The Charming Tree

A common or garden fantasy piece. Visit with Ods Fobwotj as he battles to save his marriage, catch fish and solve the mystery of the howling fiend. Damon Wolfe, author of THUNDRHED!

                                   The Charming Tree

1. Ods’ Home Sod.

Near by the river Bogle lies the city of Bogleside, a picturesque little ant heap of roads and cottages sprawled just a pleasant stroll from its watery namesake. It is the colourful, friendly kind of place you might find in a storybook, abounding with quaint buildings, delightful carriages and likeable people; a vibrant orchard of happiness basking in glorious sunshine. In every aspect it tells a tale of prosperity and domestic content, enjoying blue skies, good position and lush pastures for the tame, lazy herbivores ambling on the slopes of the valley.

As do the better cities of its kind, Bogleside has its charms and its quirks, both of which are represented in the naming of its streets. The citizens are in the habit of choosing names which characterise their streets, such as The Kilnway, which boasts more potter’s shops than any other. Two. This practice one imagines to be a modest charm. Then there are the likes of Stringline Road. A stringline is just that, a string stretched between two points by a mason to give him a very straight line, yet Stringline Road is as bent as a two-penny thief, a state of affairs which contradicts the overall philosophy of a stringline, and therefore may be taken as a modest quirk.

In a house set upon Stringline Road lived Ods Fobwotj. He was forty-something years old, nearer to fifty than he’d readily concede, and had lived in that house for more than twenty years. Filly Fobwotj, his wife, had lived there about four years less than that, before taking sole possession of their dry goods store and moving into the rooms above it, leaving Ods with the house. He would not have it that they were divorced, legally or otherwise. In his thoughts his wife and he had merely undertaken a shift in relative positions, and Ods still considered himself the admiral of his familial fleet. He held to the belief that Filly and he had only temporarily separated. Filly, though, knew that the ship had sailed while he’d been splashing about, oblivious to the turning tide, but then she also knew that he could be blindly stubborn about some things. She knew with iron certainty that he could be stubborn about fish ponds, for example, as that very issue had been a pivotal factor in their nautical disparity.

It had started innocently enough. Doesn’t it always? At first he’d built a fish pond because it was an attractive feature that could be made small enough to be manageable in the narrow context of their back yard, though Filly would have preferred a summerhouse. She had previously seen a belvedere, which is a summerhouse on an eminence, on the lawn of a large estate on Silk Drive and had been pleasantly affected by it. Now, it may be that a summerhouse of usual dimensions, especially a belvedere, would not do within such close margins, and it is surely true that a small fish pond was the more practicable choice in the circumstances, but the memory of the summerhouse on an eminence prompted Filly to smile from time to time, more so than the thought of a fish pond. Ods failed to notice.

So Ods built his first fish pond. He dug a hole, lined it with clay, walled it with rocks and topped it with paving bricks. He painted the walls and floor with a thin, bituminous resin and allowed it to dry thoroughly. He spread a layer of mulch and pebbles across the bottom of the pond and filled it from the brook behind the house. He netted tadpoles and aquatic insects and dug up water plants and put the lot in the pond. When those things were settled, he caught twenty or thirty baby fish half the length of his finger and released them in the pond. They did quite well.

Now and then Ods would notice a tiny pair of nostrils breaking the surface of the water in his pond, for on rainy days turtles had wandered up from the brook to holiday in the fish pond, and Ods thought this was delightful. He soon changed his mind. Because of their shells and motionless habits, the baby fish mistook the turtles for stones and hid beneath them, and the turtles graciously made breakfast, lunch and dinner of the little fish. Soon there were no fish and Ods was peeved. He captured the turtles and returned them to the brook, resisting the temptation to blame them for being themselves.

Ods restocked the pond with fingerlings and for a few weeks all was well, but a single rainy weekend invited the turtles to restock the pond with themselves. They may have been the same turtles gratefully dining at Ods’ unwitting expense, or they may have been different turtles exploring the world beyond the brook, for who knows what adventurous little hearts turtles may have? Whatever the case, they successfully digested all the fish before being discovered and returned to the brook, this time with chagrin, which is more acute than peevishness. It was too Late in the season to restock the pond again, for the juvenile fish had migrated to the lakes or fallen to predators so that they were few and far between in the brook. Besides, it had become apparent that the pond would have to be turtle-proof, and maybe just a hair wider. In disgust Ods emptied the water from the pond and filled it with dirt, thwarted for the moment. Filly had nothing to say.

The next year he tore up the old pond and built a new one, though Filly would have preferred a summerhouse or even a flower bed in its place. She simply wasn’t thrilled with fish ponds. He did make her a garden bed, but it was a long, skinny arrangement running along the fence and, honestly, a sad, second-rate effort. It was about then that Filly started becoming grumpy any time they talked of fish ponds or flower beds, and Ods started being somewhat defensive, and soon they didn’t talk of either. Some time after that, they weren’t talking of anything as much as they had.

But Ods had some success with his new pond. It was half again as big as the first and had a good, high brick border to keep out turtles. He laid the bottom of it with mulch made of gravel and herbivore dung and dead leaves, making sure the leaves were dry and brown, for he’d learned that these were good for the plants and little animals that lived in water. He filled the pond with water and stocked it with plants and fish, and thought that a good day’s work. But the leaves weren’t as dry and old as they should have been, and still carried enough sap to turn the water the dark colour of strong tea overnight, presenting Ods with a pondful of pale, floating little fish bellies in the morning. He’d poisoned the poor little blighters. Chagrin was no longer adequate. He progressed to anger, and angrily emptied the leaves and tainted water from the pond. He filled it anew and restocked it with fish, yet again.

They did quite well for a while. For a few months he fed his fish and watched them slowly grow. They were difficult to spy due to their inclination to keep to the shadows and hide any time he approached, but Ods was patient and often caught sight of some when he fed them. But after that few months, his pond was so richly grown with green slime that he couldn’t see the bottom of the thing, let alone any fish, so Ods built a little fish trap. It was a good tap and it worked, and Ods used it once a week, just to reassure himself that he still had living fish. At first he trapped many, but he found that he was catching less and less fish every week till there were none at all in evidence. For eight days in a row he caught none. What had happened to his fish? Had they taken ill and died? Had they been eaten? Perhaps the green slime had smothered them. He tried the trap one last time, but to no worthy end. There was not a single fish to be seen.

Dismayed but relentless, he punched a large hole in the bottom of the pond one afternoon to drain it, so that he might have a good look inside and learn what had killed his fish. The following afternoon Ods examined his pond expecting to find some lurking menace in lieu of fish. But there were many fish! Damn! Dead fish. There were thirty-odd of the little blighters lying on the pond floor, waterless and baked by the midday sun. They hadn’t vanished from the pond at all; they’d simply grown wise to the trap and avoided it, lurking around the rocks under a quilt of green slime. The facts of the matter hit Ods like a slap in the mouth. Fish were too stupid to recognise and dodge a trap. Weren’t they? Needless to say, it was too late in the year to restock the pond. He emptied it out, tore it up and started again.

His third pond was the sum of careful, thorough thought and skilful work. It had the look of a rock pool with a gravel bottom and artfully positioned stones and water plants that created the feel of an aquatic garden. In the heat of his constructive fervour, a lightning bolt of inspiration struck upon a vision of a windmill, revealing it as a sacred artefact in the hidden grotto of Ods’ pond-building fantasies. And Lo, Ods did build the hallowed windmill, and it was pretty damned good. It pumped up water from a screened outlet in the pond then down a short waterfall broken by shallow rock basins filled with gravel, which cleansed the water of detritus so beautifully that one must marvel at the sublime efficacy of it. It was skilfully made and useful, yet from Filly it brought biting remarks about belvederes and flowers, through no fault of its own. These remarks Ods endured with calm, husbandly fortitude. He was determined to triumph in all spheres of fish keeping, and was sadly unwilling to admit that he’d dismissed his wife’s interests in favour of his run-amok hobby. He should have realised that his misplaced priorities would one day bite him in the backside, but he didn’t see it coming.

The pond was an unbridled success. The windmill pumped water with dignity and style and the gravel busily scrubbed it clean before returning it to the pond, every drop bright and clear. The plants grew in good health and made a nice little garden for the fish, and the fish thrived or throve, as you please, and all was right in the world of fish keeping. Of course, Filly avoided Ods and looked unhappy by then, but he knew she’d move past it.

