The Ogre of Oglefort (3 page)

I
t was Ulf who persuaded the Hag to let Ivo come. As far as he could see it was only necessary to get her through the meeting; after the Summer Task had been given out she wouldn't worry so much about whether she had a familiar or not. So on the following day he tucked his long hair under a cap and the Hag wound a muffler around the fiercest of her whiskers, and they went to see the principal of the Riverdene Home for Children.

“We've just discovered that you have a boy here whose father we knew,” they told her.

And they asked if they could have Ivo to stay for a few days.

In those days it wasn't nearly so difficult to get a child to come for a visit, and after they had filled out a few forms and produced a letter from Dr. Brainsweller to say how respectable they were, Ivo appeared with a small suitcase.

“Only he must be back by Monday,” said the principal.

Ivo was still wearing the dreary uniform of the Riverdene Home: gray shorts, gray sweater, gray socks—but his eyes were shining, and as they took him back to Whipple Road, it was all he could do to stop himself jumping for joy.

And it was clear from the start that he meant to take his duties as a familiar very seriously.

“Oughtn't I to have . . . you know, tests? Inductions, I think they're called?” he asked the Hag when she had shown him the attic where he was to sleep. “Like . . . you know . . . having a live louse applied to my eyeballs. Or . . . swallowing a worm to show that I'm not squeamish. It could be a magic worm, the kind that tells you what to do from inside your stomach. I read about one in the encyclopedia.”

But the Hag said she did not keep lice in her house, and the only worms went to Gladys, who had behaved badly but still needed to eat. She set him to dry the dishes, which he did very well.

“Though I do wonder,” he said. “I mean, couldn't you just say a spell and the dishes would get dry by themselves?”

The Hag shook her head.

“You see, Ivo, there's a code about magic,” she explained. “It mustn't be used for ordinary things like boiling an egg—things one can do quite well without it. People who use it for everyday jobs are looked down on, and rightly.”

“You mean it's a sort of force which mustn't be wasted?” asked Ivo, and the Hag nodded, because that was exactly what she meant.

“And of course there are more and more of us whose powers are getting weaker,” she went on. “I used to be able to give people smallpox when I was young, and now I'd be hard put to even manage chicken pox. It's modern life. Switching on an electric light instead of waving a wand, airplanes instead of levitation, and all that scoffing and sneering. Our magic has been worn down by it.”

There were only two days now to the meeting, but Ivo fitted in so well that it was quite difficult to remember that he was an ordinary boy and not an Unusual Creature. Gertie had really taken to him. She had always wanted a little brother, and she had made him a black cloak out of an old curtain, and they found a pointed cap for him in an old trunk. A proper grandson with Hag blood in him couldn't have looked better, they all agreed.

The Great Day had come and the party from Number 26 were in the kitchen, ready to leave for the meeting. The troll did not dress up but he had polished the staff of rowanwood, which he had brought from his homeland. The Hag's other lodger had gone to spend the night with a friend and wouldn't be back till after the weekend, but Dr. Brainsweller was there. His mother had brought him earlier and asked the Hag if she would take him to the meeting because she had to go north to wail at a funeral, and she didn't think he would manage to get there on his own.

Then the door opened and the Hag entered. She wore a long Dribble-colored dress; all the colors of water shimmered and blended in the velvet, and she had polished her tooth.

And behind her came Ivo, in his black outfit, walking in her shadow as familiars should, but looking so attentive, so eager and intelligent, that everyone let out a sigh of relief. There was no possible danger of him being noticed and cast out as an ordinary boy, and they set off with a glad heart for the Hotel Metropole.

The Metropole was a luxury hotel in the center of town, the kind with deep carpets and gilt-edged mirrors and interesting things for sale in the foyer. As they made their way upstairs, the Hag looked at Ivo a little anxiously because some of the people they mingled with really were rather strange: a fortune-teller pulling along a large white gorilla on a lead; a family of fuaths, those tall faeries with green hair and a single eye; a Strong Man from a circus dressed in glittering silver who had been dipped in a magic river when he was a baby so that no knife or bullet could pierce him.

But there was no need to worry about Ivo, the Hag soon realized. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. The big conference room on the first floor was filling up fast, and the party from Number 26 slipped quietly into a row near the back. Everyone was whispering and talking among themselves, hoping that the Summer Task would be something far out in the country.

“I do so long for fresh air,” said an old brownie in the row in front of them.

There was a stage at the back of the room, and now the curtains swished apart and the organizer came on with a bundle of papers. Her name was Nellie Arbuthnot and she was a comfortable, homely sort of witch, plump, with a feathery hat. Her familiar was a parrot in a cage, and she had slipped a green baize cover over it so that it wouldn't interrupt.

Nellie started by welcoming everybody and telling them that the refreshments in the interval would be served in the Blue Room across the corridor.

“The charge this year will be half a crown, but you will get value for your money, I promise you.”

Ivo turned his head as the Hag gave a small squeak of annoyance. “I've forgotten my purse,” she whispered. “I must have left it on the kitchen table.”

No one else from Whipple Road had any money. They would have to do without refreshments when the time came.

On the stage, Nellie shuffled her papers and cleared her throat. At the same time an assistant witch pulled down a screen and set up the Magic Lantern.

“You will want to know about the Summer Task,” Nellie said, “and I'm happy to tell you that this year we have been asked to go to Mr. Barber's Holiday Camp in the New Forest and rid the camp—and in particular the Fun Fair which is attached to the camp—of a plague of mice.”

