Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

What was strange was that though the ogre’s aunts were so unpleasant, Clarence was different.

“There’s something really nice about him,” said Mirella, stroking his mottled shell.

“You feel that when he does hatch he’ll have been worth waiting for,” said Ivo.

The animals, too, had the same feeling about Clar-ence. He was a good egg and much easier to look after than a baby with all those diapers and screaming and fuss — and Charlie seemed to agree, for when the children moved away from Clarence, he sat and guarded him.

But time was a running out for the rescuers. If they had hoped that there might be one aunt who was less awful than the others, their hopes were unfulfilled. Whichever aunt inherited the castle, it would be equally bad for them, and they were determined to get away on the day the ogre left his home. They would have left earlier, but the ogre had promised to send word to the boatman who had brought them that they needed to be fetched.

He himself had decided to leave in the hearse.

“Pity to waste it,” he said, “and it’ll make quite a stir when I get to the harbor.”

The hearse had turned out very well. Ulf had painted it black and, though the gnu had offered to pull it, Brod’s cousin, the one who took messages, had a spare horse which he said they could borrow.

“Will you be all right in Whipple Road?” Ivo had asked Mirella. “After all, you used to be a princess and it’s not very exciting.”

“Of course I’ll be all right,” said Mirella.

But nobody felt all right during those last days. You can think you’re prepared for something, but when it comes it can take you by the throat. The thought of leaving the castle, the gardens they had tended, and the beautiful countryside was almost more than they could bear. Worst of all was the knowledge that they would never see their animal friends again — and the animals were taking it just as hard.

“I like being a gnu,” said the antelope. “I’m glad to be a gnu — but I didn’t expect that a gnu could feel such sorrow. It’ll be a desert without you.”

The aye-aye was becoming very shivery and nervous again.

“It’s as bad as when I was supposed to be Miss Universe with bananas on my head,” she said.

And she kept bringing presents down for them from the high trees: interesting feathers, bright berries, and unusual twigs.

Bessie didn’t say much, but every so often she gave great spluttery sighs and shook her head.

And at night Ivo hugged Charlie and thought that if he had to go back to the Home he would die.

The adults felt it just as keenly. The Hag sat on her stone in the Dribble when she could get away and cried a little, because it was hard to believe that she should find her Paradise so late in life, only to have it snatched away. The troll leaned his back against the five-hundred-year-old oak in his forest and tried to get used to the idea that soon he would again be trundling trolleys down the stuffy corridors of the hospital — and the wizard cooked in a frenzy, knowing that when he got back he would be trapped in his workshop trying to make useless things like gold which nobody could eat.

Meanwhile inside the castle things were getting stead-ily worse. The three aunts sniffed and snooped along the corridors; they peered and poked into the rooms; they shuddered and shivered and complained. They found sordid tasks which they expected the rescuers to do.

“My earplugs are too hard,” complained the Aunt-with-the-Ears, and she told the wizard to knead them with the soles of his feet to soften them.

The Aunt-with-the-Eyes had brought a bottle of ointment and a dropper which she expected the Hag to drop into her eyes, and then yelled at her because it stung. The Aunt-with-the-Nose dug up patches in the lawn to get at the roots she liked for a snack, and they had to follow her and put the turf back again.

One of the things they quarreled about was where they would put their collections.

“There isn’t a decent place for my worm collection anywhere,” complained the Aunt-with-the-Nose. “I want somewhere warm and quiet and moist; that shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The Aunt-with-the-Eyes wanted somewhere dry for her bone collection, and the Aunt-with-the-Ears said she needed a quiet straw-lined place for her egg collection, and why didn’t Dennis have anything like that. “The place is big enough, surely,” she complained.

The children found it hard to keep their tempers, especially when the aunts bullied the Hag — but they were becoming very sorry for the ogre, who looked more puzzled and worried every day.

“I’m sure they’ll come up with something good soon, don’t you think?” he asked them. “They’re just getting themselves sorted out.”

But as far as they could see the aunts were going to pieces. At the beginning they had been quite friendly to one another though rude to everyone else, but that had gone. They called one another names, they threw things and slammed doors, and at night they could be heard screaming in their sleep. Obviously each of them was so anxious to have the castle that their jealousy had become uncontrollable.

“I suppose I could leave the castle to all three of them,” said the ogre doubtfully, “but with the way they’re quarreling now, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

Then there came a morning when the Aunt-with-the-Nose pushed the Hag out of the way so hard that she fell and hurt her forehead.

“Right,” said the troll. “That does it. We’re leaving straightaway.”

The Hag said no, she was perfectly all right, but her friends had had enough. So they went to find the ogre and told him they were going — and they said they were taking Charlie, which had already been agreed on.

The ogre was very upset. “Couldn’t you wait just a few days? I could give you a lift in the hearse.”

It was difficult to say no to him, but when they looked at the bruise on the Hag’s forehead they knew it was time to go.

They went to bed early, meaning to start at dawn, but they had very little sleep because the aunts screamed and shouted all night, and the Aunt-with-the-Nose was found sleepwalking in the corridor and had to be pushed back into bed. So they were later than they meant to be as they went to the ogre’s room to say good-bye.

But when they got there they found a most extraordinary hullabaloo. All the aunts were standing around the ogre’s bed and they were crying and screaming and hiccuping.

“I won’t,” shouted the Aunt-with-the-Ears. “I won’t and you can’t make me!”

“Well, you needn’t think I will either,” yelled the Aunt-with-the-Eyes. “I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t endure it.”

“And I suppose you think you can fob it off on me,” screeched the Aunt-with-the-Nose. “But you can’t. You can’t. You can’t,” she yelled, getting hysterical and stamping her feet.

“What’s happened?” asked Ulf. “What’s going on?”

The ogre was sitting up in bed, looking thoroughly bewildered.

“They don’t want it,” he said, shaking his head. “They don’t want the castle. None of them do.”

The aunts turned on him.

“No we don’t. We never will. We want to go home.”

“Home!” shouted the Aunt-with-the-Eyes. “Home to my lovely lighthouse.”

“Home to my cave! My very own cave,” screeched the Aunt-with-the-Nose.

“Home to my abbey. Mine! My own place, my own home forever and ever,” yelled the Aunt-with-the-Ears.

They had stopped screaming now and begun to sob — great gloopy tears of homesickness and relief.

It seemed that they had liked the idea of owning a castle, but when it came to the point they couldn’t bear to leave their homes, and each of them had been pushing the castle off on the others, which was why they had been getting more and more bad-tempered.