by Eva Ibbotson
Ivo took the tray, which contained a piece of bacon, a cup of coffee, and a slice of toast. He decided to leave Charlie downstairs, which was difficult, but the Hag diverted him with an old bone while Ivo slipped out.
As he toiled up the round stone stairs to the East Tower, he was remembering how he had felt when he first saw the Princess Mirella on the Norns’ magic screen. She had looked so pathetic and terrified, with her hair streaming down her back and her pitiful face, and he had felt a great longing to save her and protect her—well, anybody would. And when he burst into the Great Hall, waving a sword which he saw at once would hardly scratch the ogre’s backside, it was the thought of rescuing the princess which had given him the courage to go forward.
And all she had done was yell at him and threaten him with a poker. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Ivo was in a thoroughly bad temper.
“Open the door,” he called. “I’ve brought you your breakfast.”
There was no answer, but when he turned the iron ring in the door it creaked slowly open.
Mirella was lying in a huddled heap on a couch, covered with a bearskin. The room was bare otherwise, except for a broken spinning wheel, a battered leather footstool, and a tool for dismembering things, nailed to the wall. Everything was covered in dust. She looked so forlorn that Ivo’s bad temper subsided.
“I’ve brought you your breakfast,” he said.
Mirella raised her head. “I don’t want it.”
“Well, you’d better have it just the same.”
“All right. Put it down then.”
“I’m not your servant,” said Ivo, getting cross again. “You might at least say please. And I think you’re a ridiculous, spoiled brat. My goodness, when I think that I spent my whole life—my whole life—in a dreary boring Home eating disgusting food and being ordered about by bossy matrons and sharing a dormitory with people who sniffed and snored and played silly tricks on me, and you,” said Ivo, getting thoroughly worked up, “you were brought up as a princess with everyone doing what you wanted and having lovely things to eat and clothes to wear, and you can’t face the thought of going on living. You have to run away and—”
But he was not allowed to finish. Mirella threw off her bearskin and sat up.
“How dare you talk to me like that! How dare you! You know absolutely nothing about being a princess. Well let me tell you what it’s like. You wake up in the morning with your room full of nurses and servants and people with lists of what you’ve got to do that day. You’re put into ridiculous clothes and when you try to do anything interesting, it’s forbidden. People throw away your ants nests and—”
“Ants nests? Did you have one of those?”
“Yes. The carpenter helped me make it; we lined it with plaster of Paris, and the ants liked it and had very interesting lives, but my parents took it away. They took away my stickleback tank, too, and my jackdaws and everything I’ve ever loved, even my—” She broke off and turned her head away. Talking about Squinter hurt too much. “I was watched morning, noon, and night and made to wear dresses covered in rosebuds, and then this prince came and they said I had to marry him.”
“But you’re much too young to get married,” said Ivo, quite shocked by this.
“They arrange these things early in royal families. He was completely horrible, with a silly beard and a squeaky voice and a scented handkerchief, which he waved when he saw anything alive—and he sleeps in bed socks. One of his servants told my nurse. And then they took away my Squinter—”
Mirella’s voice broke. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “The ogre has got to change me. He’s absolutely got to.”
“Well, he can’t,” said Ivo. “He’s having a nervous breakdown.”
Mirella frowned. “I don’t know what that is.”
“I didn’t either but the troll told me. It’s when you get so upset inside your head that everything sort of folds up—your blood and your digestion and your muscles. Nothing works properly and you become ill all over.”
“Well, he’ll have to stop, because I’m staying here till he changes me and that’s it.”
“You’re being very selfish.”
There was a scratching noise at the door. When Ivo opened it, Charlie came bounding into the room, full of good cheer and very certain of his welcome.
Ivo bent down to pat him, but Mirella had sat bolt upright and given a little shriek.
“Oh!” she cried. “It’s Squinter! It’s my—” Then as the dog came forward and she could see him in the light, her face fell. “No it’s not! His eyes are wrong.”
Ivo was indignant. “What do you mean, his eyes are wrong? He’s got lovely eyes.”
“Yes, I know. Oh . . . it doesn’t matter.”
“Look, if you come downstairs we could share him. Please. There’s so much to do.”
But seeing what she had thought was her beloved dog had reduced Mirella to a wreck. “Look, just go away, will you,” she said. “And you can take the tray back, too. I don’t eat bacon; I’m a vegetarian.”
She managed to wait till the door was shut and then she threw herself onto the bed in a storm of sobbing.
CHAPTER
11
THE OGRE BREAKDOWN
The ogre was not getting better—in fact he was getting worse. His thighs throbbed, his forehead pounded, blisters had come out on his stomach. At night he had terrible dreams and occasionally he screamed in his sleep—horrible screams which echoed through the castle.
“Oh why did Germania have to die?” he moaned. “It’s all hopeless since Germania died.”
Germania was his wife, the ogress he had loved so much.
The troll did his best to nurse him but the ogre was not a good patient. He didn’t like his medicine; he wouldn’t get out of bed to do his exercises, so that he got weaker and weaker; and he wouldn’t let the troll bathe him.
“Ogres don’t have baths,” he said. “It’s not what they do.”
