“They don’t need none, not with all those teeth.” So primitive were their captors that they hadn’t bothered to construct even a rudimentary village. Instead they lived in a line of caves worn in the side of a sandstone cliff. As the hunting party approached, a horde of cubs came shambling out to grunt and chuckle at the captives. Two began throwing pebbles at Mudge, who dodged them as best he could and said sweetly, “Why don’t you two infants go make like a bird.” He nodded toward a twenty-foot-high overhang. Fortunately for the otter the preadolescent ogres were not possessed of sufficient intellectual capacity to comprehend his suggestion or the implications behind it.
The captives were arraigned before the largest of the caves so that the chief of the ogres might inspect them. As befitted a leader of. monsters he was an impressive specimen, this mutated bear, standing some seven feet tall. Add to his natural size an extended lower jaw, additional teeth, rudimentary horns, a sharp-edged protruding backbone and it was self-evident he had reached his position by means of something less refined than sweet reason. Strips of plaited vines swung from his massive shoulders together with strings of decorations fashioned from colored rocks and bones. He wore a matching headdress made from the skulls and feathers of numerous victims.
After a brief examination of the four captives he favored each with an individual sneer before turning to bark a query to the leader of the party which had brought them in.
“City folk.”
The bear nodded understandingly. “Damn good. City folk less filling, taste right.”
Mudge boldly took a step forward. “Now ‘old on a minim ‘ere, your inspired ugliness.” The otter barely came up to the chiefs thigh. “You can’t eat us.”
“Wanna bet?” growled the chief of the ogres.
Jon-Tom advanced to stand next to Mudge, demonstrating moral solidarity if not physical superiority. At least he didn’t get a crick in his neck looking into the giant’s eyes.
“Mudge is right, dammit. I’ve had it up to here with everybody we meet wanting to eat us instead of greet us. What happened to common courtesy? What’s happened to traditions of hospitality?”
The ogre chieftan scratched his flat pate. “What’s that you talking?”
“Wouldn’t you rather make friends with us?”
“Can’t eat friendship.”
Jon-Tom began walking up and down in front of the chief and his aides. “If half you people would learn to cooperate with one another instead of trying to consume your neighbors you wouldn’t have nearly as many problems nor spend half as much time fighting one another as you do now.”
“I like fighting.” The wolf ogre who’d helped capture them grinned hugely. “Like eating, too.”
“Everyone likes to eat. But it’s an accepted tenet of civilization that you don’t eat people who want to be friends with you. It makes for uneasy relationships.”
“Need vitamins and minerals.” The chief was clearly confused.
“This is a rich land.” Jon-Tom gestured at the wall of greenery surrounding them. “There’s plenty to eat here. You don’t have to eat casual travelers.” He shook a finger at the bear. “This business of attacking and consuming anyone who enters your territory is primitive and childish and immature, and to prove it I’m going to sing you a song about it.”
Mudge looked skyward and crossed mental fingers. Perhaps the unexpected verbal assault had stunned their captors, or maybe they were simply curious to hear what the afternoon meal wanted to sing, but none of the ogres moved to interfere with Jon-Tom as he slid his suar into position. Meanwhile the otter stepped back to whisper to his lady.
“ ‘E’s goin’ to try an’ spellsing this lot. I’ve seen ‘im do it before. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it works worse.”
Try Jon-Tom did. It’s doubtful he ever sang a sweeter and more beautiful set of tunes since being brought into Mudge’s world. And it was affecting the ogres. Anyone could see that. But magic had nothing to do with it. It was just Jon-Tom singing about love, about life and friendship, about common everyday kindness toward one’s neighbors and the understanding that ought to prevail among all intelligent species. As he sang he poured out all the contradictory feelings he held toward this world in which he found himself. Feelings about how it could be improved, how violence and anarchy could be restrained and how it could be transformed by cooperation into a paradise for one and all.
Tears began to run down mangled cheeks and bloated nostrils. Even the chief was crying softly until finally Jon-Tom put his suar aside and met his gaze straight on.
