Three Good Deeds (6 page)

"Egg!" he honked. "Someone's gone and lost an egg!" The egg was fairly near to the nest of a goose known as She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South and her mate, Almost-Eaten-by-a-Fox. The egg was near
enough that She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South had just honked at Howard not to come any nearer.

She sat on her nest with her neck fully extended toward Howard, which might have been so she could get a better view of what he was looking at, or to warn him that she was suspicious of his intentions. Still, she sounded fairly untroubled as she asked, "What have you got there, How-Word?"

He pointed with the tip of his wing. "Egg," he repeated.

"Yes," she agreed without getting up.

Howard couldn't understand why she was taking this so calmly. He honked, "Someone lost one." He couldn't imagine how. Usually the geese were vigilant in their protectiveness of eggs. "We need to go around and have everyone count their clutches."

"Why?"

Howard wished he had hands with which he could shake her. "To find out where this egg came from."

"Oh," said She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South, "I can tell you that. It came from this nest."

I will never,
Howard told himself,
understand geese.
He'd had a bump on his head two days ago from where Almost-Eaten-by-a-Fox had pecked him for wandering too close to the nest. He didn't say this. Instead he said, "Shall I roll it back to you?"

Did rolling count as saving?

Howard was fairly certain it should.

But She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South said, "No. I rolled it out myself. It's no good."

"No good?" Howard repeated.

"It will never hatch."

Howard rolled the egg over with his webbed foot. It looked like a perfectly fine
egg to him. "How do you know it won't hatch?"

She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South had to stop and think. "It's not warm enough," she finally declared. "It doesn't move right."

Maybe there's a cold little goose in there,
Howard thought,
who doesn't like to move much.
With none of her eggs hatched yet, it seemed too soon to assume that this one wasn't any good.

"You mean," he asked, "you don't want it?"

"No," She - Who -Joined -Us-in- the -South told him.

She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South was obviously more of an expert in eggs than Howard.

But still...,
Howard thought.
It MIGHT hatch.

Mightn't it?

Wouldn't it be a good deed if he rescued this egg from She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South's indifference?

"May I have it?" he asked.

She had begun to relax her neck, but now she once again pointed her beak straight at him, suspiciously. "Why?"

"To see if I can make it hatch."

She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South laughed. "You're a gander," she pointed out. "Ganders guard the females; females guard the eggs."

Other geese heard her honking and some started paddling this way, including Almost-Eaten-by-a-Fox.

"Does that mean you don't care?" Howard asked, eager to speed things up before he got pecked again.

Obviously anxious lest this be a trick,
She-Who-Joined-Us-in-the-South said, "You may have just that one."

Howard used his beak to roll the egg farther away from the nest. Almost-Eaten-by-a-Fox had gotten out of the water and now stood by his female, looking bigger and meaner than Howard.

"It's the won't-hatch one," Howard explained. "She said it was all right for me to have it."

Almost-Eaten-by-a-Fox continued to glower but didn't chase after Howard, so Howard resumed rolling the egg farther away.

Once the other two geese stopped watching him, Howard decided that must mean he had rolled the egg far enough.

Now what? He felt foolish about sitting on the egg, but that's what geese do. Howard was about to sit, when he remembered he needed a nest. The other nests
were made with the females' down feathers, which he didn't have, and from leaves and grass, which he could gather.

He fetched enough to make a soft bed for the egg, then nudged the egg onto it. Then, very gently, he lowered himself on top.

A goose named Whistles-When-He-Honks called over to Howard, "Hey, How-Word, what are you doing?"

"Rescuing this egg," Howard said, since that was, after all, the long-range plan, and—he was sure—an admirable goal.

But Whistles-When-He-Honks laughed so hard he snorted pond water out his nostrils, and he called any other goose whose attention he could get to come and look at Howard.

They won't laugh when my good deeds get me turned back into a boy right in front of their eyes,
Howard thought.

