GOOSE
By Lorraine J. Anderson
Copyright 2011 L.J. Anderson
Smashwords Edition
License Notes
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Just once --- just ONCE --- I’d like to keep one of my children.
I mean, that giant came into the room today, grabbed one of my children and went off muttering. I suppose he’ll lower her down to the ground and buy some supplies with her. Which wouldn’t be so hard except that he has to find somebody who’ll deal with a net that lowers down from a cloud with a note that Harmonia writes. But objections usually melt at the sight of my children.
And I can’t object. I literally can’t object. I’m a goose. I can’t speak human. Or giant.
I never used to be so unusual. I was just your common, everyday type of gosling. I was hatched out of a regular egg. I tumbled out, looked lovingly up at my Mom, and fell down.
But it wasn’t long before I got my sea and land legs. My brothers and sister were right with me. Every day, we went to the pond and fed; every night, we hid under the bushes and slept.
But I was curious.
“Mom, what’s that?”
“That’s the sky.”
“What’s that?”
“A blade of grass.”
“What’s a blade? What’s grass?”
She cocked her head to one side. “Um… a blade of grass is something we eat.”
“We do?”
“Sometimes.”
“Oh.”
“How do you know?”
Her eyes went vague. “I don’t know, honey.”
That didn’t stop me for long.
“What’s that?”
“That’s a cat tail.”
I peered around at my own tail. “What happened to the cat?”
“It’s just it’s name.”
“But I have a goose tail. Are they going to take my tail off?”
“I’ve never heard of a goose tail plant.” Mom ate a blade of grass.
“What’s a plant?”
And so on. I never heard my brothers and sister say a word except for telling me to shut up.
One day, Mom drove me away from the nest. I was sad for a while, then I forgot her.
You say, how can I remember her if I forgot her? I’m coming to that.
I wandered around for a while. One pond looked a lot like another. I saw some male geese, but they had already found somebody. I was wandering around on this little brackish pond, miserably looking up at the sky, when I saw something arcing down to me. It hit the pond with a splash, then sank to the bottom. I immediately bottom upped after it. It was shiny, I was curious. I dove and I dove and I brought it up with my beak… and promptly swallowed it.
Cattails.
Now I’d never find out what it was.
I found myself thinking back to the old pond. Funny. I had never thought of the old pond before. I actually found myself getting homesick. I took to the wing, and, though I had wandered a long time since then, I found the old pond with no problem. And there was my mother.
“Mom!”
She looked me up and down.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s…” I realized I never had a name. It was always me and you and the others. “I’m your daughter.”
She looked confused. Well, as confused as a goose could look. “But you’re so big.” I saw little heads peering around the grass. “Those are my daughters.”
“I’m your daughter.”
My Mom looked at me. “No, you’re not my daughter.”
“But… you’re my mother.” I knew this as well as I knew my own feathers. My own beak. My…
Mom walked away. Then something happened that never happened before.
A tear rang down my beak.
I realized, with a shock, I was no longer like the other geese. I could remember. I was educated. I was special, although I didn’t know it at the time. All I felt was that my Mom was leaving me and she didn’t even remember me. Well, fine. If she didn’t remember me, I didn’t have to remember her. I could find my own companions. But I was still crying as she slipped into the water with her latest gaggle of goslings. I winged away into the night.
I found myself over a castle. I almost did a somersault in the air. A castle? What was that? The name came to me like my memories – suddenly, and with a shock. Castle. Men lived in castles. I had never seen men, but suddenly I had a vision of long legs, stretched out torso, flat faces, and no wings. Bleh. And with the memory of men came the thought of danger. I flew higher as I saw a man point something at me… a bow and arrow, that was it. No, don’t go near castles. I looked down and honked at him, like a ha, ha, ha, you can’t get me…
Then I flew into a net.
A net?
What was a net doing up here, you ask?
The net pulled me up into a cloud, and a large ugly face was staring at me. “Goose,” it said.
Oh, this guy was an intellectual giant. I could tell. I honked defiantly at him.
“Goose has eggs.”
Well, I hadn’t yet, but I supposed it was a matter of time. In fact, I felt something rather uncomfortable in my nether regions, that I had to expel…
“An egg.”
It was an egg. Looked rather grey to me, didn’t look healthy. Still, I could tell it was a boy…
“A golden egg.”
Golden egg? What was that? I peered at it closely. Still looked grey to me, but then I realized that I couldn’t see… colors, yes, that was it. Gold was a color.
“Gold is good.”
I supposed gold was good. With my new found intelligence, I realized that gold was a valuable currency. I honked at the giant.
“Must keep goose.”
