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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. In our tale, Angrboða aks her father for some advice after her boyfriend started to get rough with her. What fatherly advice will this gigantic Troll give his daughter about some runt who is abusing his daughter....

 

Old Sammy Buck was playing to a packed house at Peggy Clevenger's tavern—you know, the one up behind Bullock—when the rosin on his bow went dumb. No matter how hard he ran his bow against his fiddle, it remained quiet as the grave. He played his famous Out of the Air tune all the way through, from the beginning till the end, but nobody heard a note slip from the sound hole.

He looked at Peggy, who some say is a witch, and she shook her head and went about cleaning her mugs. It was then, he remembered that Karl had sold him the instrument. It was supposedly owned by Peter Gynt. Gynt had it tuned personally by the famous Troll Fossegrim.

Back in Trollheim, Helgi was shelling peas to the music. Trolls can steal music. She was stealing half the notes, especially the quarter notes, but she got greedy and stole all of the Out of the Air tune because it was her favorite. Now her conch shell phonograph went silent as old Sammy Buck snapped the fiddle over his knee back in the tavern.

Her daughter came in and slammed the door. "I told you to avoid that boy." 

"Mom..."

"Not another word." Helgi continued right on shelling, "Go find your father."

Angrboða left in a huff. She felt doomed to another of her father's long-winded yarns.

Bjorn was tending the scrub oak on the terrace above the Disappearing Pond. He just looked at his daughter and patted one of the two stumps as he moved about the trees. She sat on the empty one, and he took the acorn bowl off of the other.

"Did I ever tell you about the old Troll back in the old country who laid down for a nap?" Bjorn continued without an answer. "I think she was in Skagafirth.

"When she got up, she left one hell of an impression on that town!" he said, giggling like Gramps.

Angrboða sat on the stump next to him with her head in her hands, growling.

"Boy trouble?" asked the father.

"I love him, but he can get rough."

"I heard down at the siding where they load the bricks that some Bursi had died. He cheated at poker with that old Hessian ghost; I guess he just lost his head."

It was then that the stump's handles grew into arms and lifted Angrboða as it sprouted legs and a head. The Troll thanked the two of them and said, "I'm glad he is dead; now I can get my best girl back again." When they looked in the bowl, all of the acorns turned into silver.

"Dad, are you listening?"

"And you think you have relationship troubles." Bjorn said, shaking his head, "I've been moving that stump back and forth picking acorns for fifty years now; who knew..."

"Argh!!!"

"Have I ever told you about the Bergman's daughter, who married the Smith?"

"Is this another old, dusty tale?"

"No, she was my neighbor on the next mountain. Could she fill out her bellows..."

"Hmmm?"

"Her husband tried getting rough."

"What did she do?"

"She snapped a horseshoe in half."

"I don't think I could do that," she said, looking in the air. "I don't want the other girls to give me a hard time."

"Then, when the women made her stand in the back of the line waiting for the church to open, an awful mist rose from the water and stopped their sneering. It was her gigantic angry father," Bjorn said as he stood up and pretended to look like a foolish ape. "He only asked his daughter one thing: if she wanted to catch the congregation or throw them."

"What?"

"She then caught them as her father threw them all over the steeple. They all became grateful. The congregation held her now with a newfound esteem. She made more of an impression on them than that woman in Skagafirth, I can tell you that!"

"A week went by, and she found her father on the terrace again. This time, she had a mischievous little smile.

"What did you do?"

"I grabbed a rail from the Tuckerton train yard and wrapped it around his neck. It made one dapper bow tie."

"Did anyone see it?"

"All of Trollheim was there; when this one girl went to give me the stink eye, you know that Troll that used to be your stump?"

"Yes." Bjorn stood up and got ready to look all mean and stuff as he answered.

"Well, his new wife was there, and she pushed her right into a puddle and stared down the lot; I was the new hero! That Troll then kissed his new bride."

Then they saw Karl running with a fiddle wrapped around his neck.

 

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