It was an amazing moment. Each word was perfectly clear to them. They could even make out the Scottish accent in which he spoke.
“Could we ask your name?” said Mirella, sounding every inch a princess.
“Certainly,” said the antelope. “I’m Hamish Mac-Laren. And who might you be?”
“I’m Mirella and this is Ivo. You’ll have seen us about.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the gnu. “But it is strange that I can understand you suddenly — and you can understand me. Why is this?”
“We’ve eaten some magic beans,” explained Ivo.
And because the gnu sounded so reliable and sensible, they told him of all their adventures, the illness of the ogre, and what they hoped to do in the gardens and grounds.
And in return, the gnu, in his deep, steady Scottish voice, told them his story.
He had been brought up in the Highlands, the youngest of four brothers. His parents died when he was small and he went to live with his grandfather in his stately home. The older brothers fitted in well — they liked doing all the things that Scottish aristocrats did — hunting and shooting and fishing.
“But I couldn’t take to it,” said Hamish. “The whole place smelled of blood: dead pheasants hanging in the larder, carcasses brought in on litters, dead fish with glazed eyes…
“I wanted to be an astronomer. I love stars, don’t you?” said the gnu, looking up at the sky. “But I wasn’t clever enough. So I just had to help my grandfather, which meant bullying the tenants and killing things all day long.
“The house was full of the stuffed heads of animals that my grandfather had shot. There was a bison and a buffalo and a whole lot of stags; they had such nice glass eyes. My favorite was the gnu; he was in my bedroom and at night when I couldn’t sleep I talked to him. Then one day a traveler from Ostland came to see us and he told us about an ogre who turned people into animals. My grandfather didn’t believe it, but I thought anything would be better than living there and having to shoot animals that I liked a hundred times better than I liked my relatives. So I sold my father’s gold watch and took a boat to Ostland and found my way here. I knew exactly what animal I wanted to be and… well here I am, and I have no regrets.”
When Hamish stopped speaking, everything in the garden seemed very quiet.
They could hear a bird singing in the orchard but it didn’t seem to be saying anything.
Then they plunged into what they wanted to ask him.
“You see, we so much want to make this garden really grow. And we were wondering if — whether you might help us. The Hag is very old and… well there aren’t many of us. Would you consider maybe pulling a cart… or grazing bits of lawn that we can’t get around to cutting or… anything like that?”
The gnu was silent and for a moment the children were worried in case they had offended him. After all a Scottish laird might not want to work as a gardener.
But the gnu was nodding his great head. “I’d be delighted to help,” he said. “To be honest, the time does go rather slowly when one is just sleeping or eating — and I’m quite strong. Pulling a cart would be nothing… or mulching a vegetable bed. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“What a nice person,” said Mirella when they left the gnu. “He couldn’t have been more helpful.”
They had no idea how long the effect of the beans would last, and as the aye-aye was nowhere to be seen they hurried down to the lake to talk to the hippo.
They walked around the edge, peering into the water, but it was some time before the creature’s piggy eyes appeared above the surface.
“Please, could you come a bit closer so that we can talk to you?” called Ivo.
The hippo stopped in the middle of a yawn and looked up, surprised.
“Would you tell us your name? I’m Mirella and this is Ivo.”
There was another long pause and the children were worried that the effect of the beans had worn off. Then in a deep voice with a Northern accent, the hippo said, “Bessie. I’m Bessie.”
She said it in a resigned sort of way, as though being Bessie wasn’t a particularly good thing to be, but she didn’t sound unfriendly, just tired.
“How long have you lived here in the lake?” asked Ivo.
Bessie lifted her great head and opened her mouth. This seemed to be her way of thinking.
“A long time,” she said at last.
“Do you like it here?”
“Yes, I like it.” Bessie spoke slowly, but they thought this was nothing to do with being a hippo. It was more that she had been a rather slow and dozy person.
Getting her to tell her story took much longer than learning about the gnu but after a while the children pieced together her life before she came to Oglefort.
Bessie had lived in a small house in a drab industrial town. Her husband had left her with four children who seemed to be able to do nothing for themselves. Bessie cooked and shopped and mopped up after them; then when the children were grown up, they brought their own babies back to the dark little house, and it all started again: the screams, the mess, the diapers.
“The only time I had any peace was in the bath,” said Bessie now. “I would lock myself in the bathroom and run the water up to my neck. Even then they hammered on the door but while I was in there I was happy.”
Then one day she took some of her grandchildren to the zoo. The children whined and grumbled and Bessie’s legs swelled and her feet ached, and all the animals seemed to be miles away behind trees.
But then they came to an enclosure with a pool, and there, walking slowly out of the water, was a pygmy hippopotamus.
“I just fell in love,” said Bessie now. “It was so clean and so smooth and it didn’t mind being fat — it just wallowed and swam and wallowed again.”
Her grandchildren had tugged and whined for ice cream, but Bessie didn’t move. She had found the perfect way of living.
Finding the ogre and getting him to change her had taken a long time. She consulted every book she could find on magic and the lore of changing… but at last she had heard about the Ogre of Oglefort.
“So here I am,” said the hippo. “And I can’t imagine how I stuck being human for so long.”
The children realized that she had come to the castle because she was tired and would not want to do much work toward restoring the grounds. But they knew she would be able to help them with one question.
“You see, we need to find things we can eat, and of course fishing is an obvious thing to do. But we don’t want to eat — you know — changed people. A bank manager fried in batter probably wouldn’t taste very nice, and anyway there are things I suppose one just doesn’t do,” said Mirella.
Bessie saw this entirely but she said there wasn’t much need to worry. “There’s a pair of carp you want to steer clear of. They used to be philosophy lecturers in a university and spend the time worrying about how many angels can stand on the point of a needle and rubbish like that. I got to know them when we were waiting to be changed. But there’s a lot of freshwater crayfish — you could fish for those — they’re probably good eating. And the perch are just what they seem — not much flavor in them but if you’re short…”
The children thanked her. “You’ve been most helpful. We wouldn’t be depriving you?”
“Dear me, no. I’m a strict vegetarian.” She seemed to be thinking for a while. Then she said, “I mostly came here to rest, but if you like I could clear the odd drain for you — there’s a lot of weed choking some of the runnels. Just say the word.”
They found the aye-aye in the topmost branches of a bent fir, and for a long time it wouldn’t come down, just gave that sad high-pitched screeching wail which had seemed meaningless when they first heard it — but now they could make out what the terrified creature was saying.