So a family of wood lice settled behind his ears, liking the warm dampness; leeches clung to his yellow toes; a spittlebug lived in his left nostril.
Everyone did their best. The Hag remembered a spell for bringing down swellings which she had used in the Dribble, but as soon as one part of the ogre subsided, another part swelled up again. The wizard mixed potion after potion but the ogre just turned his head away. The only thing he wanted them to do was sit by his bed and listen to his dreams, which were mostly about his aunts. The ogre had three aunts who lived in separate places a long way away. There was the Aunt-with-the-Ears who could hear a man turning over in his bed on the other side of a mountain, and the Aunt-with-the-Nose who could smell people at a distance of twenty furlongs, and the Aunt-with-the-Eyes who could see an insect stirring in a neighboring county.
But the rescuers were not only trying to look after the ogre. Every room in the castle was dirty and neglected; there was very little food; and the couple in the dungeon only came out to ask for breakfast or lunch or dinner and went back in again.
“We’d better see what there is outside,” said Ulf.
So they went out over the drawbridge. In the moat they came across the gudgeon whom the ogre had changed. He seemed to be happy and contented, though they couldn’t be sure. Finding out what fish are thinking has never been easy.
On the other side of the bridge they found a walled kitchen garden and an orchard, both overgrown and full of weeds. There were a few vegetables still in the ground and the soil was good, but there was a terrible lot of work to do—and in the orchard rotten apples lay where they had fallen. They were on their way back when Charlie took off suddenly and, following him, they came to a large mound entirely covered in bare, gnawed bones. To their surprise Charlie did not pick up a single bone but sat down respectfully with a few quiet wags of his tail. Coming closer, they saw that the mound was a grave, and on top was a tombstone with the words: HERE LIES GERMANIA HENBANE OF OGLEFORT, BELOVED OGRESS AND WIFE OF DENNIS CONSANDINE. MUCH MISSE
D.
“Oh dear,” said the Hag. “That’s another thing that needs doing. We’ll have to tend the grave. Some of those bones look dreadfully untidy. Those Grumblers down in the dungeon will have to come and help or go away. We can’t do everything on our own.”
But the Grumblers wouldn’t help and they wouldn’t go away. They turned out to be a married couple called Hilary and Neville Hummock, and they had come to Ostland because they didn’t like each other anymore.
“In fact we hate each other,” Mrs. Hummock had explained. “So I’m going to be a wombat and live on land and Neville is going to be a mudskipper and live in the water, and that way we won’t see each other.”
Ivo thought he had never heard anything so silly—but it was Mirella that everyone was worried about. She hadn’t eaten anything since she’d come and she was still locked in her room. After all they had come to rescue the princess and as far she they could see she was just fading away.
“I’ll have one more go,” said Ivo. “I don’t know if it’ll be any use but I’ll try.”
This time he took Charlie straightaway. Mirella didn’t open the door at first but when the dog scratched at the wood, the handle turned slowly.
“What do you want?”
Ivo put down the tray. “I want you to come down and help. I want you to be sensible. The Hag’s working her fingers to the bone and those horrible people in the dungeon won’t do anything and the ogre’s taken to his bed and here you are just sulking.” He paused. “Please, Mirella. Please? I thought maybe we could be friends—there isn’t anyone else my own age.”
But he was shocked by the way she looked. Her black eyes had rings under them; she seemed hardly to have slept; her hair was in tangles. If she wasn’t ill already she soon would be, and Charlie, too, seemed to be worried as he sniffed round her ankles and whimpered.
“It’s no use. My parents will find me sooner or later. They’re bound to. They’ll send out armies and all that sort of stuff, and when that happens I’ll jump out of the window. I’d die rather than go back.”
“That’s silly. You’re just being a coward.”
“I am not!” Mirella rounded on him. “I came over the bridge above the ravine in the dark, and there were some ghastly creatures sort of moaning and gibbering and trying to get me. Then I walked for miles and miles without food and it was scary, but I didn’t mind because I thought when I got to the ogre he would change me into a bird and everything would be all right, but now I can’t be bothered with anything.”
“And suppose he had changed you—perhaps it wouldn’t be so marvelous. You’d have to eat things like ants, which you kept as pets in the palace, and all sorts of insects.”
“No I wouldn’t. I’d be a seabird and swoop down into the waves.”
“Oh yes? I suppose spearing fish in your beak would be better? I suppose you think fish don’t feel pain—you’ve seen them twitch and wiggle on the end of a line.”
Ivo was getting angry again. “When I think of the people who’ve been told they’re ill and they’re going to die—children even—and they’d give anything they’ve got—”
But he couldn’t get through to Mirella. She had sunk into a black hole where nothing existed except her own despair.
“Isn’t there anything we can do about her?” Ivo asked the Hag. “How can she not want to be a human being . . . a person with arms and legs and thoughts? Why does she want to throw it all away?”
He looked out of the window at the brilliantly green grass, the clear blue sky. They had expected only darkness and danger but it was very beautiful at Oglefort. There was so much to learn and see and do, and he and Mirella could have done it together.
The Hag put an arm around his shoulder.
“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.
CHAPTER
12
THE CHANGING
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.
