Three Good Deeds
Vivian Vande Velde
* * *
MAGIC CARPET BOOKS
HARCOURT, INC
Orlando Austin New York San Diego London
* * *
Copyright © 2005 by Vande Velde, Vivian
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First Magic Carpet Books edition 2007
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registered in the United States of America and/or other jurisdictions.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Vande Velde, Vivian.
Three good deeds/Vivian Vande Velde.
p. cm.
Summary: Caught stealing some goose eggs from a witch, Howard is
cursed for his heartlessness and turned into a goose himself, and he
can only become human again by performing three good deeds.
[1. Geese—Fiction. 2. Witches—Fiction. 3. Behavior—Fiction.
4. Blessing and cursing—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V2773Thr 2005
[Fic]—dc22 2004029578
ISBN 978-0-15-205382-6
ISBN 978-0-15-205455-7 pb
Text set in Bembo
Designed by Cathy Riggs
A C E G H F D B
Printed in the United States of America
* * *
To Nancy and Don,
who are fans of geese but—
as far as I know—
have never been geese
* * *
Contents
1. Howard 1
2. The Old Witch 7
3. Goose 11
4. Plans 21
5. Red 31
6. Pond Life 42
7. Dumphrey's Mill 49
8. Reunion 59
9. Old Friends 72
10. Town Goose 85
11. Brave Goose 94
12. Braver Goose 108
13. Bravest Goose 115
14. A Change in the Wind 123
15. Howard and the Old Witch 137
1. Howard
Though all the children of the village of Dumphrey's Mill called the woman whose little house sat at the edge of Goose Pond "the old witch," Howard never suspected till too late that she truly was a witch.
She was old and she was ugly, and to the children that was reason enough to call her a witch.
It was also reason enough to tag along behind her those times when she came into the village to sell milk from her goats or to buy grain from the miller. Howard was not the best nor the worst of the children to ever be born in Dumphrey's Mill. So when the old witch would come to town, Howard did not suggest it might be fun to tease her; but neither did he suggest it might not be nice. Instead, he would join in with the others and imitate the way she walked—her shoulders hunched, her right foot dragging behind her—until she'd notice and shake her cane at them, which caused them to flee with delighted screeches of terror.
One spring day when the witch had not come to town, Howard and his best friend, Roscoe, noticed the freshly laundered sheets Roscoe's mother had hung on the line to dry. Because there was nothing to do, and because they were boys, they thought the sheets on the line made a fine cave. One thing led to another, and in short order the cave was in pretty serious need of more laundering.
At the exact moment Roscoe's mother discovered this, it was Roscoe's turn to be the dragon in the cave; Howard, as the knight, was in the side yard looking for a stick that could pass for a sword. So Roscoe's mother never saw Howard as she dragged Roscoe by the ear into the house, to the accompaniment of some very un-dragonlike yelps.
Howard could have knocked on the door and volunteered the information that the knight versus cave-dragon game had in fact been his idea, but it was too late to save Roscoe anyway, so Howard decided it was no use sacrificing himself for nothing.
But without Roscoe, there was very little excitement in the village of Dumphrey's Mill.
That was when Howard decided he would go to Goose Pond and see if the geese had laid any eggs yet.
Even though the geese there were wild, everyone knew the old witch was very protective of them: As soon as the snow melted every spring, she pulled weeds from the edge of the pond so that when the geese returned from their winter home in the south they would find the area ready for building their nests. And throughout the spring and summer, she threw out crusts of bread for them to eat. When it was time for them to return to the warmth of the south, she would stand on the edge of the pond and shout good-byes, calling each by name.
Howard thought this was ridiculous behavior because everyone knows both geese and goose eggs are for eating.
When Howard arrived at Goose Pond that spring day, he stood hidden at the edge of the trees and looked over the old witch's yard to make sure she wasn't someplace she'd be able to see him.
As there was no sign of her, Howard crept to the edge of the pond and began searching for nests.
He found one quickly.
By the way the goose who'd been sitting there hissed and flapped her wings, Howard could tell that she was indeed guarding eggs.
He waved his cap and managed to startle her away long enough to snatch three of the eight eggs from the nest.
"You don't need so many," he assured her as she tried to peck him.
He set one of the eggs on the edge of the grass and rolled it toward the water's edge to distract the mother goose. This did indeed confuse her. As she rushed to save that one, Howard grabbed another, put all three into his cap, and started to run away.
Except something caught in his feet, and he fell hard.
When he looked up, he saw that what had tripped him had been the old witch's cane.
2. The Old Witch
"You wicked, wicked boy!" the old witch scolded him.
