Tales of the Peculiar

by Ransom Riggs

  Edvard didn’t know how to react. He was disgusted by the very sight of Ollie, but still—something had to be done for the boy. He didn’t want everyone finding out, though, so rather than call the town doctor, who had a big mouth, he sent for wise old Erick.

  Erick came hobbling out into the field to have a look. After his initial shock, he said, “It’s just as I predicted. It took years, but he’s finally manifesting his peculiar trait.”

  “Yes, obviously,” said Edvard, “but why? And how can it be reversed?”

  Erick consulted a tattered old book that he’d brought with him—a folk manual of peculiar conditions, which had passed down through generations of his family from a great-grandmother who had herself been peculiar.21 “Ah, here we go,” he said, licking his thumb to turn a page. “It says that when a person with a certain peculiar temperament and a large and generous heart no longer feels loved by his own kind, he’ll take on the form of whatever creature he feels most connected to.”

  Erick gave Edvard a strange look that made Edvard feel ashamed.

  “The boy had a locust friend?”

  “A pet, yes,” said Edvard. “I threw it into the fire.”

  Erick clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Perhaps you were a bit hard on him.”

  “He’s too soft for this world,” Edvard grumbled, “but never mind. How do we fix him?”

  “I don’t need a book to tell me that,” Erick said, closing the tattered volume. “You have to love him, Edvard.”

  Erick wished him good luck and left Edvard alone with the creature that was once his son. He stared at its long, papery wings and its awful mandibles, and he shuddered. How could he love such a thing? Still, he made an attempt, but he was filled with resentment and his efforts were not sincere. Instead of showing the boy kindness, Edvard spent all day lecturing him.

  “Don’t I love you, boy? Don’t I feed you and give you a roof to sleep under? I had to give up school and go to work at the age of eight, but don’t I let you bury your head in books and schoolwork to your heart’s content? What do you call that, if not love? What more do I owe you, you entitled American brat?”

  And so on. When night fell, Edvard couldn’t bear to let Ollie into the house, so he made him a place to sleep in the barn and left a few table scraps in a pail for him to eat. Toughness makes a man, Edvard believed, and being soft on Ollie now would only encourage more of the weakhearted behavior that had turned him into a locust in the first place.

  In the morning his son was gone. Edvard searched every inch of the barn and every row of his fields, but the boy was nowhere to be found. When he hadn’t returned after three days, Edvard began to wonder if he’d taken the wrong approach with Ollie. He had stuck to his principles—but for what? He had driven away his only son. Now that Ollie was gone, Edvard realized how little his farm meant to him by comparison. But it was a lesson learned too late.

  Edvard became so sad and sorry that he went into town and admitted to everyone what had happened. “I turned my son into a locust,” he said, “and now I’ve lost everything.”

  No one believed him at first, so he asked old Erick to corroborate his story.

  “It’s true,” Erick said to anyone who asked. “His son is an enormous locust. He’s the size of a dog.”

  Edvard made the townspeople an offer. “My heart is like an old, shriveled apple,” he said. “I can’t help my son, but if anyone can love him enough to turn him back into a boy, I’ll give you my farm.”

  This excited the townspeople tremendously. For such a rich prize, they said, they could make themselves love nearly anything. Of course, first they had to find the locust boy, so they set out in search parties and began to comb the roads and fields.

  Ollie, who had super-sensitive locust ears, heard everything. He’d heard his father talking about him, he heard the footsteps of the people searching for him, and he wanted no part of it. He hid in the field of a neighboring farm with his new locust friends, and anytime someone came near, the locusts would swarm up and surround the person, creating a wall that gave Ollie time to escape. But a few days later, the locusts ran out of food and took to the sky to migrate elsewhere. Ollie tried to join them, but he was too big and too heavy to fly. Being unsentimental creatures, not a single locust stayed behind to keep Ollie company, and he was left alone again.

