payment.”
“So, that’s three traumatic memories that are yet to be healed, in return for a one way transport to the home of the Feasting Tree. Correct?”
“Correct,” Amanda said.
“Right.” He was making more notes with his paper and pen.
“I can take you to just outside the darkest part of the forest. I must consider my own safety. You will be dropped off around six trees’ lengths away from your desired area. I will point you in the right direction. All agreed?”
“Agreed,” they all said.
“Very good. Please place your hands on my hair.”
His hair looked as if it had never been washed. But when the children touched the troll’s hair, it felt soft and alive.
“Take a deep breath in,” the troll said.
All three breathed in.
“And let it go,” the troll said. The three breathed out, and as they finished breathing out, they each felt a piece of darkness from inside them that had been cunningly living within them for so long, travel out through their bodies and move into the hair of this troll. As the darkness moved out, the troll’s hair turned white, their surroundings became blurred, and the air made a high-pitched, whining noise. As they looked at each other, everything around them was starting to shimmer, as if the world was turning into liquids, and then the liquids began to evaporate into gases until soon the colour was being drained out of the world and they were left in darkness. All they were aware of was a portal that the Navigation Troll was dragging them through, which seemed to bypass the normal rules of time. He was running and jumping and panting, and even though it seemed as if they were travelling for many hours, they all knew that it was being condensed into just a few seconds.
They stopped, suddenly, and it was very dark.
“Here we are,” the troll said. “Your destination.”
