The Reasonable Ogre

by Mike Barnes

  The tooth was solid. It took several hours of presses before it moved even a little. And then two more days before it went from the slowly side-to-side shifting stage to looser wiggling. Smears of blood came away on his fingers when he pressed. It hurt a lot. When it felt almost loose enough to give way, David left it alone until that night.

  Once his mother had tucked him in, he waited until he heard his parents go to bed. Then, quietly, he got dressed again and sat on the edge of his bed. He pushed at the tooth until it gave a final lurch, almost free; a thick wad of blood spurted into the tissue he had ready, some of the blood going thickly down his throat. He went to the shadowy corner where he had first seen the creature. Taking a deep breath because he knew how much it would hurt, he jabbed at the tooth with his thumb, hard, and knocked it out of its socket.

  Nothing happened for a few seconds. His mouth hurt terribly, and the tissue was soaked with blood. David wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen. His plan had never been very detailed. All he knew was that he had to help the creature, and the only way he could think of to do that was to break the sequence the creature was trapped in: baby tooth falls out, goes under pillow, gets traded for a coin, gets returned to Grimus. As long as things happened that way, David didn’t see any hope for the creature. Perhaps with a tooth pushed out before its time, and no coin involved, no sleeping child—maybe, somehow, they could get the jump on Grimus and his system.

  David felt a scratchy sensation in his legs, as if wool was being rubbed against them, and looked down to see them disappearing, as the creature’s legs had disappeared that first time. And then he saw the same thing happen to one of his hands. A scratchy rubbing went down it, taking a piece away, and then another scratchy rubbing took another piece. It was a slow and uncomfortable way to vanish, not at all like the neat pop or wink of cartoons. He was glad when the scratchy rubbing started in places around his head; they felt worst of all, but they meant it would soon be over.

  It was. He was standing in the shadowy entranceway where he had first seen the white domed room made of children’s teeth. Grimus was on his stool at his bench, working with his tweezers, muttering to himself. Near him, on the floor beside the tooth bin, the creature sat, his great legs splayed sloppily, with a bucket of water between them in which he was washing teeth, taking a bloody fresh one from the bin and working it clumsily between his fingers in the water. Then he would lay it on a towel on the edge of the bench. Grimus reached over with his tweezers and took the cleaned tooth into his workspace. From time to time, he kicked with his boot at the creature beside him, hitting him in the side, on the arm, or, once, on the side of the face. Sometimes the creature grunted at these blows, flinching away, but sometimes he didn’t react at all. Just absorbed it and went on working over his bucket.

  David waited a long time while this work and punishment went on. Suddenly, Grimus stared off into space above his workbench, staring into the wall of white teeth facing him, and his muttering became excited. David knew that somewhere a child had gone to sleep with a tooth under its pillow. Grimus swore and kicked at the creature, which was already getting clumsily to its feet. It lumbered toward David, but when it saw him, its eyes went huge with fear, and it veered into its room.

  David crept along the wall after it. Grimus was too excited to notice, clasping and unclasping his hands with a horrid washing motion and muttering intensely all the while.

  When David stood in front of the creature, he opened his hand on the large tooth he was holding. In the instant the creature saw the fresh white tooth with its long bloody root, a remarkable transformation occurred. It occurred in a single moment, with none of the scratchy rubbings of transition that David and the creature were both familiar with.

  In front of David stood no troll-like creature, flabby and hairy, but a slim, dark-haired boy only a few years older and a little taller than himself. He wore a close-fitting vest and leggings, and a thin leather belt around his waist with a sheath on his right hip. From this, with a practiced motion, he drew a short knife. As he did so, he put his finger up in front of his lips, signing Shhh. David watched all this with his mouth open in shock. Nothing about the slim boy or his quick and purposeful motions bore the slightest resemblance to the shambling, pathetic giant of a few seconds before. Though the boy had signed for silence, David had no doubt that he could speak well, and he hoped that he would get a chance to hear him.

