Эйми Бендер - The Color Master

One evening, after many years of contented marriage, the children tucked in their bed, asleep, snoring faintly, wearing hammered gold crowns with their nightshirts because their father wanted them to feel like royal ogres in their dreams, a human girl and her siblings knocked on the door, frightened. They were lost, and the ogre was out at the tavern, and the ogre’s wife opened up, and there they were—a group of six live human kids, with bright hair and red felt hats and snapping eyes, reminding her so sweetly of her long-ago nieces and nephews. The ogre’s wife disliked firmly only one aspect of her husband: his interest in eating the children of humans. It could’ve been me! she told him once in bed while he twirled and twisted her hair over his fingers. She could not bear to turn the children out into the ogre-filled night, so she hustled them inside and in a fierce whisper told them they could hide in the same giant bed as her own children, but not to make a sound, not a peep!

When the ogre came home, late, he smelled them, of course; how could she have imagined he would not smell them? She was half-asleep, twisted in the sheets, and hoped desperately that he would just crash out on the sofa in drunkenness. What she did not know was that, earlier in the night, the smart little girl leader of the human group had swapped their six red felt hats with the six golden crowns on the heads of the deep-sleeping ogre children, and when the ogre cackled hungrily, bumbling around the house, hunting for the source of the scent, he, of poor eyesight, of booziness, of delirium, ended up eating all his own children due to the swapping of those hats.

In the early morning, the human children ran off terrified, giggling.

We skip ahead five years, because five years were full of nothing but searing pain and tears. Five years of lying on the bed unable to move, slogging up to do the basic functioning needed to hold things together, then back to bed. Five years of scathing bitterness at ogres, and also at humans, at where she came from, and the worry that had led her to open the door; I should’ve let him eat them first thing! she said, weeping into the down of her pillow, though she felt sick anytime she had even gotten the hint that her husband had eaten a child. But her own! There were two that she mourned the most, much as she hated to admit it to herself, but she had loved Lorraine and Stillford best, the two most-complex-looking ogre faces, who had emerged post-utero like gnarled wood knots, and who had turned out to be all sweetness in nature. How they had loved their human mother. They nestled on her lap and nudged their big heads into her shoulders. They were gentle during the breastfeeding, unlike their siblings. Ogres grew teeth early, and she had to stop feeding most of them or they would’ve ripped off her nipple, truly. She, many times, ran to the bathroom with blood streaming from her breasts from a careless slash, a little ogre child happily lapping up the red drops on the sofa. To those she gave formula. But she was too softhearted to decide for them all; for each new child she risked her breast, and Lorraine and Stillford had been different, angled their teeth just so and suckled like little human babies, and perhaps held within their selves some of her human genes that knew not to tear at the gentleness offered. Now they were dead, digested in the system of their father, who had been so angry he split a bone out of his neck while overclenching his jaw and had to go to the hospital, where he broke four beds and injured a nurse. He was angrier than ever these days, and their marriage and its focus and tenderness had faded. His favorite had been Lutter, the super-ogre demon child, who was so kinetic she rarely saw him still, and who had scraped the walls into shreds with his nails and twice tried to swallow his mother whole. She had let him train with her husband only, and why Lutter, even in his sleep, had let himself be eaten, could only have been due to the deep dreamy trust he felt of the smell of the mouth he was entering, a mouth he knew from its firm position over his shoulder, telling him instructions on how to rip through cartilage and sinew, and an inability, due to that core of trust, to imagine his fate could end this way.

After enough time had passed, she was able to get out of bed for hours at a time. She could go to town and engage in minutes of small talk. She could sit outside on the porch and watch leaves twist on the birch trees. She could read a short article in the newsletter. On this day, a day of change, she cleaned the house, top to floor, using swaths of cloth that grew dark with dirt and dust. She swept tumbleweeds of lint out the front door, and poured scrubbing detergent into all the sinks to scour the vast yellowing basins. At the market, she bought root vegetables by the dozen and chickens and sausages. She stuffed the chickens and made a stew and fed her husband, who came home ragged from his work climbing mountainsides to look for caves packed with jewels and gifts like the magical harp that that thief Jack had stolen from his brother years ago.

We are pillaged, constantly, said the ogre, laying his loot in a sparkling heap by the door. And they fear us?

He kissed her on the ear, and sat down to roll a cigar out of crisp brown paper and a fist-sized wad of tobacco.

Good stew, human, he said, after dinner.

Please don’t call me that, she said, for the hundredth time.

That’s right, he said, patting his belly. I’m sorry. Love that sausage, delicious. He lit the cigar and inhaled deeply.

She wiped the globs of leftover chicken off the dining room table with a sponge.

While he mumbled to himself, digesting, sleepy, she filled the pots with soap and water to soak, and ate a little bowl of the chicken stew behind the counter. She rarely ate at the same table as her husband anymore, as she now feared him during mealtimes, couldn’t stand to watch him slurp up animals with that vigor and those grinding, pointed teeth.

Husband, she said, putting her bowl aside. She walked out from behind the counter. I have decided I need to go on a trip, she said.

The ogre was finishing his fourth mug of wine. He liked the darkest wine, the red almost black.

Go where? he said, wiping his mouth. To see your family?

She shook her head. Her family lived below, in the people village, and last time she’d been home, before the devourings, everyone had lectured her on ogres and complicity and betrayal. She’d waved them off. He’s a good one, she had said. She had not dared show pictures of her children.

I’d like to see something pretty, she said. Maybe a lake?

There’s a river that’s supposed to be nice a few valleys over, he said, exhaling bracelets of smoke to the rafters.

Okay, she said. A river.

I could go with you, he said, turning a giant brown eye to hers. His eye like a pool hers could swim inside.

A mucky pool.

No, she told him. I need to do this alone.

He nodded. He understood. They both coped in their own ways. He had women on the side, ogre women, everyone knew. Maybe she didn’t know, but probably. After all, although being with a human was the ultimate in showing off both self-control and status, sometimes a man just wanted a woman like himself. There were no prostitutes in the ogre village, as it was a barter economy and females chose males with equal discernment, but there were a couple who liked this particular ogre, and every few months he’d make a little sojourn as a way to honor where he came from. It’s for my mother, he told his ogre-woman once, and she’d laughed and laughed, nude and mottled and calm, sprawled over a mattress, one arm crossing loosely over her forehead.

The ogre helped his wife pack up. He buttoned up her bag and told her he would miss her, which was true. From his plunder, he gave her a magic cloak that would turn her into the color of the dappled light that shot through foliage, and also a cake that would become more cake once she’d eaten half. He kissed her forehead, roughly, and she melted a little under his arms.