“And that’s how I think things ought to be. Maybe I’m naive and innocent and overly optimistic... .”
“ ‘E’s got that right, ‘e does.” Weegee jabbed Mudge in the ribs.
“. . .- but that’s how the world should be run. I’ve felt this way for a long time. Just never had the right opportunity to put it into song.”
The chief sniffed, wiped at one eye with a huge paw. “We love music. You sing beautiful, man. Too pretty to lose. So we not going to eat you.” Jon-Tom turned to flash a triumphant grin at his friends.
The chief gestured to his left. From the cave flanking his own emerged a female bear ogre almost as big as he was. “This my daughter. She like music too. You hear?”
“I hear,” she said, blowing her nose into a strip of burlap the size of a coffee sack.
The chief looked down at Jon-Tom. “Such good thoughts should stay with us allatime. I believe in what you sing. You stay and sing to us on all lonely days and nights.”
“Now wait a minute. I don’t mind sharing my thoughts and music with you, but I’m afraid I can’t do it on a permanent basis. See, my friends and I are on a mission of great importance and....”
“You stay.” The chiefs hammer-like hand cut the air an inch from Jon-Tom’s nose, then gestured to the young female standing nearby. She wasn’t bad looking, Jon-Tom thought. Rather lithesome—for a professional wrestler.
“You stay and marry my daughter.”
Whoa! “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Two tons of ogre bear tilted toward him. “Wassamatter, you don’t like my daughter?”
Jon-Tom managed a weak smile. “It’s not, that. It’s just that, well, it would never work. I mean, we’re not even distantly related, species-wise.”
“What was all that you say about all intelligent species working together?”
“Working together, yes; not living together. I mean, living together domestically, in a state of matrimony, like.”
“Wot ‘e means, your supreme ghoulishness,” said Mudge as Jon-Tom’s protests degenerated into babble, “is that ‘e don’t know wot ‘e’s talkin’ about. I know: I’ve ‘ad to listen to Mm spout drivel like that for more’n a year now.”
“Something else,” Jon-Tom said quickly. “I’m already married.”
“Oh that no problem.” The chief raised both paws some ten feet into the air and proceeded to declaim a steady stream of incomprehensible gobbledygook. “There.” He lowered his paws, smiled crookedly. “Now you divorced and free to marry again.”
“Not by the laws of my land.”
“Mebbenot, but you living under law of this land now. Come here.” He reached out and grabbed him by the right wrist, nearly lifting him off the ground as he dragged him over until he stood next to the daughter. She stood half a foot taller than he did and weighted eight hundred pounds if she weighed a hundred.
“Darling.” She put both arms around him and he was treated to the rare experience of a genuine bear hug. The fortunately brief encounter left him with bruised ribs and no breath, as though he’d just spent a week in a chiropractor’s office. Possibly she recognized the fact that blue was not his normal healthy color. As he gasped for air the chief raised his arms and declaimed grandly to the rest of the tribe.
“Big wedding tonight, you all come, plenty dancing and singing, plenty to eat. Though not,” he added as an afterthought, “any of our guests.” A few groans o
f disappointment greeted this last, but they were swept aside in the general jubilation. The charmingly bucolic scene reminded Jon-Tom of the cheery Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia, with himself as one of the prime performers.
“So ‘is gruesomeness is magnanimously lettin’ us off. That’s big o’ Mm.”
“I suspect he realized, in his slow dull witted way, that it would be impolitic to eat the bridegroom’s companions,” Weegee told him.
“Yeah—until after the weddin’. You wait an’ see. Or rather you don’t wait an’ see because we bloody well ain’t ‘angin’ around to find out. First time they takes their eyes off us, we evaporate.”
“What about Jon-Tom?”
“Wot about ‘im?” Mudge was less than sympathetic. “ ‘E got ‘imself into this lovely fix, wot with Mm ‘avin’ to go on singin’ about luv an’ friendship an’ intelligent species an’ all that rot. Let Mm sing ‘imself out o’ it. We can’t ‘ang around after the weddin’ to find out wot’s goin’ to ‘appen to ‘im. Got our own lives to think about, we does, and we ‘ave to make a break for it while our charmin’ ‘osts are still in a good mood.” He whispered to the raccoon standing nearby.