Then he thought,
I wonder how long it takes an egg to hatch?

No matter. He could be patient.

If he had gotten hungry before, this was even worse, because he could no longer spend his days looking for plants to eat but instead had to keep the egg safe and warm.

Sitting on an egg was boring work—
long,
boring work, especially when all he could think about was how hungry he was. Every once in a while he just had to rush out to the water to graze on the plants at the edge.

One of those times, Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers swam to him. Howard looked up and saw Mighty-Beak/ Bone-Crusher notice him and begin approaching. Before he could ask Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers to keep away lest her male beat him up any
more, she said, "There are tiny plants in the water, too, How-Word. Didn't they have those in the pond you came from?" She demonstrated by sticking her head into the muddy water, then chattering her beak to strain out the tiny bits of edibles.

Howard had seen the geese doing this before, but he had thought they were gargling. He knew enough not to say this.

Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers swam away before Howard could thank her, but also before Mighty-Beak/ Bone-Crusher arrived.

Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher bobbed his head up and down to let Howard know that he wasn't getting away with anything, and Howard backed away.

But straining the water was a help, though the nourishment he got that way was even less tasty than the grasses and leaves.

Still, it was enough to keep him going for two days and two nights while he sat on the egg.

The third day, coming back from a few quick mouthfuls of tiny plants, water, and—of course—mud, Howard lowered himself onto his nest, and he felt something give.

Some instinct warned him this was not The Big Day.

He stood up. The egg had shattered, and there was no sign of a baby goose in there, just sticky, messy liquid.

Howard sighed.

All that time—wasted. Such a good plan—wasted.

And more than that: He realized he'd been picturing the tiny little goose that would come from the egg, a goose that wouldn't have existed, except for him.

But now it turned out there was no such thing.

He went to the water to wash the egg white off his feathers and to eat, and to forget the loss of the goose who never was. And to try to think up a new plan.

But of course he couldn't have wasted his efforts in private or had his failure go unnoticed.

"Say, How-Word!" one of the geese honked. "Hatched that egg of yours yet?"

Goose humor.

Howard hoped he wouldn't be a goose long enough to come to appreciate it.

Howard continued to be on the lookout for good-deed-doing, and he happened to be in the vicinity when Scared-by-a-Rabbit once again honked for help.

Hoping it wasn't a badger, but growing desperate enough to think he might be persuaded to take on a badger (if it was a small one) Howard rushed to the anxious mother's side.

But it was neither badger nor clump of grass that had threatened her; it was a robin who had fluttered too close over her head. Even though robins never bothered geese, Scared-by-a-Rabbit explained to Howard that you could never tell:
This
might be the first robin that would turn vicious and would try to steal an egg.

"And why are you standing so close?" she demanded once she'd finished explaining. "Back away from the eggs."

Howard backed away.

Two days later, there was another attack at Goose Pond, but it wasn't reported by Scared-by-a-Rabbit, and this time Howard saw it all.

It was just coincidence that he happened to have glanced upward and noticed a black dot in the sky; and while he was still wondering what it was and why it was hurtling earthward, one of the other geese honked in terror, "Falcon!"

Moving faster than anything Howard
had ever seen before, the falcon swept out of the sky and grabbed a just-hatched fledgling from the nest of a pair whose names Howard didn't know. Then, with mighty beats of it's wings, it angled upward before any of the geese could catch their breath. The parents honked in protest, bobbing their heads and hissing, but neither of them took to the air.

They're afraid,
Howard thought.

Well, no wonder. A falcon was big. It was a meat eater, with a sharp beak and mighty talons that could puncture a poor goose's body.

But Howard was getting mightily tired of his own goose's body.

I will fly after that falcon,
he thought,
and because I am so desperate to prove myself, I will be the fastest-flying goose there is, and I will catch up to him, and peck him until he lets that little fellow go, then I will catch that gosling midair....