  Without his friends to help protect him, it wasn’t long before a group of boys was able to sneak up on Ollie while he was sleeping and capture him in a net. They were the same boys who had tormented Ollie at school. The oldest one slung Ollie over his shoulder as they skipped back to town, singing and celebrating. “We’re going to turn him back into a boy, and then we’ll get Edvard’s whole farm!” They cheered. “We’ll be rich!”

  They kept Ollie in a cage in their house and waited. When, after a week, he stubbornly remained a locust, they switched tactics.

  “Tell it you love it,” the boys’ mother suggested.

  “I love you!” the youngest boy shouted through the bars of Ollie’s cage, but he could hardly get the words out before he started laughing.

  “At least keep a straight face when you say it,” the older boy said, and then he gave it a try. “I love you, locust.”

  But Ollie wasn’t paying attention. He had curled up in a corner and gone to sleep.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!” the boy shouted, and kicked the cage. “I LOVE YOU!”

  But he did not, nor could he force himself to, and when Ollie began making locust shrieks all night, the family gave up and sold Ollie to their neighbor. He was an old hunter with no family and little experience in matters of the heart, and after a few feeble attempts to show the boy love, he abandoned the effort and sent Ollie outside to live with the hunting dogs. Ollie much preferred the dogs’ company to the man’s. He ate with them and slept alongside them in their doghouse, and though they were afraid of him at first, Ollie was so gentle and kind that they soon grew accustomed to him, and he became one of the pack. In fact, he felt so accepted by them that one day the hunter found he was missing a giant locust but had gained an extra-large dog.

  The months Ollie spent as a dog were some of the happiest of his life. But then came hunting season, when the dogs were expected to work. On the first day, the hunter brought the pack out to a field of tall grass. He shouted a command and all the dogs began to run, barking, through the field. Ollie followed along, barking and making a fuss. It was good fun! Then, suddenly, he tripped over a goose in the grass. The goose leaped into the air and started to fly away, but before it could get anywhere there was a loud crack and it fell back to earth, dead. Ollie stared at its body in horror. A moment later, another dog trotted up to him and said, “What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to take it back to Master?”

  “Of course not!” Ollie said.

  “Suit yourself,” said the dog, “but if Master finds out, he’ll shoot you.” And then he grasped the dead goose in his jaws and trotted away.

  The next morning, Ollie was gone. He’d run away with the geese, chasing their V-shaped migration from the ground.

  When Edvard heard that his son had been found and then lost again, he sank into a despair from which those who knew him worried he’d never emerge. He stopped leaving his house. He let all his fields lie fallow. If old Erick had not brought him food once a week, he may well have starved. But like the locust plague, Edvard’s time of darkness eventually passed, and he began to tend his farm again and to turn up at the market in town and in his old pew in church on Sundays. And after a time he fell in love again and married, and he and his wife had a child, a girl they called Asgard.

  Edvard was determined to love Asgard as he had failed to love Ollie, and as she grew up he did his best to keep his heart open. He let her love stray animals and cry over silly things, and he never scolded her for acting out of kindness. When she was eight years old, Edvard had a hard sea
son. The crops failed and they had only turnips to eat. Then one day a flock of geese was passing overhead, and one of them left the formation and landed near Edvard’s house. It was very large, nearly twice the size of a normal goose, and because it didn’t seem afraid, Edvard was able to walk right up to it and grab it.

  “You’ll make a good dinner tonight!” Edvard said, and he carried the goose inside and locked it in a cage.

  It had been weeks since they’d had meat on their dinner table, and Edvard’s wife was excited. She stoked a fire and prepared the cooking pot while Edvard sharpened his carving knife. But when Asgard came into the kitchen and saw what was happening, she became upset.

  “You can’t kill it!” she cried. “It’s a nice goose, and it didn’t do anything to us! It isn’t fair!”

  “Fairness doesn’t enter into it,” Edvard told her. “In life, sometimes you have to kill in order to survive.”

