The Ogre of Oglefort

“And I need some of that blue medicine,” said the ogre, pointing to a large bottle. “Three spoonfuls. It’s very nasty but if it wasn’t it wouldn’t do me any good.”

Ivo poured out the medicine.

“And I think I better have one of those pink pills in the saucer.”

When he had swallowed all these he lay back and said, “Now that you’re here, squirty boy, I’ll tell you about my dream. It was about one of my aunts. The Aunt-with-the-Ears, we called her. You could have set up camp inside her ears, they were so huge. Well, in this dream . . .”

The ogre was off and Ivo listened as well as he could. Dreams are not often interesting—they don’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end like proper stories—but he knew that people who have them want to tell you about them, so he tried to be patient.

But when it was over and the ogre suggested that Ivo might give him another pill, he summoned up his courage.

“Please,” he said. “I’ve got a favor to ask you. It’s an important one. Very important.”

The ogre did not like the sound of this.

“I’m ill,” he said. He groaned a couple of times to make this clear. “I’m having a nervous—”

“I know. But it’s about Mirella, the princess. She’s not eating anything and she just cries and I’m afraid she’s going to get ill.”

“I’m ill,” said the ogre crossly. “I’m very ill indeed. I’m ill all over.”

“Yes,” said Ivo, “I’m sure you are. But about Mirella—”

“She should go home, back to her parents,” said the ogre. “She ought to be glad I haven’t eaten her.”

“Well, she won’t. She says she’d rather die and I think she may really. You see, she had a sort of vision thing, a proper one like the saints used to on mountaintops. She saw these white birds on the roof of the palace, and they were so free and above all the fuss and all she wants is to be like that, too. Absolutely any white bird would do—well perhaps not those owls that fly at night and bang into things but—oh you know—gulls and gannets and all those. Then she would fly off and she’d never bother you again.”

The ogre lifted his head from the pillow. “Are you suggesting I change her?” he yelled. “When you know that I have given up all that sort of thing forever and ever—and that I am having a nervous breakdown. You must be out of your mind. Do you know how much force is needed even to change a hedgehog into a flea?”

“No. But—”

“Have a look at my left toe. See those swellings. And my stomach.”

He began to fumble with the bedclothes, but Ivo did not feel up to the ogre’s stomach, and he handed him another pink pill and a green pill, which the ogre swallowed greedily.

“It wouldn’t take long,” begged Ivo.

“NO. I absolutely refuse. Go away.”

Ivo stood up. Then he turned and said, “You could do it in your dressing gown. You wouldn’t even have to go out of the room. And your slippers.”

“NO!” yelled the ogre again.

He closed his eyes and pretended to snore. But Ivo stood his ground—the image of Mirella in a huddled heap wouldn’t go out of his mind.

“If we didn’t have to keep looking after the princess we could do important things,” he said, “like tending your wife’s grave. The bones are all over the place.”

“Oh they are, are they?” The ogre didn’t like this. “Germania was very tidy.”

“We could get some unusual bones, maybe,” Ivo went on, “and make an interesting pattern.”

“What sort of a pattern?”

“Something with skulls would be good. A sort of pyramid. We could make it look really nice. But it would take time and we can’t leave the princess.”

The ogre shook his head. “I can’t do it, I’m too tired,” he said, and let his head fall back on the pillow again.

Ivo had reached the door when the ogre opened one eye.

“In my dressing gown and slippers, did you say?”

And Ivo said, “Yes.”

The Changing was to take place in the Hall so as to give Mirella plenty of room to fly up and away, but it had to be kept secret from the Grumblers. There would have been a riot if they’d known that Mirella was to be changed and they weren’t.

Ivo’s face was streaked with tears. Though he and Mirella had quarreled every time they met, he minded losing her more than he could have believed.

The Hag and the other rescuers, too, were very unhappy about what was to happen.

“I used to think it would be nice to be a frog when I lived in the Dribble” she said. “Just plopping in and out of puddles . . . But it was only a fancy. This is too much magic, it’s too strong.”

But what could they do when Mirella was determined to starve herself to death? So now they assembled in the Hall, waiting. The troll had strewn some pine needles on the floor of the platform where she was to stand; the Hag had picked a red rose for Mirella to hold while she still had hands.

Then Mirella came in. She had cleaned herself up as well as she could, rubbing her face with a wet cloth and shaking out her hair, but she still looked rather a mess—and very small, dwarfed by the huge room.