But the first part of Howard's plan was
I will fly after that falcon,
and for some reason that didn't seem to be working.

Howard flapped his wings; Howard thought of himself as a goose, born to fly; Howard tried to throw himself up into the air.

Howard remained in the water.

Something was wrong with him.

The old witch!
he thought. She wanted to keep him from doing that third good deed so that she wouldn't have to change him back into a boy.

"Help!" he honked. "Help!"

Some of the geese gathered around him. They could tell what was wrong with the family that had lost the gosling; they'd all seen goslings lost to predators before. But they couldn't tell what was wrong with him, so that was more interesting.

"What's the matter, How-Word?" they asked.

"It's not fair!" Howard slapped at the water with his wings. "The old witch has taken away my ability to fly, so I can't rescue any more of you."

The geese looked at one another. A soft noise started, which—for one brief moment—Howard thought was a murmur of sympathy.

It erupted into laughter. Hardly being able to keep a straight goose face, Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers said, "How-Word, you've molted."

Angry with her for not being more sympathetic, after he'd helped her—after even the old witch acknowledged that he'd done a good deed by helping her—he said, "Yeah? So I've lost some feathers."

"You've lost your flight feathers,"
Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers explained.

"Because of the old witch?" Howard asked in horror.

"Because of the time of year." She flapped her wings.

Howard considered. He remembered thinking that the goose parents were too afraid to pursue the falcon, that he was braver than they were. "You mean this happens to all of you?" he asked.

The other geese were having a good time with this. "That How-Word," they honked. "Either he's the biggest joker in the poultry kingdom, or he's as dumb as mud."

This was an especially stinging remark since
he
thought
they
were slow-witted.

"What did you want to chase that falcon for, anyway?" Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher asked. "That wasn't your gosling."

Howard's head drooped. "I wanted to do a good deed," he muttered at the water.

The geese spread away from him, chuckling to themselves. "That How-Word," they honked. "He's both a joker
and
dumb."

He didn't think he was either. But he was, still, a goose.

More days passed.

Some of those days the old witch came out to visit with the geese; some days she didn't.

What kind of caretaker was she? Howard thought peevishly. If he accomplished that third good deed, he wanted to make sure she was there to see it.

More of the eggs began to hatch—hatching order being a source of competition among the mothers and a matter of
pride for the fathers. The fuzzy little goslings took to the water obviously born knowing how to swim. And how to call Howard "How-Word."

Then, one sticky afternoon, when it was too hot to move, Scared-by-a-Rabbit began screaming. "Thief!" she honked. "Thief! Thief! Thief!"

Howard hadn't seen another falcon, so he wondered if it was vicious-looking grass or another robin Scared-by-a-Rabbit thought was plotting to steal her eggs. Always-First-to-Molt slowly headed back to shore, and Howard—much closer—almost stayed where he was.

But, ever hopeful, he swam toward her. As he climbed up onto the bank, he came face-to-face with a rat—a rat with big long teeth and nimble fingers.

"Get away! Get away!" Scared-by-a-Rabbit shrieked, bobbing her head and
flapping her wings at the fierce-eyed creature.

A threat. A real threat. Smaller than a badger, and unable to fly like a falcon.

Even knowing the rat could bite him, Howard lunged.

But instead of biting Howard, the rat bit the egg.

Howard tried to peck at the rat, but—either Howard wasn't as fast as Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher, who never had trouble connecting his beak with the top of Howard's head, or the rat was more skillful about dodging than Howard was. The rat clung to the egg, chewing away at the shell, gnawing, crunching, and sucking away at the inside.

Howard was able to peck the unrelenting creature once, a glancing blow. Still, it was finally enough to cause the rat to let go of the egg. But then it shifted it's attention
and teeth to Howard. It leaped, landing on Howard where his beak met his face. It bit. And it kept on biting. Holding on with it's teeth, the rat dangled from Howard's face, kicking at Howard's throat with it's sharp-clawed back feet.