Must keep goose! I honked in alarm. I couldn’t be kept. I couldn’t stay. I needed to find a male goose. (Why? Said my mind, but my hormones overrode them.) But it did no good. The giant grabbed the net and took off over the cloud.
My lower brain was panicking and I was struggling with the net; my upper brain was saying “What the hell?” How in the world could a giant be on a cloud? How could the cloud support the giant? Sure, it looked solid, but I had flown through clouds before, when they were down low enough to be a fog. Nothing solid in a cloud, unless one was stupid enough to run into a tree. Or a rock. Or a mountain. And I had come close enough to all of those to know.
He took me to a house. A hut, I supposed would be the better designation, but it had four or five rooms, all of which I saw upside down, swinging in a net. He swung me forward and back, and almost knocked me senseless banging into a wall. Finally, we found the right room, and he retrieved me out of the net. I escaped his hand and flew around the room.
“If you clip her wings, she won’t be able to fly,” said a calm female voice.
“Clip…wings? Cut off?”
“No, no, Gerard, darling. Just some of her feathers.”
Who the hell was talking? I finally figured out there was no exit to the room, and there was no way I was going to open the door with my beak. I settled on a counter and looked around the room. Who was talking? I didn’t see anything else living in the room. A bunch of geegaws. A fancy box. A couple of crowns. A harp with the statue of a lady.
The lady winked at me.
Aw, pinfeathers, more magic.
“Relax,” she said to me in goose. “It’s either this or he’s going to kill you.”
“How do you know he’s not keeping me for something else? Like dinner?”
“The golden egg on the counter.”
Oh. But -- “It’s just an egg.” My baby.
“No, my dear. It’s a golden egg. Gold is valuable to giants… and humans.”
“Valuable.” I pondered that a bit. “Meaning it can buy things for humans.”
“You’re smart, for a goose.”
“You’re lively, for an inanimate object.” I sat back. “Magical, huh.”
“Yeah,” she said, with a shrug. She turned her attention back to the giant. “She’ll need a nest to lay her eggs.”
“Grass is all right.” I said.
“Straw will work.”
I wished I could frown. “Straw is all right. A bit itchy, though. But I guess I could work a little down in it, make it comfortable.”
“I get straw.”
I stared after him. “A genius, that one.”
“He could be worse. But you don’t want to see what he does to humans.”
I could imagine. I still didn’t know where the information was coming from, but now having an imagination was --- creepy. Having an imagination is overrated. I kept imagining the worse things that could happen, most of which ended up with me on a spit over a fire. Bleh.
“What’s your story?”
She shrugged. “I was human once. I wanted immortality and tried to force a wizard to give it to me by force. I got it,” she gestured around to her nether regions. “In a fashion. It took me a hundred years or so, but I finally realized that music helped.” She strummed the harp. “Unfortunately, I was locked in a cabinet after the wizard died for about fifty years. I can’t die and I can’t go mad, so I learned how to play.” She started playing a lively tune. “Then the giant ransacked the castle and stole me. I rode around in his rucksack for a while until a second wizard banished him up here. He can’t touch earth without turning into mulch.” She shrugged. “Since then, I’ve played advisor to the giant and various other mortals who chanced to make their way up here. The sad part is that the men usually ended up in his soup.” She looked a little pensive. “Some good looking ones, too.” She brightened. “And your story?”
I told her my story. She nodded. “I think you’ve eaten a Wizard charm.”
“And…?”
“That would explain your intelligence and your golden… offspring. But if you want to keep both, stay away from those damned wizards.”
“Won’t the charm go through me?”
She shook her head. “I think it would require a magical removal. I understand that’s a bit… painful.” She looked at me. “How old are you?”
I thought about that. “About a year and a half.”
“Limited experience.”
“But I seem to know a lot more than I ever learned.”
“So we might have some interesting conversations. That’s good. For me, anyway.” She had the grace to look a little ashamed of herself.
I settled back on my shelf. After a time, the giant brought nest making materials. I thought of escaping while the door opened, but he blocked the entire door and closed it quickly. Then he clipped my wings, and I gave up the idea. What was I going to do, waddle out of the door and fall to earth? Splat. I’ve had more rough landings than I cared to remember. The harp reminded him to bring me food and drink, and I laid an egg a day. More than the average goose, because the average goose only had a few a year, but I could’ve had hundreds of children, had they not been taken away. I cried for the children, then became resigned.
As for the Harp, oddly enough named Harmonia, she proved to be an interesting conversationalist. And I found that I enjoyed it immensely. I may have changed in intelligence, but my curiosity was still boundless, and the harp had picked up a lot in her long life. As for the harp, I asked her once what she got out of our conversations, and she said, “Company. You think I can talk to that genius?” I had the feeling she was somewhat of a talker before her transformation.