She didn’t. On the seventeenth birthday of their youngest, Wajfol, he got himself an apprenticeship with Danfla Limq, which was an excellent position for Wajfol, as Danfla was a very good carpenter. Months later Wajfol moved into lodgings of his own, leaving his parents in their house with no buffer between them. Soon after he’d gone, Filly insisted they sit down and have a serious talk, through which she was earnest and patient and frustrated, while Ods was evasive and fairly quiet. It proved fruitless. The next day Filly moved out, with a few tears and fewer words, just enough to tell Ods that she was taking the business and living quarters for herself, and that if he didn’t like it he could try his luck with the magistrate. Or since he was so fond of his damned fish ponds he could build them for a living. Ods protested strongly and tried to stop her, but he was too late. Filly was gone by nightfall and finished with him.

2. Ods’ Plots.

Perversely enough, Ods did start building fish ponds for a living when Filly left, not in spite but of necessity, something had to put food on his table. For more than a year after Filly moved away it was the fish pond business that kept the wolf from the door. By that stage he was a dab hand at making them, and not just fish ponds either. He started off making homes for fish by himself, then hired a labourer, then two more, and built any number of ponds and children's wading pools. When he built his first tiled bath for a merchant he hired two more men, firstly on a casual basis, then full time, for word had got around and Ods was a busy man. He built ponds and pools and baths and fountains and one small ornamental lake, at which point his reputation was of such a calibre that the city hired him to design and construct sewers and cisterns. By the start of work on the first civic project, Ods promoted his most experienced hand to construction supervisor, and two others to the position of foreman to run the twenty-strong labour crew provided by the city council. He checked the site twice a day, doing what was necessary, but went back to building ponds by himself when he could, because he enjoyed it more. His windmill water filters won favour all over the city, each one lovingly crafted. Having thus attained success in his new business, Ods came to another major junction in life, and this too began innocently; quite by accident in fact.

If one were to look over Ods’ back fence, away from the house, one would see a brook maybe a hundred yards away. The tract of land between the fence and the brook was dotted with bushes and flowers and turtlenut trees, which are as common as shoes around Bogleside city. Ods did just that: he looked over his back fence one day while fiddle-farting around with his fish pond, and by doing this he spotted a daffon, which is not unusual since daffons are as common as toes around Bogleside. A daffon is like a longish, stubby-tailed squirrel with strong, sharp claws and chisel teeth. They live in trees and embrace a vegetarian diet of fair variety. They are meek of demeanour, flighty if startled, and couldn’t fight their way out of a fog.

The daffon spotted by Ods that day held his attention by dispensing with a smarl, a fast quadrupedal carnivore with strong teeth and jaws and bristly fur. These are domesticated and kept as pets by Boglesiders, and are the bane of daffons all around the city. When a smarl chases a daffon, the daffon scoots up a tree and hides until the smarl grows bored and leaves in search of something else to occupy its limited intellect. Sometimes that can take a while, which can be a problem if the daffon happens to be in the wrong tree and can’t bolt into its hollow. The specific problem in this situation is manifested in the form of a kreech, a flying thing with out-sized, piercing claws, a long, skinny tail, leathery skin and a sharp, curved beak. Kreeches are the survivors of an unfathomably distant primordial era, but while they are primitive, they are not stupid; they’ve learned a thing or two since the dawn of time. Any kreech worth its salt will take immediate interest in a smarl running around a tree and coughing out the distinctive storm of hacking base notes that is its hunting call. With fair fortune and capable management, the kreech stands a modest but real chance of snatching up a daffon marooned on a branch of the wrong tree. They are abetted in this by the fact that daffons are not as bright as Kreeches. When hunted they run panicked for the nearest tree without a thought for tactical alternatives, what paltry wits they own scattered by fright.

Ods had looked up from his pond work at the sound of a smarl coughing as it chased a daffon towards the grove of turtlenut trees by the brook. The daffon wasn’t going to make it to a decent tree in time, so it sprang into the branches of a small sapling that wasn’t big enough for its needs. The smarl saw the daffon’s mistake and charged at the sapling again and again, jolting the narrow trunk with its forepaws, its coughing punctuated by exited yaps, while its quarry voiced at the top of its lungs the piping gibber of a terrified daffon. Two and three times the little animal was almost shaken loose from the slender upper branches as they whipped about under impact.

At the height of this drama, Ods saw something that few ever will. The dominant male of the daffon troop scaled briskly down the trunk of his tree and ran away from it, instantly taking the eye of the smarl. The daffon raced for a tangled bush and the smarl raced for the daffon. The nature of the bush involved is important. It was a clump of wild thorn hedge, which is dense and woody and thick with thorns about as long as your nose, but much sharper. Into that clump of thorn hedge the local daffons had chewed an escape tunnel. They’re not completely stupid. The rest you can guess. The daffon raced into the tunnel just in front of the smarl. The smarl’s head raced into the tunnel, but not its body, which was too big. It came to a rude halt at the behest of numberless stems bearing inch-long thorns. It would seem that the smarl had not learned to recognise wild thorn hedge prior to that occasion. Its yelps were piercing. Ods shook his head in wonder as he watched the howling smarl sprint for home. He’d never heard of such courage in a daffon.

Any time he was in the back yard after that, Ods made a point of looking over the fence to see what was happening with the daffons, and his vigilance paid.

Kreeches are in the habit of watching for young daffons from on high, for young daffons, like young anythings, are rendered vulnerable by inexperience. Such a young daffon, on one of its first forays from the nest, was out in the open field when an adult set up a piping warble to warn of a patrolling kreech. The troop bolted for the trees, the young one coming last, for it hadn’t got the hang of orchestrating its legs at speed and its running style included a lot of tumbling. It neared its home tree, but anyone familiar with Kreeches could have seen it wasn’t near enough. There were just seconds left to its life, but in those seconds the same male that had sorted out the smarl, recognisable by a white flash on his left ear, charged the fray. As the kreech swooped down on its hapless prey, the charging daffon threw strategy out with the table scraps and launched his full weight at the breast of the flying menace, knocking it to ground. It was then the kreech’s turn to do some tumbling, while the daffon landed on his feet, being more accustomed to pedestrian travel.

Kreeches are not nearly as good on the ground as they are in the air. They have only their beaks to fight with since their claws are needed to support them. The kreech snapped at the daffon and the daffon raked the kreech’s face with a front paw, leaving a scratch. It was outrageous. The kreech squalled its most strident cry and turned away into the wobbling run, hopping and flapping that were needed to get it airborne. It beat away over the trees in shock, its confidence in the role of small, furry animals thoroughly shaken.

Ods was stunned. No one would believe this if he told of it. It was the kind of thing that only happened in fairytales for youngsters. Nor was that the end of it. There was one more such event, the last of the three that fitted together to form a new idea in his mind.

Among the house pets of Bogleside is another quadrupedal carnivore, the youl. A youl rolls off the youl production line fitted with sharp claws and fangs and a long, swishing tail, and hunting instincts come factory-standard. It is a hopeless runner, a competent climber and a savage killer, added to which, its tremendous talent for stalking makes it an ace among predators. While not much bigger than a daffon, an adult youl is capable of killing one, though the kill must be made with care, for daffons have their claws and chisel teeth and even a daffon will fight when cornered. A daffon is a big handful for a youl, but manageable if the attack is made with surprise, determination and precision. Two daffons, however, are more than a youl can juggle without fumbling.

A quality particular to the turtlenut tree is that it produces fruit of different colours, a botanical artist’s palette that varies from tree to tree. The home tree of the daffon troop leader was special because it occasionally sprouted blue fruit, which is quite rare, and that tree held Ods’ eye more than the others.

While looking at that tree Ods noticed the troop leader sneaking along a branch, obviously focused on stealth. Ods saw the daffon’s mate busily grooming herself below, leading Ods to surmise that the male was about to pounce on the female, as daffons sometimes do when feeling playful. The daffon stopped at a certain point on the branch, readied himself, and silently dropped with his feet outspread for the surprise landing. But he didn’t land on the female; he landed on a hidden youl that was stalking her and almost within reach. The high screech of the startled youl rose up from the grass, blended with the oddly deep tooting sound of an angry daffon and the high piping of a frightened daffon. Ods watched in great suspense as the male and the youl thrashed and rolled in a furious blur of legs and claws and teeth. The female froze for a moment but recovered her wits with commendable haste. She leapt at the madly twisting youl and bit some part of its anatomy with her big, sharp incisors, and the youl sprang clear to bound away in its hopeless but energetic gait, having decided in a blink to cut its loses and make straight for the under-storey at the edge of the field. Ods looked back at the tree to see the female preening the male, apparently tending his wounds. Ods was stumped. He couldn’t find words to fit these events

He thought about it for days. Here was the bravest little daffon he’d ever heard of, whose tale deserved to be told, but no one would ever believe it. He corrected himself. Children would believe it, and that would be fitting because it was true. Here was a custom made fairytale served up on a plate, and it was worth telling. He wanted to tell this tale to people who would value it, and that was the new idea that was forged in his mind.

