But his noise did not make the old witch change her mind.
Howard's honking slowed down from frantic to tired to defeated. He let his too-long neck sag. His feathers drooped. The old witch had more stamina than he did. He stopped honking altogether.
There was a rustling in the weeds at the edge of the pond.
Howard jumped backward. His wings beat at the air, but he was in enough trouble as it was without trying to fly. After all, his goose body might know how but his boy brain knew flying was not one of his natural talents. What if he froze again, and this time fell from a great height?
Or what if he could fly too well, and he went so far that he got lost, and then even if he did do the old witch's stupid three good deeds, he couldn't find his way back to tell her about it so she could return him to his real form?
Or what if the old witch realized she'd been much too harsh with him and that it really was Roscoe she should have punished, and she changed her mind but she couldn't find him—or worse yet, turned him back into a boy while he was up in the air?
So, no flying.
"Who's there?" he demanded in his fiercest goose hiss.
"Sorry," a voice honked at him, soft and uncertain as a honk could be. "I didn't mean to startle you. I was just wondering what was wrong."
Recent experience had turned Howard into a suspicious goose. "You didn't answer my question," he pointed out. "Who are you?"
The tall weeds parted just the tiniest bit. Howard caught a glimpse of a goose's beak. "Well, so far I have been called Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow."
Howard snorted. "That has to be the silliest name I've ever heard."
There was a sniffle from the other goose. "I'm sorry," she said, as though her name were her fault. She still didn't step out from her hiding place. "What's your name?"
"Howard."
"How-Word," the other goose repeated carefully as though she'd never heard that name before. Then she said, "I've been called Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow since the time I was little more than a hatchling and I got separated from my brothers and sisters. Our parents searched for the rest of the day, but they couldn't find me until after the moon rose and shed it's light on the pond. How did you come to be called How-Word?"
"Oh," Howard said. He had no idea how his parents had chosen his name. Rather than admit that, he asked, "Why do you keep talking like your name's about to change?"
Still hidden, for the most part, behind the weeds, Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow gave a shuddery sigh. "Well," she said, "you know how geese can be."
"I do?" Howard asked. He knew how people could be, and wondered if that was the same.
"I'm afraid once they see what's happened to me, they'll call me cruel names, and one of those will stick, and then I'll be called that for the rest of my life."
So apparently geese and people did have something in common.
"What's happened to you?" Howard asked.
Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow must have taken a step back, because even her beak disappeared among the fronds of the water weeds. "Oh," she said, sounding distressed, "never mind. I'll just go now."
She sounded as miserable as Howard felt. And she was the one person ... well, the one creature ... who had shown any concern while he'd been calling for help.
Howard stumbled upon just the right thing to say. He said, "I would never call you a cruel name no matter what it is that's happened to you." He said this even though just the past summer he had called Roscoe's sister Gertrude "Baldy" when her mother had to cut her hair really short because of an infestation of lice.
"You wouldn't?" Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow asked. "That's very kind of you."
It felt nice to be called kind. Curious, Howard again asked, "What did happen to you?"
"Are you sure you won't laugh?"
"No matter what," Howard assured her.
The blades of grass separated. Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow moved very, very slowly. At first Howard couldn't see anything wrong: She had only one head; she had two big dark eyes, a beak that seemed to be the right shape and size, two feet, a pair of wings....
"It's all right," he encouraged her, because she was lingering in the shadow of the weeds and he couldn't get a good look. Something—he was assuming some nearby plant—seemed to be casting a red sheen to the feathers on her head and back so that he couldn't see what was the problem. "You look fine to me," he said. He wondered if—like himself—she wasn't supposed to be a goose. On the other hand, he guessed, with her strange name, she probably wasn't supposed to be a human, either. "Did the old witch put a spell on you?" he asked.
"No," said Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow. "It was a human boy."
And that was when Howard realized that the red sheen wasn't from something reflecting on her. Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow wore exactly the same red color as his mother's newly dyed woolens.
5. Red
"Oh," Howard said.
Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow's head drooped. Her body slouched. Her tail feathers sagged. She shuffled backward into the weeds again. "Sorry," she mumbled as though her appearance was an offense. "You won't call me names after all, will you?" she asked in a honk that trembled. "I know I look ridiculous. You won't tell the others?"
"I said I wouldn't," Howard reminded her. Then he realized what she'd said about the others. He asked, "Have you been hiding since this happened?"
"I was hoping it would go away"—Moonlight-Gives- Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow sighed—"before anybody saw me."
"Of course it will go away," Howard assured her, knowing that dyes fade. Eventually. Usually.
He saw her perk up and thought that surely, for a goose who spent so much time in the water, the dye would fade sooner rather than later.
