The Ogre of Oglefort

Then the door opened and the troll, straining all his muscles, pushed in the ogre in a wheelchair which his grandmother had used in her last days. He still wore his pajamas and his legs were covered in a blanket made of moleskins which had been nibbled rather badly by mice.

Charlie, sitting at Ivo’s feet, gave a whimper. The ogre put one foot on the ground and moaned.

“My back,” he moaned. “The pain . . .”

But as no one took any notice, he managed to stand up and stood there, swaying.

The Hag came forward and put the rose in Mirella’s hand.

Mirella stood as though she was made of stone. If she was frightened she didn’t show it. In a few minutes—a few seconds even—she would be flying over the heads of everyone. She looked around to see how she would get away afterward, and Ivo came up to her and said, “I’ve left the window open—the round one above the banners,” and she whispered her thanks.

The ogre began to pass his hands back and forth over Mirella’s head.

In the Hall everyone held their breath.

Everyone except Charlie.

The little white dog had been watching, his piebald ears pricked as the ogre bent over Mirella. Now for some reason he left Ivo, leaped onto the platform, and ran up to Mirella, yapping excitedly, and began to wag his tail and lick her feet.

Mirella bent down to him. “It’s all right, Charlie,” she said. “Lie down. Be quiet.” And to Ivo she said, “Call him off, can’t you?”

“No, I can’t,” said Ivo. “He has a perfect right to say good-bye. He wants you to stroke him.”

“I know perfectly well what he wants,” snapped Mirella.

She had never touched Charlie before. Now as she felt his rough coat under her hand, his warm tongue licking her bare leg, something extraordinary happened to her. It was as though the scales fell from her eyes. She saw the Hag, so old and weary, who had trekked miles believing Mirella to be in danger. She saw the other rescuers—the troll and the wizard—and Ivo, who had thought she might be his friend. Above all, she saw the living, warm, excited little dog.

And suddenly a feeling flooded through her—of thankfulness for being alive, of joy in the world. She looked up at the window through which in a few moments she would fly out and away forever and felt panic, thinking of the loneliness that would follow.

But she had to go through with it now. She had suffered so much to get here, she had been so obstinate and determined—she couldn’t now change her mind. She closed her eyes and lifted her head as the ogre’s hand came down toward her.

The hand never reached her. The ogre gave a terrible cry, took two tottering paces forward, and fell to the ground with a crash that echoed through the Hall.

Everyone rushed forward, but the ogre could not move; he only pointed with his great arm to the doorway, where a figure as large and hideous as he was himself was standing, wreathed in a ghostly mist.

“Germania,” whispered the ogre—and fainted.

CHAPTER13REMOVING THE GRUMBLERS

The ogre had bruised his forehead badly when he fainted at the sight of his wife. The Hag had found the foot water which the Norns had given them, and it helped a little, but not very much.

“They must have been the wrong kind of feet,” said Ivo, who was beginning to have a very low opinion of the Norns.

But it was not the bruise that was worrying them; it was the ogre’s state of mind. He had decided that Germania’s ghost had appeared to him because the ogress wanted him to join her in her bone-covered mound.

“She has been hovering over me ever since she passed on,” said the ogre. “I have felt her hover. A heavy hover, because she’s a big woman. So I have to die,” added the ogre. “I have to die quickly so that she doesn’t get impatient.”

The ogre having a breakdown had been bad, but the ogre deciding to die was worse.

“I can’t stop eating at once, but I shall stop eating slowly, so every day you must weigh my food and take off an ounce. And I must decide which pajamas to wear for the funeral and whom to invite. My three aunts, of course, and they’ll have to bring Clarence.”

“Who’s Clarence?” asked Ivo—but the ogre only shook his head and sighed.

“But you can’t do this,” said the Hag. “You’ve got a castle to care for—look at all the land out there and the gardens and the lake. What’s going to happen to it?”

“I shall make a will,” said the ogre. “Perhaps my Aunt-with-the-Eyes should have it—she’s the eldest. Or the Aunt-with-the-Nose. Obviously I can’t leave it to Clarence. It’ll probably take a few weeks for me to be properly dead—I’ll have decided by then.” He waved a lordly hand. “And you can look after everything till then, can’t you?”

The rescuers looked at each other. They thought that the ogre was getting a bit above himself.

“I have a house in London, you know,” said the Hag.

“And I have a job,” said the troll.

“My mother is waiting for me,” said the wizard.