Once Upon a Time…
Emil “Goldilocks” Västerström didn’t like hobnobbing with ghosts as a rule, but he was a well-mannered young man (when he remembered to be), so when his host Reynir Árnason brought a pair into the conversation they and the Three Bear Warriors were having about Trond the Crooked Man’s friend’s lost property, Emil was polite to them, and soon he was glad he had been.
You see, Reynir had come into possession of a haunted house in a little village in the middle of the big, dark, scary forest not long ago. Emil and the Three Bear Warriors had been asked by Trond the Crooked Man to go and ask if they could have some things the last owner of the haunted house had borrowed and not returned, so now they were all in the haunted house and Reynir was asking the ghosts if they knew where the things Emil was asking about were.
“Onni” was suspicious and not inclined to hide it when “he” looked at the visitors, but “Tuuri” was much friendlier and even helpful. “She” seemed especially inclined to chat with Reynir, though “she” seemed quite impressed by Sigrun, as well.
“I think I saw what you’re looking for in the Green-and-Gold Drawing Room,” “Tuuri” said, “but I confess I don’t pay much attention to things anymore.”
“Then let’s go have a look!” Sigrun enthused.
Emil looked over at Reynir. “If that’s all right with… the three of you?” he asked politely. “Onni” and “Tuuri” looked pleasantly surprised to be included, but remained silent, letting Reynir decide for “them”.
Reynir seemed rather intimidated by Sigrun’s enthusiasm for… well… everything, but he responded to Emil’s polite query happily enough, “Sure! Anything I can do to help you guys!”
So off they went to the Green-and-Gold Drawing Room, which was filled with green-and-gold drawings, as well as green-and-gold furniture, green-and-gold glassware, and many other green-and-gold things. The things asked after by Trond the Crooked Man for his friend were in fact in the room; they were in a little pile in one corner, all by themselves.
“Why on earth didn’t old Olsen just return the stuff, since he obviously wasn’t using it?” Sigrun asked.
Mikkel replied, “He never could let go of anything he had his hands on, even if he never thought twice about it.”
“Like this house,” “Onni” concurred. “That’s why he made his will the way he did: he wanted someone else like him to get what he had so assiduously held on to.” “Onni” looked at Reynir. “Fortunately, he failed.”
“Blah blah BLAH. Let’s get the stuff all packed and loaded up, or we won’t get into the big, dark, scary forest until after dawn!”
Reynir looked puzzled at Sigrun’s outburst. “Isn’t that a good thing? The thieves and robbers in the big, dark, scary forest don’t try to rob you in the daytime.”
Mikkel laughed his deep, rumbling laugh. “As Bear Warriors, we are the sworn enemies of all the thieves and robbers in the big, dark, scary forest, so drawing them out to try to rob us is half the reason we took this job to begin with.”
Lalli was looking at the pile suspiciously, the hair on his neck beginning to rise, but before Emil could bring this to the others’ attention, a Great Black Shadow rose up out of nowhere and covered the pile in menacing darkness.
“A Kade!” Lalli spat, hunching his back and hissing fiercely.
“What’s a Kade?” Emil asked, as the others all seemed to know already.
“Onni” was the one to answer. “A Kade is a spirit so filled with envy that it lingers on in spiteful wrath for generations; some will kill any mortals they come across. The last time we saw this Kade was more than a century ago, when it killed twelve people and a cute little kitten.”
“I thought he wasn’t around anymore!” “Tuuri” wailed in horror as the Great Black Shadow loomed larger and larger in menacing darkness. “RUN, everybody!”
Sigrun growled and was obviously about to loudly and verbosely deny any intention of running from a fight, but what happened next stunned them all into silence.
Suddenly, Emil’s hair threw off a huge mass of sparkles, which surrounded him in swirls of gold. One sparkle floated up and hovered directly in front of Emil’s face. “I am Ulf, the King of the Sparkle Fairies, and I am your great-great-grandfather.”
Before Emil could reply to this source of his Goldilocks, the sparkle flew over towards the Great Black Shadow loomed in menacing darkness, the others following in a glittering cascade. Finally, when they were all gathered around the Great Black Shadow, they all cried out in one voice, “GO AWAY!”
The Great Black Shadow shuddered and slowly, reluctantly vanished. When it was completely gone, the sparkles vanished as well.
Sigrun looked torn between pride at Emil indirectly vanquishing the Kade and disappointment that she herself hadn’t had a crack at it, but the others were all just relieved.
An hour or so later, Reynir and his ghostly “housemates” waved farewell to Emil and the Three Bear Warriors as they went into the big, dark, scary forest with the stuff…
