'Tis dreadful inconvenient, being tied by the hair. I must confess that the hair did at least have the common decency to grow or shrink depending upon my distance from the iron ring on the post, so that we were not all tripping over leagues of the stuff when I worked about the house. Still, there is no getting away from the fact that 'twas a most villainous nuisance. The further I got from the cottage the heavier it grew to drag along behind me, until I could scarce move forward for the weight of it. Then too, it was always getting wound round trees and caught up in bramble bushes, and 'twas more tedious than I can tell, unwinding and unpicking myself everywhere I went.
One might expect that the hair would grow dull with dirt and filled with burrs, but it never did. Nay, it shone like the rising sun and curled as sweetly as a grapevine tendril. So I had not even the excuse of washing it as a pretext for being untied.
I was unable to cut it, as I had threatened. When I returned that first day I found that my scissors had been removed from my sewing kit, though all else remained. No other tool had I to sever the hair, since the butcher's knife I used for cooking must be begged from Lucinda and promptly returned.
Nor was I able privily and by stealth to untie the hair. Indeed, it did not appear to be tied at all, but grew in a continuous circle round the iron ring. In my desperation I tried biting through it, but 'twas as tough as gold wires.
After the first morning, I neither saw nor heard my own dearling Geese anywhere. The only sign that I had not lost them altogether was that each day a white feather, weighted down with a small white pebble, appeared on a certain large rock near the cottage. Next to them was always a Goose egg, which helped me in my quest for food. Each day I put into my sewing bag the feather and pebble and also the broken halves of the Goose egg after we had eaten it.
As the days went by the Ogresses became more and more impatient with the meals I served, growing nostalgic for their former diet.
"O for a haunch of child meat," said Tessa, sighing wistfully and picking over as nice a stew of wild mushrooms, garlic, and coltsfoot as you could meet in a day's march. 'A good little boy of no more than six years, f'rinstance, round and sweet as a butterball. What wouldn't I give?"
"Much too rich," I said. "You'd be awake all the livelong day with indigestion and you know it. And if you did manage to snatch a few winks, I have no doubt you would keep everyone else awake with your bad dreams."
"O pshaw!" she responded, but she held her peace, merely glancing resentfully at her sisters, who were snorting and poking one another and nodding in agreement.
"Terrible, she be, after a meal of fresh child-flesh. The moans and groans are enough to break your heart. Still," said Nellie wistfully, "it do be a treat, now and then. 1 miss it, I will confess." She raised a dripping handful of stew to her mouth and eyed me speculatively as it trickled down her chin.
Apparently they'd eaten up all the inhabitants of the deserted little village nearby. They were now obliged to find their dinner in the village graveyard, and even this source of protein was giving out at last. The occasional unwary traveler such as myself was a real windfall.
I did my best to satisfy their cravings for flesh, indeed I did. I contrived to bring back a few birds and small beasts for the cook pot with a catapult made from a thong of leather I found lying about (best not to wonder whither the leather came from!) and a forked stick.
'Twould not do for much longer. Even I was growing weary of boiled cattail tubers every evening. Still, I did my best to keep the upper hand as long as I could.
"Nellie, watch how you are holding that bowl," I scolded. I had transformed some of the sawed-off skulls into bowls, but they were awkward to manage, being full of holes, imperfectly stopped up. "You are slopping stew all down your front. Now I'll have to wash that dress again and you won't have a thing to wear until it's dry."
"Awww," she said, ruefully inspecting her dress. "It hain't so dirty. Why do y'got to wash it fer?"
"Y'know what's happenin' here, don't yer?" demanded Tessa. "She's reformin' of us, that's what she be doin'. Next thing y'know, she'll be the one runnin' the show." Tessa snorted. "Y'notice that? Whooo be it what issues the orders around here lately? Me, what's the eldest of a long and proud lineage? Or her, what's a servant and what should of been our dinner?"
"Her," agreed Nellie.
Tessa made an unlovely noise deep in both of her throats. Her four eyes followed me as I moved about the room.
