Fiona was trapped.
No matter how long she considered her situation or from what angle, it
was obvious she was doomed. No escape,
and no way to effectively strike back.
Still she stubbornly considered her situation for a while longer with
occasional grumbles of frustration until eventually she sighed and took the
only reasonable action left; she reached forward and laid her own king on its
side. “I resign…again,” she mumbled.
Moyre smirked from her seat on the other side of the table
across the chessboard. “Yeh could’ve
done that a couple’ah moves ago, y’know,” she said.
Fiona, in human form as it was late afternoon,
shrugged. “Call me obstinate,” she said.
“That’s the ogre in yeh,” Moyre said with a touch of
smugness.
“Ogres hardly have a monopoly on obstinacy,” Fiona noted.
“No, but we’ve perfected it.”
Fiona smiled wryly.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Moyre
said. “Sometimes, when you’re up against
it, a little stubbornness can be a good thing.
It might get yeh through some tough situations where others would just
chuck it. And when you’re an ogre, a
lotta times yeh find yourself in tough situations.”
“Hmmm,” Fiona muttered as she dejectedly rested her cheeks
on her hands and her elbows on the table as she studied the board before her. She was wearing one of Moyre’s dresses, given
to her when she was in ogress form, taken in a bit (she was surprised she’d
have to do that with any dress), and
which had shrunk along with her when she turned human.
“You don’t play right,” Fiona said.
Moyre’s brow furrowed.
“Are yeh accusing me’ah cheating?”
“Oh, no, no, not that!” Fiona said. “But…from all that I read,
all the accepted strategies…neither you nor Groyl play the way they say
to. You’re just so…unconventional. It just
throws off expectations. But somehow you
succeed.”
Moyre smiled. “Now
you’re touching upon what it means t’be an ogre.”
Fiona returned the smile as she continued studying the
board, trying to determine where she went wrong. Funny, she would have thought that chess
would be so beyond the abilities of ‘stupid’ ogres, and that actually losing to one would be so embarrassing. Well, at first it was embarrassing, and humbling.
But the more time she spent with these two – and she had been here a week
now – the more she realized that her assessment may have been a bit rash, and
maybe even…ignorant. Well, at least in
regards to these two. Perhaps they were exceptional.
Moyre nodded to the corner of the board where Fiona’s king
lay. “About three moves ago yeh
should’ah sacrificed your knight to protect your castle,” the ogress advised.
Fiona frowned.
“Enough knights have been sacrificed for me and my castles,” she
said. Suddenly depressed, her eyes
wandered to the shelf where the bottles of ale sat. “Um, do you mind if I—”
“Yeah, I do,” Moyre snapped.
Fiona’s eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Yeh don’t wanna get dependent on that stuff,” Moyre said.
“I’m not getting dependent,” Fiona objected. “It just makes me feel better when…um…”
“When you’re feeling sorry for yourself?”
Fiona blushed. “I
wouldn’t put it that way,” she
pouted.
“I would,” Moyre
said. “But yeh know what? Get too used to turning to drink to drown
your problems and the next day when yeh wake up yeh find your old problems are
still there waiting for yeh, and now you’ve got a new one.”
Fiona realized that she must have been looking chastised,
for Moyre’s expression softened; Moyre let out a breath, and then said, “Trust
me. I
know. After we lost the child,
I…well, I went through a tough patch. I
thought the ale would help. T’make a
long story short, it didn’t.”
Fiona was surprised to see Moyre blush herself. She reached over and laid a dainty human hand
atop Moyre’s large, rough, green one.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did anything help?”
Just then Groyl came clomping into the room from a recent,
raggedly cut doorway. In one hand he
held a nearly empty wooden bucket of daubing, and there were a few grayish
patches of dried daubing on his clothes and one on his cheek. He smiled grandly at the two females.
Moyre smiled at Fiona and, jerking her head toward Groyl,
said, “That did.” Fiona chuckled.
Groyl’s smile faltered.
“I did what?” he asked.
“Nothing, dearie,” Moyre said. “Now, why were yeh grinning like the cat that
ate the swamp rat?”
Groyl’s smile returned.
“Because the work is finished,” he answered. Then turning to Fiona and giving an awkward
mock bow, he said, “The princess suite is ready for inspection, Your Highness.”
Fiona blushed.
“Really, I don’t know what to say.
Again, I wish you two didn’t go to such trouble—”
“Oh, shut up and get your puny pink bottom in there and
tell the man what yeh think,” Moyre said.
Her tone was testy, but when Fiona glanced at her she saw that puckish
glint in her eyes again.