Howard had many fine qualities, but being quick-witted was not chief among them. "What?" he asked to give himself time to think and to give the old witch time in which he hoped she would calm down. "Who, me? Why?" And, when none of those seemed to have any effect, he went back to "What?"
"Coming here to steal my geese's eggs," she said. "And it would be bad enough if you wanted to eat them, but to take them just to destroy them is simply wicked."
Howard looked where she was looking. The cap was still in his hand, and the eggs were still in the cap. But the eggs were no longer in their shells. When he'd fallen, the eggs had taken the brunt of his weight. Eggshell shards and sticky egg innards oozed between his fingers.
"Well," Howard pointed out, "it's your own fault. If you hadn't tripped me, I wouldn't have fallen on them."
Howard thought this was sensible reasoning, but the witch did not.
She narrowed her eyes at him and said, "You, young man, are in serious need of a good lesson."
Since this was very similar to what he had just recently overheard Roscoe's mother say as she was twisting Roscoe's ear to get him inside the house, Howard clapped his hands protectively over his own ears—sticky egg mess notwithstanding.
He saw the old witch's lips move as she said something he could not hear and then he felt something
unlike anything he'd ever felt before.
It was as though a huge wind was suddenly intent on blowing Howard off his feet. And all the while the wind shoved at him, something was striking him—something softer than hail, but harder than snow. What it was, Howard couldn't tell because there was nothing in the air he could see. The sensation didn't hurt, but it was certainly unpleasant.
Like feathers, Howard thought. It was like lots and lots—and lots—of feathers landing on him.
Except that he couldn't see any feathers.
And neither could he see anything— besides himself—being affected by the wind that was trying so hard to topple him: The trees were still; the grass did not ripple; the clothes of the old witch standing before him were not flapping.
Strange, Howard thought. And while thinking that, he lost his concentration, and the wind succeeded in knocking him to his bottom.
"Ooof!" he puffed—and even in that first moment some part of him recognized his voice had come out louder than he'd expected, and more sharp and nasal.
It also seemed, even though he was sitting down, that the old witch was much too tall looming over him. Or rather, he was much too short.
"Hey!" Howard tried to say. In his mind, he could hear the word perfectly clearly.
But to his ears, it definitely came out as "Honk!"
3. Goose
Uh-oh, Howard thought. I guess she really IS a witch.
He felt someone in the village should have warned him that the name referred to more than her age and her looks.
He didn't say this. He said: "What did you do to me?"
It came out: "Honk honk-honk honk-honk!"
He stood, and in his standing was not much taller than when he'd been sitting on his bottom. His legs were short and pink and scrawny and ended in huge webbed feet. The tallest thing about him was his long skinny neck. Howard had to concentrate to keep his neck straight so that his head didn't droop. His arms flapped in helpless outrage, arms that were jointed oddly so that they felt more at rest pointing backward than hanging straight down, arms that were covered with grayish brown feathers, arms that were—in fact—wings.
"Honk honk-honk honk-honk!" Howard repeated, more frantic this time.
He was having trouble seeing straight ahead—as though his eyes were too much off to the sides. And what was the huge orange thing that seemed to be following his face around? It moved alarmingly when he asked the old witch what she'd done to him, and to his horror he realized it was attached to his face. It was a goose's beak.
"HONK!" he cried. In his mind he was saying, "Help!" but his beak wouldn't bend to the shape necessary to make the right sound.
Fortunately, the old witch understood goose.
"There is no one to help you," she told Howard.
Though his goose mouth could no longer speak human words, his goose ears could still understand her human speech.
In his agitation, he began flapping his arms, and as he did so, his feet lifted off the ground. Fortunately for Howard, he didn't get too high. He was only up to about eye level with the old witch when he realized he was flying. The reason this was fortunate was because, as soon as he did realize, he panicked entirely and froze. This meant Howard stopped flying, abruptly, and landed—very abruptly. He tipped over, once again onto his bottom. He noticed there was a lot more to his bottom than there had ever been before.
"There is no one to help you," the old witch repeated—not exactly gloating, but more like explaining. "Except yourself."
Howard fought an inclination to run around in circles flapping his wings and squawking. Looking and talking like a goose was bad enough: He was determined he would not act like one.
He tried to pretend his beak was a set of lips. He tried to speak slowly and distinctly. "What do you mean?" he tried to say.
It came out, "Honk honk HONK."
Nobody else, he realized, would be able to understand him. Only the old witch.
She did not answer his question, but instead, she said, "You're a bad boy."
"I'm not a boy at all," Howard honked. "I'm a goose—and that's your fault."
The old witch didn't tell him he had a good point. What she told him was "Well, you'll probably be a bad goose, too."
Howard began to feel sorry for himself. His beady little goose eyes got hot with tears. "My mother doesn't think I'm bad," he protested.
