If you enjoy stories being read aloud, enjoy this one – and it’s read by the author.
One rainy Saturday evening in autumn, the Pious Little Troll was sitting under the bridge, munching crickets and thinking of the Psalms. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Perhaps I should go to church, she thought. But what will I wear? What if they make fun of me? What if I don’t know when to sit and stand? She thought of another psalm, “He will hide me under the shadow of his wings.” She resolved to go, and with that, settled down into her leg fat (trolls sleep seated, not laying down) in her nest of twigs and stones and lichen, and fell into an uneasy slumber.
Sunday morning dawned clear over the river. The Pious Little Troll was using her claws to clean her substantial earwax when she saw a traveler approaching her bridge. It was a woman with an embroidered shawl and a purse. The Pious Little Troll snuck up behind her, grabbed her hair to immobilize her, and took her shawl with a deft sweep. The woman tried to shriek but the Pious Little Troll shushed her and shoved her forwards on her way. Now she had something to wear to church!
After a long walk, the Pious Little Troll came to the big stone arched building, and with an uncharacteristic gulp of nervousness, walked through the door. A lovely man in a bowtie smiled charitably at her rumpled physique and gave her a crisply folded bulletin. She went in and found a pew near the back, near the door, so she could escape if she needed to. She couldn’t control a few grunts of anxiety. What did people who went to church think of trolls? No one looked at her, which made her feel ashamed, as though she did not even exist. She looked around at everyone’s pearls and pastel jackets and coiffed hair and tried not to think about them as travelers who might cross her bridge. She pulled the scarf closer around her neck and wondered, uneasily, if that woman was in this church. She began to sweat, which always produces fruit flies with trolls, and soon she had a fair little mist of gnats hovering over her.
The music started and the Pious Little Troll relaxed a little. She closed her eyes. The sound of the organ rumbling under and through her pew, the layers of voices in the choir–these were devotional opportunities she did not have alone under her bridge. She even dared hum along to the hymns: Crown Him with Many Crowns, and How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place. She was starting to feel her trollish heart expand when suddenly a man’s voice snapped her eyes back open. There, up front, in the pulpit, beginning the sermon, was none other than Old Uncle Antler, a well known rogue troll! He was bigger than she was, almost double in size, and had thick shaggy hair which he had cropped close – ridiculously, she thought. His trollish skin and clothes were hidden under fine, shining vestments, but his voice was unmistakable. What could this mean? Did the church know their leader was a troll? They did not, since they did not know that trolls existed outside of stories. They did not know that his bed was full of frogs and moss and stones, or that he, too, could attract a cloud of gnats if he panicked.
Old Uncle Antler, going by the name Father Mike, it seemed, gave a fine sermon. As the Pious Little Troll knew well, it is not only the human who can love the Lord our God with heart and soul and mind. He spoke about having the courage to cross the bridge and not remain stuck on one side, but to embrace what joined the sides. It was like he was talking directly to her! He waved his tree-like limbs, and thumped the pulpit with his paws for emphasis. His beady eyes swept over the congregation, gauging whether or not he was succeeding in fooling them, when his eyes fell on the Pious Little Troll and he knew her at once. He did not break stride in his sermon but by his ears there appeared, invisible to the congregation because he was removed up in the pulpit, three, then five, then a dozen or so tiny little flies.
Well, after church, everybody went out by the West doors to shake the preacher’s hand and he would say something soothing and bland, but when the Pious Little Troll got to the door, she did not shake Old Uncle Antler’s hand.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” he said with a veneer of charm. “Let’s go get to know one another.” And the old ladies in the line sighed with approval. Father Mike was so kind to talk to that scraggly-looking newcomer. Didn’t he just have the biggest Christian heart?
Old Uncle Antler put his hand under the Pious Little Troll’s elbow and directed her outside into the corner of a courtyard and they sat down on a bench. He sat right next to her, appearing to lean in in a pastoral manner, ready to receive her tearful confidences. With his left hand, which was hidden by his vestments, he drew a stone handled dagger and thrust it just up to the Pious Little Troll’s side so she could feel its point on her skin but no cut would show its mark afterwards. His voice dropped to a sound register that only dogs, owls, and trolls can hear.
