Once upon a time there was a giant mean troll whose name was Gertrude. Gertrude loved to sneak into the homes of the Village Under the Mountain, and grab the little children who lived there. Then, she'd steal away back to her cave and eat them.
All the parents of the village used to warn their children, make sure you do as we tell you, or the troll will get you! Make sure you study hard, or Gertrude will come for you! So all the little children, frightened by the looming spectre of doom from outside the mountain, always made perfectly sure to behave as they were expected so.
One day, however, as Little Boy Blue skipped along home to his hut under the frost-bourn crag of the southern embrace, he heard a noise behind him. And as he turned to see who was there, Gertrude pounced! Out from behind a rock she dashed, and caught Little Boy Blue up in her arms, and bounded away.
Out through the entrance to the Village Under the Mountain she ran, fast as the wind, Little Boy Blue trailing behind her grasped tightly in her meaty arms, his pale blond hair flapping in the wind. Up, across the sunny meadow and down the vale, and through the trees, over the babbling brook, and deep into her cave she took Blue, where she proceeded to lock him up in a cage, so that she could start a fire and cook and eat him.
As she threw the logs on the fire, in eager anticipation of her coming feast, little boy Blue begged with her. “Why are you going to eat me?” he called, “I'm just a boy! And besides!” he pleaded, “I've never done anything wrong! I always did exactly what my parents told me! Why didn't you steal away one of the naughty children from the village?!”
This surprised Gertrude, because she had never imagined that she might be expected to eat only naughty children. Indeed, she wondered how she could be expected to know in what manner her dinner had behaved at all! All poor Gertrude knew was that she was hungry, and the children of the Village Under the Mountain were so delicious that she could not resist.
While both Gertrude and Blue were together considering the startling revelation that everything they had thought they understood about life was not quite as it seemed, back in the Village Under the Mountain, frenzied action had begun to take place. The parents of Little Boy Blue had noticed their son was missing. Rallying the other village folk, who realised their own children were also at risk, the good people of the Village Under the Mountain decided they needed to act. Their mutual survival demanded the destruction of Gertrude!
And so, gathering their pitch forks, and setting alight their torches, the people of the Village Under the Mountain swarmed out of their homes, and into the streets. Through the great passage out of the maintain, and across the dell they travelled, all the way to the edge of the forest.
However, the forest looked very dark and foreboding, and at this point some of the villagers began to ask themselves whether this was really the best course of action for the village. Maybe, they said, it wasn't so bad!
Their children weren't taken, and if they tried to get little boy Blue back,
they might be killed in the fight! Then who would care for their homesteads? Who would mind their crops and raise their children?
A tremor of fear ran through the assembled throngs, and not even the heroic words of the village elders could convince them all to stay. And so some of the villagers departed, back to their homes, to huddle in fear and await their destinies from beneath the hearths of their ancestral houses. Others, however, steadied their beating hearts, and summoned their courage.
Swirling like a cloak of ethereal mist about the group, fear and determination mingled, infusing the air with mutual dread and excitement. As they forged on through the woods, and drew nearer to Gertrude's lair they could see obscene, twisted tree shapes, looming in the darkness, and could hear what they imagined must be the screams of the suffering victims. Or else, the howls of the monsters that existed within the woods, on the very fringes of their perception, outside all boundaries of what they knew as normal. Until finally, en masse, the village people burst into a clearing!
The light from their torches cast a flickering nimbus amongst the tattered leaves of the long, low trees, banishing the darkness, and the moonlight, alike. Their presence filled the clearing, and infused it with their sense of righteousness, and exclaimed their absolutism to the wood and all its inhabitants. Gertrude must die, so that they might live!
So that the children of the Village Under the Mountain could go to sleep at night without fear!
So that never again would innocent people face such a fate as Blue.
So that goodness would be restored to their world.
From within her homely lair, Gertrude could hear the crashing exclamations of the village folk, feebly calling for the vengeance they so rightly deserved. And gathering from within herself the same indignation which she faced from outside, she collected her spear and club, and went to meet her foe.
And the assembled mass of the village people was mighty, and lo, Gertrude saw herself outmatched by her opponents. Truly, the force of their convictions overwhelmed her, and lusty battle was had, and much blood was spilled.
When at last the final blow was lain, and the last pitch fork fell to the ground, out of the hand of the lifeless peasant who had wielded it so ably in anger, the torches, too, quenched and ceased to bleat their exclamations of brightness. For indeed, it was morning, and even had they continued to burn, their energy would have been wasted amongst an unknowing crowd of dead, deafened, as it was, by the cacophony of the sun.
Hers, after all, was the brighter light, and it shone more truly than the pitiful torches.
* * *
And so victory was had, amongst the trees and the rocks and the creatures of the forest and the vale and the mountain. And Gertrude never again bothered the citizens of the Village Under the Mountain, and Little Boy Blue never again feared for his life as he frolicked in the lush and verdant valley of his existence, between the village he knew, and the forest that threatened him.
And above all and sundry, the sun shone down, upon that happy day.
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