Just after midnight Ursula was awakened by something clattering around in the crawlspace below the condo and a voice muttering in foreign language. Whoever was under there was quite clumsy, as there was nothing down there except the cement floor, some poles that held up the first floor and a sump pump. They had to be trying pretty hard to make all that noise, since it sounded like someone beating the floor and metal posts with a baseball bat. She ran to wake Clementine up, only to find Clem heading out of the yarn lady’s room looking for her.
“Who could be under our condo,
Ursula? I looked under there when they
were inspecting for mold after Lucy next door had all the flooding, and it’s
not big enough for an adult to walk upright.”
Clem was confused, partly because she’d been awakened from a sound sleep
tucked in under the covers with the yarn lady.
“I don’t know, but he’s speaking
in some foreign language. I couldn’t
tell what he was saying, and it didn’t sound anything like the Spammish that
the noisy people who replaced the roof spoke,” Ursula replied.
Clem shook her head vigorously
to keep herself from laughing. “Spanish,
not Spammish, Ursula.” She listened
carefully as the visitor continued to mutter loudly. “Oh, my Cat! He’s speaking Íslenska! Archie
and I decided to learn it after those weird things visited their house around
Christmastime years ago. That was before
you moved here.”
“You speak what? And who’s
Archie?” Ursula was totally confused.
“Íslenska is the language of
Iceland, and Archie is the dog who lives with the yarn lady’s sister. We send
emails back and forth about what’s going on. There was a gang of hooligans who
terrorized them and Archie and I decided we’d learn their language in case they
ever came back. Now shush, I want to hear what it’s saying.”
Clem listened intently at the
cursing hooligan who seemed to be talking about…looking for sheep? Why would
anyone keep a sheep in a crawlspace, or maybe he’d lost his sheep and thought
it might be down there? It was making its way back to the front of the house,
so Clem followed the sounds and saw it climb out of the crawl space. She was
very glad that a window was between her and the…thing. It was kind of humanish,
but instead of feet and shins it had wooden legs with something at the bottom
that wasn’t a foot. It stumped its way towards the end of the building.
Clem scurried back to the
bedroom, checked to see that the coast was clear and slipped out her cat door
in the yarn lady’s bedroom window. She hurried to a spot under the huge hedge
that surrounded the patio and worked her way silently to the end of the hedge
closest to the street. From there she
could see a bunch of scruffy folks all bunched together talking. The wooden-legged one joined them,
complaining that there was not a sheep to be found here. He’d checked out a bunch of the cellars, as
he called them, but there were no sheep and no sheep bedding or fodder. Obviously these people must keep their sheep
elsewhere.
The one who’d crawled under the
house was called Stekkjastaur by the others, and he said his grandfather had
told him specifically that everyone kept their sheep in a cellar under their
house to protect them from the harsh winters and that his job was to go and
find the sheep and disturb their rest.
If there were any lambs (unlikely in December) he should suckle from the
ewes, as that was his due as one of the…Christmas boys? Clem wasn’t sure if
that was the right translation, but that’s what it sounded like.
Another laughed at him and told
him they needed to forget the grandfather tales, as even people in Ísland
didn’t live like that anymore. A
different…boy?…said that he’d talked to the younger Jólasveinar (Clem decided
their own name fit better) who’d given him the score. Few people lived in villages anymore, raising
their own animals and crops for food. Instead, they worked far from their homes
and were given bits of paper that allowed them to take food and other things
from places where it was all stored together. Nowadays, the best the Jólasveinar
could do was to recreate their traditional tasks as best they could. He said the only thing that was the same was
that the children still left their shoes on the windowsills in hopes of candy
or small gifts. The band this younger Jólasveinar
had talked to was pretty split on whether they should leave rotten potatoes or
something nice. They all agreed that if
they could do something close to their task they’d leave something nice, but
otherwise they were 50/50 for rotten potatoes vs. treats.
Stekkjastaur snorted. “There are no potato fields around here to
take rotten potatoes from, so I put rocks in all the shoes I could find. None were on the windowsills as they should
have been. These people are ignorant! We should head back to Ísland and find a
nice village to terrorize.
