The Ogre of Oglefort (4 page)

There was nothing to be done then, and the Norns made the best of it.

“You are the Chosen Ones,” said the First Norn.

“You are the ogre-slayers,” quavered the Second.

“The rescuers,” said the Third.

“But—” began the Hag.

She had infuriated the ancient creatures.

“There is no BUT,” screeched the First Norn.

“No BUT whatsoever,” yelled the Second.

“Not anywhere is there a BUT,” cackled the Third.

The bed shook with their rage.

“The others have failed the test,” they pronounced. “On you falls the Glory of the Task. You are the ogre-slayers.”

The room went dark. There was the eerie creak again as the great bed was wheeled away. And the party from Number 26 was left alone.

I
think we need a nice cup of tea,” said the Hag when they returned from the meeting.

But even after three cups of tea and five slices of bread and butter in the kitchen of Number 26, they still felt terrible. One minute they had been looking forward to Mr. Barber's Holiday Camp—and the next they were branded as ogre-slayers and given this appalling task.

“It's because there's a princess involved,” said Ulf gloomily. “That's why the Norns appeared. Princesses always bring them out.”

The wizard was worrying about his mother.

“She won't like it. She won't like it at all,” he muttered.

“I don't know how to slay things,” said the Hag in a worried voice. “It's not what I do.”

Ivo put a hand on her arm.

“But think what an exciting adventure it'll be. And we won't only be slayers—we'll be rescuers. Rescuing the princess has to be good.”

“Not for you, it doesn't,” said the Hag sharply. She was still feeling very guilty because she had let Ivo become mixed up in something so dangerous. “You won't be a slayer and you won't be a rescuer; you're going back to the Home first thing on Monday.”

“No I'm not,” began Ivo. “I'm a familiar and—”

But at that moment there was a loud pecking noise at the window, and looking up they saw, caught in the rays of the street lamp, a large black bird perched on the sill. The Hag was just going to open the window when the bird flew
through
the glass panes, circled the room, dropping evil-smelling black feathers, and settled with its unpleasant-looking feet on the butter.

“A harpy,” said Ulf, looking at the creature's swiveling yellow eyes. Harpies are messengers from the Underworld and have to be taken seriously. “What can we do for you?”

The bird did not answer. Instead it opened its beak, let a piece of paper fall onto the table, and flew off again through the unopened window.

While the Hag scooped the butter into the trash can, Ulf read out the message.

In strange wavery letters it said:

 

ALDINGTON CRESCENT UNDERGROUND STATION—MIDNIGHT TONIGHT

 

Everyone looked at everyone else.

“That station's been shut forever, since the end of the war,” said Ulf. “It was badly bombed, and the whole line's been abandoned. We can't go there.”

“But we have to,” said the Hag. “It'll be the briefing, telling us what to do. You'll have to wait here for us, Ivo. I'll leave a night-light on and—”

“No!” Ivo's voice was very strong. “You said you wanted a familiar and you've got a familiar. Familiars serve for life, I told you. I'm coming.”

“But—”

“Let the boy come,” said Ulf. “He's too far into it now. On Monday he can go back.”

It was as the troll had said. The station entrance was sealed off by a great iron gate covered in rust. It looked as though it had been there forever.

“Well that's that,” said the Hag. “We'd best be getting back while the buses are still running.”

But Ivo had gone up to the gate. He put a hand on the lock—just touching it—and now slowly, creakily, the gate began to open. Only a crack at first . . . then all the way.

“I don't like this,” said the wizard. “I don't like it at all.”

Nobody liked it, but keeping close together, they made their way down a flight of steps into a freezing and derelict ticket hall. The machines were wreathed in cobwebs; a torn poster said
DIG FOR VICTORY
, which was what people had been told to do in the war.

“This used to be the deepest underground station in London,” said Ulf.

They huddled together, wondering what to do next. Then a faint blue light came on above a sign which said
TO THE TRAINS
.

But of course there weren't any trains. There hadn't been any trains for years. The notice led to what seemed to be a hole in the wall but was actually the top of a curving concrete staircase.

“They want us to go down there,” said Ivo.

“But who are they?” There was no one to be seen.

They began to walk down the stone stairs and all the time it got colder and colder.

“I didn't know there were so many stairs in the world,” said the Hag.

They reached the bottom at last and found themselves on a platform with a row of broken-down vending machines and some battered wooden benches. There was a smell of decay and oldness.

“Now what?” wondered the troll. “We can't go any lower.”

And then, incredibly in this station which had been closed for years and years, they heard the sound of a train!

The sound came closer. The train appeared in the mouth of the tunnel. It slowed down but it did not stop. In the dim light inside the carriages sat rows of dark-clad specters, staring at the ground.

“A ghost train!” said the wizard. “Who would have thought it?”

Ivo felt a chill run through him; he'd never seen ghosts before.

