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GUNNAR

I rode in the back of the human vehicle as it bumped along the dirt road that led deeper into the forest. Taking a deep breath, I savored the scents that surrounded me. Never had I smelled anything so amazing. Ignoring the scents of beasts, and men, I focused on the fresh pine and moist soil. There were so many amazing things here that I had never experienced before.

The vehicle stopped and I stood as the humans that were in the front got out. “Come on, Gunnar, let’s go meet your new boss,” one of them said. I hopped out of the truck and they both stepped back. No matter how I tried to control my movements and not be threatening, my size made it impossible for humans to not be intimidated. One of them led me to where the human Frank was waiting.

“Hey, Gunnar, are you ready?”

“Yes,” I said. I was not accustomed to speaking to anyone, so I kept my words to a minimum. Something that those who had been teaching me the ways of humans for the past year had found frustrating. But my life as a troll had been a solitary one, and I did not feel the need to fill the space with words that did not matter. We walked through the forest, and I breathed in the smell of pine that I didn’t think I would ever get used to. I also wasn’t sure I could get used to wearing shoes and the confining clothes that humans seemed to find normal.

“Gunnar, this is Flynn Davies. He’s going to be your supervisor and he’ll be showing you the ropes,” the man said that had led me here.

“Where is the rope?” I asked and glanced around. The human, Flynn Davies, grinned and coughed to cover a laugh and the sound made a smile tug at my lips. His dark hair was messy under the hard hat he wore. But I found it hard to look away from his brown eyes.

“It’s a saying. It just means I’ll be training you,” he said and held out his hand. I looked at it before remembering what I’d been taught and shaking it. Not too hard though. I knew exactly how easily an arm could be removed.

“I’m Gunnar,” I said, again as I’d been trained to.

“Have you ever done any kind of forest work?” he asked. He was a small human. Well, smaller than most. I noticed a patch on his coat that grabbed my attention, but I reminded myself not to stare.

“No, there are no trees in Iceland,” I said and glanced around at the many trees we were surrounded by. I could feel their strength and their happiness at living in such a vital area. There was much wildlife in this area too, but I had been told that eating anything that wasn’t human food would be forbidden.

“No trees? That’s a damn shame,” he said with a far off look in his eyes. “Come on, I’ll show you what we’re doing. Today you watch, tomorrow you get to work,” he said. The guy that had brought me here waved as he walked back to the vehicle. I watched him a moment before I remembered it was expected I wave in return. My hand went up and I noticed Flynn Davies grin at me before he turned and walked over to where some of the humans were getting ready to cut down a tree.

“Why do you cut them down?” I asked. There were many, but once Iceland had many trees too.

“We cut them, then they’re taken to a mill outside of town where they’re processed into either lumber to build houses, or pulp which is used for paper,” Flynn Davies explained. He watched as one of the other men picked up a machine and pulled a string to start it. It roared to life, and I forced myself not to cover my ears.

The tree he walked to was small and I was glad they didn’t seem to target the larger and far older trees. I watched as it fell to the ground barely disturbing the other trees around it. He walked over and started cutting the branches off. Another man gathered those branches and set them in a pile. “Why do you gather the parts you cut off?” I asked.

“We don’t want to leave too much fuel on the forest floor. If there were ever a fire all that dry cut stuff would feed it,” Flynn Davies said before he walked over to where more trees were. “Come on, Gunnar, I’ll show you what I do.”

I looked at the men cutting the branches off and ignored the looks they gave me. Most were worried about me, but one hated my kind. I stared at his back a moment before walking over to where Flynn Davies waited.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes, Flynn Davies.”

“Call me Flynn,” he said before walking deeper into the woods.

“Flynn,” I said before following behind him.

“So, I’m the one who chooses which tree to cut. I try to choose the ones that are not healthy because we want to preserve the ones that will continue to grow and keep the forest strong,” he explained before walking up to a very old, very large tree. “This one has been here a long time.”

I walked up to the massive tree and put my hand to it the way he had. The tree’s strength pulsed from its roots up to the very top branches. Closing my eyes I listened. It told of all the time it had been here. How it had weathered extreme heat, and storms it thought would destroy it. But it lived and continued to grow. “It fears you,” I said.

“Me?” Fynn asked.

“The men that want to cut it down,” I said and stepped away from it.

“I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. Wait, you can communicate with trees?”

“I can hear all things in nature if I listen.”

“Wow,” he whispered, and for a moment he looked at me not like I was a troll, but like that didn’t matter. At that moment, I wanted him to look at me like that again. Even if I didn’t fully understand why that was. “Why is that?”

“I was born of the natural world when my country was being formed of fire and ice. I will always be connected to that world.”

“I don’t want to harm the trees. Quite the opposite. I want to make sure they stay healthy, and we give them plenty of room to grow. But we’re in the lumber business, so we do need to harvest some.”

“The trees understand. They’ve survived worse than being cut down.”

“I’m always careful to not take too many and wary of the location so we don’t cause erosion.”

He gave me that look again and this time I walked away. Nature was easy to understand, humans were far more complicated.