A Pocket Tale

Let's return now to Sweden and enter its forests. Let us also go back in time, though not really so far, a mere one or two hundred years will suffice. It's peaceful here with the trees, the air so clean and pure, the sky high above a blue or a gray — and the silence deep, profound, too deep now, you see we've been out for days, on a hunt or to burn charcoal, and the silence has become so intense that it seems we don't even hear the sounds of our own actions. We know we are safe from the trolls, for while there are probably a large band of them on the other side of the mountain, never has it been said that there are any near here. But the skogsra, ah, we must always be on the alert for the skogsra...