The Reasonable Ogre

by Mike Barnes

  THE BOY BORN nine months later was weak and sickly. A disease that wasted his muscles caused him to develop slowly and walk, when he eventually did, with difficulty. But despite this he was a happy child, meeting the world with a gurgling smile, and he soon became the joy of his parents’ lives. His father stopped worrying so much about his fisherman’s luck and simply accepted with a shrug what fortune the sea brought him: a fat fish for the table some days, with extra left for salting; nothing but his wife’s coarse bread on others. In time he taught his son, who was too frail for an open boat, how to mend nets, sharpen knives and gaffs, caulk cracks, stitch sails, tend the vegetable patch behind their hut, and help with all the other jobs around the docks and house that didn’t require strong legs and a steady gait. The boy learned everything quickly, and was a great help to both his mother and his father. Rowing back into the bay after a long day’s fishing, the father felt his heart leap up in gladness when he turned and saw his son sitting on the dock waiting for him, the smoke curling from their hut behind him, where his wife always had vegetable soup simmering, as she considered it unlucky to count on fish no matter how good the sea had been to them lately.

  Life offered them its small plenties, including, two years later, another son. From the start, this boy was as different from their first son as it was possible to be. His body was strong and his will was fierce; not only was he determined to go just where he wanted, but where he wanted to go was always the very place that others had ordered him to avoid. The fact that he grew up to be quick-witted and handsome only made him more difficult; whatever trouble his muscles and short temper spared him, his charm and cunning supplied. By fourteen, he was done with the village school and it was done with him; and the same could be said of the village girls: he had already broken the hearts of the prettiest, and their brothers and fathers were his sworn enemies. Having used up his life in the village, and restless to see the world, he slipped away one night with two other boys who were on the same reckless path.

  Not surprisingly—for the sea soaked into every villager’s pores, so that no one’s living was unconnected with it—they became pirates. Though barely more than boys, they lived the thrilling life of robbers at sea, chasing or being chased over crashing waves, hunting down plump ships and fighting those on board to take whatever they carried. After only a few years serving under others, they took command of their own vessel. The fisherman’s son became the captain, and his two village friends his trusted mates. They made a great deal of money but never became rich, as they gave generous shares to the sailors on their ship, and spent whatever was left on lavish parties for themselves and their friends. It was a fine, dangerous life, but they realized it could not go on forever. Already they had seen many of their pirate friends killed or captured. So the three friends made a pact to begin saving a part of what they stole, and to quit piracy forever when they had filled three chests with treasure. Each would take his treasure chest and begin a new, honest life.

  They kept their word to themselves. Pieces of gold and silver, rings and necklaces and bracelets taken from gentlemen and their ladies, soon covered, like a glittering mat, the bottom of the casket each kept under lock and key in his quarters.

  One hot and windless day in the tropics, they came upon a merchant ship that they had been chasing for months without success. Though the ship was squat and laden with heavy cargo, it had a mysterious ability to outrun their own sleek vessel, tacking always just ahead of them on whatever sliver of wind could be found. Now, however, there was no wind to find an advantage with and the ship lay ahead of them, utterly becalmed. The pirates rowed over to seize it, the men shouting and brandishing their swords and pistols. They knew that such a show of force would often decide a battle beforehand, making bloodshed unnecessary. Indeed, when they boarded the becalmed merchant ship, its sailors already had trunks of valuables standing ready on the upper deck, and were bringing more up from below. An older sailor directing this work assured the pirates that nothing would be held back; everything they had would be handed over immediately.

  “Fine,” said the fisherman’s son, “We expect nothing less. But where are your officers? Why aren’t they here to greet us?”

  The sailor looked dismayed, though the pirate leader wanted merely to congratulate the men who had bested him in sailing for the past half-year, and, if possible, to learn what sailing secrets they had used to do it.

  “Below . . . tending to business . . . .” mumbled the frightened sailor, eyeing the planks below his feet as if he could see his absent superiors through them.

