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by Dean T. Moody
Once upon a time, there were two sad brothers named Ian and Ewan, who lived in a small log cabin in the middle of the
Great Woods.
Ian had been a miller, long ago, and quite a brilliant miller at that. He could grind a thousand pounds of grain in a
single hour, was admired by all for his ability, and his flour was considered the best in the land. But something awful haunted
Ian and kept him from being a happy man.
Ian quit the milling profession when his now-deceased ex-wife became responsible for the terrible deaths of his children
from a previous marriage. In order to save on bills, she had demanded that they be sent off to die by the perils of the wild.
He had tried in vain to convince her that this was a bad plan: should the authorities find out, the two of them would surely
be hanged. No matter: she succeeded in abandoning their kids while Ian was away at a neighboring kingdom doing milling consultant
work. On his way home, he was horrified to find his two beloved children out in the woods, dead, with their eyes picked out
by birds and their poor little bodies swarming with maggots. He swiftly returned home and, in a fit of rage, promptly slew
his nasty second wife. This made him feel only slightly better, however, for he was tortured by the image of his slain children
all the days of his life. He was never again able to recover his desire to be a miller.
Ian's brother Ewan had been a woodsman since he was a young man. He was able to chop down a hundred trees in the space
of an hour, so skilled was he. Unfortunately, he too was constantly troubled by an episode in his past: for one day, as he
hiked through the far end of the Great Woods, he heard screams coming from a small cottage. He ran inside, only to find a
large wolf licking his chops and sucking his fingers. When the wolf tried to attack the woodsman, he quickly raised his axe
and beheaded the beast. And if this weren't traumatic enough, he then heard muffled voices coming from the bloody body of
the slain wolf. In dire fear, he slowly approached the carcass, only to be startled beyond his senses by a small hand punching
its way out of the gut. As he watched, breathless and terrified, a little girl and her grandmother crawled out of the mess,
covered head to toe in blood and wolf intestines, and jumped for joy for having been saved. They ran to hug the poor frightened
woodsman, which scared him even more out of his wits. The incident remained forever burned in poor Ewan's memory; it prevented
him from getting a decent night's sleep and made it otherwise rather difficult for him to maintain an intimate relationship
with a member of the opposite sex.
One day, as Ian and Ewan were moping around their little cabin, there came a knock on the door. They opened it only to
find their long lost brother Liam, once tall and valiant in stature, now old, bent and in tatters. Liam had been a huntsman
once, and a finer huntsman you could not find anywhere. He, too, had been widely admired for his expertise: he was rumored
to have hunted, skinned, cooked and eaten an entire herd of wild boar in the blink of an eye.
However, like his brothers, he too was troubled by his past. For Liam had been severely punished for the crime of disobeying
the Queen. She had commanded him to take her young and beautiful stepdaughter deep into the Great Woods and, for reasons unbeknownst
to him, he was to cut out her heart and return it to the Queen. Well, Liam thought this task far beneath him, for he was,
after all, the greatest huntsman in the kingdom. Why should he be tasked to do something a simple apprentice butcher could
do? Unfortunately, this attitude did not sit well with the Queen, and when she heard tell of his response, she had him placed
in shackles and carried away to the deepest, darkest dungeon of the highest, most forbidding prison in the land. Twenty years
later, Liam was finally released and reunited with his brothers. But the long imprisonment and the torture he underwent would
stay in his mind a long, long time.
One gray and cloudy day, as Ian, Ewan and Liam were lazing sulkily in their living room, something strange happened: A
shrill shimmering noise, like a thousand wind chimes (the little tiny annoying kind) came wafting harshly out of the woods.
The three sat up and looked at each other, confused. Wondering what this sound could be, they rose in concerted apprehension.
They opened the door; seeing nothing, they stepped outside. Staring deeply into the woods, in the direction of the sound they
were hearing, it stopped abruptly. Taken aback by the sudden silence, they were instead surprised by a loud, hacking cough
from right behind them. They turned swiftly. They were shocked to find a short, squat, and very hairy little man with tall,
glittering wings.
The wings were easily twice the height of the man. In one hand he held a clipboard, in the other the short end of a stale
cigar. He had a smelly black moustache, filthy black curly hair, and appeared to be wearing overalls. After a few moments,
he drew a last puff off his stogie, dropped and ground it out with a wooden-booted foot, and spoke with a pronounced Brooklyn
accent.
"So, hey, am I in da right place or what?"
The three men stood and gawked in awe, speechless. The hairy little man rolled his eyes and spoke again.
"Whaddis dis, a mime show? You guys an oil paintin' or what?"
No response.
"All right, never mind. Which of you, er, 'gentlemen' ordered da fairy godfadda?"
The three looked at each other. Simultaneously, they shrugged.
"C'mon, c'mon, I ain't got all day. One a youse put out a distress call and so here I am. Don't tell me I came all
dis way for nuttin'."
After a long pause, Ewan spoke.
"Saaaaay," He looked to his brothers. "I do remember speaking a wish out loud for some magic to come help
me."
The troll spoke. "Yeah, see? Toldja I wasn't crazy."
He shot a stare back at the troll. "That was eighteen years ago."
His brothers' eyes widened in disbelief. The troll harrumphed and shrugged.
Ewan continued, obviously distressed. "Yeah, that was right after I'd seen that--those two--- come out of that---"
He bent over, gulped, stuttered and couldn't continue. Ian and Liam went to comfort him.
The troll hacked a few times and spat.
Then Liam turned to the troll. "Yes, actually, that reminds me..." His voice grew tense. "I distinctly
recall requiring some miracle to save me from my plight--and none ever came. I waited for years! I was shackled and holed
up in that filthy cell for years! And all for something I didn't do!"
The troll was beginning to sense that he was not welcome His wings twitched. "So, uh, whaddaya gettin' at? None
a' dis has anything ta do wit me."
That response made Ian so mad he nearly exploded at the troll. "What about my kids!! Poor Hansel! poor Gretel---they're
dead now!" he shouted angrily. "Why? Because nothing---no miracles, no magic feathers, no talking squirrels---nothing
came to save them when they needed it most!"
The troll looked nervous at the reaction his arrival had caused.
"Look, guys, ya can't blame me for some breakdown in da system. I'm just da delivery guy. Tell ya what," he
grunted as he consulted his clipboard, "Lemme give da boss a call an' see if we can straighten dis mess out, whaddaya
say? Maybe arrange a---a refund or somethin'?"
That call was never made. He glanced up to see the three large men quickly charging him, wild-eyed, with terrible toothy
grins on their faces and their large hands ready to grab him. He let out a shriek that quickly withered into a soggy growl.
It was the last sound the troll ever made.
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The next morning sun found Ian, Ewan and Liam in the best of spirits, happily finishing up a large delicious breakfast
of troll chops (courtesy of Liam's skill with a meat cleaver), with a large side of muffins (baked with the flour ground from
troll bones by Ian's expertise), all cooked over a large hot pot-bellied stove (filled with wood felled by Ewan's swift axe
as well as a wooden clipboard and a pair of wooden boots). The wings made an excellent awning for the front window, and the
overalls were used to clothe the scarecrow in the backyard garden. Life was good now.
The three finally found the reason for each of their unhappiness; and in so finding, they found their happiness. All three
found quality, purpose and expression to their lives and, although their résumés needed a little polishing and updating, all
three went on to lead long, productive lives, and to live happily ever after.
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