The Ogress and the Orphans: Chapters 1–8

As for dragons in particular, they are as diverse in their dispositions as any other creature.

I, myself, have encountered dragons of every personality type—shy, gregarious, lazy, fastidious, self-centered, bighearted, enthusiastic, and brave.

I, myself, have encountered dragons of every personality type—shy, gregarious, lazy, fastidious, self-centered, bighearted, enthusiastic, and brave.

This dragon was greedy, perfidious, and indifferent.

This dragon was greedy, perfidious, and indifferent.

He delighted in discord and sowed acrimony wherever he went.

People walked slowly under blossoming, or green, or fruiting boughs, taking their time as they enjoyed the dappled shade.

Some insisted that it was a miscreant who set the fire, claiming that they had heard footsteps echoing with sinister purpose, moving toward the venerable building and then scampering away once the flames erupted.

Some insisted that it was a miscreant who set the fire, claiming that they had heard footsteps echoing with sinister purpose, moving toward the venerable building and then scampering away once the flames erupted.

They ran through the darkened streets, carrying buckets, following the billowing smoke and that awful firelight.

After the fires, the fruit trees, and then the blossoming trees, and then the shade trees began to die off. A blight, people said. Perhaps caused by the smoke. Or that terrible heat. Or terrible luck.

They remembered the click of his fine boots as he sauntered across the cobblestones, and the sweep of his great coat, and audacious twinkling of his eyes.

He set up a booth during Market Day with a sign that said WORLD-FAMOUS DRAGON HUNTER: INQUIRIES AND ADULATION ACCEPTED.

“What a lucky town,” exclaimed the cobbler (and the apothecary and the constable), “to host so noble a guest! What a lucky town indeed!”

By sheer serendipity, several dragon sightings were reported in the weeks just following his arrival.

After a while, the dragon sightings dwindled, and then became haphazard, and eventually mostly ceased.

It was several years after her arrival before anyone in town even noticed her living there. Ogres are reticent creatures, you see. And shy. They don’t announce themselves.

There she found a farm, fallow and abandoned, the remnants of the old house and barn heaped in a hollow.

After a week or two, she had sprouting plants and had found a clutch of tubers, which made a tasty snack when they were roasted.

Have you heard of the undeniable power of crows? Have you heard about our rapacious talons and our razor-sharp beaks?

I don’t have much to offer guests, I’m afraid, but I do have a bit of hardtack in my bags. And some dried corn. If I crumble them together, they will make a fine meal.

They only knew the town as it was now: a drab, tightfisted, mean little place.

Matron seemed impossibly old to the children, but she was surprisingly strong and spry, and always hurrying.

Bartleby declared it “philosophically untenable, and morally gross.”

She was the sort of girl who believed in logic and progression, cause and effect. She enjoyed using the word ergo whenever possible.

Ancient things, they were, and so numerous you couldn’t see past the wide trunks and sprawling branches.

While ash trees tend to be, I’m afraid to say, rather silly creatures, and their stories are often too vacuous and meandering to matter much, there is no better storyteller on earth than an oak tree.

While ash trees tend to be, I’m afraid to say, rather silly creatures, and their stories are often too vacuous and meandering to matter much, there is no better storyteller on earth than an oak tree.

The Mayor frowned. He reached out to touch the Stone. Nothing happened for a moment. Then his face grew livid.

Like the matron of the Orphan House, her husband, Myron, was impossibly old. The children often tried to guess their ages, but neither Matron nor her Myron would ever say. (Fifty? One hundred? One hundred and fifty? Each number sounded like a lot, and therefore each was entirely plausible.)

One thing was for sure: even though the children knew that Matron and Myron had been friends and sweethearts since they themselves were children (in this very Orphan House, no less), and even though Myron was a couple of years younger than she, it was Matron who was decidedly the more robust.

All he had was a collection of odds and ends—likely just picked from the pile of trash right next to him, and he was trying to sell it as though a person couldn’t have just picked through the junk on their own. Someone nearby threatened to call the constable.

A man stood at the counter, arguing with the butcher. Or at least the butcher was arguing. The man he was arguing with was standing placidly and nodding his head.

The butcher had thin arms and a distended belly covered by a stained apron.

“Oh!” the butcher said, gesturing toward the man and Myron. “Ganging up on me now, are you? Well, it figures! Please, old man! Tell me how you would like to swindle me as well!”

“Hush,” Anthea admonished.

“Liars and thieves!” he lamented.

And I see you are training them young, are you, Myron? Is that your gambit? The Mayor warned me that dirty deeds were afoot, and he was right! An orphan house dedicated to the production of the criminals of tomorrow, it seems.

The sun beat, hot and relentless, but Anthea wrapped her arms around her body and shivered with cold.

The man’s face became languid at the thought of the Mayor, his eyes unfocused.