The Reasonable Ogre

by Mike Barnes

  THE REASONABLE OGRE

  Text Copyright © Mike Barnes, 2012

  Illustrations Copyright © Segbingway, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Barnes, Mike, 1955-

  The reasonable ogre : stories for the sick and well / Mike Barnes ; illustrator, Segbingway.

  ISBN 978-1-926845-45-6

  I. Segbingway, 1974- II. Title.

  PS8553.A7633R42 2012 C813’.54 C2011-907871-6

  Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

  To

  Mary Margaret Barnes

  and in memory of

  William Henry Barnes M.D.

  Contents

  . . . hard bargains . . .

  The Reasonable Ogre

  Silver

  Moonswoop

  The Jailed Wizards

  . . . small plenties . . .

  Neverday: The Grateful Sprites

  Wear Me Last

  . . . luscious dregs . . .

  Sloth’s Minions

  The Glass Garden

  Falling Water

  . . . strange detours . . .

  Grimus the Miser

  The King’s Huntsman

  The Spigot

  The Reasonable Ogre

  Once there was an ogre who was like all other ogres except in one respect: he was reasonable. He could see more than one point of view, and he liked to argue and discuss. People seldom realized this, however, since he looked like any other ogre, huge and frightening, and he spent his time doing what every other ogre does: grabbing passersby and stuffing them in his mouth. He lived in a cave by a crossroads, where he slept away most of the day; but if he was awake and heard footsteps, he rushed out with a roar and planted himself in the roadway. No matter how loudly the person screamed (they always screamed), he snatched them up in his great hairy hand and ate them in two or three bites, cleaning his teeth afterward with branches he’d torn off trees.

  One day a lawyer happened by. She was dressed very smartly, and the clicking of her heels woke the ogre up. He jumped into the roadway and confronted her. Instead of screaming she began talking quickly—not because she knew he was a reasonable ogre, but from the habits she’d learned in the courtroom.

  “At least leave me my hair and eyes, since my husband says they are my best features,” she reasoned with the ogre.

  And the ogre, thinking he could make a very good meal without her hair and eyes, agreed.

  “And leave me my hands, so I can do a little typing to earn my living,” she said.

  Again the ogre thought this was not too much to ask, and agreed.

  “And my feet,” she continued, “since everyone needs to have a little fun, and I love dancing.”

  Even without hair, hands, feet and eyes she is still a nice plump meal, thought the ogre, and nodded in agreement.

  In this way the clever lawyer got the ogre to make an exception for one leg, then the other leg, then one arm, then the other arm, then her neck since how else would she hold her head up, then her heart since it would need to pump blood to whatever remained, and then—

  “STOP!” bellowed the ogre. “You ask for too much! You are greedy, not reasonable.”

  The lawyer’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. And then, before she could even scream, the ogre ate her in two great bites.

  Now, during this debate, a young boy had been approaching the crossroads. He saw the lawyer get eaten despite her clever arguments. He wasn’t clever at arguing, but he was a very fast runner, and he thought that might give him a chance.

  The ogre towered over him, his mouth still bloody from his meal. He snatched up the boy and held him in front of his horrible face. “What do you have to say for yourself?” the ogre demanded.

  “I have an interesting argument,” said the boy. “If you put me down so I can catch my breath, I’ll tell it to you.”

  “That is what everyone says who wants to run away,” said the ogre, and stuffed the boy down his throat without even chewing.

  Along came a poor man, a musician. He had been walking toward the crossroads and he saw what had happened to the lawyer and the boy. He was a humble man, used to life’s hard bargains, so he thought he would try a different approach.

  When the ogre planted himself in front of him and opened his huge mouth, the musician said, “I saw you make a meal of that lawyer and then have the little boy for dessert. You can’t still be hungry.”

  “I eat whether I’m hungry or not,” said the ogre. “You don’t know my nature.”

  “Well, then,” said the musician, who knew all too well the nature of ogres, “if you must eat some of me, at least leave me the parts I can’t do without.”

  “Which parts?” the ogre asked.

  “I could spare you one leg,” said the musician, “since I could get around with a crutch. But I need both of my hands to play my music.”

  “What instrument do you play?” asked the ogre.

  “The harmonica.”

  “You don’t need two hands for that,” said the ogre. “One hand and a mouth are enough.”

  “That is true,” said the honest musician. “Life would be more difficult, but I could manage.”

  “Since you are fair with me, I will be fair with you,” said the reasonable ogre. “I will take one of your legs but just two fingers from your left hand.”

  And that is what the ogre did. And now the poor musician gets around with a crutch, and plays the harmonica and the recorder too. And when the talk turns to ogres, he tells people that though there is usually no reasoning with them, it never hurts to try.