A different Jólasveinar said
that there were no villages unclaimed by the others. There were too many bands and too few
villages. More people lived in cities in
tall crowded buildings that were too well watched for their pranks (not that
they could even do most of them). A few
bands had gone to the Faroe Islands and even the Shetland Islands of Scotland. That
was why this newest of the bands had decided to bravely try something
different.
Headlights from an approaching
vehicle caused the Jólasveinar to scuttle onto the yarn lady’s patio where they
would be concealed. Clem hoped she was
well hidden by the hedge. A sharp debate broke out among them about what they
should do. Should they stay and do the
job the best they could? They were in a
village – the sign out on the road said so.
“The Villages,” it proclaimed. They were not ignorant as their elders
were. They could speak and read English
at least a bit.
Stekkjastaur pointed out that
their tasks were about the children of the villages, and he’d found no children
in this place. He’d peered in some
windows after it was dark, and the place was inhabited by old people for the
most part, although there was a somewhat younger person in the one he’d
visited. Were they to provide treats for adults now? And who would be scared by
their antics, so they could make off with the best food they could find to keep
them nourished until they went back to Ísland?
Another argument broke out and
was ended by Stekkjastaur who rushed at the hedge making horrible menacing
noises and reaching into the hedge as best he could. “No, I can’t terrify their
kids, but I can terrify their cats! I saw this one inside looking at me, and
now it’s out here spying on us. Run, little cat, or I’ll take you home to
provide a snack for Gryla’s cat, Urðarköttur.”
Clementine
quickly ran out of the other side of the hedge and cowered in the shadows next
to the neighbor’s condo. The Jólasveinar
all laughed and stomped off across the street and down into the dingle in the
woods. They were laughing and pounding Stekkjastaur
on the back, praising him for his fast thinking.
When Clem
stopped shaking enough to walk, she made her way back to her cat door, hugging
the outer condo wall, checked to see if anyone was there and then shot in
through the window. It slammed into the
back of the chair so hard that it woke the yarn lady who asked if there were bears
outside. Clem yowled that it was worse
than bears. There were TROLLS outside,
and she was afraid they’d be back tomorrow and every night for the rest of the
month.
The yarn lady said that she was
happy there were no bears and went back to sleep. Clem wished more than ever that the yarn lady
could understand her.
FROM:
Clementine <princessclementine@kittymail.com>
TO: BC
& Sparky <rudytoots@catlover.com>
Archie
<pupsupreme@whosagoodboy.com>
DATE: 12/12/23
4:28 am
RE: TROLLS!!!
We have an infestation of trolls! One was in the basement and there were dozens out on the patio. They said something about going to other houses, so I wanted to give you a heads up, BC and Sparky, in case they came by. They were looking for sheep in our crawlspace. As if.
Archie, they said something about some of them
going to New Hampshire a few years ago.
Did they leave rocks in all your shoes?
The one tonight did, and I don’t know how he managed without waking us
up, cuz he has wooden legs and feet.
Please pass along any information you might have about them.
FROM: Archie <pupsupreme@whosagoodboy.com>
TO: BC
& Sparky <rudytoots@catlover.com>
Clementine
<princessclementine@kittymail.com>
DATE: 12/12/23
5:49 am
RE: Re:
TROLLS!!!
Uh-oh, that sounds like the same trolls that harassed
us some years back. They showed up every
night for weeks, and sometimes they left old potatoes in the shoes and
sometimes we got nice things. One time I
even got dog cookies! And yeah, they’re noisy and rude. I’m glad we learned íslenska, so you can
understand what they’re saying. If they
come back here, I’ll tell them off before I bite them and chase them off.
P.S. Don’t forget to leave shoes on the windowsill for them. Some of these guys are nice, but others have NO sense of humor.
FROM: BC & Sparky
<rudytoots@catlover.com>
TO: Archie
<pupsupreme@whosagoodboy.com>
Clementine
<princessclementine@kittymail.com>
DATE: 12/12/23
2:27 pm
RE: Re:
Re: TROLLS!!!
What the heck have you guys been smoking? It was quiet as it can be around here with the Daddy snoring.
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