“Wot about you, Cautious old chap?”
“Afraid I must agree with you this time time for sure. Poor Jon-Tom got himself in one great galloping mess. I don’t see way out of, you bet.” He chuckled ruefully. “Better he do something before tonight. Making love to mountain could be dangerous. She get carried away, he find himself in pieces like his duar.”
Mudge and Weegee concurred with the raccoon’s assessment of their friend’s connubial prospects.
They put Jon-Tom and his intended in a cave of their own. The floor was of clean sand. There was a table and chairs and a brace of unexpectedly modern looking chaise longues. Not knowing what else to do he lay down on one. The lady ogre immediately settled into the other. It creaked alarmingly.
The official waiting room, he told himself. Just like waiting for surgery. He wasn’t allowed to leave the cave but he could see his companions strolling about outside. Apparently they’d been given the freedom of the encampment. This forced his thoughts to work faster still because he knew Mudge wouldn’t hang around waiting for him to extricate himself from this new predicament forever. The otter was a friend but not a fool. Jon-Tom knew if he didn’t try something fast he’d find himself completely on his own. Meanwhile the female ogre lay in her longue and stared across at him in what could only be described as an affectionate manner.
Frustrated by the continuing silence as much as his unhelpful thoughts he said, “This isn’t going to work, you know. I told your father that.”
“How you know? Haven’t tried it yet.”
“Take a good look at us. I see you, you see me. I see different.”
“I see two. What more is needed?”
With that kind of axe logic Jon-Tom saw he was in for a long conversation.
“Ever been married before?”
“Once. Was fun.”
“But you aren’t married now?”
“Mopes.”
“What happened to your first husband?”
“He got broke.”
“Oh.” Better shorten the conversation somehow, he thought rapidly. But his usually fast if not always accurate wits had deserted him. Since his suar and spellsinging had gotten him into this situation it was unlikely he’d be able to use them to extricate himself from it. If only his duar was intact. If only, if only—he wondered if another ogre would find her attractive. He couldn’t imagine what she saw in him. Of course, it wasn’t him, it was his haunting sweet songs which had enchanted the entire tribe.
“What’s your name?” he asked her, not really caring but unable to stand any more silence between them.
“Essaip.”
He almost smiled. Cute moniker for an uncute lady.
“What should we do now?”
“Anything you want. You to be husband, me to be wife. If you want anything you must tell me. Is wife’s duty to wait on her husband, even on husband-to-be. That is the way of things.”
“You don’t say?” A hint of an inkling of a thought was beginning to take shape in his brain. “You mean that if I wanted you to do something for me, anything at all, you’d have to do it?”
“Except help you run away.”
Dead end. Or—maybe not. “Are all the females of your tribe required by custom to act that way?”
“Certainly. Is way of things. Is what’s right.”
He sat up and faced her. “What if I were to tell you that it’s not only wrong, it’s unnatural.”
That lengthy jaw line twisted in confusion. “I don’t understand what you say.”
“Suppose I told you—and you have to believe me, remember, because I’m your husband to be—that males and females are equal, and that it’s wrong for one to wait on the other all the time.”
“But that not right. Has always been this way.”
“I see. I wish I had some Kate Millet or Gloria Steinem to read to you.”
“I don’t know such names. Are they names of magical deities?”
“Some people think so.” He rose and walked over to her. It was an awesome body. Those enormous paws with their long heavy claws could tear out his throat with one swipe. The parody of a bear face was frightening. But behind those large, even attractive eyes he sensed an emptiness waiting to be filled, an eagerness to learn. Would she be receptive to new ideas, especially as propounded by an outsider?
“I think you like me, Essaip, even though we are not the same.”
“Like you much.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to live as a slave. It doesn’t mean that any female of your tribe has to live in servitude to any male. This is a fact that holds true whether one is talking about otters or ogres. Times they are a-changing, Essaip, and it’s about time you and your sisters -changed with them.”
