Ogreness, Black Lake-book5

Chapter 16
~

I was awake with a cup of coffee, sittin’ on Ezra’s porch, long before the Hamlet started to rise. Life in the Range runs on its own schedule, a pace that would drive a Northerner insane.

The thought made me smile. Nuel would be beside herself by the end of the day.

The Hamlet’s pace even irritates me a bit, and I spent my first two decades here, before going off to university. I returned to the Range durin’ summer breaks, and minded the herds on the family ranch, miles east of the Lake. Always felt majical being here. But less like home, every year, every vacation.

Now I’m a visitor. Guest. Almost an outsider. Why they wanted me on the council so badly— A loyal son broadened by the outside world, I think the crazy elder who recruited me to serve, said.

The Range has always been a sanctuary for our kind. Yes, we allowed humans in, just as we allowed the other races, but with our grander claim on the peaks and valleys, we wrote our own laws, and dared the Northerners to challenge them. The Range has been its own commonwealth for two hundred years. Protected by the Lake’s majic. And the council’s attorneys.

“Sorry,” Nuel’s raspy morning voice knitted at my head. “I overslept. Marvelously quiet up here.”

Quiet until now.

“Where’d ya get the coffee?”

I’d let her figger it out.

She returned with her own cup. “Late, yet the sun isn’t up. Weird.”

No. Majical.

“What time will the council assemble?” She leaned against the porch rail.

The lightest nudge and she’d plummet the hundred-foot drop off on the other side, onto the neighbor’s deck.

“Someone will be around to gather us up, I spose.” That was the best answer I could give her. It’s all about the pace of things, here in the Hamlet.

“Ezra up?” she asked.

“Headed for the Inn an hour ago,” I said.

Nuel turned to glare at me. As though that needed explainin’. So I did. She approved of my answer with a nod. Sissy let out a monumental yawn. She’d had a hard morning already, evident from the black silt coatin’ her normally white hide, looked as though she’d travelled up and down the adjacent hills a couple of times already.

“Breakfast?” Nuel asked.

“When ya’re ready, we can head to the Hamlet.”

“Oh.” Her face appeared confused.

Why cook, when the Inn prepared the best breakfast this side of the Wildes?

“Then let’s go. I don’t want to be late for council.”

Hard to be late to council, but I finished the chilled dregs of my cup and stood, gave Nuel a look over. Bright skirt to her ankles with an explosion of green hues, her regular white blouse, but long sleeved, tucked into her waist. She was out to make an impression.

“What are ya looking at?” she asked.

“Ya look nice today,” I said. Why not throw her a bone.

She looked down at my cargo shorts. Back up to my blue polo. “That’s how ya’re dressing for council?”

I headed down the porch stairs.

Ten minutes later we were sittin’ in the Inn’s dining hall—there are multiple inns around the Lake, but only one known as the Inn, which birthed the Hamlet.

Our server set down a platter about three-foot long filled with pretty much everything that comes out of the Inn’s kitchen for breakfast. The thick-sliced bacon is good enough to kill for. The biscuits light enough to fly. The gravy thick enough to plow. Grandpa Klow taught me that expression.

It was actually hard for me to eat though, as a heavy ogre or troll paw would back-pat me a welcome every few moments. Which is really a little odd. I haven’t spent much time here the past twenty years. But they act as though I’m still a favorite youngling.

Don’t think the Lake has one of those, but I go by the name of the Hamlet’s most famous citizen. Maybe that has something to do with it. Ike. There are a lot of my namesake’s busts and likenesses here and there, in the Range. Not that I’m the only Ike. It’s a favorite name for firstborn bulls, which is strange, because the Ike was the last born to his famous parents, Birs and Tiff.

I think my papa named me Ike because he didn’t want another ogreling under foot, and a lastborn named Ike worked for him. Yep. Four troublemakers were enough for him. Mama too. We were all a handful, to be honest.

Story goes, the Ike was quite the scoundrel and rascal, but no one has been more loved, the epic flows. Every summer there’s a grand festival held on the Lake shore to honor his memory. I avoid it—too much back thumpin’. Much beer is drunk. Many elk and yearling calves roasted over open fires. What would the first Ike say about all the ado?