Except, of course, that she wasn't going into the water for fear of being seen and laughed at. She could spend the whole summer long hiding in the weeds.
"But...," he said, and he saw the hope fade from her eyes. So he changed to: "But meanwhile you look fine. You look different in a good way. You look exotic and..." What he wanted to say was that she looked—between gray-brown feathers and red dye—like a moth-eaten tea cozy. Instead he finished, "You look interesting."
Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow poked her head back out from among the weeds. "'Interesting?'" she repeated. "Is that good?"
It would be easy to make her feel bad, but it was just as easy to make her feel good.
"Absolutely," Howard said.
Someone—some goose—was paddling around in the pond and noticed Howard. "Hey!" this other goose said. "You're new. You need to come introduce yourself."
Howard turned to this other goose. "I'm not staying long," he explained. He very much hoped he wouldn't be staying long.
The other goose craned his neck to see around Howard. "Who's that with you?" he asked. "Moonlight, is that you?"
"This," said Howard, waddling out of the way to let the goose in the pond see Moonlight-Gives- Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow, "is..."
Hmmm, what was another way to say red ?
"This is Sunset."
Sunset was obviously way too short a name to replace something like Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow.
Howard cleared his throat. Luckily, when a goose clears it's throat, there's a lot of throat to clear and this gave Howard a lot of time to think. He started again. "This is Sunset Shining ... Excuse me. Ahem ... Sunset Dances ... um ... Like Flames..."—inspired, he finished all in a rush—"on Her Feathers. Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers. Isn't she beautiful?"
"Ooh, I like that," whispered the goose formerly known as Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-a-Silver-Glow. "Thank you."
Perhaps it was that not many people had had occasion to say "Thank you" to Howard. He felt a bubbling sensation—not exactly good, not exactly bad, but definitely strange—that started inside, then in the space of four or five heartbeats grew and burst through his skin with suc
h force that he looked down at himself to see if his feathers were rippling.
From behind him came a voice, a human voice. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"
The old witch was standing with a basket over her arm. She reached in and tossed a handful of bread crumbs into the pond. Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers dove into the water, and she and the other goose began gobbling up the soggy bread.
"What wasn't so hard?" Howard demanded.
"Doing a good deed," the old witch said.
"Complimenting a goose is a good deed?" Howard asked.
"Making her feel better is."
Howard considered that notion while the witch reached into her basket and threw out more crumbs. So the bubbly feeling was the boy-into-goose spell starting to come apart. He wondered if he would look one-third boy and two-thirds goose, because that would be very weird—though it might make doing the remaining two good deeds easier.
But, no. He still looked entirely goose.
Other geese had heard the happy honking and splashing of Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers and the other goose and were beginning to swim their way.
Howard took a deep breath. Then another. Then he said to the old witch, "Have I mentioned what lovely eyes you have?"
He waited for the bubbly feeling to indicate the spell loosening up further.
Nothing.
"Nice try," the old witch said, with a very unlovely snort. "A certain amount of sincerity might help. Want some bread?" She tossed a crust at his webbed feet.
Howard prodded the bread with his toe and found it as hard as the stone it had landed by. "This stale old thing?" he scoffed. His mother would never let bread go that stale. She'd toss it out to the animals rather than feed it to her family.
Oh, Howard thought, realizing the old witch was doing just that.
She suggested, "Dunk it in the water."
The water was muddy and had geese swimming in it.
Howard heard Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers getting introduced as more and more geese gathered. Howard heard the geese-honks for "one of a kind" and "beautiful" and "interesting." Geese did not strike him as being very original thinkers.
"Your bread probably has weevils in it," Howard said to the old witch. She wanted a sincere compliment? He didn't need to compliment her at all when there was a whole pond full of gullible geese nearby. "Besides, I'm not going to be a goose long enough to get hungry."
The old witch shrugged, and Howard eased himself into the pond. He planned to wade in only as far as his short legs would permit since he didn't know how to swim; but as soon as his goose body hit the water, his goose instincts took over. His feet began paddling and in moments he was gliding away from the shore.
He swam up to Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers and said, "Wow! You look even better in the full sun than you did back there in the shadow of the weeds."
"Thank you," she said to him between mouthfuls of watery bread.
Howard watched the water squish out from her beak and waited for the spell-loosening sensation to start.
Nothing happened.
Maybe a compliment only worked once for each ... complimentee?
Howard swam up to another goose. "You have very soft-looking feathers."
"Thank you," that one said, though she sounded a bit timid, as though distrusting why he'd come up to her to say this.
Still nothing. Maybe the compliment wasn't good enough.
To another goose, Howard said, "The sparkles in the water cast sparkles in your eyes. Very becoming."
"Thanks," said that goose, but she backed away from him warily, as though he made her nervous.