  “But we don’t have to kill it,” she said. “We can eat turnip soup again tonight—I don’t mind!”

  And then she collapsed in front of the goose’s cage and began to weep.

  At another time in Edvard’s life, he might have scolded his daughter and lectured her about the perils of softheartedness—but now he remembered his son.

  “Oh, all right, we won’t kill it,” he said, kneeling down to comfort her.

  Asgard stopped crying. “Thank you, Papa! May we keep it?”

  “Only if it wants to stay,” said Edvard. “It’s a wild thing, so keeping it in a cage would be cruel.”

  He opened the cage. The goose waddled out and Asgard threw her arms around its neck.

  “I love you, Mister Goose!”

  “Waak!” the goose replied.

  That night they ate turnip soup and went to bed with their stomachs grumbling, happy as could be.

  The goose became Asgard’s beloved pet. It slept in the barn, followed Asgard to school every morning, and sat honking on the schoolhouse roof all day while she was inside. She let everyone know the goose was her best friend and that no one was allowed to shoot it or make it into soup, and they let it be. Asgard made up fantastic stories about adventures she had with her goose, like the time she rode Goose to the moon so they could see what moon-cheese tasted like, and she regaled her parents with these tales at dinnertime. That’s why they weren’t terribly surprised when Asgard woke them up one morning in a state of excitement and announced that Goose had turned into a young man.

  “Go back to sleep,” Edvard said, yawning. “Even the rooster isn’t awake yet!”

  “I’m serious!” Asgard cried. “Come and see for yourself!” And she tugged her tired father out of bed by his arm.

  Edvard nearly fainted when he got inside barn. There, standing in a nest of straw, was his long-lost son. Ollie was grown now, six feet tall with strong features and a stubbled chin. He wore a burlap sack around his waist that he’d found on the floor of the barn.

  “See, I wasn’t lying!” Asgard said, and she ran to Ollie and hugged him hard. “What are you doing, silly Goose?”

  Ollie broke into a big smile. “Hello, Father,” he said. “Did you miss me?”

  “Very much,” said Edvard. His heart hurt so much that he began to cry, and he went to his son and hugged him. “I hope you can forgive me,” he whispered.

  “I did years ago,” Ollie replied. “It just took some time to find my way back.”

  “Father?” said Asgard. “What’s happening?”

  Edvard let Ollie go, wiped his tears, and turned to his daughter. “This is your older brother,” he said. “The one I told you about.”

  “Who turned into a bug?” she said, eyes growing wide. “And ran away?”

  “The same,” Ollie said, and put out his hand for Asgard to shake. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Ollie.”

  “No,” she said, “you’re Goose!” And she ignored Ollie’s extended hand and hugged him again. “How’d you become a goose, anyway?”

  Ollie hugged his sister back. “It’s rather a long story,” he said.

  “Good!” said Asgard. “I love stories.”

  “He’ll tell us over breakfast,” said Edvard. “Won’t you, son?”

  Ollie grinned. “I’d love to.”

  Edvard took him by one hand and Asgard by the other, and they led him into the house. After Edvard’s wife had recovered from the shock, they sat together and ate a breakfast of turnips on toast while Ollie told them all about his years as a goose. From that day forward he was a member of the family. Edvard loved his son unconditionally, and never again did Ollie lose his human form. And they lived happily ever after.

  The Boy Who Could Hold Back the Sea

  There was once a peculiar young man named Fergus who could harness the power of the currents and tides. This was in Ireland during its terrible famine. He might have used his talent to catch fish to eat, but he lived in a landlocked place far from the sea, and his power was of no use in rivers or lakes. He might have set off for the coast—he’d been there once as a young boy; that’s how he knew what he could do—but his mother was too weak to travel, and Fergus couldn’t leave her alone; he was all the family she had left. Fergus gave her every bit of food he could scrounge while he survived on sawdust and boiled shoe leather. But it was sickness that finally got her, not hunger, and in the end there was nothing to be done.