  “Show me.” But when the poor old sailor began to tremble, the pirate captain ordered his own men to search the ship. They soon found the officers in the crews’ quarters, with the captain cowering in a storeroom behind some sacks of flour. A bit of stern questioning with a knife at his throat soon had him blubbering for mercy, and he led them to a little locked room off his own quarters. There the pirates, who already loathed this fat and cowardly captain, expected to find the profits he had hoarded from his crew and masters. What they found was more pathetic, and, as they learned, more valuable.

  On the dirty floor, inside a cage barely large enough to hold him, lay curled a sickly boy, as thin as a skeleton, with half-closed eyes, and dry skin rubbed raw in places. He breathed in gulps, and a fine tremor passed at intervals over his whole body, as if he were shivering, though the air in the room was hot and foul-smelling. There was no sign of food or drink. A basin with a scoop near the cage held what appeared to be seawater with shreds of seaweed floating in it like sops.

  The pirate asked the captain the meaning of this sight, whose pointless cruelty offended him. When the captain didn’t answer right away, the pirate seized his hand and pressed his knife against the fat flesh of his palm. A line of blood welled out from the blade, and the captain squealed at the sight of it. Then he babbled his story.

  The creature in the cage was no boy, but a water sprite they had captured. Sprites, as everyone knows, are masters of all aspects of waves and wind, and know the contrary currents that shift just under the surface, or the storm that is approaching on a cloudless day. The captain (he started to say “My officers,” but when the pirate gestured with his knife admitted the decision had been his) thought that if he could force the sprite to be his navigator, he might gain advantage enough to stay ahead of both pirates and his competitors. Out of its element, the sprite weakened, but dashes of water revived it when they needed its advice.

  The pirate jerked the point of his knife at the basin, unwilling even to say “Show me” to the merchant, whose throat he had to restrain himself from slitting on the spot.

  The captain scooped up a bit of the fetid water and threw it over the caged sprite’s legs. The sprite opened its eyes and drew in a wheezing breath. The sight revolted the fisherman’s son. He ordered the sprite brought out of the cage and carried up to the upper deck, where it was laid carefully. Barrels were filled with fresh seawater, and long strands of seaweed were gathered. The seaweed was laid over the sprite, covering it like a wet green blanket. Seawater was ladled on it, from head to foot. The pirate captain and his two officers did this personally, while their men transferred the merchant ship’s cargo to their own ship, making the merchant sailors do the heaviest and dirtiest work. They kept the fat captain and his officers sweating down in the bilge, and did not hestitate to use their fists to underscore their commands to such despicable seamen.

  The sprite recovered slowly at first, then very rapidly. The cloudiness went out of its eyes, which became clear and sharp again; its breathing slowed and deepened; and its raw injured skin smoothed over and became subtly luminous, shining with a faint milky sheen as if soft light moved in its veins. It lay quietly collecting its strength, watching the men who tended to it; then, without a prior movement, sprang to its feet with a swift fluid motion that was not in any way human, though something in human form performed it.

  The pirates stepped back, startled at the si
ght despite all the wonders they had seen on the high seas. Within its dripping green strands, the sprite stood slim and straight, with a calm dignity in its upright posture that branded as even more despicable its wretched treatment at the hands of the merchants. Inclining its head toward each of the pirates in turn, and addressing the captain last, it spoke these words in its high clear voice, like a boy’s except less reedy and more forceful:

  You will find on Saturday

  You on Friday next

  You will dig till Neverday

  And then you’ll find what’s best

  WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD the sprite sprang to the gunwale and dove down into the water, so swiftly that in the second it took the amazed pirates to reach the side, they missed all but a white shimmer far below.

  “Will you kill us now?” whimpered the merchant captain when the pirates had him and his officers brought before them. “I wouldn’t dull my sword with you,” said the fisherman’s son. He locked the captain and his two officers in the cage in which they had kept the sprite, and threw the key overboard. Then he ordered his men to smash the instruments of navigation and tear up all the charts. “Learn to sail by the stars,” he told the miserable seamen assembled before him, and handed the captain’s hat and papers of command to a slow-witted cabin boy who had formerly emptied the captain’s slops.