I could not feel easy in my mind about my future prospects in this household. Besides which, some of my duties were rather repellent to a person of fastidious tastes. 'Twas as if I were playing nursemaid to a trio of gigantic children with particularly nasty personal habits. The number of times I had to break up quarrels over some old bone, or prevent Lucinda from pulling Nellie's hair out by the roots! Well, you simply would not believe me if I were to tell you.
Of course any one of the three could have crushed me like a beetle underfoot. Tessa in particular was at least eight feet tall and five feet wide, while I was rather slender and delicate of frame, though wiry and strong after years of fending for myself.
O my friend, I tell thee that there were nights when I did dream of naught but Tessa's teeth. Both sets of them.
'Twas the morning of the twelfth day that the Ogresses caught yet another unhappy traveler. I knew it to be the twelfth day because I had eleven white feathers, eleven white pebbles, and twenty-two eggshell halves in my sewing bag, and had not yet gone out to forage for food, which is when I normally found them.
I got up before dawn as usual and tidied the cottage, sweeping the usual gold dust outside, where I carefully dispersed it over the dooryard dirt. I was most vigilant in performing this duty, and in dusting every surface of the cottage, for I did not wish the Ogresses to know any more about my gifts than I could help. You might wonder that I did not offer my wealth in exchange for my freedom, but if you do so wonder, kindly recall the result of my previous attempts in this direction.
Once every gleaming grain of gold was gone, I began cooking our great meal of the day as usual. Suddenly I heard a tremendous tumult coming up the path: roars and moans, shrieks and groans. There came a sound of heavy bodies falling about into the shrubbery.
I rushed to the doorway to see what was the matter. This was a bit difficult to tell at first. There was such a confusion of gigantic arms and legs and massive chests and hips that I couldn't immediately decide what I was looking at, and the fact that the sun was not yet up did not help. Presently, however, I determined that it was the three Ogresses wrestling with a large black sack which was in violent motion.
"Hold his feet, ye! Nellie!"
"Ugh!"
Nellie was toppled like a tree in a tempest as the black sack suddenly jackknifed.
"Hold him, can't ye? Lucinda, make y'self useful."
Lucinda wound her enormously long arms around and around the sack like a snake, and Tessa settled the issue by sitting down on both Lucinda and sack at once.
"Gerroff! Gerroffuvit!" came Lucinda's muffled roar from underneath her sister's weight. Tessa did not move, however, but simply sat there. Both of her heads grinned ferociously.
I could see a rather elegant, well-polished boot protruding from under Lucinda's body, a boot which did not belong to Lucinda; obviously this was not some woodland creature which they had snared for the pot.
I opened my mouth to order them to immediately release whatever unfortunate soul they had imprisoned in that sack, when I caught the expression, identically reproduced, on each of Tessa's twin faces. Two sets of eyes glinted wolfishly, and two tongues darted out of two mouths in an expression of naked greed. But 'twas me she was looking at, not the sack.
Now was not the moment to exert my precarious authority.
I closed my mouth and then reopened it.
"Excellent," I said cheerfully. "You've brought home some dinner, I see. How clever of you all."
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Misfortunate Knight<
br />
IT IS A DEAR COLLOP THAT IS
CUT OUT OF THY OWN FLESH.
—JOHN HEYWOOD, PROVERBS
Jessa was most grievously disappointed, I could see. Trying to make them let the man in the sack go might quite easily have been fatal for me, and Tessa knew it. Lucinda and Nellie were simply not in the mood to be told that ladies never eat human flesh. They had, with considerable difficulty and after many days of nearly meatless meals, caught themselves an unfortunate knight whose skill and valor had not been equal to the brute force and size of the three Ogresses.
They now intended to cook him and eat him, and if I chose to object, why then I was welcome to join the benighted traveler in the pot.
"Drag him inside and tie him up with the golden thread while we decide what to do with him," I instructed.
"What do ye mean, decide what we do with him?" demanded Tessa. "We be agoin' to kill him, that's what we be agoin' to do with him. Hand me that knife, Lucinda."