So, while it wasn’t freedom, it was interesting and relatively comfortable.
Until Jack came.
He slithered into our room like a snake intent on stealing eggs. I could see his shifty eyes jump around the room. He settled on Harmonia.
“Harmonia,” I squawked.
She had been sleeping. “What. What! Oh.” She looked at him appraisingly. “Does a good looking fellow like you want a harp?”
“Harmonia!” I objected.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?” She said lowly in goose.
“Well, yes, but…”
“Let me do the talking.”
“I need something I can sell. My mother and I, we’re about to starve to death.”
“Well,” said Harmonia with her hands on her hips, “I would be a bit difficult to sell, but over there is a goose that lays golden eggs.” She sighed. “Only problem is that I’m the only one who can get her to lay.”
“I don’t believe it,” the boy shifted side to side. He suddenly looked young and less sinister.
“I’m a harp who can talk,” Harmonia said wryly. “Would I lie to you?” She waved her hands toward the shelf where a number of my children’s shells lay. “See the results?”
“Wow.” I could see the greed come up in his eyes. Somehow, Harmonia’s scheme didn’t reassure me.
I could feel pounding in the distance. “Listen, pal, the giant is coming back. Over there is the giant’s net. Put us in it and take us back to earth.”
Earth is nice.
Jack hesitated for a second, looking at the harp as if there was a catch. I wondered about that, myself, but honked in support. He ran over to the other end of the room, deftly folded the net in fourths, tied it so that it fit over his head, then grabbed the harp, then me. My instincts kicked in and I struggled for a second, but overcame my instincts. Then I thought of something.
“Harmonia, how did this human get up here?”
“A beanstalk, of course.”
“A… what?”
Jack ran out of the front door, almost under the legs of the giant. He ducked one way, then another, but his fancy footwork was useless against the giant, who was slower than molasses. Looked nice, not necessary, a linear run would have been just as effective and less exhausting. Then he settled down and ran toward a large plant sticking out of the floor of the clouds. As we got closer, I could see that it was a beanstalk.
Life is weird. Life in a world with wizards was bizarre. What would I be doing in a normal world? I’d be with a mate, eating grass, and raising children. Not a bad life. On the other hand, I’d be missing Harmonia’s entertaining discussions and my intelligence. On the other hand, I’d be flying and not in the bag of a greedy young man, who was clambering down the beanstalk. I looked up. Yeah, there was the giant, lumbering down behind him. “But the giant can’t touch earth, can he?”
“Hush. Momma Harmonia has this in hand.”
After an interminable time, we reached earth. It had just rained; I could smell the grass, a sharp, delicious smell. An older woman leaned out the door. Her teeth were half-gone. “Jack! What on earth are you doing?”
Jack handed off the net with us in it. “Not now, Momma.” He reached toward the hatchet, and started hacking away at the beanstalk. He did know how to cut a tree, because it wasn’t long before the beanstalk was swaying. I looked up at the giant. He had a panicked look on his face, and even from here I could smell what he let loose. “Pe-euw,” Harmonia uttered.
But the higher the giant went, the more the beanstalk swayed, until suddenly, he fell to earth. It made an enormous noise, and the giant flopped, his head jumping back and forth. As we watched, he turned into mulch, then the mulch settled and shifted on either side.
Jack’s mother stood there with her hand on her hips. “Jack, you fool, what were you doing?”
He took the bag from his mother, then laid us on the ground. “Mother, this is a magical harp. She talks.” He lifted Harmonia, who was doing her statue imitation. He shook her a little bit.
Harmonia put her hand on her hips. “I was joking with you.” She reached out her tiny hand. “How do you do.”
Jack’s Mom gaped at her. I could see Harmonia’s nose wrinkle. “I see you had garlic for lunch,” she said, withdrawing her hand.
He handed her to his mother, then picked me up. “And this is a goose who lays golden eggs.”
“If he hands me to her, I’m going to throw up.”
Harmonia grinned. “I wish I could.”
Jack’s mother started swinging at Jack, unfortunately with Harmonia. “Jack, you fool, what good are golden eggs for food!”
“We can sell them for food!”
“And who’s the fool here?” Harmonia said in goose.
Jack’s mother stopped swinging. “Jack, you idiot, when you sold the cow, you bought magic beans! What good are magic beans?”
“They got us the harp and the goose!”
I could see the idea circulating around in her brain. “I’ll make the deal.”
“As if she’s any better than he is.”
I heard a plop. “Get in the hut,” Harmonia yelled. A board fell before us.
“What is it?”
