Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

“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.

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.

“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.

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.