Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

The wizard looked up, meaning to thank the spiders, but they had already scuttled away, leaving the webs hanging on the rafter.

When the Hag returned she found Dr. Brainsweller staring down at a bowl full of mixed leaves and looking very shaken.

“What is it, Brian?” she asked him. “You look upset.”

The wizard explained, and the Hag, who was feeling uplifted after her time in the Dribble, did her best to comfort him.

“She’s just worried about you,” she said. “Mothers are like that.”

The wizard sighed. “I’m afraid I’m a disappointment to her.” He looked down at the contents of the bowl, which he was stirring absently. “You can’t blame her for being worried. I mean, it doesn’t look much like a magic potion, does it?” he said sadly.

The Hag looked. She looked again. She fetched a bottle of olive oil from the larder and a bottle of vinegar. She fetched a fork.…

Her face was shining. “No,” she said. “You’re right. You haven’t made a magic potion, Brian, but you have made something much, much better. You have made a salad!”

And from that day, the wizard did more and more of the cooking. He learned to make excellent soup from the vegetables in the garden — because after all soup is not so different from a magic potion; it is all about stirring and mixing — and sometimes a little muttering — and he tried out other recipes. He took great pride in the job and was happy for the first time in his life, and Mrs. Brainsweller stopped appearing to him because the kind spiders always blotted her out with their webs, and gradually she gave up and left her son alone.

So the wizard was happy and so was the troll — and the Hag was in a state of bliss because she knew that the Dribble was there even on days when she couldn’t get to it.

As for the children, they couldn’t imagine a better life than the one they now had.

When they had been at the castle for nearly three weeks they saw a man in a jerkin come over the drawbridge carrying a large churn of frothy milk, which he wanted to sell them. His name was Brod and he kept a cow and some chickens in a small farm on the other side of the ogre’s land. He used to supply the ogre with milk and eggs in the old days but the ogre’s servants had cheated him so badly that he’d stopped coming.

“But I saw them skiving off,” he said. “So if you give me a fair price I’ll do business with you.”

The Hag was delighted but worried, too. “I don’t think we have any money,” she said.

Brod stared at her. “The ogre’s got a pile of gold pieces. Keeps them in his sock. You go and ask him and tell him it’s Brod. He knows me.”

The ogre was not at all pleased to be interrupted, but he admitted that he knew Brod and said that they could look in his sock drawer for the gold pieces.

The drawer was not a pleasant place, but after a long search they found the gold coins and took one down to Brod.

“I’ll supply you for six months for that,” he said when he had bitten it to make sure it was genuine.

So now they had milk and eggs, and the larder was filling with blackberries and dried mushrooms, and they picked blackberries and rose hips in the hedgerows.

“What an idiot I was wanting to be a bird up in the cold sky,” said Mirella. “No trees, no grass, no water, no work to do — just empty space.”

But the ogre was beginning to be a worry. At first they simply waited for him to give up the idea of dying, but he wouldn’t. And if you get an idea like that into your head, you can seriously make yourself weaker and weaker. He was also getting not just ordinarily disgusting, but very disgusting indeed, and there came a morning when they all stood around his bed and told him that he had to have a bath.

“Ogres don’t have baths, I’ve told you,” he said. “I never had one when Germania was alive.”

But Ulf said if he wanted them to go on looking after him, a bath was essential, otherwise he was on his own. “And anyway your aunts are coming. And Clarence.”

“Ah yes, Clarence.”

They waited for the ogre to tell them more about Clarence, but he just sighed as he always did when he mentioned his name — and the moment passed.

“And you must change your pajamas,” said the Hag. “Leave those outside the door and I’ll take them to be washed.”

Since the ogre could not fit into an ordinary bathtub except in bits, they decided to sluice him down in the laundry room near the dungeon, where there were two huge copper vats which were used for boiling clothes, and a stone floor covered in wooden slats so there would be no trouble with flooding.

“But we must make sure that the insects that are living on him are safe,” said Mirella. “They’d die in all that water and steam.”

So she fetched all the jam jars and containers she could find and started to scoop out the wood lice from behind the ogre’s ears and the spittlebug from his nostril and the leeches between his toes. The ogre lay very quiet while this was going on, because it put off the evil moment when he had to get up and go to his bath.

“What about the bedbugs?” he said. “Don’t forget those.”

But at last every single creature was safely stored and labeled, and the dreaded event could be put off no longer.

Ulf meanwhile had lit the fire in the range and dragged two enormous copper cauldrons out into the center of the room and scrubbed them clean. He had placed a stool between the tubs and found a rack for the ogre’s towels and laid out a long-handled brush and some soap neatly, as he had seen the nurses do in the hospital. He added a large pot scourer and some cleanser to be on the safe side. Then he climbed back up the stairs and started to get the ogre out of bed, which was a terrible business. The room had to be cleared because he was shy, and as soon as he was standing upright and Ulf tried to help him on with his dressing gown, he sat down again, panting horribly and clutching his heart.

“You’ll kill me before I’ve got my funeral sorted,” he said. “And I’ve told you, ogres are better when they smell.”

“Ogres may be, but we aren’t,” said Ulf, who was longing to get out into the forest. “Come on.”

Slowly — very slowly — grumbling furiously, collapsing again and again on the stairs, the ogre arrived in the laundry room. Clouds of steam were rising from the hot tub and he gave a bellow of rage.

“You’re going to boil me alive,” he roared. “It’s a plot.”

Ulf took no notice. He took the ogre’s dressing gown and hung it on a hook. Then he poured two more buckets of warm water into the first of the gigantic tubs, and the whole room filled with steam.

“Get in,” he said.

“Very well,” said the ogre. “You are hurrying me on to my death but nobody cares. Germania would have cared, but she’s under the mound.”

Ulf waited.

Still grumbling, the ogre began to lower his bulk into the tub. Water slopped onto the floor. Ulf picked up his long-handled back scrubber and the cake of soap. The ogre, complaining the whole time, lowered himself farther, and then a little farther still, into the water.…

The children had gone into the orchard to pick the last of the apple crop when Mirella suddenly said, “Oh no! I’m an idiot — the poor little bat — it’ll be boiled alive in the heat.”

Ivo stared at her.

“What are you talking about?”

“The fruit bat in the laundry room, don’t you remember? The very young one that was hanging above the range. I bet Ulf won’t have had time to collect it and let it out.”