In the quiet hours of the night Ods began scribbling an outline of the story, and that became his hobby since fish ponds had become his work. He made rough sketches to accompany the tale, and first drafts and second drafts, and the upshot of all this was a children’s picture book about the adventures of a brave little daffon, whom he named Tooter.

At the beginning of the story, Tooter had spent weeks secretly gnawing a new nest hollow with his strong little teeth as a surprise for his mate, who was named Wisp. He was very industrious. But when he went to find Wisp and show her their new home, he found her being stalked by a youl, which he pounced upon and fought off with Wisp’s help.

The next day he presented her with their new nest hollow, lined with clean, dry grass, only to find that a scruffy vagrant daffon had moved into it overnight. Tooter was angry. He told the bum to move out or else. The bum moved out. Wisp felt sorry for him and asked Tooter to help find him somewhere to live. Tooter wasn’t happy.

‘But he smells! Our new nest smells from him sleeping in it! Now we’ll have to clean it out and line it with fresh grass!’ Wisp asked him to help the bum anyway and Tooter agreed, grumpily. Tooter turned to the vagrant.

‘But you get down to the stream and have a bath first! Then meet me by the old turtlenut tree. And make sure you’re clean!’ The bum nodded emphatically as he started towards the brook, a bit frightened.

Tooter went to see Bolter and Olook, who were moving into Tooter and Wisp’s old nesting hollow at Tooter’s invitation. He asked them if anyone was planning to move into their old nest. Why no, said they, it’s vacant. He told them about the vagrant. Could he have their old place? Yes he could. The bum approached, freshly washed, dripping.

‘What’s your name?’ Asked Tooter.

‘I’m called Gibber.’ Said Gibber.

‘This is Olook and Bolter. You can have their old place as long as you do a fair share of the work. What can you do?’

‘I can grow things.’ Said Gibber.

‘Good. I’ll take you to meet Madly; he’s in charge of gardening.’ So Tooter and Gibber went away to find Madly and make arrangements.

When Tooter got back to his new nest, Wisp had emptied out the smelly grass and was scrubbing the inside of the hollow with crushed glin leaves, which are good for cleaning things. Tooter carried away the smelly grass, had a wash to get rid of the smell, and fetched a batch of clean grass. It was almost dark by the time they were done. Wisp told Tooter it was a good hollow and she was very happy, but Tooter was still a bit grumpy.

The next morning, even before everyone was wide awake, Tooter had to save Bouncer, one of his children, from a plunging kreech by knocking it out of the sky as it was about to strike. His day improved after that. Gibber wasn’t too keen on bathing at first, but Madly laid down the law and told him he could either wash every day or move out and find somewhere else to live.

‘Gardnin’s dirty work and I won’t work with a smelly daffon, so you keep clean.’ Insisted Madly. Gibber wasn’t thrilled, but he liked his new home so he agreed to have a bath every day after working.

Things were quiet for a few days then, till Flappy was chased up a skinny sapling by a rampaging smarl. Tooter saw the wicked thing off by tricking it into charging a thorn hedge.

A week after the smarl incident all was normal again. Olook and Bolter were pleased with their new nest, which was bigger than the old one, and Gibber, who proved himself a good gardener, was quite enamoured with his little place.

Tooter forgot about the smelly grass. He and Wisp settled into their new home, and he really was pleased that Wisp was happy with it. He and Wisp snuggle up in their nice new home, final curtain.

That, in a nutshell, was the storyline of the book Ods named ‘Tooter Turtlenut’. He took considerable pains to rewrite and polish his growing book, and to illustrate it, an endeavour that kept him busy for a period of months. He ended up with nine pictures in vibrant watercolours and over two hundred peripheral sketches and paintings. Of the nine pictures he chose to include in his book, the one of Tooter and Wisp snuggled up in their cosy new nest at the end of the story was particularly good. It was an outstanding picture book when it was finished.

He took the completed work to Mr. Dai Marx, the best printer in Bogleside city. The quality of Dai’s printing was beyond criticism, and that made him a busy man, but the skill that made him a quietly wealthy man was his ability to produce excellent coloured prints, a much sought-after talent. From his savings Ods paid Dai a disturbing amount of money to print and bind the first run of his book.

For the front and back covers Dai recommended a hardy material of wood fibre blended with cloth, which stood up to the rough handling of tots better than anything else. The entire front cover was printed with a bordered, colour picture of Tooter, with the title across the top and Ods’ pen name, Mr. Fob, across the bottom. A smaller, oval picture of Tooter’s turtlenut tree was centred on the back. The text was printed in a large type, set widely spaced for young readers, on thick, tough paper and interspersed with seven, glossy, full-page colour pictures that were magnificent to see and touch. Despite the added expense, Dai convinced Ods with a minimum of coaxing to include some black and white pictures, five of his best line drawings.

The first run sold out in three weeks. Proprietors of bookshops were asking for more and market-stall holders wanted a more affordable edition. On Dai’s advice, Ods paid for a limited run of the top quality edition and a much bigger run of a second grade edition for the markets.

Between, them the booksellers and stallholders absorbed the two lots as soon as they became available, and began running low on stock after a month. Dai confided to Ods that he’d never seen such a frenzy, that they’d best make the third run a big one. Tooter Turtlenut was one of those rare sales phenomena that unpredictably flash through the market like wildfire, partly thanks to the master of a foreign trading ship who stopped by to order ten gross, having quickly seen which way the wind blew. That was a possibility Ods and Dai had overlooked. The language of Bogleside was Bomehan, and Bomehan was spoken and read by two thirds of civilisation.

Dai weighed cost against profit and bought a second press, specifically for Tooter Turtlenut. He hired a few extra people and started working a half-shift in the evenings. In the weeks and months that followed, while Dai worked the hardest he ever had, Ods went rummaging through his notes and sketches and began writing new material.

Tooter Goes Boating went to the presses half a year after the release of Tooter Turtlenut. It went out the door so fast that Dai had a new manufactory built in desperate haste. When he took over the new premises he did so with more than double his original staff and two new presses, built to order.

Tooter Flies Home was next to the presses, and Ods sold his aquatic engineering business to his construction supervisor through a relatively painless instalment schedule. Writing had become his profession so fish ponds once again fell wholly into the ‘hobby’ category, and he occasionally undertook small, domestic projects for householders. He bought two good horses and ordered a custom-made caravan for fishing trips.

Dai had more staff than ever, working two full shifts through the week and half a day on weekends. That was all well and good until the release of the hugely popular Tooter And The Wizard’s Book, which was closely followed by Wisp’s Home-Making Book For Young Ladies, co-written by Ods and Mavs Daub, chairwoman of the Bogleside Crafts Society.

It was the release of the Wizard’s Book that saw the series really take off overseas. Dai moved his family out of their large, comfortable house and into an enormous, gaudy and entirely ostentatious mansion, which had surely been decorated by a deranged person with a cruel sense of humour. In order to facilitate his possibly masochistic enjoyment of his new home, he promoted an experienced hand to the position of manager to avoid having to work every day of the week. With Ods’ enthusiastic agreement he printed a run of Wisp’s book with a special cloth cover, and boxed sets of all five volumes entitled ‘The Turtlenut Books’.

Sales figures grew altogether out of hand. Dai’s new manufactory was only just big enough. He filled it with presses and employees and still it looked like a beehive every day of the week, two full shifts per day. Ods bought houses for his children. He bought the cottages on either side of his house and the vacant lot out back, where the daffons’ turtlenut trees grew. Now he had plenty of room for rebuilding his fish pond. With all that money spent, the owner of the bank where he kept his account told him he would need a hay cart, a shovel, and two or three hours to withdraw the balance. Ods was rich.

3. Against All Ods.

The chapter of Ods’ life with which we are presently concerned took place some time after the publication of the boxed set, about three years after Tooter Turtlenut first hit the bookshops. It begins with a fishing trip to the Wishmist Lakes.

Let it first be said that Ods was a softy towards fish. He’d put so much effort into raising, breeding and caring for the little mites that he usually hadn’t the heart to kill them. No, Ods was a fisherman who used a scoop net much more often than a hook.