“It’s the giant’s house! The spell’s broken, and his house is dropping down to earth!”
The pair ran into the hovel, fortunately bringing both of us with them. “Get close to the goose.”
Huh?
She looked at me. “Testing a theory.”
A board came through the roof in front of us. Another came through behind us. I looked up and honked. There was one coming toward us, but suddenly it deflected the other way. “Jack,” Jack’s mother said. “Is this your fault?”
“I think so,” Jack said, cringing.
I was still thinking about the deflected board. “Did I do that?”
“I think the charm you ate did. If there’s any chance of it being destroyed, it’ll work to save itself.”
“But not necessarily me.”
“I think so.”
“Hmmm…. Convenient.”
The clatter ended and we looked out. The remains of the house were scattered around the hut. Intermingled with the wood were glints of gold. The pair gaped, then set us both down and went out to gather their booty.
I stood up and took a bit of sweet grass, grass that I hadn’t eaten in at least two years. “Well, that should keep them busy for a while,” Harmonia said.
A man appeared in front of us. He was an average looking man, in spite of the fact that he appeared out of thin air. “Well, isn’t this fascinating,” he said, looking down at us. He peered at Jack and his mother, who hadn’t noticed anything more than picking gold out of the grass. “You cause this?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Harmonia said, frowning upwards. “You going to lock us up for that?”
The man snorted. “Not today, but I think I need to take you away from this.”
“I know your sort. You’re a wizard.”
“No, I’m your worst nightmare.”
Harmonia wrinkled up her face.
“Sorry, joking. A little future reference. My name is Howard.”
“We’re being rescued by Howard, the wizard?”
Howard grinned, picked us both up, and the idiot Jack and his despicable mother disappeared. We found ourselves in a comfortable room, with cushions. He set me down onto a chair, Harmonia on another chair, and he took a third. “Well, I’m curious to find out both of your stories.” He pointed at me. “You, first.”
I lifted my head, startled. “You can understand me?”
“Of course I can, you goose.” He grinned. “I’m a wizard; didn’t you notice?”
“Heh,” Harmonia said.
I told him my point of view. Howard looked serious. “I knew you had a charm in you; I could sense it. My first instinct is to recover it, but since it’s been in you so long, I’m not sure that’s feasible.”
I felt disappointment, and, oddly enough, hope.
“Let’s hear your story, Harmonia.”
She told her story. She didn’t hold anything back.
“Your predicament is a bit simpler, although the spell has been on you for a long time; I think I can transform you back to human.”
“Really?” Harmonia looked the same as I felt.
He sat back into his chair. It was an odd looking thing, with cushions and a foot rest that manually came up off of the floor. I looked at it. “Another future invention.” He looked at us both. “So what’s the problem?”
“Don’t get me wrong…” Harmonia started.
“You’re very nice, I’m sure… “ I said.
“Mmmm. You’re not sure about this.”
“When I woke up this morning, I was held in the room of a giant.”
He set the chair up. “Fair enough explanation. Well, you can both stay here until you change your minds.” He picked Harmonia up. “I’m going to have to put a protection spell on the house, though.”
Harmonia screwed up her lips. “Other wizards?”
“You know.” He looked out of the window. “In fact, you don’t know that I have honorable intentions.”
“Oh, no,” Harmonia said. “I’ve been enchanted long enough so that I can tell these things. You’re one of the good ones.”
So we stayed in Howard’s house. I kept having children, but, as Howard explained, I found out that they never would have hatched, no matter if I had kept them or not. I could tell whether they were boys or girls, but apparently that was just their original potential; they were still gold. Harmonia played her tunes to Howard as he relaxed; when he was working, she liked to stand over his shoulder, watching. He accused her of stealing his secrets, but he was joking; a wizard was born, not one by study, although it helped.
One day, he came up to me. “I’ve figured out how to get the charm out of you without harming you.” He looked regretful. “But you’ll forget everything you’ve ever known and be just an ordinary goose. And I’ll regret that. I like you as you are.” He shook his head. “And not because of the eggs.”
“But,” I said, “I’ll be able to mate and have children.”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Harmonia looked in from the other room. “Please don’t do it, honey. I’ll miss you.”
I felt anxious. “And I’d miss you.” I looked at Howard. “But I can stay the way I am without any harm?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
“But I couldn’t have a mate or children.”
“You could have a mate. I suspect you wouldn’t like him, because geese aren’t generally terribly smart.”
Harmonia yelled from the other room. “That’s a disadvantage?”
I laughed.
“Do I have to make a decision today?”
“No, of course not.”
So I thought and I thought about children and mates and friends and interesting discussions. I finally made a decision.
Well, which would you choose?
End
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