The Ogre of Oglefort

CHAPTER 17 The Magic Beans

The children and Charlie had followed the stream which led from the lake. They had taken off their shoes and socks and were treading carefully over the bright sharp pebbles. Charlie was not content with paddling. He plunged into the water, swam across to the other bank and back again, shook himself all over them, and plunged again. He waited with his head on one side while they threw sticks for him, and more sticks and more sticks still, and after that he began a ferocious tug-of-war with a tree root, growling like a werewolf, but whatever he was doing he came back to them, sneezing with pleasure and sharing his happiness. He was a great believer in sharing.

“I thought I’d never love a dog after Squinter, but I was wrong,” said Mirella.

“He makes everything seems as though it’s just been invented, doesn’t he?” said Ivo. “I mean, look at him with that stick — you’d think there’d never been a stick like it in the whole world.”

The little dog still slept on Ivo’s bed, but as soon as he woke in the morning he trotted off to see Mirella, who now had a bedroom along the corridor, and when the children were apart he simply went backward and forward between them.

“He’d never let us quarrel,” said Mirella.

But the children had no wish to quarrel. They agreed exactly about what they wanted to do: make the castle gardens grow, stock the larder, tend the land. And perhaps — though they did not put this into words — turn the place into somewhere where people would not want to be changed but would be content to be themselves.

“If only we had more help,” said Ivo as they made their way back to the castle. “The kitchen garden needs digging all over and the rose garden needs mulching and Ulf says we ought to be pruning the trees in the orchard. And the Hag gets so tired.”

“Yes, I know. Maybe the animals could help. People used to use animals on farms.”

“But not hippos or gnus or aye-ayes.”

“No… but why not? The gnu could pull a cart; it takes ages to wheelbarrow the stuff to the compost. And the hippo could help us to find out what’s going on in the lake. Catching fish would be a big help.”

“We could ask the ogre a bit more about who the animals were — the gnu and the rest. He might remember.”

But the ogre said he couldn’t remember anything like that, and anyway he was far too busy with the arrangements for the funeral.

“I’ve changed my will again,” he told them. “I’m going to leave the castle to the Aunt-with-the-Ears. I’ve thought about it and I think she’ll do better than the Aunt-with-the-Eyes. She dances, you know. She goes around and around when you play a waltz and her teeth flash, and I think it will be jolly when I’m under the mound to have a dancing aunt about the place, don’t you agree? And what about the hearse, how is that getting on?”

He had also changed pajamas again. Not the ones he was wearing, which were turning a rather messy gray color, but the ones he was going to be buried in.

“I think they should be my silk ones. I shan’t be cold if I’m beside Germania. Oh, and there’s the music for the funeral. I think we want a brass band with lots of trombones — I’ve always been fond of trombones.”

So it was no good trying to get help from the ogre. But in the night Ivo woke and remembered something which made him sit bolt upright and disturb Charlie, who was not at all pleased.

The Norns had given them three presents before they set off on their quest. The sword had been useless, and the foot water hadn’t been much good either. So probably the magic beans which would make whoever ate them understand the language of the animals would turn out to be useless, too.

But not necessarily, and as soon as it got light he ran along to Mirella’s room.

“It’s worth a try,” she said. “Do you want to tell the others?”

“I don’t think so. The Hag will only worry — she’ll think we shouldn’t swallow anything that hasn’t been tried. I know where the beans are — in the suitcase she keeps under her bed.”

“Good. Let’s go for it then,” said Mirella.

The beans in the leather pouch looked small and black and… well, like beans.

“I suppose we’ll have to eat one each and at the same time, if we’re both to understand what the animals are saying,” said Ivo.

So they took two beans and put the pouch back in the suitcase, and then they shut Charlie in the kitchen and made their way out of the castle toward the walled garden.

They had decided to talk to the gnu first — and they found him in his usual place, dozing in the greenhouse.

“Well, here goes,” said Ivo. He held the enamel mug under the tap in the wall and swallowed his bean and Mirella swallowed hers.

Then they waited.

“Nothing’s happening,” said Mirella. And then, “No wait. I feel sort of… fizzy. No, more light-headed.”

“And my ears are buzzing a bit,” said Ivo.

They walked over to where the gnu was lying. Then together they said, “Good morning.”

The gnu opened his yellow eyes and stared at them. He began to squeal and grunt — and then quite suddenly the grunts turned into “And good morning to you.”

