After enough time had passed, she was able to get out of bed for hours at a time. She could go to town and engage in minutes of small talk. She could sit outside on the porch and watch leaves twist on the birch trees. She could read a short article in the newsletter. On this day, a day of change, she cleaned the house, top to floor, using swaths of cloth that grew dark with dirt and dust. She swept tumbleweeds of lint out the front door, and poured scrubbing detergent into all the sinks to scour the vast yellowing basins. At the market, she bought root vegetables by the dozen and chickens and sausages. She stuffed the chickens and made a stew and fed her husband, who came home ragged from his work climbing mountainsides to look for caves packed with jewels and gifts like the magical harp that that thief Jack had stolen from his brother years ago.
We are pillaged, constantly, said the ogre, laying his loot in a sparkling heap by the door. And they fear us?
He kissed her on the ear, and sat down to roll a cigar out of crisp brown paper and a fist-sized wad of tobacco.
Good stew, human, he said, after dinner.
Please don’t call me that, she said, for the hundredth time.
That’s right, he said, patting his belly. I’m sorry. Love that sausage, delicious. He lit the cigar and inhaled deeply.
She wiped the globs of leftover chicken off the dining room table with a sponge.
While he mumbled to himself, digesting, sleepy, she filled the pots with soap and water to soak, and ate a little bowl of the chicken stew behind the counter. She rarely ate at the same table as her husband anymore, as she now feared him during mealtimes, couldn’t stand to watch him slurp up animals with that vigor and those grinding, pointed teeth.
Husband, she said, putting her bowl aside. She walked out from behind the counter. I have decided I need to go on a trip, she said.
The ogre was finishing his fourth mug of wine. He liked the darkest wine, the red almost black.
Go where? he said, wiping his mouth. To see your family?
She shook her head. Her family lived below, in the people village, and last time she’d been home, before the devourings, everyone had lectured her on ogres and complicity and betrayal. She’d waved them off. He’s a good one, she had said. She had not dared show pictures of her children.
I’d like to see something pretty, she said. Maybe a lake?
There’s a river that’s supposed to be nice a few valleys over, he said, exhaling bracelets of smoke to the rafters.
Okay, she said. A river.
I could go with you, he said, turning a giant brown eye to hers. His eye like a pool hers could swim inside.
A mucky pool.
No, she told him. I need to do this alone.
He nodded. He understood. They both coped in their own ways. He had women on the side, ogre women, everyone knew. Maybe she didn’t know, but probably. After all, although being with a human was the ultimate in showing off both self-control and status, sometimes a man just wanted a woman like himself. There were no prostitutes in the ogre village, as it was a barter economy and females chose males with equal discernment, but there were a couple who liked this particular ogre, and every few months he’d make a little sojourn as a way to honor where he came from. It’s for my mother, he told his ogre-woman once, and she’d laughed and laughed, nude and mottled and calm, sprawled over a mattress, one arm crossing loosely over her forehead.
The ogre helped his wife pack up. He buttoned up her bag and told her he would miss her, which was true. From his plunder, he gave her a magic cloak that would turn her into the color of the dappled light that shot through foliage, and also a cake that would become more cake once she’d eaten half. He kissed her forehead, roughly, and she melted a little under his arms.
Do you know how long you’ll be? he asked.
I don’t know, she said.
Okay, he said. I’ll be here.
They spent the night almost close, her forehead pressed against the wall of his triceps. Come morning, she walked through the door and into fields of glistening green.
What marriage could recover? She did not plan on ever returning. The ogre wasn’t sure, but he thought it was unlikely. He was not insensitive, despite all suspicions. The day she left, he skipped work and went to the tavern for lunch and drank ninety-five beers. You’re a machine! the other ogres said, admiringly, as he slammed down another stein. Foam made an old man’s beard around his mouth, and he burped in an echo that trembled the hillsides.
She felt it, his wife, now miles away, following a winding path up and over lightly rolling hills covered in sage, and dandelion fields, and one meadow of sunflowers shuddering in the daylight. She walked and walked until dusk, trying to collect distance under her feet, and then she camped out under a shady elm with her checkered cloth. She unpacked some almonds and dried cherries and she also ate the cake, which would let itself diminish to half and then, under her bare eyes, build itself back up out of nothing, out of air, until it was a full cake again. She was grateful for it, but somehow it also bothered her. Finish, cake, she said, tearing off half, watching it rebuild. Finish! She tore off more than half, the whole, but the cake was unstoppable. Plus, she needed it. What, she was going to trap birds and roast them over a fire? She was a woman who shopped at a market with a wheeled cart and used honey-lavender soap. She drank from her water mug and refilled it at a spring at the edge of the meadow, and before she fell asleep, she sprinkled the remaining cake crumbs around her cloth.
In the morning, she awoke surrounded by expectant-looking crows. Enough! she said, shaking the cloth as they tottered away.
Really, she could’ve spent the rest of her life there, just sitting and feeding those crows and herself with the cake, but she wanted to reach the river.
When she heard a clip-clopping sound, she put on the cloak so that she looked like the dappled sunlight beneath the elm, a particularly glorious sunlit area that did not correspond to the rules of sun location in the sky, but who would notice that except a particularly astute observer of shadows? This was just a human horseman riding along in ogre country, looking to find some treasure, like his comrades who had come up here and survived. She watched him, his handsomeness, his vanity and sureness, his sculpted hair and cheeks, his strong hands, his proud red jacket, and she was reminded again why the ogres had attracted her, and why she had loved young Stillford so, his wet brown eyes searching out hers, those sharp, smiling, crooked teeth. The ogres knew they were ugly and in that they were decent. They did not ever think they could be like this man, she thought as he galloped off, tossing his head with pleasure. He ducked and rose over hills, and she saw it coming before he did, saw the ogre who ran the corner store just out on a pleasant walk in his seven-league boots, rounding the corner and—surprise! what a gift!—the man too late raising his gun and landing a shot on the ogre’s shoulder, which was nothing to an ogre, nothing a little mending at night wouldn’t fix, a little digging with a fork into flesh to expunge a bullet, and she watched in her cloak as the man was plucked from his horse and eaten whole. It was a horrible sight, one she had tried not to see for most of her wedded life, but on that day she found it almost comforting. Just to see it. Not comforting to see pain and death but just to see what she could not let herself imagine and therefore ruled her. She wept quietly under the tree as the ogre chewed. Then he walked off, rubbing his belly, wearing those boots, a little scrap of red cloth sticking out of his mouth until he reached out a tongue and licked it in, just like a human might do with a bit of jam.