The Ogre's Feather

"By thunder!" yelled the Ogre. "I am not having a moment's peace with you tonight! Is it another of your dreams?"

"Yes," she said. "I dreamt of an innkeeper who wonders the whereabouts of his daughter who has been missing for years."

"That is easy enough to solve," he scoffed. "His daughter is you."

The next day at breakfast, the Ogre insisted he still smelled the scent of man. "And I'm not hungry or tired, either." She ushered him out the door as quickly as she could, saying she had a feeling it would be a very good day for him, and not a moment to waste.

As soon as the coast was clear, she and the attendant, clutching his four feathers, escaped out the cave and down the mountainside to freedom. They traveled by way of the crossroads, where the young man found the two noblemen. He gave them the Ogre's feather and told them what they must do. Once at the river's edge, they jumped aboard the ferry. The ferryman was delighted to have a magical feather, but when he asked the secret of his freedom, they said they would tell him only after they were across the other side. Once safely alighted, they told him what he must also do.

Next they went to the inn. The innkeeper was delighted beyond words to see his long-lost daughter. He urged them both to stay, sensing their feelings for one another, but the young man insisted he must return to the castle with all due speed, since the king was still quite ill and desperately needed the Ogre's feather.

The attendant and the maiden returned to the castle where they were announced, much to the astonishment of the court advisers, who had long since assumed the attendant had been lost as another victim of the Ogre. Even more astonished was the king himself, when after a single brush of the Ogre's feather, his malady, which had seemed to grab his very lungs, disintegrated and his vigor and health swept back over him. Soon seated again on the throne, he was happy to grant the young couple permission to marry, and he even set them up in a royal guesthouse, where they lived happily for the rest of their lives.

As for the Ogre?