Page 10 of Trolling For Love

He swung the ax and made quick work of clearing the undergrowth away enough for me to get a better idea of what we were dealing with. “That really helps, thank you.” He walked up to one of the larger trees and as he’d done before placed his handon the tree and closed his eyes. Gunnar was amazing, and I was glad to spend more time with him.

A rustling in the brush behind me got my attention, but when I turned nothing was there.Must have been a deer.Gunnar also looked in that direction, but his eyes narrowed as he focused on something I couldn’t see. “Is there something there?” He blinked before meeting my eyes and shaking his head.

“It was nothing.”

Something had happened but I had no idea what it was, so I got back to work choosing where we’d be working next. We worked well together, he cleared the area for me to access it and I marked which trees to cut and which to keep, same as always—but better.

Chapter 9

GUNNAR

Flynn had just turned to get back to work when I took one last glance. A human from the crew had been hiding nearby. When he knew I saw him he ran but I wasn’t sure why or what he’d been doing. Then I remembered he was the one that ran into me as I was walking into the bathroom to clean up.Strange.

I’d dealt with humans in the past who hunted trolls for sport or glory. But the ones that I had dealt with had not accomplished what they set out to do, and they had paid with their lives.

“Gunnar? How was your tent last night?” Flynn asked as he walked slowly ahead of me.

“The bed is small,” I said, making him laugh.

“I don’t know if there’s a bed big enough for you,” he said and turned to me with a grin. Seeing him happy, out here in thewoods with no one else around but the two of us, warmed my heart.

“I’ve slept in much worse places,” I said.

“Where did you live in Iceland? I mean did you have a house?”

“I lived in a cave near the sea and on the edge of the monster realm.”

“That sounds—nice,” Flynn said but didn’t look at me.

“It was cold and damp, but it was all I had known. That is one thing I enjoy in this world. Warmth. My world is not warm.”

“I’m glad you’re here now. If I can do anything to make your tent more comfortable let me know.”

He’d said this before, but I wasn’t used to the sorts of comfort he was, and to me it was already far more comfortable than the cave. “Thank you.”

“So, I don’t know if you had plans for the weekend, but I thought we could go into town after work on Friday and go to dinner. I mean if you wanted to. Most of the crew leave for the weekend but I usually stay here. I’d rather go hiking than spend the weekend around town.”

“Would we come back here after we eat? I don’t think I want to stay in the town if I can stay in the forest.” I had been in the town a few times just to acclimate, but I preferred the solitude of the forest, and so far, I had enjoyed the company of Flynn.

“Yes, we would come back here. We’ll need to do some shopping while we’re here. Dwayne doesn’t cook on the weekends so we’re on our own for food, and if you need to do laundry, we can do that while we’re there too.”

“I think I will learn a lot from you,” I said, because while I knew about doing laundry and shopping for food, I wasn’t great with either. Laundry was still a mystery to me after living most of my life in animal skins that didn’t need laundering. Or if they did, I never noticed, and didn’t really care. There was only me to worry about, but now things were different.

“Well, I know for a fact I have a lot to learn from you. I wish I could hear the trees speak the way you do. I make my best judgement on which ones to cut down, and I hope I never get it wrong. But it’s not foolproof the way it is for you.”

“I will tell you what the trees tell me anytime you need to know,” I said, and walked up to the one he’d tagged to be cut. “This tree is at the end of its life. It knows that its sacrifice will help the other trees grow stronger.”

“Thank you, Gunnar, I wish we lived in a world where no trees needed to be cut down at all,” Flynn said, and his eyes held a hint of sadness. “I looked up what happened to Iceland’s trees, and you weren’t kidding. They were all cut down. I can’t imagine that happening, but men do not always do what’s best for the environment.”

I imagined it as it had been. There were never as many trees as there are in this place, but it was still beautiful, and I mourned the loss of the forests in Iceland every day. But it was too late to change it. “We can only try to do better,” I said.

“Hey, guys, we saw the trees marked, we’re going to start cutting,” Ben said as he and the rest of the crew caught up to us.

“It should be a busy day today. Gunnar has cleared most of the trail, but we’ll need to put all the cuttings into a few piles so they’re out of the way and easy to remove, if necessary,” Flynn said. “Dwayne will be showing up in a couple of hours. Let’s make the most of it between now and then.”

Ben worked with me to gather up the brush and small trees I’d cleared to make a path here. After that we both helped with the trees as they had been cut down. And like yesterday I carried the big logs over to put them all in a stack. I didn’t mind. Just the opposite. I loved doing this kind of labor. Getting the sap from the trees and the sawdust on my clothes didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did some of the crew. I had just placed a log on the stack when the other logs started to move.

“Gunnar, look out,” Ben yelled, as I hurried to get out of the way. But I wasn’t fast enough, one of the logs rolled too fast for me to get out of the way and pinned me under it. I pushed as hard as I could, but I couldn’t move the log from me.

---