Fiona couldn’t help but smile. Then she sighed resignedly, stood up and
walked over to Groyl, who was still holding his bow. “Thank you, kind sir,” she said meekly, and
curtseyed. As he straightened back up she turned toward the doorway and looked into the room.
The room was about the size of Moyre and Groyl’s bedroom,
and looked very nearly the same, right down to the generally oval, glassless
window. It had no furniture yet, and
the only items in it were some crude but effective construction tools and a
couple of empty, daubing-lined buckets set in one corner. The room was framed
by uneven, recently cut branches that the ogres had brought in from around the
forest and hammered onto their own home.
They had then put up a thatched roof and finished the walls with clay
and sandstone daubing. All the materials
were fresh – remarkably, they had only taken three days to build it – and even
in her human form Fiona could smell all the freshness, particularly of the
daubing.
“It’ll need t’air out a day or so,” Groyl said, as if
reading her mind. “So you’ll need t’bed
out here one more night.” He nodded
toward a moss-stuffed mattress that lay against one wall. “Hope yeh don’t mind.”
“Mind?
Not at all!” she said, turning to face Groyl. “As I said when I insisted that you two move
back into your own bedroom, I’m fine out here.
You’ve been so much more than kind, just taking me in. And to go to all the trouble to add an entire
room—”
“Hey, you helped,” he said.
“A little,” Fiona humphed.
Although the ogres had done the heavy work, Fiona had done what she
could once her side had healed enough to allow her sufficient mobility. It had mostly been very light finishing work
that didn’t require much skill, or cleaning up, or performing menial household
chores while the ogres did construction.
“But you did all the hard work,” she said. “And to alter your home for a stranger –
maybe even risking danger to yourselves—”
“Ha!” Groyl chortled.
“Princess, like I said b’fore, just being
an ogre is to live in danger. And also
like I said, we don’t abandon fellow ogres in
danger.”
“But…I’m not a real ogre,” Fiona said. And, oddly enough, she almost felt ashamed to
say it.
“Tosh!
You’re real enough for us,” Moyre chimed in from her seat. “And not just at night, either. I still say there’s plenty’ah green
underneath that squishy pink shell.”
“If you say so, Moyre,” Fiona said, smiling
indulgently. “But thank you so
much!” She moved to Groyl, leaned up on
her toes and kissed him on his partially-shaven cheek. “Thank you.”
“Ah, t’wernth a problem, Princess,” he said, turning a
slightly darker shade of green. “Gave an excuse for good exercise. And I’ve always wanted t’build a guestroom.”
“Right, for your copious amount of guests,” Fiona laughed.
“Hey, y’never know!” he said, and
laughed as well.
Then Fiona turned and rushed over to Moyre. “And thank you, too!” she said, enveloping
the ogress’s form as best she could in a hug.
“Agh!
Stop that!” Moyre objected, fighting the embrace – if only half-heartedly. “If yeh really
wanna thank me, get over to that cauldron and stir that stew, I think I smell
it starting to burn.”
“Oh, right,” Fiona said, moving over to the fireplace and
picking up a large spoon. “Heaven forbid
we ruin it.”
“Hey, you make fun of it now, now that y’know what’s in it,” Moyre said. “But yeh slurped it up fast enough before then.”
“I still eat it,” Fiona said. Although, she had to admit, when Moyre had
told her the ingredients after two days of such cuisine – all the time trying
to keep from smiling at Fiona’s reactions – the princess had felt a bit of revulsion. But it was more reactionary than
heartfelt. At least Moyre had assured
her that the stories Fiona had grown up with about ogres eating humans were
just myths. “Although we don’t go out of
our way to debunk ‘em,” Moyre had added with a wink. “It helps keep the muggles away.”
Following the culinary disclosure, although Fiona didn’t
at first eat with as much enthusiasm as before, she still ate. She tried to tell herself that it was a
matter of being polite, but darn it, as much as her mind told her that she
should be properly disgusted, the food still
tasted good to her. And, as the princess
now glanced at the window as she stirred the pot, and noted the lengthening
shadows, she reflected on how the last couple of evenings Moyre – despite her
goading – had timed their meals to occur after sundown, as if being an ogre
gave Fiona leave to enjoy things like the stew that she might be embarrassed to
admit to as a human. Such a subtle,
thoughtful nuance – not that Moyre would admit to it if Fiona directly asked
her. These two –
‘monsters’ – continued to surprise and fascinate her with the unexpected depths
and complexities of their characters.