“Place is busy,” Nuel mumbled.

I slipped Sissy a pound of bacon under the table, which Ezra had put aside for her. I would owe her a big hug.

A voice rasped to my right. “The Hamlet can rest calm now. Ike is here.”

I turned and shared a smile with our council leader, Doke.

“Don’t stand,” Doke grumbled.

I hadn’t planned to—oh he was talkin’ to Nuel. She prattled on as she introduced herself. Quite embarrassin’. I had half a notion to inform her Doke wasn’t worth the fawnin’. A nice sort, but, she’d find out as he enjoined the council, whenever that happened.

“Being the troublemaker as usual, huh?” Doke mumbled in my direction.

I had a fist-sized gob of gravy-covered biscuit in my mouth so opted just to nod.

“Our attorney needed something to do anyway,” Doke said. “We don’t rightly have enough to keep ’im busy in the Hamlet, and he likes to ride in the fan dangled air-copter-thing, so no sweat off the brow.”

I kept eatin’. Funny he was tryin’ hard to sound country. The bull has his doctorate in child psychiatry, teaches the tough discipline of raisin’ an ogreling at the local college.

My mama would claim there’s only one trick to managin’ a young bull. Don’t beat him to death before ya send him away to college. My mama has a dandy way with words.

I had a switch laid across my backside more often than I could count. My sister prolly more. She was the biggest bully in school. It was scandalous. She had every bull within a hundred miles frightened to death of her.

She seems tame enough these days. Must be due to the seven ogrelings she’s raised. We ogres don’t usually raise a large brood. One runt is typical. She deserved every hard moment any of that crew put her through. Need to get over to her nearby dale one afternoon. A lot of folk to visit this week.

“Don’t wish to interrupt yar eatin’,” Doke said.

That was funny. Interruptin’ an ogre from eatin’. But then, Nuel had stood. But she was back to pilin’ it in again too.

“Ya know where to find me when ya’re done here?” Doke asked.

“Maybelle’s?”

Doke nodded.

Maybelle is an ancestor of the first human settlers in the Hamlet, and lives in the granite edifice the local trolls built her ancestors almost three hundred years ago. Just a short walk above the Inn.

For some reason, the Hamlet elders selected her place generations ago as a favorite, informal place to assemble. The grand veranda overlooks the Lake. Not that every porch within a hundred miles doesn’t. But there’s history at Maybelle’s, and plenty of space, and acceptance for all the ogre and troll grumblin’ that regularly takes place.

Doke gave me and Nuel hard slams to our shoulders and reversed his route out of the dining room, slowin’ down at every table to share a word, Northern visitor or local, didn’t matter. For not being a politician, the bull can blab with the best of ’em. Prolly has some dark troll blood in ’im.

“Seems very friendly.” Nuel wiped her mouth with her linen napkin. I guess she was finished, even though there was still some sausage and ham on the platter.

“Hard to tell he’s served time for murder,” I said.

Her jaw dropped almost to her lap.

“Just kiddin’,” I said.

“I hate ya. They’ll be waiting for us. Hurry up.”

No one would be waitin’ for us. Her demand made me slow down, for spite. Time to enjoy the last two biscuits from the platter. Nothing beats the fresh-churned butter the Inn makes. Prolly make a good cardiologist turn in his grave, but there’s no harmin’ an ogre’s heart.

~ Nuel ~

If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was still asleep and experiencing a deeply troubling, out of body experience. Woke up to a freezing cabin built back when rocks were young and dirt just forming. Warmish water dribbled out of the bathroom faucet. No clue why that bull ignored me so rudely. Never met anyone quite so—Standish doesn’t have a word to describe him.

And why did he act so disagreeable about the pending council meeting?

Everything about life seems reversed in a mirror, except for the smiling faces in the Inn’s dining room. Rustic, yet a service of crystal and bone china, linin napkins placed across our laps.

I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t want to wake up.

I could hang around a while. The view from that veranda is to die for.

~