  The boy went swiftly and silently to the door, David following close behind. The boy approached Grimus at his bench. At the last moment, Grimus sensed him and turned. He uttered a shriek of outrage and then began babbling uncontrollably, as if his former mutterings had all joined together and risen to a pitch of panic, which sounded to David’s ears like a mixture of cats wailing in a sack and alarm clocks going off.

  The boy raised his knife, which glinted in the light. Grimus shrieked again, and dropped to the floor, where he became a lizard-like creature, white and gray, with a smooth head, and slimy all over as if covered with glue. He scuttled away across the floor of teeth. But the boy jumped ahead of him, crouched down, and cut him in half. Each half quivered, then grew legs and scuttled on in different directions, a little more slowly than before. This, too, the boy was prepared for. He sliced the lizard on his right in half, and then flipped the knife into his left hand and severed the lizard on that side. Again the remnants quivered, grew legs, and tried to escape—but it took a second longer, and the lizards were smaller than before.

  Working quickly with his knife, slicing it down with unerring swiftness, the boy dispatched the multiplying selves of Grimus, which grew in number as they shrank in size and power—until, finally, he had exhausted his power to divide himself. What was left in the glowing white room were dozens of tiny, slow-moving lizards, so small they resembled bugs, and so weakened that they milled about in a confused way, crawling here and there over the floor.

  “Now kill them,” said the boy, in a voice as clear as anyone’s. “Every one.” And he showed David how, with a stamp of his heel on the lizard-thing closest to him.

  It took David and the boy some time to kill all of the slowly scuttling parts of Grimus. The bug-like lizards crunched unpleasantly underfoot, but as they did so, that patch of tooth-floor changed to normal-looking pebbles, like those you might find on a beach. Some of the Grimus-bugs crawled up the walls, and it was even more unpleasant to crush them under one’s hand. But the walls, too, gradually turned to the rock bits on the sides of a cave, with bits of moss and earth between them.

  Finally, when all the dirty work had been done, the boy and David were sitting in a pleasant cave, on a stone-and-dirt floor. Grimus’s terrible bench was only a ledge of rock, long and straight, and the light above it was a hole in the cave through which the moon shone. Even the creature’s washing bucket had been transformed, into a little pool of water fed by tricklings down a mossy patch on the roof of the cave. As they lay there, the boy recounted to David the story of the spell Grimus had placed him under, which had robbed him of his speech and proper shape and condemned him to serve Grimus in his miserly eternal exchange of teeth for silver coins. Only one thing could save him, which Grimus had told him with a laugh, not expecting it could ever occur. He could be rescued—which Grimus forbade him ever to reveal, and then made double sure by cutting out his tongue—only if a child offered him a tooth of its own free will, expecting nothing in return. That would release him from Grimus’s spell.

  Listening to this, David felt himself becoming sleepy. As interesting as the boy’s story was, and as pleasant as it was to hear him tell it in his clear strong voice, David was up far, far past his normal bedtime; it was near the end of a long night; and though the ground was hard, he had made himself comfortable lying with his head on his bent arm. The one thing he wanted to ask the boy, while he still had the power to remain in this place, was whether there was such a thing as fairies and whether he himself, the boy, was one or of another race entirely, and he was waiting for a place in
the boy’s story where he could interrupt not too rudely—

  —when he realized he had missed his chance, he was back in his own bed, in his own room, and the faint sounds he heard in the distance where those of his mother and father stirring in the kitchen downstairs.

  The King’s Huntsman

  In a distant land, a powerful king offered the following terms to anyone who would wrestle him. The contestant must wager his life, but if he prevailed in the match, the king would reward him with one of his prize horses and a huge bag of gold. Though the king’s wrestling skill was legendary, many strong men were desperate or noble enough to try him at his terms. Most lost quickly; a few pushed the king hard; one or two tested him to his limit—but in the end, all climbed the steps to the scaffold which stood directly behind the wrestling area.

  After a few years, only vagrants and lunatics were willing to risk their lives against the king. And the king, who was as just as he was proud, would not accept such hopeless challenges.