Over time he’d learned quite a bit about the plants, insects, amphibials etcetera that transformed a pond of sterile water into a friendly neighbourhood where fish were happy to live. In the interests of good management, he’d collected and bred these things and established them in new ponds, so that each pond was a going concern by the time the fish were introduced. He also tried new specimens of these things in test pools to see how they interacted with known species. Naturally, he put unfamiliar breeds of fish through similar examinations, when he could catch them. Hence we have not only a fishing trip in the offing, but also the motivation of Ods.

Needless to say, Ods had bits and pieces and boxes and tins and bundles of fishing gear from all across the world, for he was a feverish fisherman and a wealthy one. He had every trick ever invented for freshwater fishing and more than a few intended for salt water. He had nets with poles and floats, nets with floats and weights, cast nets, traps for big fish, small fish and crayfish, nets and traps for shrimp and insects and amphibials, jars of smelly baits, transportable waterproof chests for carrying home the spoils, glass-bottomed viewing tubes, and a row boat with a short collapsible sail mast. He also owned two fishing rods that normally remained rolled in their canvas wrappers. Whether he was a softy or not, when he was hungry and looking for a meal he would unwrap one of his rods, and his benign opinion of fish would pull its hat over its eyes and pretend to be asleep for a while.

So varied and clever were the many piscine widgets in his possession that the establishment of a small fishing museum would not have been out of the question, and anyone with a similar aquatic fetish would have found that institution absorbing. His battalion of lures, by itself, was worth a half hour of one’s time to take a really good look.

To try stuffing all of the above into pannikins on a mule would be hopeless and would attract rebukes from humane societies, and packing it all onto a cart would certainly be an improvement, but not necessarily ideal when questions of comfort are raised. Therefore Ods had his caravan. It was lighter than a wagon and larger than a carriage, about nine feet high and completely enclosed. There was a window on each side, a door at the back and a door at the front. It was painted racing green, in direct contrast to its best speed, and trimmed in maroon.

A tiny closet in one corner, fitted with a sealed portable pan, served as a toilet, though Ods preferred a tree or a spade whenever practicable. The cushioned bench seat against one wall served as a bed, and the table could be folded down to make another. Washing facilities amounted to a fixed enamelled basin with an exterior drain and a small pump fed by a discreet water barrel, and some cooking gear and a tiny twin-burner wood alcohol stove constituted the remainder of the normal creature comforts. The rest of the interior was dedicated to storage, so that every possible space was fitted with concealed shelves and drawers. Beneath the back door, outside, was bolted a strong metal rack to firmly hold the largest of Ods’ watertight chests, and at the front was a well padded driving seat watched over by a foldable awning. Lastly, the crowning glory of Ods’ little caravan, in every sense, was the boat. It was light enough to be lifted and slid onto a purpose made rack on the caravan roof, and there secured by a removable rail and two straps. Visibly, Ods’ outfit was any fisherman’s passport to paradise.

Since his fishing gear was always packed in his caravan, all Ods needed to travel was food and water. To provide himself with drinking and cooking water he filled the sixteen-gallon barrel beneath the caravan sink. Washing water could be had at the lakes. His foodstuffs included three types of tea, dried meat and vegetables, herbs and spices, and a large bag of mixed nuts and dried fruit to nibble while fishing. To add quality to this sturdy fare he loaded an armful of turtlenuts, as one would.

It must be said at some point that a turtlenut is not a nut of any kind, but fruit. At its largest it will be the size of your fist and covered with a thin, smooth, leathery rind. Inside is a solid mass of edible flesh, variable in taste and texture depending on many factors, such as the colour of the fruit, its ripeness, the quality of the soil in which it is grown, and the season. Its name derives from the shape of the seed, which is oval with five little nubs along the edge, giving it the outline of a turtle with its head and legs slightly extended, as seen from above. The seeds grow on the outside of the skin and may be picked off with a minimum of effort. Birds eat them and daffons store them in their nests and crack them with their teeth to get at the flattish kernels, while people use nutcrackers and store them in jars for the baking of biscuits and whatnot. Turtlenuts are common to the larders of more Bogleside homes than any other food because they are good and because they are free, since the trees grow all over the place.

So provisioned, Ods set his horses in harness and trundled away to the Wishmist Lakes. He left early in the morning and travelled for a day, observing this and that as he went, none of which concerns us at the moment. He stopped briefly by pools and streams he happened across, and peered into their depths in search of novelty and new livestock. At nightfall he made camp in a glade by the roadside, stopping while the light was still fair to scout around the site for ant nests and such, which is always a good idea in that locale because the insects of the Wishmists are gigantic, though they’ll normally leave you alone if you don’t impose on them. And it’s wise not to impose on them, for a goodly wasp, humming blandly to itself as it goes about its business, might mistakenly carry off a horse if its owner’s not there to wave his arms and yell. It’s best to have a saddle or cart attached to a horse in that neighbourhood so that wasps and centipedes and so-on can see that it’s a domesticated animal and not game. They’re quite decent about it usually. Still, don’t provoke them.

By the mid-morning the next day he came to a turn in the road he knew well. Instead of turning left, as he had in the past, he turned right, heading for the southern shore of Lake Turtlenut, where he’d never fished. Travelling east along the southern shore he came by some promising spots, but most were claimed by other people’s fishing huts. Passing these by, he took a curve in the road to arrive at what for all the world appeared to be a giant mushroom, at least thirty feet high and topped by a vivid orange cap marked with blue spots. He’d never seen its like. As he proceeded towards it he noticed windows, a door and a chimney pot. A house. Well, well. He wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Ods saw a short, wiry, red haired man in a paint-spattered shirt sitting at an easel some little way from the mushroom house. He stopped painting as the caravan drew near and Ods climbed down to talk with him. He saw that the painting on the easel was of the man’s house with a gigantic wasp or hornet, he wasn’t sure which, overflying it, and a gigantic preying mantis peeking out of one corner of the canvas, though neither of the insects was present at the time. That was just dandy by Ods, since mantises are occasionally indiscriminate in their choice of prey. It turned out that the painter was none other than Livl Weeb, who was famous for his series entitled ‘Bugfield’, which was the name of his house. They chatted for a bit, about the lakes, about fishing and bugs and Livl’s house, and then it fell out that Ods was in fact the renowned Mr. Fob. Well I’ll be stewed, was Livl’s response, imagine that. Livl invited Ods in for a bite of lunch, for it wasn’t often he encountered visitors of any description, much less authors of well-known picture books.

While they lunched on cold meats and bread rolls and cheese and salad, Livl told Ods the legend of the Charming Tree and the Wish Bogle, from which the lakes, and most things in the area, took their names. Perhaps Ods had heard of the Charming Tree, reputed to grow on a lower slope of Yon Boglecrag Mountain, in the Bogle Ranges. Sure, Ods had heard something of the kind years ago, but the memory was vague. Right then, Livl knew the myth, and here it was:

A long time back, sixty decades and more, turtlenut trees had never been seen in the area by man or critter. Then a lone warrior came over the mountains from the far east, maybe in flight from a lost war, maybe in search of peaceful surrounds, or maybe just dazed and lost from one too many dents on the helm. At the very dusk of his days in the world, the warrior wandered up the skirt of the mountain now called Yon Boglecrag, which was angered by his effrontery and turned a cold shoulder to him, sending sleet and wind to tap the last dram of vitality from his mortal raiment of flesh and blood. He died on the mountain, but not forlorn, for he achieved his aim in going there, and maybe his aim in coming over the mountains to begin with.

In his pack the warrior had a red turtlenut he’d carried with him from the mysterious east, and in a sheltered corner of Yon Boglecrag he planted it, then sat down and died. Legend has it that some kind of spirit, not a dryad exactly, but some kind of wood nymph, took up residence in the seedling that grew, or perhaps she’d been carried there in the seed, for her like had never been known in the Bogle Ranges till then. By few but consistent reports she was green skinned and beautiful, a female warrior dressed in fantastical silvery-green armour, a likeness perhaps taken in memory of the warrior who planted the tree. While the turtlenut tree was young she seemed anything but, for she had the wisdom of the world when the tree was no more than a switch.

Thereafter, it was said, any worthy person bearing gifts of iron who completed the arduous trek to find the tree would be granted one wish, on the condition that he or she take a turtlenut from the tree and plant it elsewhere. The wishes would take effect after the tree pilgrim had planted the seeds.