  Silver

  A village beside a stream was slowly dying. Once it had been prosperous and happy, but now its children were becoming sick and families were moving away. No one knew the cause. One night an old man in the village dreamed of an ugly, ancient fish gasping at the bottom of a muddy pool. When he awoke he said to his wife, “Our water is the problem. I will follow the stream to its source and see what I find.” His wife feared that she would never see him again, but she did not try to stop him. They had no children and they were old. Who else in the village could make the trip?

  By the side of the stream they parted tearfully. “I’ll come back,” the old man promised. “But not before I’ve found what I’m looking for.”

  At first he had a pleasant walk. The stream wound through meadows and he walked beside it with his stick in the sun. But when the stream entered the forest, the way became more difficult. Often his path was blocked by a fallen tree, which he climbed over with difficulty, and the ground beside the stream became wet and muddy, so that his boots sank into it and he had to pull them free with a sucking sound. It was hard to tell the slow-moving stream from the swamp around it.

  At one difficult place he stopped to rest and eat a bit of bread, when he saw a little silver minnow having trouble like his own. The minnow was trying to swim up the stream but its way was blocked by a stick. The old man removed the stick, and smiled to see the minnow dart on with a flick of its tail.

  Farther on, he saw the minnow stopped again, this time by a line of little stones and mud. The minnow swam up and down the line trying to find a place to get through. The old man reached down and with two fingers made a channel through the stones. With a
flick of its tail, the silver minnow shot through.

  I’ll follow it, thought the old man. It knows where to go, and if it gets stuck I can help it. In this way the two made their way farther up the stream. The old man catching sight of a silver flash when he’d lost his way, and the minnow finding the way cleared when it had been blocked. They travelled for many days. The man’s food was all gone, but the ground was dry and the walking easier as he climbed beside the stream into the hills. The stream ran swift and clear, and made pools in level areas. Always, when he stopped beside one of these for the night, he would see the silver minnow glinting below, resting after the day’s hard swimming.

  Then, one day, the stream ran under a rock and disappeared. The silver minnow swam into the hole and was gone. The man walked carefully back and forth beyond the rock, but could find no sign of the stream returning to the surface. The ground was dry everywhere he looked. Tired and discouraged, he lay down to rest. His bones were aching and he groaned through a fitful sleep.

  When he awoke, the sun was low. Peering at it from under his hand, he thought he saw a flash of silver farther up the hill. It could be the sun on a rock, or my mind playing tricks on me, he thought, but I’ve got to follow it and see.

  But at the first step he took in the direction of the flash, a voice said firmly, Give up what’s precious or go no further.

  Startled, the old man looked all about him to see who had spoken, but there was no one there. The voice seemed to come from the trees and rocks and forest shadows.

  He thought, I don’t know what’s precious, but I know what I need. I’ll give up my walking stick. And as soon as he thought that, the walking stick disappeared. He looked around him, but it was gone. Far up the hill he saw the flash of silver again, and when he had reached it, limping slowly without his stick, he saw that it was the little stream, returned to the surface and catching the last light of the sun.

  By now it was dark and he lay down for the night. When he got up to follow the stream again, he had only gone a short way before the voice stopped him:

  Give up what’s precious or go no further.

  The old man thought. My food is gone, my stick is gone. I don’t know what’s precious but I know what I need. And no sooner had he thought of his clothes than they disappeared and he was naked.

  Now he began to suffer badly. He limped painfully without his stick, and he shivered from the cold without clothes to protect him. Still, he made it a little farther along the stream before nightfall. There he spent a miserable night, shivering and groaning.

  Again, the next morning, the voice stopped him before he had gone ten paces:

  Give up what’s precious or go no further.

  The old man slumped down beside the stream. He began to cry. “What else can I give? I am hungry and sore, tired, naked, and above all, old. I have nothing more.”

  Give up what’s precious or go no further.

  Closing his eyes, he smelled the fresh running water, and he put his aching feet in the cold stream to soothe them. I could find my way without eyes, he thought, and with the thought he was instantly blind. Day and night were the same to him now, and he stumbled up the stream in his bare feet, stopping only when he could not go another step without resting. He felt more hopeless but also more determined than ever, and when the voice spoke again, he was ready for it.

  “Take my hands,” he said back to it. “I don’t need them to walk.” And his hands fell at his sides, limp and useless.

  Now he was without almost everything: a blind, handless, naked old man, limping slowly up a cold stream. All that filled his mind as he made his way haltingly on, was the thought of his village, slowly sickening and emptying of people, and of his wife, an old woman in a hut waiting for him to return.

  Give up what’s precious or go no further.

  I can’t give up my wife or my village, he thought. They’re not mine to give. All I have is my memories of them. And with that his mind went completely blank, like a window wiped clean of dust.