"Mothers never do," the old witch said. "But you come here with your friends—who are all bad boys, except for the ones who are bad girls—and you toss pebbles at the geese, and you chase them, and you steal their eggs. Why, just last week, you came here and threw a bucketful of red dye at them. Does your mother know about that?"
"That wasn't me," Howard explained. "That was Roscoe." Then, because Roscoe was, after all, his best friend, he added, "It was his sister Gertrude's idea."
What he didn't add was that he had known all about it. Gertrude had suggested the plan after she had seen Howard's mother mix up the dye to color the wool the family had gathered from their sheep. But it was Howard who poured some of the dye into a bucket and slipped it to Roscoe while his mother's back was turned.
The plan had been for Roscoe to wait for Howard to be done helping his mother.
The plan had been for the two boys to join Gertrude after she finished her chores, and for the three of them to go to Goose Pond together.
But Roscoe, who could be highly excitable, couldn't wait, and he went by himself.
So it was only fair for Howard to give the old witch Roscoe's name.
But he could see that the old witch wasn't interested in such little details. She didn't care that she had the wrong boy. She understood Howard's honking, but she didn't understand that he shouldn't be punished. She said, "How would you like someone to throw a bucket of red-dyed water onto your head? How would you like someone to steal your eggs?"
Howard—who sometimes didn't know when to quit—asked, "Since when do boy geese have eggs?"
"You think you're so smart," the old witch observed. "You have an answer for everything."
"Well, maybe not every—" Howard started.
The old witch spoke right over him. "You won't be able to talk your way out of this."
"But you said," Howard honked at her. "You said nobody could help me except myself. That means something can be done. Besides, you can't keep me a goose forever. My father will come looking for me."
"Will your father know to come here?" the old witch asked.
That was a good point, though a bad outlook—for Howard had not told anyone where he was going.
Not only could the old witch understand goose language, she was also good at reading the expression on his little goose face. Perhaps it was that the lower portion of his beak began to quiver. "It won't be forever," she told him. "Just until you've learned your lesson—until you're no longer a bad boy."
"Oh, I've learned my lesson," Howard assured her. "I'll be a much better boy from now on. I am very, very, very, very sorry for what I did."
Howard waited to return to human shape.
And waited.
And waited.
"Why am I not changing back?" he asked.
"Because you haven't proven yourself."
"Well?" Howard honked at the old witch impatiently. "How do I do that?"
"By doing three good deeds," she told him. "Good luck to you." She started walking back to her cottage with her back bent and her foot dragging.
Three good deeds.
Three didn't sound so bad. Three was better than, for example, one hundred.
So long as they weren't three hard deeds.
He shouted after her, "Which three?"
She didn't even stop walking. "Any three."
Howard thought about this. He thought about his arms that were wings. He thought about his short little legs. He thought about his voice that came out as honks. "How can I do three good deeds if I'm a goose?"
The witch had reached her cottage. She opened the door. She cal
led over her shoulder, "Try hard." Then she shut the door behind her.
Try hard? What kind of advice was "Try hard"?
"That's stupid!" Howard shouted at the closed door. "And mean." Then, even though it was fairly strong proof that he wasn't nearly as sorry as he knew he needed to be, he added, "And you're old and ugly, too."
The sound of his honking faded, and Howard was alone in the stillness of the day.
4. Plans
Howard considered what he might do. I could just walk up to that door, he thought. I could kick it in, and I could shake that old witch and MAKE her change me back into a boy.
He looked at his floppy webbed feet—though he had to turn his head sideways because his eyes were too far back on his face for him to look straight ahead. He looked at his wings, which still seemed like bent-the-wrong-way arms rather than any useful body part. He realized there probably wouldn't be much kicking-in or shaking-sense-into going on for a while.
"Mother?" he tried his voice out. "Father?"
It was no use practicing anything more complicated. His words came out a quavery honk. How could he explain to his parents that something bad had happened when geese were limited to honking, quacking, and the occasional hissing?
Howard waddled to the edge of the pond and looked at his reflection. Never mind that he looked silly. He tipped his head this way and that, hoping to catch a glimpse of something a loving parent could recognize despite the feathers.
"Help," he moaned. But he knew there was no one to help. He went from sad to frightened, and his honking for help got louder.
Nobody would ever know what had happened to him. He went from frightened to angry, and his honking got louder yet.
Howard's ears were ringing from all the noise he was making. He went from angry to having a plan, and he honked as loudly as he could. The old witch did not seem to be the kind of person who had a lot of patience. Surely he could eventually annoy her into changing her mind.
"Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!" he honked as loudly as his little goose lungs would allow. His little goose lungs did a fine job. His honking hurt his ears and his throat. His honking echoed under the sky.