It was an amazing moment. Each word was perfectly clear to them. They could even make out the Scottish accent in which he spoke.

“Could we ask your name?” said Mirella, sounding every inch a princess.

“Certainly,” said the antelope. “I’m Hamish Mac-Laren. And who might you be?”

“I’m Mirella and this is Ivo. You’ll have seen us about.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the gnu. “But it is strange that I can understand you suddenly — and you can understand me. Why is this?”

“We’ve eaten some magic beans,” explained Ivo.

And because the gnu sounded so reliable and sensible, they told him of all their adventures, the illness of the ogre, and what they hoped to do in the gardens and grounds.

And in return, the gnu, in his deep, steady Scottish voice, told them his story.

He had been brought up in the Highlands, the youngest of four brothers. His parents died when he was small and he went to live with his grandfather in his stately home. The older brothers fitted in well — they liked doing all the things that Scottish aristocrats did — hunting and shooting and fishing.

“But I couldn’t take to it,” said Hamish. “The whole place smelled of blood: dead pheasants hanging in the larder, carcasses brought in on litters, dead fish with glazed eyes…

“I wanted to be an astronomer. I love stars, don’t you?” said the gnu, looking up at the sky. “But I wasn’t clever enough. So I just had to help my grandfather, which meant bullying the tenants and killing things all day long.

“The house was full of the stuffed heads of animals that my grandfather had shot. There was a bison and a buffalo and a whole lot of stags; they had such nice glass eyes. My favorite was the gnu; he was in my bedroom and at night when I couldn’t sleep I talked to him. Then one day a traveler from Ostland came to see us and he told us about an ogre who turned people into animals. My grandfather didn’t believe it, but I thought anything would be better than living there and having to shoot animals that I liked a hundred times better than I liked my relatives. So I sold my father’s gold watch and took a boat to Ostland and found my way here. I knew exactly what animal I wanted to be and… well here I am, and I have no regrets.”

When Hamish stopped speaking, everything in the garden seemed very quiet.

They could hear a bird singing in the orchard but it didn’t seem to be saying anything.

Then they plunged into what they wanted to ask him.

“You see, we so much want to make this garden really grow. And we were wondering if — whether you might help us. The Hag is very old and… well there aren’t many of us. Would you consider maybe pulling a cart… or grazing bits of lawn that we can’t get around to cutting or… anything like that?”

The gnu was silent and for a moment the children were worried in case they had offended him. After all a Scottish laird might not want to work as a gardener.

But the gnu was nodding his great head. “I’d be delighted to help,” he said. “To be honest, the time does go rather slowly when one is just sleeping or eating — and I’m quite strong. Pulling a cart would be nothing… or mulching a vegetable bed. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“What a nice person,” said Mirella when they left the gnu. “He couldn’t have been more helpful.”

They had no idea how long the effect of the beans would last, and as the aye-aye was nowhere to be seen they hurried down to the lake to talk to the hippo.

They walked around the edge, peering into the water, but it was some time before the creature’s piggy eyes appeared above the surface.

“Please, could you come a bit closer so that we can talk to you?” called Ivo.

The hippo stopped in the middle of a yawn and looked up, surprised.

“Would you tell us your name? I’m Mirella and this is Ivo.”

There was another long pause and the children were worried that the effect of the beans had worn off. Then in a deep voice with a Northern accent, the hippo said, “Bessie. I’m Bessie.”

She said it in a resigned sort of way, as though being Bessie wasn’t a particularly good thing to be, but she didn’t sound unfriendly, just tired.

“How long have you lived here in the lake?” asked Ivo.

Bessie lifted her great head and opened her mouth. This seemed to be her way of thinking.

“A long time,” she said at last.

“Do you like it here?”

“Yes, I like it.” Bessie spoke slowly, but they thought this was nothing to do with being a hippo. It was more that she had been a rather slow and dozy person.

Getting her to tell her story took much longer than learning about the gnu but after a while the children pieced together her life before she came to Oglefort.

Bessie had lived in a small house in a drab industrial town. Her husband had left her with four children who seemed to be able to do nothing for themselves. Bessie cooked and shopped and mopped up after them; then when the children were grown up, they brought their own babies back to the dark little house, and it all started again: the screams, the mess, the diapers.

“The only time I had any peace was in the bath,” said Bessie now. “I would lock myself in the bathroom and run the water up to my neck. Even then they hammered on the door but while I was in there I was happy.”