  As she lay dying, his mother made him promise to leave for the coast as soon as she was in the ground. “With your talent, you’ll be the best fisherman who ever lived, and you’ll never have to go hungry again. But never tell anyone what you can do, son, or people will make your life hell.” He promised he would do as she said, and the next day she died. Fergus buried her in the churchyard, threw his few possessions into a sack, and began his long walk to the sea. He walked for six days with one shoe and no food. He was starving, and all the people in the towns he passed along the way were starving, too. Some towns had been abandoned altogether, the farmers gone to seek better fortunes and fuller stomachs in America.

  Finally, he reached the seaside, and a little town called Skelligeen where none of the houses looked empty and none of the people looked hungry. This he took as a sign that he’d come to the right place: if the people of Skelligeen were still around and well-fed, the fishing must be very good. Which was a lucky thing, because he didn’t think he could go much longer without eating. He asked a man where he might find a fishing pole or a net, but the man told him he wouldn’t find any such thing in Skelligeen. “We don’t fish here,” the man said. He seemed oddly proud of it, as if being a fisherman were something shameful.

  “If you don’t fish,” Fergus said, “then how do you live?” Fergus hadn’t noticed any signs of industry in his ramble around the town: no pens of livestock, no crops other than the same rotting potatoes he saw everywhere in Ireland.

  “Our business is salvage,” the man replied, and did not elaborate.

  Fergus asked the man if he had anything to eat. “I’ll work for it,” he offered.

  “What work could you possibly do?” the man said, looking the boy up and down. “I could use someone who can lift heavy boxes, but you’re scrawny as a bird. I’ll bet you don’t weigh seventy pounds!”

  “I may not be able to lift heavy boxes, but I can do something no one else can.”

  “And what’s that?” said the man.

  Fergus was about to tell him when he remembered the promise he’d made to his mother, and he muttered something vague and scurried away.

  He decided to make a fishing line from the lace of his shoe and try to catch something. He stopped a plump-looking lady and asked her where he might find a good fishing spot.

  “You needn’t bother,” the lady said. “All you’ll catch from shore are poisonous puffer fish.”

  Fergus tried anyway, using a bit of stale bread for bait. He fished all day, but caught nothing—no
t even a poisonous puffer fish. Desperate, his stomach in terrible pain, he asked a man walking along the beach if someone might have a boat he could borrow.

  “Then I could go a bit farther out to sea,” said Fergus, “where perhaps the fish are more plentiful.”

  “You’ll never make it,” the man said. “The current will dash you to bits on the rocks!”

  “Not me,” Fergus said.

  The man looked at him skeptically, about to turn his back. Fergus really didn’t want to break his promise, but it was beginning to look like he’d starve to death unless he told someone about his talent. So he said, “I can control the current.”

  “Ha!” the man replied. “I’ve heard some whoppers in my time, but that tops them all.”

  “If I can prove it, will you give me something to eat?”

  “Sure,” the man said, amused. “I’ll throw you a banquet!”

  So the man and Fergus went down to the shoreline, where the tide was going out for the day. Fergus huffed and grunted and gritted his teeth, and with a great deal of effort he was able to bring the tide back in, the water rising from their ankles up to their knees in just a few minutes. The man was astounded, and very excited by what he’d seen. He brought Fergus back to his house and threw him a lavish banquet, just as he’d promised. He invited all his neighbors, and while Fergus stuffed himself, his host told the townspeople how Fergus had brought in the tide.

  They were very excited. Strangely excited. Almost too excited.

  They began to crowd around him.

  “Show us your tide-pulling trick!” a woman shouted at him.

  “The boy needs his strength,” the host said. “Let him eat first!”

  When Fergus couldn’t force himself to take another bite, he looked up from his plate and around the room. Stacked in every corner were crates and boxes, each filled to the top with different things: bottles of wine in one box, dried spices in another, rolls of fabric in another. To one side of Fergus’s chair was a crate spilling over with dozens and dozens of hammers.