A short while later, Fiona was helping with the last of
the meal preparation, sparing more frequent and longer glances at the window as
the sunlight progressively faded. All
discernable rays were gone and the light remaining was from the warm glow that
presaged sunset when Moyre, who had taken over stirring the pot, said, “Fiona,
the stew’s nearly done, why don’t yeh set the table now?”
“Huh?” Fiona responded, somewhat startled as her head
swung around to face Moyre. “Oh, um,
just a moment… I just have to… I…”
Moyre glanced over at the window herself, and then back to
Fiona. Stone-faced, she nodded.
“I’ll be right back,” Fiona blurted, and then rushed out
the door and onto the unevenly-planked front porch. There she paused and took hold of one of the thick
tree roots that were acting as a support column as she stared in the distance
at the horizon, where the sun had just descended below the tree line.
She didn’t know why, but she found she felt embarrassed at
being in the presence of others when the transformation took her – even beings
such as these who knew her secret – as if it were one of those personal private
moments that decorum dictated occur alone.
She almost laughed at the thought of linking decorum with ogredom, but
whatever laugh was forming was quickly cut off as the glowing mist appeared and
engulfed her, and she felt the pain of her body expanding and re-arranging yet
again. She shut her eyes tight and
waited. As she felt her ears reshape and
lengthen, the ambient sounds of the swamp around her – the insect chirps, the
bird songs and cawing, the splashing of fish, the rustle of the trees in the
breeze – grew louder and crisper. She
even heard the planks below her feet creak slightly in protest as her weight
increased. And her wider nostrils and
more sensitive olfactory sense picked up on so many of the smells and
fragrances of life, from both plants and animals.
Fiona opened her eyes.
One quick glance down the front of her body confirmed that she had
resumed her familiar ogress shape. She
signed resignedly, but then looked back up at the sky just above the tree line
where the sun had just descended. It was
a beautiful sight, with all its colors and hues, even when viewed as a human. But seeing it with the
sharper vision of an ogre made it appear even more beautiful. And those ambient sounds from around the
swamp, enhanced by her ogre hearing, made the entire clearing – the entire swamp
– the entire world
seem more alive somehow. It was as if she were tuned in to one great
concerto of life sights, sounds and smells, one that was connected to her and to
which she felt connected. She stood
there, transfixed by it all, staring at the glorious colors from the sunset’s
wake, when she heard Groyl’s voice behind her say, “Quite a view from out
here.”
Fiona gasped and turned to face him.
“Whoa, sorry!” he said, raising his arms palms
forward. “Didn’t mean
to startle yeh.”
“Oh! Oh…that’s
okay,” Fiona said, relieved. Then she
blushed. “I was just… well, caught up in
all that…” she waived one arm toward the swamp and sunset panorama before them.
Groyl smiled and nodded.
“I know what y’mean,” he said.
“Times like this…well, it’s one of the reasons we ogres prefer t’live in
swamps and forests. Well, that and
keeping ‘way from humans.” Then his
smile faded and his tone became a bit sterner.
“Speaking of which,” he said, “y’need t’be a wee bit more aware of
things going on all around yeh. I coulda’ been anybody sneaking up behind. And when you’re…well, like this…” he gestured
at her corpulent green form, “It’d be easy for somebody t’mistake yeh for…um…”
A sad little smile played on her lips. “A real
ogre?” she suggested.
Groyl’s smile resumed.
“Again, you’re real enough for us, lass,” he said, reaching over and
patting her shoulder reassuredly. “Now,
come back in and eat. If yeh let it get
cold, it gets less slimey.”
Fiona couldn’t help but laugh, which Groyl returned
heartily as he opened the door for her.
She began to go back inside, but then paused. “Why couldn’t I smell you?” she asked. “Your odor is…well…”
“Distinctive?” he suggestive, and
winked.
She chuckled. “For
lack of a better word,” she said.
“Standing here, I was a bit downwind of yeh,” he
explained.
“Oh!” she said. “I
didn’t notice.”
“One’ah the things you’ll need t’learn,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll teach yeh.”
“But you’ve done so much already!” she protested. “Besides, it would all go to waste once this spell breaks.”
“Yeh planning on it breaking any time soon?” he asked.
“Well…um…” Fiona sighed.
“It doesn’t appear so.”
“You have any pressing engagements? Courts to hold? Balls to attend?”
She laughed. “Not
presently,” she said.
“Good! We’re not too
busy either.” He gestured to the open
doorway and gave another mock bow.
“M’lady.”
Fiona laughed again as she crossed the threshold back into
the welcoming odor of her new home.