  All that Saturday, the first pirate addressed by the sprite dug, from dawn to dusk, on as many beaches as he could reach. He found no treasure. That night, drinking under the stars, his two companions laughed at him, their jokes aimed also at themselves, since if one of them had been tricked by the sprite, all had. Still, every Saturday, the first pirate searched stubbornly, wherever he had a hunch treasure might be lurking, unable to believe that the graceful creature they had saved would stoop to deceiving him. Week after week, he found nothing.

  Some months later, on a windswept coast where he was burying a particular friend, a fierce and foolish favourite who had died in a battle the day before, he struck a rock with his spade. The rock turned out to be no rock, but the metal ribbing on a wooden chest. When he opened it, the splendour of the wealth inside—jewels, coins of many countries, chains of gold and silver—sprang out to hurt his eyes with abundance, like a sun he was staring into. The tears he had shed for his friend started again. It was Saturday, he realized.

  Within a year, the second pirate had found a treasure hoard even larger than this first, on a Friday as the sprite had foretold. The two were now in a position to retire and live like lords for the rest of their days. Loyally, however, they insisted on remaining with their friend, either to search for his reward together or to divide amongst them the treasure already found, just as they had always carved into equal shares the booty they plundered. But the fisherman’s son would not accept their generosity, or deter them from enjoying their fortunes. He put them off at the next port, so they could arrange passage back to the village, where they planned to build great houses and live in the style of wealthy men. “I will join you as soon as I’m able, and we’ll show the villagers how they underestimated us. Especially the women.” The three friends laughed, and parted warmly, though in their heads rang the sprite’s word that they feared to speak: Neverday.

  LOOKING WITHOUT FINDING soon stops being a search and becomes a way of life, and that is what it became for the fisherman’s son. At first, recalling his friends’ heaped treasure chests, and the sprite’s promise that he would find “what’s best,” he dug his spade eagerly into each new beach he came to. Finding nothing did not disappoint him, it only whetted his appetite more; after all, his friends had searched far longer than they expected, and had found their reward only when they had almost given up hoping for it. Sprites were curious creatures; neverday might only be their way of saying a very long time, or a day when you least expect. He continued his pirate ways, chasing down ships and plundering what they carried, celebrating each capture with feasts and drinking songs, even adding, though more slowly, to his savings chest—but, more and more, he lived mainly for those moments on a new beach, some patch of sand in a corner of the world, the sun just setting or just coming up . . . when, leaning on his spade handle to rest, he felt a peace he had never known before creep over him like a warm vine and send down roots deep into his heart.

  He travelled to remote regions of the earth, wherever waves could carry him. Years passed. As a pirate who dug on distant beaches in the evening—or a digger on beaches who practiced piracy to reach them—he grew old. Too old, at least, to be chasing younger men for their coins, he thought. It was time to go home. But where was that? He was a vagabond of the waves. One day, he heard from a passing ship that his father, the fisherman, was very sick. His friends, the two rich pirates, had sent out word with every ship to try to reach him. At the next port, he bought passage on a fast schooner back to the village. What he had saved in his chest he divided among the men on his ship, according to the shares system they used. We’ll keep it safe for your return, they said.

  Spend it, he replied. I won’t be coming back.

  Arriving in the village a few days later, he found his mother and brother keeping a vigil around the body of his father, who had died the day before. The candlelight flickered over their few possessions, even more sparse and thread-bare than he remembered. The hut was in disrepair, its roof leaking in places and leaning to one side owing to a crumbling of the foundation stones. His father, he learned, had been sick for more than a year, during which time he could fish only occasionally, and not at all near the end. His mother and his brother, the net-mender, had picked up what work they could, and had not been too proud to accept the bunches of vegetables or occasional fish left on their doorstep. The three of them shared a dinner of soup and bread, trading stories of their years apart, happy to be reunited despite the sorrowful occasion.