The train moved off. The ogre-slayers waited in eerie silence.

After a few minutes the ghost train reappeared; the same dark specters sat staring at the ground. They were on a circle line, doomed to go around and around forever.

Once again the ghost train vanished into the tunnel; once again the slayers waited. Then for the third time they heard the noise of a train, but this one did not only slow down, it stopped, and a disembodied voice said, “Enter.”

It took a lot of courage to get into the train. The seats were ripped and covered in harpy feathers; rats scuttled about on the floor.

The doors shut. The train began to move.

They went through a number of stations. On one, the sign said
RIVER STYX
. Another said
MEDUSA'S LAIR
. It looked as though the Underworld had taken over the underground.

Then the train slowed down, stopped. The doors slid back and the poor slayers, frightened and bewildered, got out.

The wall behind the station had collapsed; it was probably near here that the bomb had fallen, because they were in a kind of hollow cave.

The smell was vile; harpies roosted on the ledges; water dripped from the roof.

But on a platform in the center of the cave was something familiar: the great bed of the Norns—and all three of the Old Ones were in it, leaning against the pillows.

For a moment the Norns stared with their bleary eyes at the group of people coming toward them. Then they shook their heads. They had forgotten how bad it was.

There was a pause, and because it looked as though the Norns might drop off to sleep, the troll said, “You have orders for us?”

The Norns sat up. “Orders,” they agreed.

“And gifts.”

They clapped their hands and one of their attendants came forward carrying a leather pouch full of black beans. Beans are often magical, and these were very magical indeed, because they enabled the person who had eaten one to understand the speech of anyone they were talking to, whether it was a human or an animal.

The slayers thanked them and the Hag put the pouch carefully in her handbag.

The second gift was a ketchup bottle filled with a yellowish liquid.

“Foot water,” said the First Norn.

“Water in which feet have been washed,” said the Second Norn.

“Feet of heroes,” said the Third Norn.

The wizard took it and asked shyly what the foot water was for.

“Wounds,” said the First Norn.

“Heals wounds,” agreed the Second.

“Usually,” said the Third.

But gifts from people who deal in magic nearly always come in threes, and now the Norns clapped their hands and one of the attendants came forward carrying a rusty sword.

The Norns had ordered it when they realized that not one of the slayers had a proper weapon.

“For plunging,” said the First Norn.

“Or thrusting,” said the Second.

“Or stabbing,” said the Third.

“Into neck of ogre,” said the First Norn.

“Or stomach,” said the Second.

“Or chest,” said the Third.

The attendant continued to hold out the sword, but no one moved. The troll was strong and brave, but he worked with wood, not rusty metal. The wizard thought that the sword looked heavy, and carrying it would make it difficult for him to think. Then Ivo stepped forward and held out his arms, and the attendant laid the sword across them.

The Norns were very tired now. Their heads kept falling forward on their skinny necks and they shook themselves awake. Then they beckoned once again, and another of their attendants came with a small packet.

“Open later,” whispered the First Norn.

“At home,” croaked the Second.

And a few moments later, the cave resounded with their snores.

The packet, when it was opened in the kitchen at Whipple Road, did not contain a phoenix or a dragon's egg. It was a pleasantly ordinary parcel. Inside was a large map of the island of Ostland surrounded by ocean. A rocky bay on the northern tip of the island was marked with a black arrow.

There was also a page of instructions for the journey—and four envelopes. Each envelope had on it the name of the person who was to travel. One said
HILDA GARBUTTLE
, which was the official name of the Hag. One said
ULF OAKROOT
; and one was made out to
BRIAN BRAINSWELLER
. Inside each of the envelopes was a train ticket to Rylance on Sea and a boat ticket from there to Osterhaven, the most northern port on the island.

“There's an extra envelope,” said the Hag.

The troll picked it up. Quite clearly it was labeled
IVO BELL
.

“Oh but he mustn't come,” began the Hag. “He absolutely mustn't be allowed to run into danger. I'll rub out his name—we can get the money back perhaps?”

She found an eraser—but as soon as she started to remove Ivo's name, the letters came back again, as clear as day.

“Better not meddle with the arrangements, Hilda,” said the troll. “Who knows, they must have seen something in the boy.”

Ivo had the sense then to go quickly up to the attic and put himself to bed. But he was far too happy to go to sleep. Tomorrow, the day when he would have sat down to claggy meat and lumpy custard, he would be setting off on an amazing adventure.

Ostland. . . . He had heard of it, of course, an island as big as England and Scotland and Wales all put together, afloat on a remote and mysterious ocean. Ivo had longed to see it, poring over maps in the encyclopedia, but he had never dreamed that he would make the journey. And he was going to rescue a young girl from dreadful danger! He could see her now, kneeling in terror before the great beast that threatened her. It was a pity she was a princess—Ivo did not approve of people being royal—but it was not her fault; one cannot choose one's parents.