Murmurs of pleasure spread through the audience. A Fun Fair sounded good, and the New Forest was very beautiful. A picture of the camp now came on the screen. It looked really nice, with colored chalets and well-kept flower beds. A picture of the fair came next—swings and merry-go-rounds and a giant slide under a sunny sky—and then came one of the Barber family: Mr. and Mrs. Barber, and Penelope and Timothy Barber, nicely dressed children smiling into the camera.

“You may ask why the Barbers don't just bring in a lot of cats, and the answer is that the family is allergic to cats. Cat fur brings them out in terrible bumps. So Mr. Barber has invited us to spend a week, as guests in his camp, and concentrate in particular on the Fun Fair, where the mice are breeding at a terrifying rate. He leaves it to us how we get rid of the mice—shape-changing . . . luring . . . the evil eye. . . . Leading them on a hill like in the Pied Piper of Hamelin is of course a possibility.”

She waited for a moment while the tired creatures who had worked all summer in the city talked delightedly among themselves. This was going to be the best Summer Task ever!

“Now we come to the arrangements for the journey,” began Mrs. Arbuthnot. “We will travel from—”

But at that moment something extraordinary happened. The curtains swished together. The lights flickered and went out. An icy draught crept through the room—there was a single roar of thunder, followed by complete silence.

And then . . . from behind the curtains . . . came a slow and eerie noise.

Creak . . . creak . . . creak.

The lights came on again. The curtains parted, but there was no sign of Nellie Arbuthnot or her parrot. Instead, on the stage was a most extraordinary contraption. A gigantic circular bed on wheels. A movable hospital bed? A deathbed? Nobody knew . . .

And on the bed crouched three women.

But what women! They were older than time with cracked and hideous faces, tangles of long white hair, and ghastly stares.

Panic spread through the audience. The Hag took Ivo's hand; she was clammy with fear.

“Norns!” The terrified whisper could be heard all over the room. “It's the Norns!

“It's the Old Ones!”

Norns are the eldest beings in the world. They were there at the beginning of time and they never quite die. Anyone who sees them feels an unstoppable dread because the Norns are the Fates; they spin the threads of the future and foretell what is to come.

The frightful things crouched on the bed, peering at the rows of people watching them. At the same time, on the screen behind them, the cheerful faces of the Barber family vanished, and instead there appeared a landscape of towering black cliffs, lashed by a stormy sea. White spray dashed against the rocks; they could hear the howling of the wind.

The picture moved inland through a cleft in the cliffs and stopped in front of an enormous castle with turrets and towers and places for pouring boiling oil. The windows were barred with iron; blackbirds circled the battlements.

Again the picture changed. They were inside the castle now, in a huge banquet hall, its walls hung with death-dealing instruments and the antlers of slaughtered animals. And then came gasps and cries of “Oooh” from the audience—because what they were seeing was a head.

But what a head! Swollen and loathsome, with hate-filled eyes, a pockmarked nose . . . a mouth opened to show bloodstained teeth.

The Norns pointed to the picture with their deformed fingers.

“It is the Great Ogre,” intoned the First Norn.

“The flesh-eating Ogre of the North,” pronounced the Second Norn.

“The dreaded Ogre of Oglefort,” uttered the Third Norn.

For a moment the camera stayed on the fearful head. Then it pulled back to show the figure who knelt at the monster's feet: a young girl with long hair streaming down her back, her hands clasped beseechingly. But just as the ogre's hands came down toward the trembling girl, the screen went dark.

“It is the Princess Mirella,” said the First Norn in her singsong voice.

“She must be rescued,” said the Second Norn.

“Saved,” said the Third.

“And the ogre must be slain,” said the First Norn.

“Killed,” said the Second Norn.

“Pulverized. Absolutely,” said the Third.

Then all three of them pointed to the audience and with one voice they cried:

“THIS IS THE TASK!”

A rustle of despair went through the Unusual Creatures.

“What about Mr. Barber's Holiday Camp?” came a voice from the back.

The great bed shook as the fearful females rose to their knees.

“THE TASK IS GIVEN,” screeched all three Norns again. “And any waverers will feel the pull of Hades.”

They fell back on their pillows. Rattling noises came from their throats. The nurses who had brought them in wheeled the bed to one side of the stage, and Nellie Arbuthnot came back, looking shaken. The parrot in its cage had fainted.

“If you make your way to the refreshment room, we will prepare the instructions for the . . . er . . . the ogre-slaying,” she said nervously. “You have half an hour.”

The curtains were pulled together and everyone in the audience trooped out of the room—everyone except the people from Number 26, who had no money.

“This is terrible,” whispered the Hag to the troll. “I'd never have brought the boy if I'd known what was going to happen.”

But Ivo did not look frightened. He looked excited.

Behind the curtains, the nurses came with large syringes to inject the Norns and pills to push down their throats.

The minutes passed.

Then a bell rang, the signal that the meeting was going to start again. There was the noise of footsteps of all kinds coming from the refreshment room, but none of them seemed to be coming back into the hall. One could hear the sounds of slithering and limping and shuffling which gradually grew fainter—and then silence. Every one of the Unusual Creatures had made their way down the stairs and out into the street, heading for home.

The curtains parted. The Norns were a little stronger after their injection; they knelt up in the great bed and raked the room with their baleful eyes.

What they saw was a Hag and her familiar, a troll, a small wizard—and nobody else.

The Norns beckoned to a nurse and stuck out their arms, and she gave each of them another injection from her huge syringe—but it made no difference. When the Old Ones peered into the room once more, they still saw only the same four people.