  The next day, the two brothers prepared to bury their father. Having no coffin, they wrapped him in his sail cloth. This was the only time the net-mender, who had kept his amiable nature despite infirmity and a hard life, threw a sharp glance at his brother. Have you really got nothing from those years? he asked him. The pirate shrugged. Get and lose, he said, is all I know. It’s all there is . . . out there. He gestured at the sea beyond the docks.

  And that—the sea—was where the brothers decided to bury their father instead of in the village graveyard. He had spent his days on the water. Their mother made no protest, though she would not go with them, saying her farewell to her husband with a kiss on his cold face before the net-mender sewed shut his shroud.

  The pirate rowed them out from land, while his brother sat in the stern with their father’s body. When they were out of sight of the village, he directed his brother to row along the shore, keeping close enough to land so that he could sight a beach he was looking for. The pirate did not question or argue. The one who stays has rights never to be disputed by the one who roams: that much he knew without being taught. Finally, a long way up the coast, his brother pointed to a certain small cove. There, he said.

  When they had landed and brought their father ashore, the brothers stood awhile in silence beside the shrouded figure on the sand. Then the net-mender said, looking down at his father as if he could not easily lose the habit of their conversation, This was where he brought me once. It was after he first got sick, or when we realized how sick he was. He said that this was where he found himself, on the worst and best day of his life.

  The net-mender, whose legs could support him only briefly now, sat by their father’s body and watched while his brother dug the grave. His brother dug swiftly, with an almost savage energy, sweat falling from his brow, the muscles in his dark forearms jumping. When he struck something solid, it sent a shiver up his arms. What is it? called the net-mender.

  But the pirate, grinning fiercely down into the hole, already knew. He saw it before he had uncovered even a corner of it. And he saw what would happen next. Once they had emptied the chest, the largest one yet, of its riches, they would lay the
shrouded fisherman in it and return it to the ground. His father would receive a burial fit for him, and the three of them would live well for the rest of their days—

  Or? Before he could raise the spade again, a competing vision invaded his mind. The sprites were devious. What if, this time, the chest itself were the treasure—a casket of solid gold, say, encrusted with gems? A fortune around an empty space. In that case, he resolved, he would still put his father into it and return it to the ground, surprising his simple brother with the finest gesture imaginable. A gesture entirely in keeping with the pirate’s life, though no one might believe it who had not lived it with him. He stood beside the half-dug grave testing his resolve, and did not begin to dig again until he was sure he could do it. Now the net-mender was standing beside him, a puzzled look on his face. What is it, brother? he asked.

  Without answering, the pirate set to work again. A few more spadefuls of damp sand uncovered a rusty metal corner and the cracked planking it had once protected. The top of the chest, though split and gaping in the middle, was the largest intact piece of the box. Below it the sides and bottom caved in to rot and splinters. Neither brother said anything, nor did they look at each other. The net-mender got down on his knees and helped his brother clear away the broken wood, setting aside the unbroken lid, which they laid over their shrouded father in the manner of a shield, then filled in the grave with sand, leaving it unmarked, and rowed back home in silence to the village.

  ON A HILL across the bay from the fisherman’s hut stand the two fine houses built by the pirates whom the sprites made rich. Both are married, with many children, whose playful cries echo through their rooms and gardens. The two men, not denying themselves any luxury, have grown stout with age, but they give generously to their friends and to the villagers that live below them, too. The villagers being as proud as they are poor, the former pirates must find ways to cloak their generosity: replacing the village dock because, they say, its rotting timbers might scrape their own fine pleasure boats; buying far more fish from a seller than they can use; hiring local tradesmen to build unneeded additions to their houses; and so on. But the poorest and proudest villager will take nothing from them, no matter how they disguise it. This is their former captain, the fisherman’s second son. After his work day, he sometimes walks up the steep path to their homes, and sits with them on the terrace watching the sun set, eating their roasted meats and drinking their wine, telling the same stories and jokes they once told on the deck of the ship; all with undimmed gusto, as if the years and their divided fates were no more than bits of sea foam blown back from a wave;—but when he leaves, he leaves with nothing but the good memories they have shared. A proud man.