“I don’t need to throw anything but music. All I need is a few minutes with the suar.”

The otter sounded reflective. “You know, I almost welcome gettin’ stewed. I’m so sick an’ tired o’ marchin’ around the world with you, goin’ from one crisis to the next, that me enthusiasm’s just about run out.” He glanced back at Weegee and his tone softened. “O’ course, somethin’ new’s been added that I kind o’ ’ate to miss out on.”

“Relax, Mudge. This doesn’t strike me as an especially dangerous bunch. Certainly they have no supernatural powers.”

“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 chief’s 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 chief’s 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 ’im 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 of 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’ ’im.”

“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.”