The Ogre of Oglefort

“I’m not being true to myself,” he spluttered. “Ogres are fierce and wicked; they’re here to do harm. So I told her I wouldn’t do it and then . . . well you saw her—tears, pleading, fuss. I tell you, I’m through. No more changing, not ever.” He let his head roll back onto the cushion once more and closed his eyes. “I need a rest,” he said. “A long, long rest. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

The troll now took charge. The sofa had casters, and with all of them pushing, they managed to wheel it into the ogre’s bedroom, and in a few minutes the ogre was lying back against the pillows of his enormous four-poster bed.

As they tiptoed out, his voice followed them. “You’ll have to stay and look after me,” he said. “They’re nasty things, these breakdowns. Very nasty indeed.”

CHAPTER10CHARLIE

Now what?” wondered the Hag.

They were all completely exhausted. If everything had gone according to plan, they would now be dragging the body of the ogre away and setting Mirella free. Instead the troll was making medicine for him, and the princess they had come to rescue had locked herself into a room in the tower and wouldn’t come out. Was there a punishment for failing their mission? If so, they were in trouble.

Ivo settled matters by yawning, and the Hag made up her mind.

“We must all go to bed. Now. There are sure to be enough bedrooms in the castle. After a night’s sleep we shall know what to do.”

So they went exploring, opening and shutting various doors. Some were storerooms and some were empty with clouds of dust rising up from them, but eventually they found a corridor with a number of doors which led into fairly ordinary bedchambers. The beds were enormous, of course, as were the chairs and bedside tables, but the rescuers were too tired to care about details. The troll shared a bedroom with Ivo, not too far away from the ogre so that he could hear him if he called in the night; but the Hag and the wizard had rooms to themselves.

It was as he was undressing that the poor wizard had a nasty shock. Undressing was always difficult for him—he so easily got tangled up in his trousers—and he was holding onto the bedpost to keep his balance when he thought he saw, on the ceiling, the same floating face he had seen when they were crossing the sea.

Was it his mummy again, checking up on him? When he was a little boy she had often come in at bedtime to make sure that he was reading his Book of Spells and not the comic book he had saved up for.

But when he looked again, he saw two spiders scuttling away and realized that the gray shape was the webs they had been spinning, and with a sigh of relief, he climbed into bed.

Ivo slept heavily and at first he did not hear the scratching on his door. Ulf’s bed was empty—he must have been tending the ogre—but he had left a candle, so Ivo went to open the door, and in a minute the animal that stood outside ran past Ivo and took a flying leap onto his bed.

It was a small mongrel dog, white, with brown splotches on his back and ears, alert, intelligent eyes, and whiskery eyebrows. It was clear at once that he liked Ivo’s bed, and liked Ivo. His tail went like a windmill; whimpers of pleasure came from his throat. He rolled over so that Ivo could scratch his stomach, and as Ivo scratched, he closed his eyes and helped him, moving one paw in rhythm with Ivo’s hand, as kind dogs do.

“Where do you come from?” Ivo wondered.

But it didn’t matter where he came from; Ivo was just incredibly pleased to see him. After all the fear and the strangeness, here was a warm friendly living thing, and something ordinary.

The little dog yawned and burrowed into the pillow, setting it right for the night, and Ivo curled up beside him. He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector.

For a moment the thought was frightening; then he put it out of his mind. Whatever the little mongrel had been once, what he was now was a warm, breathing, loving dog—and Ivo’s friend.

And while everyone in the castle was asleep something sinister happened down in the kitchens. The door opened and a procession of strange people in brown capes and hoods came out and set off across the drawbridge and down the path that led to the sea. They carried sacks filled with their working clothes and with food that they had stolen. These were the ogre’s servants, who had finally decided to leave. They had been thinking about going for a long time because everything was going to pieces in the castle since the ogress had died, but it was the tea bags that were the final straw. When a message came from the people in the dungeon that they had run out, something just cracked in the cook. She said she was leaving and then all the other servants said they were leaving, too.