Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

But the rescuers had had enough. “However ill you feel,” said the Hag firmly, “you really must tell us what all this is about.”

There was a groan from the sofa.

“No, it’s no good groaning,” the Hag went on. “We’ve come a long way and nothing is what it seems. If you explain we may be able to help but not otherwise.”

The ogre looked at the troll, hoping perhaps that he would be forbidden to excite himself, but Ulf, too, was looking at him and waiting. So the ogre gave one more deep groan — and then he began.

“You know what ogres do?” he said.

“They eat people?” suggested Ivo.

“Exactly so. But I never liked the taste of human flesh,” he said. “The first time I ate a person it turned the corners of my mouth blue and gave me a pain here.” He put his hand on his side. “It’s my liver, I think. The livers of ogres are very sensitive. I thought maybe he was too fresh — the bloke I ate — so after that they brought me an idiot who’d shot himself instead of the deer he was after, but it wasn’t any better.” The ogre shuddered. “Ugh, I can taste him still.

“My wife was alive then — a wonderful ogress — she didn’t care what she ate. Her grave is behind the castle. She reminded me of my duty. Which was to be terrifying, to be ferocious. So I began to do what ogres have been doing for thousands of years. Next best thing to eating people was to change them into beasts. Turning human beings into animals. A dreadful punishment it was considered to be and quite right, too. Anyone who came near I changed, and when I ran low I sent my servants out to find more. I turned the postman into a wolverine and the plumber into an okapi and the man who came to mend the roof into a worm. I was the best shape changer in Ostland, and humans were terrified to come near me.

“Then my wife died. She was a wonderful woman,” said the ogre again. “I wish you could have met her — the tops of her legs measured twelve feet around and every square inch covered in long black hair.” He sighed and went on with his story. “I rather let the castle go after that, but I went on changing people — it was what she’d wanted.

“Then one day a truly awful thing happened. I’ll never forget it. It was a Thursday. The last day on which a thing like that should have happened.”

“Because Thursday’s Thor’s day, isn’t it?” put in Ivo. “The God of Thunder. I saw it in the encyclopedia.”

“That’s right,” said the ogre. “I found a man trespassing near my wife’s grave. Weedy little fellow. Well, I picked him up and brought him in and I told him I was going to turn him into a fish and throw him into the moat. A fish, mind you — wet and dumb and slimy to hold. So I waited for him to scream and plead and beg me not to, and do you know what he did?”

The ogre paused and searched them with his bloodshot eyes.

“He smiled,” said the ogre. “I can see it now, that smile — and he said, ‘Oh yes, thank you, thank you. A fish would be so restful. I wonder… I suppose it couldn’t be a gudgeon; they have such pretty fins.’” The ogre paused. “That’s what he said. Those were his very words. I was so shocked, I did what he said — he’s out there now in the moat, you can tell him, he’s got a look.

“And that was the beginning of the end. People came — more and more of them — and asked me to turn them into animals. Said they were tired of being human, nothing worked — their jobs, their marriages. They’d thought of killing themselves and then they’d thought no, they’d rather go on living but as an animal.

“Since then I’ve been besieged. People come all the time and they won’t take no for an answer. The place they’re in used to be a perfectly good dungeon with torture instruments and hooks for hanging, and they’ve turned it into a sort of club room and sit there drinking tea. What’s more, they come with lists of animals they want to be — not just a dog but a Mexican hairless dog… not just a rabbit but an Angora rabbit with lop ears and spots.” The ogre’s voice was getting higher and higher, and the troll poured a spoonful of medicine and gave it to him.

“Well, I can’t eat them so I changed them — after all, I am an ogre. And then along comes this girl — the Princess Mirella — and suddenly I couldn’t take any more. A young, beautiful girl — a princess — and she wants to be a bird. Can’t face being a princess, can’t face being married to the prince her parents picked out for her. And not any bird — a white bird. I could tell her a thing or two about birds — if you want to see something really nasty, watch two turtledoves having a fight. And I’m sick of it,” said the ogre. “I’m turning into someone who’s taking on the sins of the world — making life better for people who have mucked up the planet. Do you hear me? I’m making life better — me, an ogre.”

He tried to sit up, dreadfully agitated, and began to cough.

“I’m not being true to myself,” he spluttered. “Ogres are fierce and wicked; they’re here to do harm. So I told her I wouldn’t do it and then… well you saw her — tears, pleading, fuss. I tell you, I’m through. No more changing, not ever.” He let his head roll back onto the cushion once more and closed his eyes. “I need a rest,” he said. “A long, long rest. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

The troll now took charge. The sofa had casters, and with all of them pushing, they managed to wheel it into the ogre’s bedroom, and in a few minutes the ogre was lying back against the pillows of his enormous four-poster bed.

As they tiptoed out, his voice followed them. “You’ll have to stay and look after me,” he said. “They’re nasty things, these breakdowns. Very nasty indeed.”

Now what?” wondered the Hag.

They were all completely exhausted. If everything had gone according to plan, they would now be dragging the body of the ogre away and setting Mirella free. Instead the troll was making medicine for him, and the princess they had come to rescue had locked herself into a room in the tower and wouldn’t come out. Was there a punishment for failing their mission? If so, they were in trouble.

Ivo settled matters by yawning, and the Hag made up her mind.

“We must all go to bed. Now. There are sure to be enough bedrooms in the castle. After a night’s sleep we shall know what to do.”

So they went exploring, opening and shutting various doors. Some were storerooms and some were empty with clouds of dust rising up from them, but eventually they found a corridor with a number of doors which led into fairly ordinary bedchambers. The beds were enormous, of course, as were the chairs and bedside tables, but the rescuers were too tired to care about details. The troll shared a bedroom with Ivo, not too far away from the ogre so that he could hear him if he called in the night; but the Hag and the wizard had rooms to themselves.

It was as he was undressing that the poor wizard had a nasty shock. Undressing was always difficult for him — he so easily got tangled up in his trousers — and he was holding onto the bedpost to keep his balance when he thought he saw, on the ceiling, the same floating face he had seen when they were crossing the sea.

Was it his mummy again, checking up on him? When he was a little boy she had often come in at bedtime to make sure that he was reading his Book of Spells and not the comic book he had saved up for.

But when he looked again, he saw two spiders scuttling away and realized that the gray shape was the webs they had been spinning, and with a sigh of relief, he climbed into bed.