Ods was fascinated. Intrigued. Ye gods, here were the makings of a new plot! Livl then burst his bubble by telling him that no wish had been granted for more than twenty-five years, to his knowledge, and that nothing had been heard of the Charming Tree in all that time. Damn, what bad news. But then again it was a mystery, and who knew where that might lead? What, for instance, was behind the gifts of iron? Why no more wishes? Livl had heard tell of a mad, howling thing that had taken to roaming the mountain and pursuing seekers after the tree. This fiend, he believed, was the reason why no seekers had gained a wish for so long. With this news, Ods was engrossed, thoroughly wrapped in the whole business. A magic tree, a mystery, and a roaming fiend? There was a story in this alright.

He said as much to Livl, who took up the banner and stormed ahead with it, the two of them launching a brief but all-consuming rampage of professional creativity, a hurtling tempest of inspiration that stirred not a mote of dust in Livl’s lounge room. Find the tree, Livl commended Ods, taken up in the notion, a thunderhead of forthright enthusiasm, then you’ll get to the bottom of it! No word of a lie, by extempore!

But how? Prudently and with forethought, was the first response from Livl, who’d sobered suddenly. The best strategy Livl could recommend to Ods was that he go talk to the Faffidylls, who lived a way up the road on a foothill of Yon Boglecrag itself. Mr. Faffidyll was a sound man who knew the lore of the mountain better than most, and Mrs. Faffidyll’s wisdom in the ways of nature was unapproached by any. Mrs. Faffidyll, wondered Ods, surely not the same Mrs. Faffidyll whose herbal mixtures and home-making books were so cherished by wives all across the land? One and the same, insisted Livl.

Learning from Livl that the Faffidyll’s place was about five hours by wagon, Ods elected to leave on the moment, which ought to get him there an hour or so before dusk. He thanked Livl for lunch and for his thoughts and bade him goodbye, with a promise to return and let him know what happened, and so took up the reins.

Imagine Livl Weeb and Mrs. Faffidyll living within spitting distance of each other on the very lake where he fished. What a coincidence. Or maybe it was something to do with the mountain. His wife had used Mrs. Faffidyll’s Patent Condensed Fabric Wash for years, and now that he lived alone, Ods kept a bottle of it in the laundry for washing his clothes. Everyone did.

Livl’s directions to the Faffidyll’s house weren’t hard to follow for there were only two turns to make, but the ground rose steadily, making the trip heavy going for the horses. He rested them a couple of times on the way, gazing about himself to observe the gradual change overtaking the landscape. The higher he drove the less soil was to be seen. The wind grew cold and the grass thin and patchy. At the end of a long, weary haul he topped a short crest to level out on an almost flat reach of the hill, very near the top. Once there he saw the Faffidyll’s house and the long stone wall of Mrs. Faffidyll’s renowned herb garden. And what an unlikely place for a garden, he thought, smack in the middle of a cold, windy, rock-strewn wasteland. When he drew rein at the roadside by the front of the house he saw a sign on the gate reading Poh Puree, which he took to be the name of the place, and a strong, ageing man holding a sickle at the door.

Ods introduced himself and mentioned his visit to Bugfield, and his interest in the Charming Tree. Well now, you’d best come in then, was Mr. Faffidyll’s view. He’d been helping Mrs. Faffidyll harvest some herbs when he’d seen the caravan pull off the road, which was how he’d come to greet Ods with a sickle in his hand. Besides, having a sharp gardening tool ready to hand was never a bad idea when living away in the wilds like this. Mr. Faffidyll led Ods into the house as Mrs. Faffidyll came in through the back door, drying her hands on her apron. Mr. Faffidyll introduced them and repeated Ods' mention of his visit to Livl. Ods told them he was interested in the story of the Charming Tree because he was a writer, and that he’d written a series called the Turtlenut Books under a pseudonym. Oh, my! Well, they warmed to him then because they’d delighted in his books and bought boxed sets for the grandchildren. Mrs. Faffidyll insisted that they sit down at the table to tea and scones.

Talk unavoidably circled around his writing for a while, Ods telling them about the business with Filly and the fish ponds, and patiently giving an abridged account of how he came to write his first book, for the nine millionth time. He told them of meeting Livl Weeb and setting aside his fishing in the interests of learning more about the Charming Tree, because the little he’d heard so far had intrigued him. At this, Mrs. Faffidyll embarked on a tale of how an eastern warrior had brought a red turtlenut to Yon Boglecrag that was almost identical to Livl’s account. Ods listened with good grace, and when she was done, asked a question that had been buzzing around in his head like a fly in a bottle. What was behind the gifts of iron?

Little had he known that in making that query he would throw a smarl in the youl cage. It was a hot question, one they’d obviously discussed before, as Filly and he had discussed belvederes. He’d really set the fur a-flying, and he weathered the resultant storm silently, pale and abashed at the changes that overcame his hosts. Mrs. Faffidyll was no longer the pleasant, well fed housewife but a fiery, steam-snorting harpy with wild wrath in her eyes, and Mr. Faffidyll was no longer the hale farming man but a paladin made of stone and lightning, set by the Gods to guard something valuable from the world at large. His opinion, perhaps.

Mrs Faffidyll held that since wood nymphs were known to attach themselves to things for life, the tree spirit would have been strongly attached to the warrior who’d planted her tree. The tribute of iron, she therefore reasoned, was in memory of the iron armour of the warrior, a likeness of which she wore.

And that was a good wagonful of horse ordure, insisted Mr. Faffidyll, for which he was immediately savaged by a volley of harsh words from his wife. He glowered. As Ods might know from his own experience of the world, appealed the big man, iron was used in crafts like pottery to produce red colouring. It was obvious then, that the tree needed iron to grow red turtlenuts. Iron turtlenuts, objected the missus, who ever heard such rot! Mr. Faffidyll fired a verbal ballista loaded with heavy sarcasm in her direction and slammed a prodigious fist on the table, which put the piled scones and the tea service at risk and worked to bring them to their senses, for they were both fond of their tea and scones. Mr. Faffidyll eyed his wife warily and stated as calmly as he could that he suspected red turtlenuts were actually blue turtlenuts grown in a cold climate from a soil with a high iron content. He reached the end of his sentence without further assault from his soul mate, and an ephemeral state of peace stood nervously between them.

Ods consigned these views to his meagre warehouse of information about the tree. He almost baulked at asking after the howling fiend but it had to be done, even at the risk of instigating further domestic conflict. He steadied himself and went ahead with it, his emotional feet set at shoulder width and well braced.

There were no fireworks, for which he was thankful. Instead, the Faffidylls grew concerned. They passed on to him accounts from seekers who’d travelled their way, reports of getting only so far up the mountainside ere being attacked by some maddened fiend of dark, uncertain aspect. In every case it had come upon the travellers as night drew about them, and in every report had come from higher on the mountain where the tree was said to grow, seeming to fly over the scattered stone inhumanly fast. Every time it had gone straight after the nearest person it saw, covering all but the worst of terrain with thoughtless speed and wailing the loudest primeval anguish, relentless and unshakeable in pursuit.

One man had run headlong down the mountain and escaped the fiend by a hand’s breadth. While running he’d felt his shirtsleeve plucked form behind, and on reaching safety had examined the garment to find part of it eaten away, as if by acid. A young woman had suffered similar damage to a knapsack she wore. Those two had come the closest of any to being caught by the fiend. Fortunately, none had been killed or injured by it yet, apart from some moderately nasty falls taken in the course of flight. Mrs. Faffidyll had treated some of those injured in her home, just a few over the past couple of decades. No two of the travellers described the apparition the same way, apart from the howling, and none could say why it hunted them, yet upon one point they all agreed, the fiend quit its pursuit of them the moment they went downhill past the ogre’s shack, for there it seemed to become distracted.

The ogre’s shack?

Aye. Calls himself Boulvardier, though others call him Stinker. Lives away up the hill, nearer the tree than anyone else. Sometimes, Mr. Faffidyll told Ods, when there’s a still night, we hear the fiend raging around his hut, and him yelling at it, faint like. A good set of lungs has Boulvardier. Between the ne’er-do-well on the hill and the howler it’s no wonder there’s been not a wish granted in twenty year or more, though the missus has another idea.

At this, the missus became visibly unhappier with her thoughts. There had been one young man who’d claimed to have gone far enough to see the tree, albeit from a distance, and had been sure it looked to be dead. It troubled her greatly.

Ods wits were bogged. The mystery had him surrounded. It was getting wider and deeper instead of simpler. He sat there stewing his thoughts, combing the pot for lumps and picking out the big bits to look at them. It had grown awfully quiet around the table when Mrs. Faffidyll suggested a tour of her herb garden to clear the air, and Ods agreed. A breath of fresh air away from the fug of his perplexity would do him no harm. He went to see the garden.

