"Outside Stood An Old Fellow Chopping Wood" by Betsy Bowen

Image posted with the permission of the artist. This print was published in the book The Troll With no Heart in His Body by Lise Lunge-Larsen, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 1997. See more of Betsy Bowen's artwork on her website here.

A great troll, camouflaged as a towering evergreen, wrenches over, hands curled, eyes set with focused urgency. Is he looking at something in that hand? The sound of steady chops breaks the quiet stillness.The rest of the forest is set in aqua-blue like a whisper in the background of this dramatic scene. Indeed, the troll, flanked by pillars and with an arch overhead, seems to stand on a stage. And though I momentarily feel I am a member of an audience, his anxious leaning over and the shape of the rectangle which encases him cause me, too, to lean over. It is as if I am peering into a shoe box I had stowed under the bed and forgot about a long, long time ago.