The Ogre of Oglefort

Ivo thought he had never heard anything so silly—but it was Mirella that everyone was worried about. She hadn’t eaten anything since she’d come and she was still locked in her room. After all they had come to rescue the princess and as far she they could see she was just fading away.

“I’ll have one more go,” said Ivo. “I don’t know if it’ll be any use but I’ll try.”

This time he took Charlie straightaway. Mirella didn’t open the door at first but when the dog scratched at the wood, the handle turned slowly.

“What do you want?”

Ivo put down the tray. “I want you to come down and help. I want you to be sensible. The Hag’s working her fingers to the bone and those horrible people in the dungeon won’t do anything and the ogre’s taken to his bed and here you are just sulking.” He paused. “Please, Mirella. Please? I thought maybe we could be friends—there isn’t anyone else my own age.”

But he was shocked by the way she looked. Her black eyes had rings under them; she seemed hardly to have slept; her hair was in tangles. If she wasn’t ill already she soon would be, and Charlie, too, seemed to be worried as he sniffed round her ankles and whimpered.

“It’s no use. My parents will find me sooner or later. They’re bound to. They’ll send out armies and all that sort of stuff, and when that happens I’ll jump out of the window. I’d die rather than go back.”

“That’s silly. You’re just being a coward.”

“I am not!” Mirella rounded on him. “I came over the bridge above the ravine in the dark, and there were some ghastly creatures sort of moaning and gibbering and trying to get me. Then I walked for miles and miles without food and it was scary, but I didn’t mind because I thought when I got to the ogre he would change me into a bird and everything would be all right, but now I can’t be bothered with anything.”

“And suppose he had changed you—perhaps it wouldn’t be so marvelous. You’d have to eat things like ants, which you kept as pets in the palace, and all sorts of insects.”

“No I wouldn’t. I’d be a seabird and swoop down into the waves.”

“Oh yes? I suppose spearing fish in your beak would be better? I suppose you think fish don’t feel pain—you’ve seen them twitch and wiggle on the end of a line.”

Ivo was getting angry again. “When I think of the people who’ve been told they’re ill and they’re going to die—children even—and they’d give anything they’ve got—”

But he couldn’t get through to Mirella. She had sunk into a black hole where nothing existed except her own despair.

“Isn’t there anything we can do about her?” Ivo asked the Hag. “How can she not want to be a human being . . . a person with arms and legs and thoughts? Why does she want to throw it all away?”

He looked out of the window at the brilliantly green grass, the clear blue sky. They had expected only darkness and danger but it was very beautiful at Oglefort. There was so much to learn and see and do, and he and Mirella could have done it together.

The Hag put an arm around his shoulder.

“Give her time,” she said.

But time was something that they didn’t have. Mirella was quite simply dwindling away—and after a sleepless night Ivo took his courage in both hands and went to see the ogre.

What he was going to ask of him was difficult but he couldn’t see what else there was to do.

CHAPTER12THE CHANGING

Ivo had never spent any time in the ogre’s bedroom—it was the troll who did the nursing. Now he waited till everybody was out of the way and crept up to the door.

From inside came a kind of heaving, juddering noise which grew to a climax, faded away, and began again. The ogre was snoring.

Ivo pushed open the door and walked in.

The ogre’s bedroom was vast and gray and had a strange and rather unpleasant smell. The more the troll tried to get his patient to wash, the more the ogre said he did not hold with that kind of nonsense.

As his eyes got used to the gloom, Ivo noticed the medicine bottles by the bed, the spittoon for spitting into, the pile of torn-up sheets which the troll had given him to use for handkerchiefs. On the ogre’s warty nose, as it rose and fell, the spittlebug was taking an evening walk.

When he got up to the bed, Ivo coughed. Then he coughed harder. After Ivo’s third cough, the ogre gave a great roar and sat up in bed. Still half asleep, he bared his teeth hungrily—then he remembered that he was no longer a flesh-eating ogre but a person with a nervous breakdown.

“What do you want, squirty boy?” he roared.

“Please, I need to speak with you about—”

But the ogre now remembered that he needed a lot of things, and that the troll had gone away with some nonsense about seeing to some trees.

“My pillow needs turning,” said the ogre, and lifted his head so that Ivo could manhandle the huge cushion full of chicken feathers. It was heavy and smelled of blood, because the feathers it was stuffed with had not been cleaned.