The herb garden was a garden only in name, and in practise was a farmlet occupying five acres. What Ods noticed from the back door was that it was not a standard rectangle, as he’d thought it to be when he’d viewed it from the road, but an eccentric rectangle bent along its length to follow a mild curve. A little rock pool near the back of the garden quickly drew his interest, but he collected himself to heed Mrs. Faffidyll, who was telling him what plants she had. She named the singly and by type and it hardly mattered, for plants were not his forte and their names, other than those he already knew, slipped through his memory’s fingers like fat through a duck.

The layout of the garden was terribly neat, each individual bed a regular rectangle matching all the others, each surrounded by a low stone wall. All these evenly spaced beds, with their crops of low, tidy bushes and their neat, low walls with flagged paving between them, gave a plausible impression of a formal garden. Running from each bed to the next was what appeared to be a broad clay pipe set well into the ground. It was far too big to be simply a watering pipe, and though Ods beat his thoughts against it, and measured it with them, and stretched them out of shape to make them fit, they wouldn’t. He gave in and asked, and the answer he got from the suddenly proud Mr. Faffidyll made good sense of the whole arrangement.

The borders of the garden curved because he’d originally set it out to follow the course of a hot spring running under the ground, in accordance with Mrs. Faffidyll’s wishes. The spring was a vital part of the garden for two reasons. The heat from the spring allowed the garden to grow properly in this barren, windy outpost, and the water was loaded with nutrients, which, the Faffidylls agreed, invigorated the garden far beyond normal. Mr. Faffidyll, who managed the growing side of things, had found that of plants grown in the same circumstances, those watered from the rainwater tank grew about a third as big and hearty as those watered from the spring. Equipped with this knowledge, Mr. Faffidyll had diverted some of the spring water into the big pipe and run it lengthwise under the beds to keep them warm. Within each of the beds the pipe had four holes through which water leaked into the soil where the plants could get at it. The open pool at the back of the garden gave them access to spring water for raising seedlings.

Ods saw dwarf glin trees grown thickly in some sections of the garden and nodded quietly to himself. The dwarf glin is really a bushy shrub and not a tree, but its leaves yield as good a cleaning agent as those of its larger cousin. While Ods had long suspected that glin leaves were an indispensable part of Mrs, Faffidyll’s Condensed Patent Fabric Wash, he discreetly withheld any mention of her secret. He also saw eight or nine turtlenuts growing at the back of the garden, one old mature tree and a succession of younger ones. He enquired of Mr. Faffidyll if he’d ever tried planting a blue turtlenut in iron-rich soil to grow red turtlenuts, and the worthy farmer admitted he had, without success. The ground here was too warm, he asserted with inadequate conviction.

When the tour of the garden was concluded the three of them repaired to the house, for the sky was darkening without and Mrs. Faffidyll insisted that Ods sit down to dinner with them. She heated up slices of roast fowl (bass-crested chuk) and served them with a rich sauce and steaming vegetables. Given her otherworldly knowledge of herbs and spices it was a tasty meal indeed, and filling. Mr. Faffidyll sat back and sighed with proper contentment while Ods thanked his wife and complimented the quality of the fare. It wasn’t long though, till he began thinking again about his new-found quest.

Why would the fiend quit its pursuit on reaching the ogre’s shack? Why chase people in the first place? What was the ogre’s place in the dramatis personae?

The ogre Boulvardier, he learned as the night wore on, was not well known to anyone. He’d moved into the area not long after the Faffidylls, but that was about as much as they knew of him. That the creature suffered from having a maggot in his brain was Mr. Faffidyll’s diagnosis, and he wasn’t sneering when he said it; he held it to be a medicinal fact. Mr. Faffidyll had been schooled in the traditional farmer’s remedies of illness and stoutly assured Ods that the daily inclusion of powerful alcohol in his diet would improve the miserable wretch’s condition, for being volatile, the alcohol fumes would rise to the monster’s brain and at least subdue the maggot if not kill it, at worst affording him periodic relief.

Mrs. Faffidyll thought along other lines. She believed the ogre’s wretched qualities to be the symptoms of an iniquitous disposition, punishment from the Gods, perhaps. And the biting, clinging, choking stench that attended his person was out of the reach of an ordinary woman’s words. He was a stinker, she believed, in spirit as well as in flesh. She steadfastly held that he was somehow responsible for the business with the fiend. Quietly on the wind, late at night, they sometimes heard it raging around his hut, and him screaming back. No such conflict exists between two creatures unless there’s a strong cause at the root of it. She suspected the worst of him.

It seemed likely to Ods that the stinking ogre Boulvardier knew what was at the bottom of all this. Maybe he was the one to ask. Had they ever spoken with him? They had, according to Mrs. Faffidyll, while her husband said nothing but displayed a seething anger at the memory. They’d gone to visit him years ago when they’d first learned of his arrival, as neighbourly people do, but he’d behaved strangely from the outset and ended up shouting and throwing rocks at them. They’d never been back.

Was it very far to ogre Boulvardier’s place?

Not far enough, for Mr. Faffidyll. He wasn’t thinking of going there?

He was.

He wouldn’t be welcome. The stinker hated everything. He hated the Wish Bogle, hated the howling fiend, and hated visitors. Threw rocks at them. All of them. And bear in mind that ogres have a wormy reputation and are vaguely rumoured to occasionally eat people when no one’s looking. Ods had better outfit himself with a suit of armour before calling upon the maggot-bitten churl.

Ods considered the possibility and the idea stuck. He asked the Faffidylls if he might impose on them for the use of some household items to patch together an improvised suit of armour. They reluctantly agreed, quite reluctantly, and spent a little time picking things from the laundry and garden sheds, so that Ods soon had the most pitiful, homespun collection of armour ever assembled. A soldier of any sort would have turned his back on it. The Faffidylls tried to discourage him but he wouldn’t have it. He was determined. Mr. Faffidyll sketched him a map showing the ogre Boulvardier’s place, most of a day’s hike from the farm, and the general location of the tree, and that was enough for the day. The Faffidylls were set to retire to their bed and offered Ods the guest room, which he politely declined. He would sleep in his caravan so he could depart in the early hours of the morning without disturbing them. He arranged to leave his caravan with them the next day and bade them goodnight.

The road leading to Poh Puree ended there, and no trails led farther up the mountain, so Ods left his caravan and one horse, and threw a blanket over the other in place of a saddle. With a bedroll and a satchel filled with food, and sundries of armour strapped to his back, he set out in the darkness of early morning, well dressed against the cold. He was on foot when he departed, leading his horse and choosing the way with care, not mounting till the light was strong enough to expose the treachery of the ground.

The day was a long one, for Ods took his time to read the map and make sure he accurately identified every landmark before moving on, so that he would not find his way blocked by a chasm or impassable slope. The landscape on the lower flank of the mountain proper was uninviting, a cold waste of stone, stunted life and scything winds. It was an ideal place for a hermit for it was certainly no prize in anyone else’s language. It was frankly discouraging. Silence reigned there but for the odd fluting of the wind as it breathed across the empty land in the voice of a lost soul.

Ods cleared an outcrop of rock and spied the hut he sought. He tied his horse to a tough shrub and donned his junkpile battle garb. Mr. Faffidyll had warned him of approaching the shack, best keep a hundred yards from it if you’d not like a rock embedded in your forehead. He kept to the spirit of that warning if not the letter of it, for he had to close to within effective hailing distance to question the ogre. He bent double and darted crouching from far to near. He crept on tip-toe from near to nearer, keeping one eye on the abode so that no rock-launching might be undertaken without his knowledge. He slinked skulkingly to an embrasure in a natural stone dyke very near his target.

This was how Ods came to the ogre Boulvardier’s jumbled, reeking, pile-of-crap hovel, carrying a great big boiler lid borrowed from Mrs. Faffidyll as a shield. It was also true that he went wearing a thick leather apron and leather gauntlets in lieu serious armour, and bore upon his head a broken, medium sized cooking pot padded by a towel for a helmet. The chinstrap was made of string. Smoke drifted from a hole in the roof of the hut, the ogre was home. Ods stood. He readied his shield and gathered his breath.

‘Ho! Ogre Boulvardier! Halloa!’ He bellowed. From the wrong door of the hut burst the ogre Boulvardier, a tall, muscled creature dressed in a mackintosh and leather hat against the cold. He stopped facing the wrong way and glared all around for the source of the voice. He shot back into the hut and emerged at the rear, grabbing up an axe by the door. Ods tried another greeting.

‘Good morrow, ogre!’