“How you mean, change?”
“Well, it’s kind of like this ....”
Mudge was trying to see into the depths of the wedding cave. “I don’t ‘ear no suar music but I can see ‘is mouth movin’. ‘E’s talkin’ up a storm, old Jon-Tom is. I know Mm. ‘E can work a different kind o’ magic just with words. ‘E’s sharp enough to confuse a magistrate. You’ll see, luv. In a few ‘ours ‘e’ll ‘ave ‘er spoutin’ sweat reasonableness.”
Before long Essaip emerged from the cave spouting, all right, but she didn’t sound very reasonable. She sounded steamed. When the two guards refused to let Jon-Tom exit behind her she knocked both of them into the bushes.
Another warrior, a large jaguar ogre, stepped in her path and tried to halt her.
“Is not good for bride to leave wedding cave before feast.”
“Ahhhh, shaddup you, you—male!” The jaguar’s jaw connected with a paw only slightly smaller than a 725-15 radial ply tire.
Other warriors came running to try and quiet the chiefs daughter, who had apparently gone berserk. No one bothered to stop Jon-Tom. He strolled past the battle royal toward the staring otters, grinning like the Cheshire cat. Mudge turned to his lady. “Get ready to leave.”
“What? But just because she’s fighting with the guards doesn’t mean they’re going to let us walk out of camp.”
“Just be ready. ‘Tis like I told you: Jon-Tom don’t always need to sing to work magic.”
Behind them the rest of the tribe’s females had put aside domestic tasks and emerged from their caves. They listened intently as Essaip recited the feminist litany Jon-Tom had relayed to her while she simultaneously fought off half a dozen hunters. Most of the male ogres were off preparing the wedding ground for the nighttime ceremony. They would have found Essaip’s speech most interesting. Growls and grunts began to issue from the tightly packed cluster of females. Weegee picked up a few sentences. “This is very interesting.” Mudge tugged on her arm.
“Come on, luv, we’ve got to be ready to leave when Jon-Tom reaches us.”
/> She held back. “Extremely interesting. I’ve never heard the like before.” Mudge overheard, too. His tugs began to take on an aura of desperation.
Abruptly the fighting ceased. The chief and the rest of the warriors had returned. “Not nice to begin festivities without us,” he said disapprovingly. “Plenty of time to play after wedding ceremony complete.”
“No wedding ceremony.”
The chief gaped at his daughter. “SAY WHAT?”
“No wedding ceremony.” Breathing hard, her fur mussed, Essaip was clearly in no mood to back down. “Who you think you are to give order like that?”
“Who I think I—I am your father! I am chief of this tribe!” The giant’s face was flushed, a remarkable sight.
“By what right you make such a demand?”
Speechless, the chief waded through his warriors, scattering them left and right, and tried to cuff her across the muzzle. She blocked the blow and caught him with a return right to the chops. Several warriors stepped up to grab her. As they did so they were set upon by the tribe’s females. Shouts and snarls filled the hitherto peaceful evening air, along with bits of fur and flesh.
Abandoning the fight, the chief chose instead to confront Jon-Tom as he was trying to tiptoe inconspicuously around the dust of battle.
“You! You have brought this trouble among us. You have been talking to my daughter and filling her head with superstitious nonsense. What evil magic have you worked? Marriage is off. Dinner is back on.” He reached for Jon-Tom, who skipped back out of the way.
“Essaip!” He called to her several times, but she was too busy raising male consciousness by cracking skulls to help.
The chief advanced, grinning nastily. “I going to eat you myself, have you raw for dinner. One piece at a time. I think I start with head first.” He reached out again. Jon-Tom saw Mudge running to recover his longbow but he knew the otter would never make it in time. His oh-so-clever scheme had backfired. Mudge was right. The odds had finally run out.
A massive shadow interposed itself between him and the chief and thundered, “You not going to eat anyone without my permission.” The ground shook as the new arrival moved forward to engage the chief in combat.