  Now he could only splash forward through the water following his nose, like a creature of instinct, not remembering the reason. He grew weak from hunger and cold. Finally he could go no further and he collapsed on a rock with his feet in the water, knowing he had reached the end. Though he could not see or know it, the stream had reached an end too. He was sitting beside its final pool, where the stream bubbled up from somewhere deep in the earth. In the clear water near his feet flashed the little silver fish, which had reached the pool long before.

  Give up what’s precious or go no further, said the voice, as sternly as ever despite the old man’s state.

  “I have nothing left to give,” said the old man tiredly. “If it’s nothing you want, then take it.”

  And with that he fell over, dead, into the pool and sank slowly to the bottom.

  Far away, in the village he’d left behind, the old woman wondered what had happened to her husband. For days she had waited for him by the stream where they’d parted. Then she returned to their hut and waited some more, though with a smaller and smaller hope that he would ever return. Gradually, with a sinking heart, she accepted the fact that she would never see him again. One of the few young men left in the village offered to search for the old man. He followed the stream a long, long way, up to where it disappeared into the ground. There he found the old man’s walking stick and his clothes. He brought these back and gave them to the old woman. Tears ran silently from her eyes at this proof that her husband had died.

  Not only was he gone, but the sickness in the village was worse than ever. Families moved away until only a few remained, along with a scattering of old people. The stream they lived by behaved strangely that year. For weeks it dried up almost completely, shrinking to a trickle of murky, foul-tasting water. Then suddenly it gushed down and flooded over its banks, like water bursting through a dam, colder and clearer than before. The people shook their heads in puzzlement, since there had been neither drought nor heavy rains.

  One day, a boy in the village went fishing and caught a plump silver fish. He was taking it home to his family for dinner, when he saw the old woman whose husband had disappeared, walking alone by the stream as she often did. Taking pity on her, he gave her the fish for her own dinner. The next morning, he knocked on her door to see how she’d enjoyed it. Getting no answer, he pushed the door open. Inside the hut he saw a beautiful young woman in a green dress lying on a bed. On a plate on the wooden table were the bones of the fish, stripped clean of meat. He went to the bed and touched her hand, which was as cold as ice.

  He ran to get his parents, who returned with some of the village elders. The oldest of these said the dead woman on the bed was the old woman as she had looked sixty years before, on her wedding day.

  After that, the remaining young families moved away, more certain than ever that their village was cursed. Those who were too old to move died one by one, and soon the village was deserted, its huts collapsing into grass. Which was a shame, because at last the water in the stream was perfectly clean and safe for anyone to drink.

  Moonswoop

  When she was very young, Moira got so sick that she had to stay inside for a whole year. Her mom made up her bed beside the living-room window, and Moira sat with a pillow behind her back, colouring pictures and watching the seasons slowly change beyond the glass. Their apartment was on the fourth floor, and when she leaned her forehead on the glass, she could see the tops of people’s heads going by in the street below. A tall maple tree stood outside the window, and behind it clouds passed slowly, and planes a little more quickly. Little birds landed in the tree and flitted from branch to branch. Sometimes they all stopped moving at once, then dropped straight down like stones falling, and Moira knew that the hawk was nearby. She would see the hawk floating in a circle high above, or diving down into her tree or another, its wings pinned close to its sides. It sailed past her window with its ragged wings rippling like old flags, sometimes with another, identical
hawk following close behind, like a twin sister or a reflection in a mirror of air. Once it sat for a few minutes on a branch just beyond the window, and Moira memorized it to draw later: black, curved talons digging into bark; gray-white, tawny-yellow and brown feathers; the beak like a short, thick hook bent downwards.

  In November, when she had been inside for half a year, Moira began to grow wings of her own. She felt them first as hard knots in her shoulders. She couldn’t get comfortable lying on her back, and when she felt behind her, her hands touched little hard mounds like buds below her shoulder blades, with a covering of first feathers so fine they felt like fur. Within a few days, the wings had grown long enough to tickle the small of her back with their tips. She used new muscles to make them twitch—she just thought about it and it happened—though of course she couldn’t unfold them inside the apartment. For now she kept them tucked under her nightgown, pinned as flat against her body as she could make them, and was careful not to say a word about them to her mom.

  One night she waited until her mom was asleep and then opened her window and crawled out on the ledge of their building. She had unbuttoned the back of her nightgown, and now she felt the wings unfold behind her and rise and stretch out in the cold night air. They swept downward slowly and she felt her feet leave the ledge for a moment. She flapped them again, more vigorously, and the next thing she knew, she was standing on a branch at the top of the maple tree, already above the roof of her building. To get the feel of her new wings, she flew in a wide circle over her neighbourhood. She found the air currents that allowed her to float, barely moving her wings, like a boat on a lazy river. Then she flew much higher, circling the city on the river of air, looking down at the thousands of twinkling lights, behind which people slept or dreamed or read books by bedside lamps. She tried to pick out her home, but from high above, many houses and buildings looked alike.