| In the very depths of winter, on the longest night of the year, when the wind blows cold from the hills and the only place to be is sitting warm beside the fire...
Listen!
For beneath the snow-dark sky outside, the trolls are about.
Passing unseen from door to door, house to house and cottage to cottage, peering through windows, watching for dogs and waving at cats out for a stroll.
Hatted and mittened and bedecked in scarves, munching mince pies and sliding on ice, singing their songs of long ago and leaving small gifts behind at each door.
When the doors are opened to feed the birds, the troll gifts will be found and possibly a faint trail of footprints disappearing in the morning snow. |