Then one day she took some of her grandchildren to the zoo. The children whined and grumbled and Bessie’s legs swelled and her feet ached, and all the animals seemed to be miles away behind trees.

But then they came to an enclosure with a pool, and there, walking slowly out of the water, was a pygmy hippopotamus.

“I just fell in love,” said Bessie now. “It was so clean and so smooth and it didn’t mind being fat — it just wallowed and swam and wallowed again.”

Her grandchildren had tugged and whined for ice cream, but Bessie didn’t move. She had found the perfect way of living.

Finding the ogre and getting him to change her had taken a long time. She consulted every book she could find on magic and the lore of changing… but at last she had heard about the Ogre of Oglefort.

“So here I am,” said the hippo. “And I can’t imagine how I stuck being human for so long.”

The children realized that she had come to the castle because she was tired and would not want to do much work toward restoring the grounds. But they knew she would be able to help them with one question.

“You see, we need to find things we can eat, and of course fishing is an obvious thing to do. But we don’t want to eat — you know — changed people. A bank manager fried in batter probably wouldn’t taste very nice, and anyway there are things I suppose one just doesn’t do,” said Mirella.

Bessie saw this entirely but she said there wasn’t much need to worry. “There’s a pair of carp you want to steer clear of. They used to be philosophy lecturers in a university and spend the time worrying about how many angels can stand on the point of a needle and rubbish like that. I got to know them when we were waiting to be changed. But there’s a lot of freshwater crayfish — you could fish for those — they’re probably good eating. And the perch are just what they seem — not much flavor in them but if you’re short…”

The children thanked her. “You’ve been most helpful. We wouldn’t be depriving you?”

“Dear me, no. I’m a strict vegetarian.” She seemed to be thinking for a while. Then she said, “I mostly came here to rest, but if you like I could clear the odd drain for you — there’s a lot of weed choking some of the runnels. Just say the word.”

They found the aye-aye in the topmost branches of a bent fir, and for a long time it wouldn’t come down, just gave that sad high-pitched screeching wail which had seemed meaningless when they first heard it — but now they could make out what the terrified creature was saying.

“What do you want? Leave me alone. Don’t hurt me.”

“We’re not going to hurt you. We wouldn’t dream of it,” said Ivo. “We just want to make friends.”

It took a long time to coax the aye-aye down from the tree and to hear her story, but when they did, they understood why she was so shy and seemed so unhappy.

“My name is Nandi,” the little creature said, staring at them out of her huge, black-ringed eyes. “And I was born in India and they said I was pretty, so from when I was a little girl my mother put me in for beauty competitions till in the end I was Miss India with a big crown on my head and a lot of fruit round my neck and everyone shouting. And then I was Miss Eurasia with pomegranates and a purple bikini and cameras clicking. Then when we came to England I had to be Miss Hackney South with a Union Jack on my bosom and a wand — and then they put me in for the Miss Universe competition, but the heel came off my shoe in the procession and I fell over and everyone laughed — and my boyfriend was angry and left me because he had bet a lot of money on me winning. And he was the apple of my eye, so my heart was broken and I came here and asked to be an aye-aye and live where nobody can hurt me.”

When Nandi had finished speaking in her breathless little voice, the children were very shaken. They could see all the other contestants laughing and sneering as she ran off the platform, and they would have liked to put a bullet through the cruel man who had left her. They were so upset that they hardly dared ask Nandi if she would help them to make the castle gardens flourish, but she already knew what they wanted.

“I will help pull down the fruit on the high branches,” she said. “And I can put back some of the tiles on the roof. I have seen you working and I will help — but there must be no cruel men — and no competitions.”

“What nice people they all seem to have been,” said Mirella as they made their way back. “And all of them willing to help. After the Grumblers I was expecting the worst.”

But as they got closer to the castle, they both fell silent, because they were absolutely dreading what they had to do next: talk to Charlie, and find out what kind of a human being he had been.

“Even if we tried not to,” said Ivo, “I suppose it wouldn’t work. Now that we’ve swallowed the beans we can’t not talk to him.”

“It’ll probably be all right,” said Mirella. “He can’t have been anybody really horrid — he just can’t.”

They tried to think what sort of a person they wouldn’t mind him having been.

“I suppose if he’d been one of those people who go bird-watching and hiking on the weekends. Maybe takes school parties and shows them things?”

