From Spooky Wisconsin, by S.E. Schlosser:

Snip-snap-spin,

Our story begins...

It was a foolproof operation. They were thieves with an ace up the sleeve that no one--not even in their wildest dreams--would have guessed. The husband descended from a long line of thieves and rogues who lived atop a fell in Norway. Long ago, the family had contracted with the trolls who lived within the mountain to aid and abet their thieving in exchange for gold. The wife came from a respectable family that had secretly kept a family of small trolls bound ot them as slaves, ordering them to do all the work around the house and farm while the humans lounged about, growing fatter and lazier with each succeeding generation.

The couple took the show on the road, traveling to visit friends, family, distant relations, and friends of friends all over the world with a special suitcase containing a secret compartment in which a small house troll made itself at home during the nasty daytime hours when it could turn to stone in the light of the sun and from which it roamed freely at night, stealing jewelry and money and other easy-to-hide dainties that brought a tidy sum when sold on the black market. Best of all, no one suspected. After all, in this enlightened age, no one believed in trolls. They were just a fanciful myth from old Norway. According to the legends, the Earth was created from the corpse of a giant called Ymir and trolls were the transformed dark spirits of maggots that emerged from the decaying body. Trolls were evil creatures, some big and some small, who lived underground during the day and came out at night to steal and plot mischief and sometimes prey on the humans living in the world above them.

It took some time for anyone to begin connecting the couple with the thefts. Most of the relatives and friends thought they had mislaid the missing items and guests were too embarrassed to report the disappeared items to the police.

"Cannot find your wallet, venn?" the hushavnd would say sympathetically. "Maybe the trolls got it, ho-ho!"

The guests would chuckle, and the "friend" would flush and say that he must have put the wallet in his other jacket.

"A missing ring? Tut, tut!" said the wife. "My bestemor, you know, my grandmother was always losing her rings, too. She said the trolls stole them. Ho-ho! But they always turned up again in the bread dough or under the bed."

"Ho-ho!" chuckeled the relatives. No one believed in trolls.

If something expensive was stolen, the couple was always first in line to help look for it. They insisted on having their room searched as an example for the other guests. The house troll used a special sort of magic to conceal the secret compartment, so that no one ever found it or suspected that the couple had a small troll sleeping inside with a ruby necklace clutched tight in his tiny claws.

Still, enough incidents happened that friends and relatives on the Continent became suspicious. The police interviewed the couple a few times, but they never found anything. The couple knew they were being closely watched, so they decided to try their luck somewhere else. They had never been to America and decided that this was a good time to visit the New World. They flew to Wisconsin to visit a fourth-cousin-once-removed and soon were driving with their host toward a nice home outside of town.

"I see you like trolls, ho-ho," chuckled the husband to his host as they drove along Main Street. He gestured to the wooden statues of trolls scattered through the downtown area.

"We sure do, ho-ho," responded the fourth-cousin-once-removed. "A local artist--chap named Mike Finney--carves them. They're something of a fad with us."

"Ever see the real thing?" asked the husband jovially.

The fourth-cousin-once-removed laughed uproariously. "Not yet!" he gasped happily. "Not yet!"

The couple chuckled with their host and settled back against their seats to enjoy the ride. This would be easy! Deep inside the trunk, the house troll stirred a bit when it heard the loud laughter and then went back to sleep.

While the couple was having a late dinner with their host and hostess, the little house troll was happily exploring his new surroundings. He was a small Old World troll who resembled a pig with pointed ears, a small snout, and little pinkish eyes. He had two tails that wagged back and forth as he walked, and he wwore a formal bunad costume, part of the deal his family had struck long ago with the family of the wife whom they served in the Old World. The little troll found it itchy and uncomfortable, but slaves have no choice in the matter.

Scratching himself in a not-so-nice way, he nicked a few strands of pearls from the wife's dressing tavle, stole some loose change from the husband's wallet, and then nipped out into the darkness for a walk. He dashed hither and thither through the balmy summer night, checking doors and crawling in and out of open windows. Several times he returned to the house to empty his little sack into the secret compartment before heading out again.

The little house troll finally wandered onto the Main Street of the nearby town. In the moonlight, he spotted a tall figure carrying a parasol. He blinked a few times in the dim light from the crescent moon and then gave a happy whistle. It was one of the huldrafólk, no mistake.

"Ho-ho, me proud beauty," he called excitedly in Norwegian, scrambling atop the tall stump on which she posed. "Let's scamper about in the moonlight! There's a loose windowpane in a house over yonder, and I smelled candy inside the kitchen!"

The huldra ignored him. She didn't even blink or turned her head. The little house troll was annoyed. The first troll he'd seen in months, and she was ignoring him. Playing hard to get, he decided, dropping back down to the ground. Well, two could play that game. Besides, she was too tall anyway. He liked smaller troll females. They were cuddlier. And after all, the huldra had only one tail. A fine house troll like him needed to have standards.

He raced away down the street and almost collided with a large stump on the sidewalk. Jumping back a little, the house troll gazed upward at a jolly-looking fellow with an accordion. The house troll jumped up and down excitedly.

"Play some musikk, venn!" he called. The troll stood silent and still atop his stump. The little house troll called again to him, but he didn't answer. Both of the house troll's tails twitched back and forth in annoyance at the rude behavior of the troll. Of course, all trolls were rude to one another, but none of the trolls living in Norway would completely ignore a fellow. Belt him one, maybe. Shout curses at him, definitely. But never the silent treatment. Who did they think they were anyway, these New World trolls?

Away the house troll trotted down the street, as mad as could be. He was so steamed up, he forgot to watch the time. The sky above him was changing color, becoming gray instead of black, and bird were beginning to chirp. Then his keen nose caught the smell of chickens not too far away, and the rude American trolls were forgotten in an instant. With the uncanny speed forwhich house trolls were know, he trotted down the road toward the smell. A farmhouse looked out of the darkness, and behind it was a barn and ... ah-ha! ... a chicken coop.

The sky was pearly gray as the house troll swarmed up the chicken-wire fence and leapt to the top of the coop. He have a little dance of joy. He was going to eat fresh chicken! Hurrah! It was at that moment that the first rays of the sun came up over the horizon and all the birds burst into happy song. And the little house troll turned to stone right on top of the henhouse roof.

When the farmer came to feed the hens a few minutes later, he saw a large knobby rock sitting on top of the chicken coop. If you looked closely at it, it was shaped a bit like a pig wearing a bonad, with two long dark bumps that might have been two tails. But the farmer didn't look too closely.

"I wish these kids would stop fooling around in the chicken coop," he fossed. The farmer tossed the heavy little rock over the fence. It rolled under a bush and disappeared from sight.

The couple didn't miss their house troll. Their policy was to completely ignore the troll and its antics until they were safely back home in Norway. Only then would they unpack the secret compartment to see what it had stolen for them.

The couple stayed for a week with their fourth-cousins-once-removed and then went to the airport to fly to South America for a visit with a friend of a friend. But their bagged didn't make it through the safety check at the airport. Without the troll's magic, the secret compartment was readily visible to the electronic scanners.

The thieving couple was taken aside by security, the stolen goods were found, and the two were arrested. When the husband and wife protested that it was a troll that had stolen all the money and jewelry found inside the secret compartment in their luggage, they were committed to a psychiatric ward under heavy guard. It became their permanent home after the trial.

After this incident, no one lese in the family of thieves ever tried taking a troll abroad again.

Snip-snap-spout.

This story's told out.