A man-eating

ogre

By Donald Kalpokas

LONG long ago there was a village on a beautiful plain.

It had a lot of people. Sadly, some people began to disappear slowly.

There was an Ogre who was causing this. He lived in a big, dark cave on a hill, above the village. He used to steal down to the village in the day and take away a human prey when nobody else was around.

The fearful deed went on for a long time. Nobody could stand against him. The fear of the cannibal grew so big that every body was scared of making a fire because this would only tell the Ogre of their presence.

One day a man and his wife decided to go to their food garden. They asked their two children, a boy and a girl, to remain at home. They had to prepare their food for the evening. They were told to have the left-overs from their break fast for lunch. It was important not to light a fire before three o’clock in the afternoon. By then a lot of people would have come home from their gardens.

Unfortunately they did not do exactly what their parents asked

them to do. They started pre paring their food well before anybody came back from the gardens. They had to light a fire and make some yam pudding.

This meant of course starting a fire in the umu. Of course a lot of smoke was created.

The early preparation of food was not without thought. The 12-year-old boy had thought of a way to kill the Ogre.

The giant saw the smoke.

Immediately he gnashed his teeth and sharpened his wooden sword, and then set off. It took him quite a while to get to the compound of the house. He was weak and tired as a result of fasting so long. He smelt the smell of cooked food as he approached the house. This made him feel more ravenous.

He moved towards the house

very silently, like a cat. A big surprise came to him when he saw the occupants of the home.

The boy had cleverly thought of colouring his hair to attract the Ogre’s attention; he used the blossoms of a ‘Nakavika’ tree (native apple). The colour is attractively red or pink.

The monster was so interested in the colour of the boy’s hair, that he asked the boy how he got the colour on his hair. The boy told the Ogre that he had got it by placing red hot stones in his mouth.

The Ogre was led to believe that the process was true. He knelt down patiently by the fire in which the boy had placed some stones. He opened his mouth and both the boy and the girl put the first stone in. He started moaning because of the pain. The boy told him not to move for fear that the process might not work. So the second, third, and fourth stones were put in quickly. By the time the fourth one was put in, the cannibal dropped dead.

The parents and the people of the village were very happy to find the Ogre lying dead.