And all this because a toad called Gladys had said no.

O
stland is an unexpected place. The south of the island is peaceful. It has a string of pretty towns along the coast and the biggest of these, which is called Waterfield, is the capital. In Waterfield you can find everything you can find in London or Dublin—or even in New York. There are the Houses of Parliament and the law courts and theaters and a zoo—and because the town lies by the sea there is a harbor for big boats and a marina for smaller ones.

If one goes farther north toward the center of the island one comes to rich farmland. Here there are orchards and studs for breeding racehorses and beech woods carpeted with bluebells.

But the very north of the country is different. Completely different. There was an earthquake in Ostland many hundreds of thousands of years ago, and it made a deep cleft across the northern tip of the island which cut it off from the rest of the island. On the far side of the cleft the land is rocky and wild and almost empty. At least it is empty of ordinary people and ordinary houses. But in the folds of the dark hills are caves and castles and tunnels, and the people who live there would not be found in any telephone book. This part of the island is only connected to the rest of the island by a narrow bridge across a ravine which is hundreds of feet deep. But even if the bridge were wider and the ravine less deep, the people from the friendly civilized part of Ostland would not have tried to cross it. One of the first things the children of Ostland heard from their nursemaids and their parents was what would happen to a child foolish enough to try and cross the bridge to the north. Sometimes their legs would be torn off and thrown into the ravine, or their eyes would be pecked out. And if they got across there would be all sorts of delightful people waiting for them, ready to turn them into bluebottles or nail them to trees or pull them down into fiery pits.

Although the citizens of Ostland spoke English, they refused to have a monarchy. They didn't want to have a king and queen ruling over them and bossing them about.

All the same, there was a palace in Waterfield—a big one which was lived in by a royal family called the Montefinos. They had come to the island many years ago, and nobody minded because a palace is a colorful thing to have and it was good for tourists to have something to photograph. There were also a few castles scattered around the south where dukes and princelings spent their time hunting or gardening or playing whist.

Though the Montefinos did not actually rule over the country, they were very grand. They kept their own sentries and bodyguards and had over a hundred servants. They drove about in carriages with their crest on the door, and they waved graciously to the people with their white-gloved hands. They opened bazaars and had their portraits painted and gave balls and rode Thoroughbred horses in the park with their grooms cantering behind them.

The Montefinos had three daughters. Princess Sidony was the eldest, then came Princess Angeline—and a long way behind them came the youngest, Princess Mirella.

Sidony and Angeline were pretty, obedient girls who liked doing all the things that royal people do, but Mirella did not. She was a misfit from the start. Mirella did not look like a princess. Her eyes were black and her hair was straight and her ears stuck out. Mirella would not ride in a closed carriage and wave to the people; she said driving made her sick. She would not have her portrait painted or go and play with children who were “suitable.”

What Mirella was passionate about was animals. Not just cats and dogs and horses but creatures most people hardly know are there. She had made a sanctuary for wood lice and ground beetles and earwigs in a courtyard garden. She kept a plaster of Paris ant nest under her bed, and when the maids tried to remove it she threw a tantrum which echoed through the palace. Her dog was not a beautiful saluki like the dog that was photographed with Princess Sidony, or a perfectly groomed Afghan like the dog owned by Angeline—it was a stray she had made her bodyguards pick up on the way to the dentist: a rough-coated mongrel with a funny eye. She called it Squinter and her mother shuddered whenever she caught sight of it.

And she had a passion for birds. While she was still in her pram she had looked for hours at the starlings and sparrows and chaffinches that came close. By the time she was seven there was hardly a bird she did not recognize, and when her nursemaid took her down to the harbor, the little girl couldn't take her eyes off the gulls and terns and gannets wheeling over the water.

“They're so
white
,” she said to the nurse.

One of the things that royal families like very much is having weddings, and on the day she was eighteen, Sidony got engaged to Prince Tomas, who lived in a slightly smaller palace along the coast.

He was a very uninteresting young man who lived for his stamp collection, but both families were pleased, and a great wedding was planned to take place in Waterfield Cathedral.

“You're going to be one of the bridesmaids, dear,” her mother told Mirella.

“Do I have to be?” asked Mirella, which upset her mother because surely all normal little girls want nothing more than to go down the aisle in a pretty dress.

The wedding was incredibly grand. The church was decorated with a thousand pink roses and Sidony wore a cream gown with a nine-foot train. Mirella's dress was embroidered all over with tiny pink rosebuds.

“You're going to look so sweet, my darling,” said her mother.

“No, I'm not,” said Mirella. “I'm going to look like an escaped measles rash.”

But everything went off pretty well except the usual things—an usher being sick on the best man's shoe, a mouse in the trifle . . .