  That is why at first he declined when word reached his ears that a newcomer in town, a poor soldier, wished to try him. The soldier—so the king’s attendants reported—was of no rank or distinction, not old but not quite young, and of middling stature. When the newcomer persisted in his challenge, the king had him brought to court.

  “Do you know who and what you will be fighting for?” the king asked the soldier, who looked as unremarkable as his courtiers had described.

  “I will be fighting you for my life, which is all I have,” said the soldier, returning the king’s gaze steadily.

  “And why do you think you can win where so many others have lost?” asked the king.

  “For the reason I already gave,” said the soldier.

  And the king, who thought that if the soldier was insane it was at least in a way that interested him, ordered the preparations for the match. The executioner was summoned. Courtiers and their ladies packed the viewing stands. The two contestants stripped to fight. The match was the longest and fiercest anyone had witnessed, filled with pins and falls and close calls on both sides, but in the end the court saw what it had learned to think impossible: the king pinned helplessly, signalling defeat with a grim nod.

  That evening, the king, who was as magnanimous as he was just, invited the victorious soldier to a banquet in his honour. He seated him beside him and they ate and drank and watched the entertainments. As the evening drew to a close, the king offered to make the soldier one of his knights and, further, to give him one of his own daughters in marriage.

  The soldier lowered his head and took his time answering, hesitating so long that those listening (while pretending not to) shifted nervously in their seats.

  “Thank you,” said the soldier, raising his eyes at last, “but soldier has proved rank enough for me. And your daughter deserves better than a common man. Even,” he added, “one with a fine horse and a bag of gold.”

  The king’s face hardened with displeasure, for he was as vain as he was magnanimous, but he acknowledged the soldier’s wishes with a nod. That night, though, the king twisted in his bed, tossing in and out of a troubled sleep. In the morning, as the soldier was preparing to depart, the king stood with him at a window overlooking the courtyard where the king’s best black stallion was being loaded with a leather bag bulging with gold.

  “You’re obviously a gambler,” said the king casually, for he was as sly as he was vain, “so I wonder if you would be interested in one more small wager.”

  When the soldier said he might be, the king took him to another window overlooking a small weedy plot. On one side of it stood a goose and a goat in a pen; on the other, an old man dozed on a bench.

  “I will send you away with double your winnings,” said the king, “if you will agree to let my huntsman pursue you. If he catches you, you will owe him your head.”

  “I will need to see this huntsman you are betting on,” said the soldier, whom a perilous life had taught to be prudent as well as bold, depending on the circumstances.

  The king gestured down at the old man on the bench.

  The soldier smiled; the king did not. And the soldier, after a pause of consideration, agreed.

  Immediately, the king called down for a goose for supper. And the old man, without looking up at his master’s voice, lifted himself slowly from his bench and hobbled across the weedy yard. It seemed to take him half the morning to shuffle the short distance. And the soldier, though he watched without expression, felt alarm at the sight of the figure’s scanty gray hair and threadbare gray cloak; for he knew the strength and cunning in the man he had bested the night before, who would surrender nothing easily. When the old man finally reached the animal pen, something flashed in his hand—so fast the soldier never knew if it was an axe or a sword—and the goose’s head was lying on the ground a full second before its body could fall and join it.

  “He is as relentless as he is merciless,” said the king in a musing voice. “Go wherever you like. He is an expert tracker. All he needs is one look at your back, which I will give him when you go.”

  With a curt nod, the king turned to leave. After a few steps, however, he turned back to say one thing more.

  “There is one way to evade him, but no one has ever discovered it. You’ve given no sign of needing my help, so I’m sure you don’t want it now.” He smiled coldly. “Until I see you again.”

  And he strode away down the corridor of his castle.