‘Go away!’ Returned Boulvardier, so loudly that he might have been heard on a different mountain. ‘Begone, malicious trespasser!’

Well that’s nice, thought Ods, enough pleasantries then.

'Tell me of the Wish Bogle!’

‘No! Begone! Abandon this harassment criminal interloper!’

‘By no means! Tell me of the Wish Bogle!’

Boulvardier bent to the ground to snatch rocks from it and hurled them Ods’ way with determined menace. Ods fielded two of them with his boiler lid but one clunked slantwise off his helmet, provoking him to the sharpest vigilance, for Boulvardier’s shots were not only fast and powerful, but more precisely accurate than should have been allowed.

‘Begone you!’, Boulvardier again, ‘Fly miscreant!’

‘Not a bit! Tell me!’ This was greeted by more rocks and many of them, a business occupying some moments.

‘Tell me of the Wish Bogle!’ Yelled Ods. ‘Else I return every day to ask!’

‘No!’ Another, protracted, volley of rocks, but getting weak in the legs and failing the distance, only one of them thudding home, and that thwarted by Ods’ deft boiler-lid fielding.

‘Yes!’ Insisted Ods.

‘Aghh!’ Boulvardier sobbed and wailed and tore at his hat. Another rock, no range. ‘The Wish Bogle is evil! It cheated me! It left me to smell most appalling and to appear grotesque so that my company is a bane to all; so that I must live alone in cold lands! Evil, I say! I dare not abide in the warmth of my home over the mountains for there this stench becomes unbearable! What if I ate a few villains? They were villains! I deserved no such curse! And where is my cure, I ask? It cheated me, did the Wish Bogle! Evil, wilful and damned!’

‘Good-oh.’ Murmured Ods to himself, taking mental notes. ‘Thank you ogre! Now what of the howling fiend?’

‘Leave! Go away from here!’

‘Tell me!’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’

‘No, no, no! Avaunt sinner!’ Three more rocks, each weaker in turn.

‘Tell me!’

‘AAHGH!’ - Silence.

‘Tell me!’

‘This much and no more!’ Cawed the ogre, his voice becoming hoarse. ‘The howler is a demon, a dark servant of the witch tree! It haunts me and hunts me and takes unwary travellers! Flee the howler, sinister person! Flee before the rolling tide of night overtakes thee! No more from me! Go!’

‘My thanks ogre, good day to you!’

‘GO!’ - A half-hearted rock.

All the while they’d been talking, or shouting, to one another, Ods had been taking in the details of the ogre’s hideout, and one thing that had almost escaped him was a scraggly, scrawny turtlenut tree growing from a midden of food scraps, broken tools and other refuse. That was meaningful in itself, but the presence of two red turtlenuts amid its branches was surely of major importance. Still, questions on that subject would have to wait for another day, since Ods perceived that the ogre was sneaking towards him with a handful of rocks.

4. Ods Jobs.

He made it back to his horse undented by missiles and helped himself to a hearty swig from his water bag, upending his broken-handled helmet to pour a drink for his steed. He divested himself of his doughty armour, took up his food satchel and consulted his map, for Ods intended to at least get a look at the Charming Tree. By the map it was easy enough to find and by Mr. Faffidyll’s reckoning it was about a twenty-minute uphill hike from the neighbourhood of Boulvardier’s hovel. Ods made a meal of the business and took forty-five minutes in getting there. He had saved a little time in reaching the ogre’s place through travelling on horseback, and with that time up his sleeve he made a tactical rather than speedy advance on the tree.

Possibly thanks to the perversity of fortune that sometimes attends people who don’t know that they can’t do what they’ve just done, Ods reached the locale of the Charming Tree without attracting the attention of the howling fiend. He’d spent his time sneaking from one spot to another, peering from behind a standing stone, peeking around a shrub, sneaking a bit further and peering some more. That had brought him within sight of the Charming Tree, which stood in an opening atop a shelf of stone maybe thirty feet high. The ground dipped quite a bit over the two hundred yards or so between Ods and the tree, so that he was almost on a level with it. Even from that distance he could see that it was surely dead, grey and leafless with the marks of an axe around its base.

The ground before him was completely bare of cover. If he ventured across there he’d be as obvious as a fly on a plate. For a while he stayed crouched where he was, playing at being a great hunter with endless patience, but that wore thin when his legs began to ache. He stood up slowly, watchful and listening and ready to burst into a dead run at an instant’s notice. If the howling fiend did come at him from higher on the mountain, it would have to jump down that thirty-foot rock face. He’d be a mile away before it hit the ground, and on the other side of the country, in a fast skiff, well out to sea before it reached his hiding spot. It then occurred to him that he’s been standing there plainly visible for some moments, and the howling fiend had not shown itself. He began to wonder if the fiend was away for the day; visiting an aunt maybe, or shopping for winter woollies. He took a step from his hiding spot and waited. Nothing. He took another step. No response. He danced a cheeky jig and blew raspberries at the mountain. Nought.

Overconfidence can lead to some alarming reality adjustments, though, can’t it? What he’d forgotten was that the fiend showed itself at dusk, and now the day’s light was fading. He made fourteen steps from his position before he heard a high, wild, undulating howl from the mountain. He looked up and saw a nightmare that might have been a compact cyclone or lightning storm or a twisting rent in the fabric of reality, moving out at high speed from behind the Charming Tree and racing for the edge of the cliff. He saw it for only a second, because in the next second he was travelling in a serious, all-out sprint in the opposite direction.

He flew over rocks, past shrubs and standing stones, vaulted crevasses and hurtled down the mountain at a breakneck rate. If the hike up from Boulvardier’s hovel took twenty minutes, the downhill charge took Ods about two, and still the fiend almost had him. He peeled the food satchel off his back and fired it at the fiend with an aiming glance, and saw the fiend dodge it without a thought. At his next glance, the fiend stopped dead in an instant and pounced on the satchel, tearing it apart and watching the turtlenuts roll away from it. That was what saved Ods’ skin. He didn’t look back again. He saw the ogre Boulvardier’s place and ran his hardest. The ogre was standing at his back door when Ods passed widely by his shack, now getting along at a fair but winded jog, his exhausted legs getting mighty wobbly by then. Boulvardier threw a rock at him as he went by, Which Ods thought to be just a token of spite, but the damned thing hit within three feet of him, and at that range it was a splendid shot, first rate.

When he found his horse he was red in the face and desperate and walking, not giving an undercooked damn if the fiend was after him or otherwise. When he stopped to catch his breath, hands on knees, not daring to sit lest he topple senseless into sleep there, he heard the fiend raging around Boulvardier’s hovel, the two of them howling and screaming at each other. How had Boulvardier survived residing so near that thing? Maybe the fiend didn’t know how to open hovel doors. He walked away from the noise for an hour, nearly asleep on his feet, then fed and watered his horse and curled up in his bedroll and slept till dawn on the distinctly uncomfortable ground.

With the rising of the sun Ods was on his way to the Faffidylls’, for his food was gone and he wasn’t hungry enough to share the horse’s grain, but he was hungry enough. It was late in the day when he tiredly reached the heights overlooking Poh Puree, and in the golden light of the setting sun he saw the herb farm for the marvel it really was, an island of green in an eternal wintry void.

Down at the farmhouse, with his horses tended, Ods was invited in for tea and scones, by which means the Faffidylls drew from him a report of his adventure up the mountain. He told them the lot of it in laudably unembellished style. They nodded surely when he told of his rock-dodging conversation with Boulvardier and thrilled to hear of his close scrape with the fiend, and when Mrs. Faffidyll heard of his throwing the food satchel she realised he’d been without a meal for a night and a day and very decently set about making dinner for all.

The next day he declared his intention to explore on foot the valleys around Poh Puree, and while he did explore, he spent a good bit of his time sitting and thinking. He was pretty sure he knew the answer to the conundrum of the wishless Wish Bogle and her Charming Tree, even if he didn’t yet see the source of the troubles, but being pretty sure is not the same as being certain, and might get him shredded if he was wrong. His only real difficulty was how to go about testing his ideas without being milled by the fiend. When he thought he had the answers he went back to the Faffidylls’ and once again asked for their help. On hearing his conclusions and plans they pitched in with enthusiasm and an admonition to take utmost care. He dined again with them that night, and after the meal, while they lingered over tea and scones, Ods put one of his suspicions to Mrs. Faffidyll, that the herb farm had resulted from her or Mr. Faffidyll gaining a wish from the Wish Bogle. She nodded, smiling. It was twenty-nine years since she made her pilgrimage to the tree. The oldest of the turtlenut trees in the garden was grown from the turtlenut she’d brought back from the Charming Tree.