After that Mirella had two years of peace, during which she set up a freshwater aquarium with nesting sticklebacks and tamed a jackdaw which had fallen down the chimney—and then Angeline got engaged to the only other prince in Ostland: a weedy young man who sucked peppermints all day long because he worried about his breath, and Mirella had to be a bridesmaid once again.

This time the wedding was even grander. The bride carried a huge bouquet of hyacinths, which matched her eyes, and the bridesmaids wore silver dresses covered in glittering sequins.

“Like fish,” said Mirella.

But she was fond of fish and behaved well.

Once again there were a couple of years of peace—and then Mirella's parents started to worry. Because the supply of princes in Ostland had now run out, so where were they to find a husband for their youngest daughter?

“Of course she's only a child,” said her mother. “She can't marry for years, but we've got to make sure there's someone ready for her when the time comes.”

So Mirella's parents went prince hunting in Europe. After many disappointments they found the Crown Prince of Amora, a small country between Italy and France, and the prince was invited to Waterfield to come and look Mirella over.

The visit was not a success. Prince Umberto arrived a day before he was expected, and instead of finding Mirella in her best dress with her hair curled, he found her in overalls cleaning out her stickleback tank. Her hair was screwed up in two rubber bands, and there was waterweed all down her front.

Prince Umberto did not take to Mirella at all and she most certainly did not take to him. He was a conceited show-off with a silly blond beard and a sneery voice.

“You'll have time to get used to him,” said Mirella's mother.

But Mirella said she wouldn't get used to him in ten years or in twenty or a hundred. “You can hang and draw and quarter me before I'll join my life to that nitwit,” she said.

So the prince went away but that was not the end of the matter. Mirella's father was very rich—he owned oil wells and diamond mines—and Prince Umberto's father was poor, and he told Umberto that he had to promise to marry Mirella as soon as she was old enough.

“I'll do it,” said Umberto, “but she's got to be cleaned up and turned into a proper princess. I'm not living with fish and mongrel dogs and jackdaws.”

Mirella's parents saw his point, and they began to train Mirella. They confiscated the ant nest. They took away the aquarium. They shooed out the jackdaw. And they said that the little dog had to go before the prince's next visit.

“We'll get you a beautiful pedigree dog like your sisters',” they told her.

“I don't want a pedigree dog, I just want Squinter,” said Mirella. “Please let me keep him. Please.”

But it was no use. Mirella fought and argued and threw tantrums but one day she came back from a walk and found that the little dog was gone.

“We're doing this for you,” said her parents. “So you can become a proper princess.”

It was then that Mirella realized just how helpless children really are.

When she was very unhappy, Mirella used to climb out of a window on the top floor of the palace and crawl along the battlements to a place where she could watch the clouds and the wheeling birds, and after a while she usually felt better.

The day after the little dog had gone, Mirella clambered onto the roof and lay there.

She had always found it easy to follow the birds with her eyes and feel as though she was one of them, but today, because she was so wretched, the feeling was so strong it overwhelmed her.

A seagull mewed and whirred over the chimneys, and the sun caught its dazzling plumage. A pair of terns in from the sea swooped so low that she could see the pupils of their eyes—and high among the clouds a kestrel was hovering.

And as she lay there, Mirella felt as though she, too, was winged and completely free—a white bird in a pale blue firmament, not thinking or worrying or afraid, just feeling the wind currents beneath her wings and flying on and away . . . on and on . . .

It was in so many of the stories, the magic birds who flew high above the earth, seeing the silly worries of people below dwindle away. The wild geese who carried the boy Nils on their backs across the whole of Sweden . . . the Great Roc who bore Sinbad away to the Valley of Diamonds . . . the swallow who took Thumbelina to Africa.

Except that if she were a bird she wouldn't carry anyone in her claws. She would fly away higher and higher, as far as she could go—but alone. Always alone and free.

After an hour her old nurse became worried and the palace was searched and a page boy fetched her off the roof.

As soon as she saw the princess, the nurse began to scold.

“You know you're not supposed to go up there. You'll fall to your death gawping at those dratted birds. The way you carry on you'll become a bird yourself one of these days.”

Mirella never really listened when her nurse started to scold, but now she said, “How could I? No one can become a bird.”

“Oh, can't they just,” said the old woman. “There's sorcerers and monsters enough in the north to turn people into worse than birds.”

“What sorcerers?” asked Mirella. “What monsters?”

But the nurse wouldn't say any more—she had been forbidden to frighten Mirella with stories of what went on in the far north of the island.

“What sorcerers? What monsters?” repeated Mirella. “You're making it all up.”

“I am not,” said the nurse angrily.

That was all she would say—but it was enough. All the next day and the day after, Mirella was very quiet and absentminded.

And on the third day, the servants found her bed empty—and not a trace of her in the length and breadth of the palace.