  TROTTING AWAY on the black horse, the soldier felt a cold prickling between his shoulders at the thought of the old huntsman watching him. Watching and memorizing. As soon as he was out of sight of the castle, he kicked the horse into a hard gallop. Despite the heavy bags of gold hanging from the saddle, the black horse fairly flew over the ground, and the soldier drove him until his flanks were frothing. Even so, when he finally let up, he turned with his heart in his throat, expecting to see the old huntsman with his terrible blade right behind him. But of course the road was empty. He laughed out loud at his own foolishness, and led the horse to a stream for a good long drink and rest.

  The soldier had been in too many dire battles to let the deft butchery of a goose dismay him for long. The king had tried a black joke at the end, that was all. Unhappy at losing, he had hoped for some slight revenge: planting a seed of fear by trickery where he had failed to plant one in the wrestling ring.

  Still, to be prudent, the soldier urged the black horse along the road as hard as he dared, stopping only for the briefest and most necessary rests, riding each day until nightfall and then, after snatching a few hours sleep at an inn, setting off at dawn again. After a few such days, he stopped earlier one afternoon. At this rate he would soon turn the magnificent horse into a broken-down nag. He ordered himself dinner and wine.

  How many weeks, he thought, would it take a strong walker to cover the ground I’ve ridden in these days? (Even assuming he knew the way, for the soldier had changed course often, especially at first.) How many months—or years—would it take a hobbling, shuffling old man?

  He smiled into his cup, finished the rest of the wine, and before bed visited the stallion to see how he’d enjoyed the oat mash he’d ordered him.

  Finally, he relaxed, and let his good fortune surround him like the quilt on the inn’s best bed.

  And then, in the instant just before sleep, he saw the bent gray figure, whom he had endowed with no need to sleep, limping towards him through the dark. Making up a little ground, pace by slow pace, while his quarry slept.

  And he saw the eye of the goose, open and unsurprised, staring up from the ground.

  IN THIS WAY the king had his revenge. It was a subtle revenge, to be sure: nothing like being thrown to the ground and pinned before one’s astonished (and no doubt secretly delighted) subjects, as he himself had endured. And, over time, the image of the pursuing huntsman worked less powerfully on the soldier’s mind. He was still not quite old, and he had two bags of gold with which to distract himself. Still, he
moved around a lot, even for a wealthy bachelor. He told himself that he had always been restless, and now he had the means to satisfy those urges. Hadn’t the dread of settling driven him into the soldiering life to begin with? Yet—he had slept better as a soldier. His hand had been steadier. Even the night before a battle, it had been.

  The scene of the huntsman and goose in the weedy courtyard dwindled in his thoughts to the echo of a scene. And then the echo of the echo of a scene. And then the echo of the echo of an echo . . . —without ever, even for a moment, getting so faint that he forgot it entirely.

  Certain dull shades of gray wool had the power to startle him, especially if he turned and saw them close behind him.

  He was uncomfortable standing with his back to a roadway, or even to a room, and he felt most relaxed with a wall behind his shoulders, clear sightlines ahead.

  Foolishness! Foolishness! he chided himself. And laughed at himself, and felt some moments of relief. And then some thought such as Is it foolishness for a sparrow to glance around constantly?—or another like it—would come creeping back into his brain.

  He is relentless.

  An old man, a hunter, slowly hobbling after his quarry.

  A goose head, staring.

  HE MARRIED at forty. Something he had put off for a long time, despite a rich bachelor’s many opportunities, for fear of bringing another into his predicament. But he fell in love, and that decided it. It decided it in the blind, unreasoning way love decides everything. He had bought businesses along the way with his money, and these supplied enough income that he didn’t need to touch what remained of the king’s gold. His wife, who was much younger than he, loved to travel, so for a few years they were happy moving about seeing the world, without him having to believe that he was always running away. It was when she said that she wanted them to buy a house and have a child while she was still young enough—that was the moment when the fear returned, or reminded him with a dull throb that it had never left. But the throb passed, and all was well again. There was even a busy spell, during the flurry of purchasing the house and settling into it, when he became sure that he was done for good with limping gray huntsmen and goose heads. The echo was that faint.