But Lucinda, being underneath Tessa and with her arms wrapped several times around the man in the sack, was unable to comply.
I took the opportunity to walk over and inspect what I could see of the sack. He appeared to be wearing very little armor; apparently his errand had not been of a warlike nature. He was no merchant, however. I could see plain as day that his coat of arms was embroidered into his surcoat, though most of it was obscured by the sack. This was of no moment, as I was ignorant of the devices of the noble houses in this part of the world.
"The gentleman appears to be a bit underfed," I remarked, leaning down to pinch his leg. "Most likely he has been wandering in the woods for days without a bite to eat." I shook my head. "I fear he will cook up lean and stringy."
Nellie ceased her wild dance and eyed me suspiciously. There was a mutinous look on her face as she said, "What of it? He'll taste a mort better nor a mess of old cattail roots, I warrant."
I nodded, as though much struck by her observation. "Verily you speak true. But wait!" I cried, as Nellie turned a greedy face toward the sack and Tessa began to cautiously ease herself off Lucinda. "I have a notion. Why should we not fatten him up for a few days before we eat him? We could give him the cattail roots, you know. There wouldn't be any need to cook up anything special for him."
"Well..." said Nellie.
"Now lissen here, missy," said Tessa.
"I'm hungry now," Nellie whined.
"Mmmph!" said Lucinda.
"Tessa, you have to let Lucinda up in order to get the knife, you know," I pointed out. "And the moment you do that he'll make a run for it. You will have to tie him up."
In truth, I doubted that the man could have gotten away, not blinded as he was by the sack. Mercifully, even both of Tessa's heads put together had not the wit to see this. They turned on me a look of pure dislike and then the bald one barked, "Nellie! Get me the golden thread that her is allus agoin' on about."
I swiftly produced the great skein of golden thread and handed it to Nellie. In a trice Tessa had bound the sack sufficiently for both Lucinda and Tessa to get off it. The sack did not stir throughout all of this. Mayhap he was half suffocated and crushed, poor fellow. Or wholly suffocated and crushed, perchance.
"G'me the knife, Lucinda," commanded Tessa as soon as Lucinda had scrambled to her feet.
"Whoof!" said Lucinda, one hand to her chest. "Wait a bit, can't ye? I be fair scrunched."
"Lucinda," said Nellie, "What d'you think we should do? Eat it now or fatten it up like Alexandria says?"
"Now! Now! I do be as empty as a gourd." And she whipped out the knife and flourished it in the air.
I stared at the polished boot and thought furiously. Within moments the gentleman belonging to that boot would be no more than various cuts of meat.
"What, pray," I said suddenly, "has become of his horse?" Surely that boot wouldn't look so elegant had he come here on foot.
The three Ogresses stopped and looked at each other. The sack emitted a low groan. He was not dead, then.
"What did we do with the horse, Tessa?"
"Don't remember."
"Well, I do," said Nellie. "I brought it along of us and laid it down behind the cottage since it were dead, or next thing to it. I figgered we could have it later. Fer dessert, like."
The sack groaned again.
"Most shrewd of you, Nellie," I said. I grieved for the man in the sack, but what else was there to be done? We still lived and the horse did not.
"We shall have a delicious horsemeat stew for our dinner. Much better than waiting for this tough meat here to cook. Why, 'twould be hours before he was fit to eat." I hastily excused myself in order to go and inspect our next meal.
All I could see behind the cottage was what appeared to be a mountain of cloth, metal, and leather. This puzzled me mightily until I realized that what I was looking at was the saddle and fitments of a royal charger. I nearly groaned aloud. For never, surely, could there have been two horses so festooned and bedecked in all this world. 'Twas the Prince's horse, without a doubt.
I had been thinking of the man in the sack as a potential ally. But nay, quite the contrary; I should now be saddled with this silly simpkin in a situation of most dreadful peril and uncertainty. Was there ever anything so misfortunate?
I drew near the dead horse and began to strip off the trappings.
"Alas, noble beast!" I sighed. "Tis indeed a pity to see thee lying here, about to be carved up into cutlets."
