The Ogre of Oglefort

“I didn’t either but the troll told me. It’s when you get so upset inside your head that everything sort of folds up—your blood and your digestion and your muscles. Nothing works properly and you become ill all over.”

“Well, he’ll have to stop, because I’m staying here till he changes me and that’s it.”

“You’re being very selfish.”

There was a scratching noise at the door. When Ivo opened it, Charlie came bounding into the room, full of good cheer and very certain of his welcome.

Ivo bent down to pat him, but Mirella had sat bolt upright and given a little shriek.

“Oh!” she cried. “It’s Squinter! It’s my—” Then as the dog came forward and she could see him in the light, her face fell. “No it’s not! His eyes are wrong.”

Ivo was indignant. “What do you mean, his eyes are wrong? He’s got lovely eyes.”

“Yes, I know. Oh . . . it doesn’t matter.”

“Look, if you come downstairs we could share him. Please. There’s so much to do.”

But seeing what she had thought was her beloved dog had reduced Mirella to a wreck. “Look, just go away, will you,” she said. “And you can take the tray back, too. I don’t eat bacon; I’m a vegetarian.”

She managed to wait till the door was shut and then she threw herself onto the bed in a storm of sobbing.

CHAPTER11THE OGRE BREAKDOWN

The ogre was not getting better—in fact he was getting worse. His thighs throbbed, his forehead pounded, blisters had come out on his stomach. At night he had terrible dreams and occasionally he screamed in his sleep—horrible screams which echoed through the castle.

“Oh why did Germania have to die?” he moaned. “It’s all hopeless since Germania died.”

Germania was his wife, the ogress he had loved so much.

The troll did his best to nurse him but the ogre was not a good patient. He didn’t like his medicine; he wouldn’t get out of bed to do his exercises, so that he got weaker and weaker; and he wouldn’t let the troll bathe him.

“Ogres don’t have baths,” he said. “It’s not what they do.”

So a family of wood lice settled behind his ears, liking the warm dampness; leeches clung to his yellow toes; a spittlebug lived in his left nostril.

Everyone did their best. The Hag remembered a spell for bringing down swellings which she had used in the Dribble, but as soon as one part of the ogre subsided, another part swelled up again. The wizard mixed potion after potion but the ogre just turned his head away. The only thing he wanted them to do was sit by his bed and listen to his dreams, which were mostly about his aunts. The ogre had three aunts who lived in separate places a long way away. There was the Aunt-with-the-Ears who could hear a man turning over in his bed on the other side of a mountain, and the Aunt-with-the-Nose who could smell people at a distance of twenty furlongs, and the Aunt-with-the-Eyes who could see an insect stirring in a neighboring county.

But the rescuers were not only trying to look after the ogre. Every room in the castle was dirty and neglected; there was very little food; and the couple in the dungeon only came out to ask for breakfast or lunch or dinner and went back in again.

“We’d better see what there is outside,” said Ulf.

So they went out over the drawbridge. In the moat they came across the gudgeon whom the ogre had changed. He seemed to be happy and contented, though they couldn’t be sure. Finding out what fish are thinking has never been easy.

On the other side of the bridge they found a walled kitchen garden and an orchard, both overgrown and full of weeds. There were a few vegetables still in the ground and the soil was good, but there was a terrible lot of work to do—and in the orchard rotten apples lay where they had fallen. They were on their way back when Charlie took off suddenly and, following him, they came to a large mound entirely covered in bare, gnawed bones. To their surprise Charlie did not pick up a single bone but sat down respectfully with a few quiet wags of his tail. Coming closer, they saw that the mound was a grave, and on top was a tombstone with the words: HERE LIES GERMANIA HENBANE OF OGLEFORT, BELOVED OGRESS AND WIFE OF DENNIS CONSANDINE. MUCH MISSED.

“Oh dear,” said the Hag. “That’s another thing that needs doing. We’ll have to tend the grave. Some of those bones look dreadfully untidy. Those Grumblers down in the dungeon will have to come and help or go away. We can’t do everything on our own.”

But the Grumblers wouldn’t help and they wouldn’t go away. They turned out to be a married couple called Hilary and Neville Hummock, and they had come to Ostland because they didn’t like each other anymore.

“In fact we hate each other,” Mrs. Hummock had explained. “So I’m going to be a wombat and live on land and Neville is going to be a mudskipper and live in the water, and that way we won’t see each other.”