“I don’t think this is going to be the right church for you, sister.”
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“Listen closely. I have a good thing going here. They pay me well, in gold, and they feed me lots of cake, which is nicer than crickets and raw minnows. I don’t have to take things from them when they cross a bridge anymore – they give them to me because it’s a church! I use my little magic to ease their warts and their worries for a few hours each week. I can fool them because they don’t know what I am, and I will not have YOU coming in here and messing it up for me.”
“But that’s wicked! Don’t you know it’s wrong to lie, especially in church?”
“You stupid little troll. What do you know about church? My gospel is what they want; safe and simple and small.” He could not help a wet chuckle. He renewed pressure on the dagger point under the chasuble. “Now, I’ve been kind to you today, but as the river-god is my witness, if you ever show your face here again, I will find a way to slit your throat before you can say ‘jack-rabbit’” (which is a well-known troll password.,). The Pious Little Troll looked around helplessly. A knot of parishioners walked past and Old Uncle Antler donned a pebbly grin and waved with his right hand. He put the dagger back into his alb and stood up, pulling her up too by the elbow.
“So great to have you,” he said loudly for anyone to hear, and as she started down the flagstone walk he lashed out a kick to her backside that no one could see.
When the Pious Little Troll got back to her spot under the bridge, she folded her stolen scarf into a neat square and placed a smooth rock on top of it. Then she sat down and wept. I am a worm and no man, scorned by all and despised by the people. All who see me laugh me to scorn. She trusted in the LORD; let him deliver her; let him rescue her, if he delights in her. For three days and three nights she did not move from her spot. She did not eat and she slept very little. I will give you meat in due season. She took this to mean the psalms were to be her food. Who can stand in God’s holy place? Those who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, nor sworn by what is a fraud. That wicked Old Uncle Antler! I hate him with a perfect hatred. Perhaps she had been foolish to go to church. All those seemingly nice people, unable to believe in things right before their eyes? Maybe Old Uncle Antler was exactly what they deserved.
On the third day of her grief, the bullfrog who lived across the river, and who had been watching her water the earth with tears, took pity on her. He hopped into the water and, with three strong kicks, glided over to her side. He thought it best to greet her with a psalm.
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” he began. The Pious Little Troll was amazed. She did not know the frog was also a believer! “I have heard the sound of your weeping,” the frog went on.
“And we have decided we want to help. All you have to do is be still and know that I, the Frog-King, will fight for you. Next Sunday, return to church, and see the mighty acts of the frog kingdom. We have fought for the Lord before!” Without another word, the frog flexed his big leg muscles and leapt back into the water and swam out of sight.
Well, that cheered her up. She got up and took some river water and munched a handful of dandelions and worms. Then passed some days of waiting. She braided lichen into her armpit hair to pass the time. She recited the psalms, of course and thought about the Lord and the frog king, and the wicked Old Uncle Antler and wondered what was going to happen.
Sunday morning came and the Pious Little Troll stood up and stretched and shook out the beetles from her matted garments. She thought, “I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord.” She looked around for some sign of the frog, but saw only the gurgling clear water, running over stones and river moss. She grabbed a few minnows and munched their cold, slippery bodies, wrapped herself in the stolen shawl she had so carefully folded, and set out for church once more. But what if Old Uncle Antler recognized her? As luck would have it, a pair of men were crossing the bridge just as she was getting ready to leave, and she seized her chance. She shoved one man, and before either of them could say jackrabbit, she snatched the felt fedora off the head of the other and clapped him on the back with a growl (which was her way of laughing). “You, O LORD, are good and forgiving, and great is your love toward all who call upon you!” she shouted, and scurried off on her way. She mashed the hat onto her slimy ringlets, and felt very pleased with her disguise.