“In an anorak, with binoculars, who tells you it’s not a Lesser Spotted Flycatcher, it’s a greater one?”

“Or a geologist with a little hammer banging at rocks?”

But though those sort of people do a lot of good in the world, they didn’t want Charlie to be like that, and they didn’t want him to be an out-of-work actor, or an office clerk whose boss had been unkind to him. In fact they couldn’t think of a single sort of person they really wanted Charlie to be, and their steps got slower and slower as they got nearer home.

But when they walked into kitchen, the Hag told them that Ulf had taken the little dog to the forest and probably wouldn’t be back for a while. The evenings were long and light still, and there was no sign of Charlie or Ulf at the time they usually went to bed. Ivo had gone to his room, and Mirella was just saying good night when there was a scratching at the door, and when they opened it, Charlie rushed into the room — tired, happy, muddy, and ready to share his busy day in the forest.

The children looked at each other. Time to begin. So far Charlie’s barks had sounded as they always did, but it had been the same with the others at first — the gnu’s grunts, the aye-aye’s screeches had taken a moment to become understandable as human speech.

“Charlie,” said Mirella very seriously, taking the plunge and looking into the dog’s eyes. “We’re able to understand the language of animals now, so would you tell us who you are? Or rather who you used to be.”

And they waited, holding their breath.

But whoever Charlie had been, it was obviously not someone very quick on the uptake. He wriggled free of Mirella’s grasp and began to play his favorite game, leaping over the footstool and waiting for them to catch him.

“Please, Charlie,” said Mirella, “speak to us. Tell us about your past. We have to know.”

Charlie rolled on his back and let his paws go limp, ready to have his tummy tickled.

But the children felt they had to go through with it now — and how could they scratch the stomach of someone who might presently tell them that he was a High Court judge?

“Charlie, please try,” Mirella begged again.

But it was no use, and now Charlie had jumped onto the bed and begun his evening rearrangement of Ivo’s pillows.

“Of course,” said Ivo suddenly. “I know what’s gone wrong! All those magic things usually stop working after the sun has gone down. And it has gone down — look — there’s not a ray to be seen.”

Mirella ran to the window, and it was true. The evening star had just risen on a darkening sky.

“We’ll have to wait till the morning,” said Ivo.

The relief was tremendous. Neither of the children had admitted how frightened they were of hearing Charlie’s story.

So Mirella said good night and went along to her room, but as she passed the open door of Dr. Brainsweller’s bedroom, Mirella heard voices.

“Ridiculous person,” said a woman’s voice, “appearing like that and calling him Bri-Bri — and those absurd spectacles. No wonder the poor man gets upset — you did quite right, spinning a web over her face. We’ll have to keep an eye on him — wizards are highly strung, everyone knows that.”

Mirella looked in at the open door. At first she thought the room was empty. Then she looked up at the ceiling where two large spiders were sitting close together and conversing.

Mirella hurried on. She had understood the spiders quite clearly. So what on earth was the matter with the little dog?

She decided to wait till the morning, but as soon as it was light she crept back to Ivo’s room and told him what had happened.

“So it wasn’t that the beans had stopped working, because I understood the spiders as clear as anything.”

They couldn’t make it out. They tried again, asking Charlie simple questions, talking clearly and slowly — but all he did was scratch at the door and indicate that it was time he went out for his morning run.

“We’ll have to go and see the ogre,” said Mirella. “And I don’t care if he’s in a state about his funeral pajamas or the trombone — we’ll make him tell us who Charlie was. Now we’ve started we can’t just stop.”

So they went to see the ogre, who was just finishing his breakfast. They explained about the beans and the animals and demanded to know the truth about Charlie.

The ogre wrinkled his vast forehead.

“Charlie?” he said. “Who’s he?”

“The little white dog. The one who follows us everywhere. You must know who he is. White with a brown patch behind his ear.”

“Oh, him,” said the ogre. “He’s a mongrel. Been around for a while.”

“Yes, but who was he?” said Mirella urgently. “Who was he before you changed him?”

The ogre shrugged. “He wasn’t anybody. He’s just a dog, always has been. Now about the hearse — I think it should have my name on the side and a little poem. The kind you get on gravestones.”

But the children weren’t listening. They were hugging each other, then dancing around the room — and Mirella’s eyes had filled with tears of relief and happiness.

Charlie was a dog. Charlie was himself and nothing else. Charlie was Charlie!