And how long after that did the howling fiend arrive?

Oh, about four years.

Ods nodded and thought, but not for long. He went to bed early that night.

In the small hours of the next morning Ods again left Poh Puree leading one horse, earlier than the last time, again outfitted for his expedition by the Faffidylls. In a borrowed satchel (all his own remaining bags smelled of fish or bait) he had assorted sandwiches, cold meats, turtlenuts and scones to keep him in good fettle through the day. In another bag, slung clanking over the horse’s back, he had all the useless, broken old bits of iron Mr. Faffidyll had been able to scrounge from the garden sheds. Ods had a plan.

On arriving at Boulvardier’s environs he tethered his horse out of sight and set out grain and water to keep it entertained while he was away. Horses appreciate that kind of thing. He then walked steadily uphill to burgle the ogre’s home, circumventing Boulvardier’s tantrums by the unremarkable subterfuge of taking the long way around and staying pretty much out of sight. Luckily, the ogre had so many substantial heaps of wood and bones and rotting hides stacked about his yard that it wasn’t too hard for Ods to get within pilfering distance. He made his petty theft and sneaked away somewhat more briskly than he’d arrived.

This time, it wasn’t so late in the day when he came to the patch of no-man’s-land at the foot of the Charming Tree. There was still a good hour of sunlight left, and this was very much a part of the plan. He stepped out into the open and hesitated. The memories of his last experience here gnawed at his nerves, but no shrieking devil-storm came rushing over the cliff at him. He’d hoped not, with the advantage of daylight in his corner. He strode across the open space with shaky resolve, riding roughshod over his qualms, and quickly scaled the shattered stone cliff face without thinking too much. Once there he found himself on a ledge at the mouth of a broken cave that ran wide and dark and far into the mountain’s flank. At one end of the ledge, in an overhung corner, stood the Charming Tree. He crept light-footed and hushed to the tree, stealing every step, ready to take to the air in a blink, forgetting for the moment that he wasn’t able to fly.

Silence held court. It was true then that the fiend appeared at night. At the sight of the tree a depth of sorrow he’d not at all anticipated seeped into him. It was just half again as tall as he, which surprised him. He’d thought that its apparent height when seen from a distance had been a trick of perspective, but in truth it was a tiny thing for all the years it had grown.

There was no hope that the tree might live, for axe cuts ringed its trunk close to the ground. Someone had killed it very deliberately, someone who had not escaped the consequences of his crime. Amongst threadbare remnants of a man’s clothing lay an old, weathered skeleton at the foot of the tree, the bones cracked by more than twenty years of frosts and thaws. Mere feet away lay a short length of wood. While the head was missing, it was unmistakably the decades-old haft of an axe. The sight of it threw Ods’ reckoning out of kilter. He’d been absolutely convinced that Boulvardier had been to blame, and that the howling fiend had hounded him year in and year out, and possibly been the party who’d cursed him with his antisocial stench, for that very reason. Thoughts of the Wish Bogle bothered him then. He’d heard before of the intimate bond between a tree sprite and her tree, for it was part of local mythology. He saw that this one had lost her home, and maybe more than her home, longer than twenty years ago. He knew then the reason for the wash of sorrow he’d felt.

The hair on the back of his neck began to prickle as he sat thinking, and he looked up to find the fiend at the edge of the cavern looking back at him over the top of the tree. It was a giant hovering in the shadow, its eyes staring, elemental and savage, its body a cloak of night that blended with the growing darkness around it. Ods stood very slowly, never looking away. He’d anticipated something like this. He went with his best guess and reached into his bag, withdrawing and opening his hand to reveal the red turtlenut he’d burgled from Boulvardier’s yard, from his wish tree.

The fiend’s eyes fixed on the turtlenut, and she immediately began to shrink, drawing in on herself, becoming smaller, slighter than Ods, and most unhappily vulnerable. She walked to him and held forth her cupped hands, pitiable and so obviously desperate.

‘For me?’

He extended the turtlenut to the tree sprite, for certainly it was she, the ongoing metamorphosis of her visible form showing as much. She took the fruit from him and it fell through her insubstantial hands and straight to the soil, for she couldn’t hold it. She wept and fell to her knees, tearing a sizeable hole from the ground with an effortless flick of her hand, never actually making contact with the dirt. In that moment he saw her fingers as the roots of a tree, but only in that moment, for she had become as he’d heard her described, a slight, green hued woman in silvery-green armour. From the way the turtlenut fell through her fingers, he judged that her magic must be bound to the land, and limited to it.

When she’d planted the turtlenut and covered it over, he remembered the second thing he’d meant to do. He unshouldered his bag of scrap and opened it to show her the iron inside. He tipped it out to hand it to her and she took it wordlessly, the iron crumbling to reddish powder as it fell through her hands around the seed. Mr. Faffidyll had been right, it seemed, and Ods was very sure he was never going to tell Mrs. Faffidyll. Ods believed they couldn’t grow red turtlenuts at Poh Puree because the ground was too warm, whereas Boulvardier’s place was as cold as the rest of those barren slopes. The tree sprite sat down, sobbing with relief.

Ods had one concern that had gotten under his skin. He put one hand on the trunk of the dead tree beside him and pointed to the bones at its base.

‘Was it him?’

She nodded quietly, intent on the threadlike green tendril working free of the torn ground that covered the turtlenut. Ods was startled to see it so soon. She looked up at him.

‘I touched the iron in his axe and his blood.’

As he watched her Ods began to feel he was intruding. It was time he left her to nurse her new tree. He moved very quietly but the Wish bogle turned to him before he could leave.

‘Fill in your pond.’ She said. ‘Plant flowers. Go home now.’

The last surprise of the day came as he passed by the ogre Boulvardier’s residence on his way back. There was the ogre in all his natural glory, his smelly old hat and mackintosh shucked, him giving every impression of glowing good health. He was vigorously clearing garbage from around his turtlenut tree. When he caught sight of Ods he stood and threw his arms high and wide in welcome, giving Ods a more detailed familiarity with the anatomy of ogres than he really needed.

‘My friend!’ Shouted Boulvardier. ‘I’m cured! Cured! Come, my friend, embrace me and celebrate!’

Ods wasn’t keen on such intimacy to begin with, and when he got a tiny glimpse of the fangs within the ogre’s smile he was doubly dissuaded.

‘Perhaps another time.’ Answered Ods. ‘I have to run.’

The ogre tossed back his head and laughed up into the sky.

‘Then go, and be gone, and good fortune keep your company! Ha!’

Ods hesitated before he set out to go and be gone, wondering if he should tell Boulvardier that all the time the Wish Bogle had been howling around his home, all she had wanted was for him to carry a red turtlenut to her cliff top because she couldn’t do it herself. But no, the ogre was in good spirits for the first time in along time. Why spoil it?

5. Ods And Ends.

At the end of the ninth week after his adventures with the Charming Tree, Ods held a party at his house to celebrate the release of his new book. He sent invitations to his wife and all of their children, who urged their mother to at least make an appearance, since the whole family would be there, along with Dai Marx and his wife, the Faffidylls and Livl Weeb. The famous Mrs. Faffidyll! Livl Weeb! Just for an hour.

When Filly arrived for the party she found there were no other guests. Indeed, there was no party and a marked absence of children, who apparently had conspired with their father. It was just Filly and Ods and high tea in the new summer house, which rested on a slight eminence specifically constructed and turfed for that role, the whole thing overlooking a fish pond-shaped flower garden. She grew teary-eyed when he kissed her cheek, and after a little, hugged him and kissed him back. The actual party was scheduled for the following day.

On his return journey from Yon Boglecrag, Ods had stopped to see Livl, who at the time had been pestered by a horsefly while trying to paint. He’d taken up his easel and made his protests. The horsefly had taken three good hits from the easel before it had finally accepted his objections, and perplexed but unruffled, had droned lazily away. Ods had kept a wary eye on it to ensure it didn’t make off with one of his horses, or himself. He and Livl talked for quite a while, as might be supposed, and by the time he’d left Bugfield Ods had come to an arrangement with the painter, and this was a surprise to be announced at the party.

Tooter and the Wish Bogle featured colour plates by Livl Weeb. It told how Tooter met Livl, the Faffidylls and the ogre Boulvardier, braving dangers and enduring much hardship to carry a red turtlenut from Boulvardier’s yard to the Charming Tree to help the Wish Bogle.

The story ended, as always, with Tooter and Wisp snuggled up in their warm little nest.

Author's Note

Was it worth reading?