Something moved under the pile of gear. I hastily backed away as the mound heaved mightily and struggled to stand. The horse had not been killed but merely stunned. Most likely it had been nearly crushed under all that equipment. Now that the weight had been removed, 'twas recovering from its swoon. It could do no more than struggle, however, for the poor animal's legs were bound together and it could not rise. At length it lay still and looked up at me, eyes rolling in terror.
I scowled back. Dead, the horse had solved a problem. Alive, he became one.
"O, very well, I suppose I must set you free," I said. "But what I shall feed to the Ogresses I simply do not know." I bent to untie its bonds. "Lie still, Sir Horse," I commanded. "I've no desire to be kicked for my pains. Now off you go, and right speedily, for 'tis death to linger in this place."
Obediently, the horse kicked up its heels and vanished into the gloom of the forest without so much as a grateful glance in my direction.
When once it had departed I sat myself down and began to lament my lot in earnest, for what would happen to us when the Ogresses had discovered the loss of the horse? The stew I had prepared was made of naught save a few old roots and leaves. What, what, was there to hand that would give it a flavor of meat? I looked despairingly about me. In certes, we were doomed.
My eye fell upon the leather saddle at my feet. Might the Ogresses not, after so long on a vegetable diet, have forgotten the taste and texture of horseflesh...?
Ah, well. Naught venture, naught have. I would do what I could.
'Twas not the best stew I have eaten.
Verily, I believe 'twas the worst stew that ever did pass my lips. Before I carried the saddle inside to cook it, I pounded it betwixt two boulders until my arms ached, both in order to make it more tender and to disguise its shape somewhat.
Once inside I cut it up into pieces, none larger than a pea. Then I added it to the meal I had already prepared and boiled it over the fire until the vegetables lost their shape and the water cooked away and the Ogresses bellowed for their meal.
They ate it. They were not best pleased, but they ate it.
"Toughest of" horse I ever did eat," muttered Tessa, choking on a lump of leather. "Must have spent its whole life eatin' thistles and tree bark."
Anxious to encourage this train of thought, I quickly agreed. "Indeed," I said, resolutely chewing away at a chunk until my jaws did ache most cruelly, "'twas almost a kind ness to put the poor beast out of its misery. Shame on you, sirrah," I said to the man in the sack, "to treat a he
lpless animal in so scandalous a fashion!"
The man in the sack appeared to attempt a lengthy, indignant rebuttal, but was hampered by having a mouthful of sack and eventually subsided.
After much grumbling, the meal was consumed and the Ogresses lay down for their day's rest. Seeing this, I made so bold as to ask for my sewing scissors of Lucinda.
Instantly suspicious, she demanded, "What be that to the likes of ye?"
I might have replied that I merely wished to catch sight of my own property, but I had no desire to antagonize.
"I want to cut the top of the sack off," I replied.
"What fer?"
"I must feed him, madam. And I can't do that if his mouth is covered with a sack."
"Ugh," Lucinda grunted. "See to it that ye give 'em right back, then," and she withdrew from her bosom my silver scissors.
As I leant down to cut the sack it occurred to me that the poor man might react poorly to having scissors brandished in his face, particularly when he could not see who was doing it.
"I'm going to cut the sack off your face," I said in a low, clear voice. "Do not move or I shall cut you by mistake." The sack became very still.
With a few adroit snips of my scissors, I freed the man's face and head and swiftly thrust the scissors under a small stack of firewood which lay nearby.
"Alas!" I sighed when I saw the man's face. My hopes were dashed; 'twas the Prince, his very own self.
Alas, indeed, my lady," he began jabbering as soon as he saw who addressed him. "I am come, at great risk and jeopardy to my life, that very life which is so precious to my people, to set you free, and now—" Suddenly his eyes rounded with horror and his jaw dropped agape.
'"Twas you, then, who spake with such a—such a ghastly relish of fattening me, ME! up for the table? Indeed, it was! Why, 'twas your very voice!" His eye fell upon the human skulls converted to bowls and drinking vessels. He gasped.
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