Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

“It’s a very common spell,” said the Hag modestly, “a Plague of Frogs — but it can be useful. This one came off well, I must admit.”

Mirella was still trying to climb out of the moat, and two men, batting away the frogs, had begun to chop down the tree which was to make a bridge across the water. The marksmen, making noises of disgust as their hands encountered the slimy amphibians, went on firing.

Up on the ramparts, the wizard spoke a single word — and the Hag nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I can do those.”

Nothing happened at first — then the men who were chopping down the tree put down their axes.

“There’s something on your nose,” said one.

“And there’s something on your nose,” said the other.

They began to finger their faces, to make noises of disgust. The warts were enormous, with tufts of hair on them, and wobbly dark skin.

Shrieking with fear, they ran back to the rest of the army. Everybody was touching their noses now, looking at their reflections in the polished harness, pointing at each other.

All the soldiers were upset, but Prince Umberto, still at the back of the troop astride his charger, was almost out of his mind.

“What will my tailor say, and my hairdresser?” he squealed.

“There’s witchcraft about,” said Prince Tomas.

Prince Phillipe agreed, but they had sworn to slay the ogre and bring back the princess, and once again both princes gave the signal to fire.

“Ow!” said Ulf — and put his hand to his shoulder.

It came away streaked with blood, but when the others rushed forward to help him he pushed them away.

“It’s only a scratch,” he said. “Trolls don’t feel pain.” And he called up to Nandi for more tiles.

But the Hag was very upset. She and the troll had been friends for a long time. She took a deep breath and turned to Ivo. “The one I’m going to do now is a nasty one — very physiological. Are you all right with that?” and Ivo said, “Oh yes! Please.”

The Hag muttered again — and down below the soldiers, ignoring the frogs and the warts, began to scratch themselves. They scratched their armpits and their heads and behind their knees. They tore off their doublets to get to their skin. They howled and twitched and cried out as their bodies turned into a fiery hell.

There are ordinary itches — itches you get from mosquito bites and sunburn. There are serious itches you get from eczema and chilblains and scabies. But the Great Itch, which the Hag had unloosed, was like none of these! After a few hours of the Great Itch, men are ready to leap into the sea and drown.

The ogre threw a kitchen table. Soon there would be no furniture left in the castle.

But now came the gnu. He trotted up slowly, because going to war was not to his taste, but he did not mean to fail his friends.

He came up behind the army — and as he drew closer he increased speed and put his head down… and choosing the largest horse with the strongest buttocks, he charged!

The horse was Prince Umberto’s. It was a brave and fiery horse, but being charged in the backside by a gnu was too much. The stallion reared, whinnied, swung around — and bolted from the battlefield.

The gnu pawed the ground and looked for another backside. He took care not to charge too hard, for his quarrel was not with the horses but with the men who rode them — but the soldiers now had had enough.

“We’ll retreat to the top of the hill and then re-form for another attack,” ordered Prince Tomas, scratching like a flea-ridden monkey.

And gathering up their wounded as best they could, they rode away.

But they did not re-form. When they reached the crest of the hill the men, still itching madly, gazed upward and pointed to the sky. Flying above them toward the castle was a swirl of dark shapes so terrifying that they could not even cry out.

In a moment they had urged their horses into a gallop and were out of sight.

And the ghosts smiled and glided on, making their way to the castle.

In the kitchen of the castle they were celebrating.

The ogre sat in his big carved chair, stuffing himself with anything the Hag could put on his plate.

“Shouldn’t you start eating gradually?” she asked in a worried voice. “You must have shrunk your stomach with all that refusing to eat, and you might be ill, suddenly filling it up.”

But the ogre said that was nonsense; the Ogres of Oglefort had cast-iron stomachs and he now felt absolutely fine.

“Repelling a whole army did me all the good in the world,” he said — and no one liked to suggest that it wasn’t just he who had repelled the army, but the Hag with her spells and the animals, not to mention the troll and the wizard and the children manning the ramparts. They also wondered what would happen when the aunts arrived to attend his deathbed and found him restored to health.

Meanwhile nothing could stop him from celebrating. The gnu and the aye-aye had been invited in, and the spider sisters hung down over the table by a specially long thread so that they could see what was going on.

“We showed them, didn’t we?” said the ogre, gulping down the Hag’s plum cordial.

Only Mirella found it difficult to rejoice. Bessie had helped her out of the moat by swimming underneath her and making a kind of shelf. She had changed out of her wet clothes and had a hot drink — but seeing her father’s army had frightened her badly, and Umberto’s stupid face, under the ridiculous helmet, wouldn’t go out of her mind.

“What if they come back?” she whispered to Ivo.

“They won’t. We really scared them,” said Ivo, and he looked proudly at the Hag, who had shown herself to be a proper witch.

No one in the castle had seen what the army saw: a swirl of hideous black shapes flapping across the sky, and then dissolving into nothingness.

The ghost train had become a boat train for the first part of the journey. The Norns had sent it on the ferry to Osterhaven with the ghosts still inside, but once they arrived in Ostland they had been forced to glide to the castle under their own steam.

The long cold journey, and the need to be invisible most of the time, had annoyed them, but now they were settling in. They had found a suitable place for their headquarters — a clump of trees not far from the castle and close to a large mound of bones which seemed somehow familiar — and they were planning their special effects.

The Bag Lady had emptied out her shopping bags and was rummaging with pale, plump fingers among her filthy clothes, looking for her corset. Being blinded by a corset often got people very upset.

The Honker was spitting steadily onto the grass. In spite of his age and the missing leg, his aim was still good.

The Aunt Pusher ran at an oak tree, his great hands held out in front of him, and the tree trembled and swayed.

“What’s keeping him?” asked the Smoking Girl, lighting a cigarette from the stub of her old one. “It’s nearly dark.”

The Inspector had glided off on his own to investigate, which was his name for spying.

“You’d better unstick your jaws,” said the Man with the Umbrella to the Chewing Head. “You can’t grin properly with all that gum, and severed heads are no good unless they’re grinning.”

The ghosts had been feeling quite cheerful, getting ready for the night’s work, but now they felt a shivery kind of bleakness, and looking up they saw the Inspector.

His stony gaze traveled over them, taking in the Smoking Girl’s untidy scarf, the Honker’s crutch thrown on the ground.