"My, you're such a good swimmer," Howard said to yet another goose. "I bet you could teach all of us a thing or two about swimming."
The goose ignored him.
"Love the shade of orange of your beak," Howard called out to another.
That one lowered it's head and hissed, a hiss Howard understood as "Keep your distance, new youngling." Now it was Howard's turn to back up.
He backed into Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers, who stopped in her bread-gobbling to warn Howard, "That's Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher. You probably don't want to get on his bad side."
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher?
Did someone with a name like that have a good side?
This wasn't fair. Howard was trying to be sincere.
He returned to the shore, to see if that crust of bread was still there because maybe he was going to be stuck as a goose for a little longer than he'd hoped.
But both witch and bread were gone.
6. Pond Life
Now that the bread was gone, the geese began to disperse.
"Sunset!" Howard called to the only one—human or animal—who had been friendly to him this afternoon.
Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers was swimming side by side with Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher.
Both geese turned to face him. Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher hissed at him, so Howard didn't swim any closer.
"What do geese eat," Howard asked, "when there isn't an old witch to throw bread at you?"
Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers laughed as though she thought Howard was making a joke. "How-Word, you're so funny."
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher honked, "How-Word? I don't like this newcomer, How-Word."
"Well...," Howard said. He debated between What makes you think I care? and I don't like you, either, but he remembered Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers saying, "You probably don't want to get on his bad side." Mighty-Beak/ Bone-Crusher was significantly bigger than Howard and had a swagger to his swim. And his beak did look impressively sharp and strong.
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher laughed at Howard's silence, but it wasn't pleasant like the laugh of Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers. "This How-Word isn't the bravest goose in the pond, is he?"
Howard took a deep breath, decided—yet again—against arguing, then admitted, "No."
Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers came to his defense. "How-Word is nice," she said. "He talked me out of the weeds when I was being shy."
Apparently Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher wasn't interested in Howard's good qualities. "You stay away from my female," he warned. "She is one of a kind and beautiful."
This time Howard couldn't stop himself. He told Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers, "You could do better. Where was he all the while you were afraid to show yourself?"
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher charged at Howard, flapping his wings and honking.
Howard found out that geese could swim backward—quickly.
Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers turned away from both the males and kept on swimming in the direction she'd been heading before. Howard didn't know if she was abandoning him, or trying to get Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher to follow her and leave him alone.
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher called after Howard, "Your feathers are dull; your neck is short; and the webbing between your toes is too thin."
"Oh yeah?" Howard honked from a safe distance. He guessed these were goose insults, and he wanted to get back at Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher. What would be a bad thing to have someone say about you if you were a goose? Howard said, "I know ducks who are better looking than you!
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher came at Howard again, somewhere between swimming and flying, so he looked like he was practically walking on the surface of the water. Whatever the geese called that move, it was fast.
Howard scrambled back up onto the shore, wondering if Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher would follow him onto land.
Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers continued to act as though she'd forgotten all about the two of them. She honked a greeting to another goose, and that got Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher's attention off Howard. "Stop talking to everybody," he complained to her. "You're with me."
"If I'm with you," she snapped, "then why are you over there chasing How-Word?"
Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher hesitated for o
ne more glare at Howard. In a honk very like a snarl, he told Howard, "You're unfit to father eggs."
"I should hope so," Howard muttered after him.
He watched Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher catch up to Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers, who was swimming in circles while she waited for him.
At the last moment, just before facing around the other way, she said, louder than strictly necessary if it was meant only for Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher to hear, "Let's find some nice plants to eat."
Howard liked to think she was speaking to him, that she had realized maybe he hadn't been joking when he asked what geese ate.
But which plants? None of the ones around the pond looked appetizing, like apples or berries or even carrots. He looked down at the weed he was standing nearest to and watched a small pale worm crawl across the broad leaf.
It'll probably become obvious, he thought, once I get hungry enough.
But he wasn't going to let himself get that hungry.
He was going to go home and—somehow or other—let his parents know what had happened.
Surely they could help him.
He hoped.
7. Dumphrey's Mill
At first, Howard's plan was to walk back home, because the thought of flying was too scary. But his short goose legs made for a slow pace, and his webbed goose feet got tired very quickly.
I'll fly, he thought, but I just won't fly very high.
He flapped his wings and got himself up to the height from which he was used to seeing the road.
And flew smack into the trunk of a tree.
He picked himself up, more stunned than hurt, though his beak was sore. A squirrel chattered at him from the branch of another tree. The witch's spell hadn't given Howard the ability to understand any other animal besides geese, but he was sure the squirrel was laughing at him.
"That's easy for you to say," he honked after it. "Your eyes are in the front of your face where they belong." Howard tipped his head for a better look. "More or less." He shook himself to make sure nothing was broken, and muttered, "Stupid squirrel."