When she got to church, she bypassed the smiling ushers and crept, in her sneakiest troll way, through the side aisle door and tiptoed up to the balcony. She was nervous, and a cloud of gnats accompanied her every step. She saw no sign of the frog king, and began to wonder if she was crazy to have believed him. The organ music began, followed by the procession, and there was that Wicked Old Uncle Antler, smiling a big jack-o-lantern grin to his left and to his right. Everybody was singing, but not him. He was too busy making sure his congregation was making eye contact with him so he could keep them under his spell. This is very basic troll magic (which you can break by lacing your hands together, closing your eyes, and repeating something cheerful to yourself like ‘cotton candy’ or ‘firecrackers’), but it worked on the foolish churchgoers. The first reading happened, and then the choir began to sing the psalm “Remember the Marvels He Has Done.” Suddenly, the Pious Little Troll felt a little nudge at her ear, and there on her shoulder was a tiny gleaming froglet who repeated the words of the psalm, “Remember the marvels he has done.” And as she looked down, she could see, silently hopping, an army of frogs of all shapes and sizes beginning to fill the aisles.
The babies were the first to catch on, and they pointed and gurgled, and their parents hushed them without turning to look. But by the time the gospel procession had made its way down the center aisle, the visitation of the amphibians was unmistakable. Large bullfrogs flanked every pew, and a small phalanx of toads creep-hopped up to meet the procession. The crucifer and torch-bearer, owing to excellent training, held their formation and did not move a muscle. The gospel hymn ended and before Father Mike could say “The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” several things happened at once.
The first was a magnificent stunned silence that was so thick you could reach out and touch it. The frogs sat quiet, eyes alert, as if waiting for a signal, not interfering with anyone in the pews. The well-behaved congregation did not know how to react correctly, and so clung to immobility, as if by remaining absolutely still, the frogs would go away and would possibly never have been there in the first place. Then a corps of small toads swarmed up Old Uncle Antler’s chasuble so that his neck and shoulders were covered with toads like a lumpy brown cope. Next, a bloom of gnats appeared around the head of the violently sweating cleric. Suddenly, the frog king himself appeared from the west door, riding on the back of a dove. In an instant that seemed to last forever, they flew down the center aisle over the cross and banked to make a perfect landing on the troll-priest’s head, where the dove unloaded a perfectly timed deposit of white, wet poop.
The children roared with excited laughter, shrieks, and hoots. Several of them left their pews and rushed to make a circle, holding hands and dancing madly around the spectacle. Others started an earnest chase-and-capture mission to grab and touch as many frogs as they could, which made the frogs lose their cool and begin jumping and ribbiting. This meant that nice older ladies were suddenly confronted with frogs haplessly crashing into their robin’s egg blue blazers, which meant they lost their cool and began to hop and stomp and shriek in short muted barks. Parents tried to reel in the children to no avail, adding a particular bleating layer to the cacophony. The choirmaster decided to get the choir to sing the gradual hymn again to restore some order, and so the organ struck up “How Firm a Foundation.” The ushers, beside themselves, joined the children in their efforts to round up the frogs, but there was no need. The frog king’s maneuvers were well planned, and by some froggy signal, the remaining amphibians who could participate galvanized behind Old Uncle Antler, and by the force of their massed presence, along with the metrical pace of the hymn, propelled the disgraced troll forward. The cross and torches, sensing liturgical pattern, led the way out the west door into the bright light of day. The acolytes stopped on the flagstone courtyard, but the frogs would not let Old Uncle Antler stop. Now that they were outside, they began their multilayered frog orchestra and with a cloud of sound they chivvied Father Mike forward all the way out of town.
The congregation’s uproar lasted for years. The appearance of the frogs was the single most biblical thing that had ever happened to them, and it made them reconsider how they told the stories. The frogs had broken the spell of Old Uncle Antler, but the people still didn’t exactly know what had happened. The children who were there that day had faith in the church for the rest of their lives. As for the Pious Little Troll, she decided that church was too dramatic for her spiritual life and so she snuck out and down from the balcony and let her shawl drop in the church courtyard. She picked up a final stray frog, kissed its shiny green head, and carried it back to the river to her place under the bridge. She settled into her nest of twigs and stones, spread some grainy mustard on a toadstool, and munched the mushroom cheerfully while reciting from the Magnificat, “the Lord has done great things for me, and holy is His name.”
Rita Powell serves as the Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard. She earned her MFA in poetry at Seattle – Pacific University to forward creative exploration of the future of religion and Christianity through innovative engagement with land, ritual, and the church’s legacy of slavery. She is a preacher, playwright, mother and endurance athlete. Massachusetts, New York City, South Dakota, and Taizé, France have been her homes.