"It's time! It's time!" they honked back.
Howard could feel excitement building in him, even though he didn't know what was going on. The individual honks became synchronized into one single chorus as the geese honked together, so exhilarating that Howard joined in, whatever this was all about, until the feeling grew too large to be contained: "It's time! It's time! IT'S TIME!"
And then, all together—even Howard, though he'd had no idea what was about to pass his beak until it did—"Fly!"
The geese burst out of the water.
Once again—as on the day the geese had learned their flight feathers had grown back—Howard's enthusiasm dragged him along with them. It can't hurt, he told himself this time. I'll fly a little bit.
The geese wheeled back and forth, swooping up, then down, turning one way then the other.
Howard was having a good time despite himself.
Far below the old witch was waving. "Good-bye!" she called. "Good-bye. Have a safe journey. Good-bye, Red-Beak. Good-bye, Limp-Tail. Good-bye, He-Who-Honks-the-Loudest."
Journey? Howard thought as the old witch called off names.
As the old witch called off names?
That was something he remembered from the folklore of Dumphrey's Mill, part of the old witch's craziness: She would tend the geese in the spring, and then stand in her yard yelling good-byes when they flew south for the winter.
South: the direction the flock—after it's veering and dipping—had finally started off in.
"Wait!" Howard practically stopped in midair, and another goose almost collided with him. "We're leaving?"
"Watch where you're flying," that one muttered as he swerved to avoid Howard.
"Watch where you're flying. Watch where you're flying," others complained as those who had been behind began to catch up and bypass him.
"We're leaving?" Howard repeated. He couldn't leave. Dumphrey's Mill was here. His parents were here.
The witch who could change him back into his real shape was here.
Howard flapped just enough to keep up with the stragglers. "You're heading south?" he asked. "For the winter?"
"Oh, How-Word!" one of the geese called over his shoulder—Howard wasn't sure, from this back angle, who—"You always say the funniest things!"
Of course they were heading south for the winter. That's what geese do.
Howard slowed even more.
If I go with them, he thought, and I do a good deed, how will the old witch know and be able to turn me back into a boy?
But if I stay here, without them, who will I be able to do a good deed for?
He had already tried complimenting the old witch herself, and that hadn't had any effect. And he couldn't see how he could ever rescue her from anyone or anything. Someone with magic simply wasn't dependent on a goose, no matter how brave.
In Dumphrey's Mill, he couldn't compliment anyone, because no one there spoke goose. And if he stayed around the village, on the lookout to rescue them from something or other—who knew what?—they were sure to eventually catch him and throw him into a cook pot.
Was that supposed to be his third good deed? he wondered crankily: To feed a hungry family?
Someone had angled away from the others and was coming back for him: the goose still known as Sunset-Dances-Like-Flames-on-Her-Feathers, though the red dye was just about all gone. "How-Word," she honked. "Catch up."
"I can't go south with the flock," he said. Perhaps she would be a loyal friend and offer to stay with him.
Instead she said, "Oh. All right then. Good-bye, How-Word." She swung around again and rejoined the formation.
Howard stayed in the air, flying back and forth across the pond, as the sound of their honking faded.
Until all the geese were so far away their individual shapes merged into one single shape.
Which became smaller and smaller.
And then was gone.
Alone, he flew down to the yard of the old witch.
She had been heading back to her cottage, but now stopped to lean on her cane and ask, "Decided to stay?"
Howard cocked his head to get a better look at her, to try to read her expression. "Should I have gone?" he asked. Fine time to ask, now that it was too late.
The old witch shrugged. "It's going to get cold here," she said.
Which sounded like a yes to Howard.
Frantically, he demanded, "Should I try to catch up? Should I try to find them? If I do a good deed while I'm in the south with them, will you know it and turn me back?" That was a sudden bad thought. "Would you turn me back while I'm in the south with them, so that I'd have to get back here on my own, walking?" Howard wondered how far south south was. "Or would you wait until we came back next spring?" Waiting wasn't good, either. Why was he even asking? He knew he could never catch up now. "Why didn't you tell me before that I should go with them?"
"Howard," the old witch said, "you're making me tired. Leave me alone." She sat down on the stoop by her door as though she didn't even have the energy to get away from him indoors.
"You're tired?" Howard said. "Try being a goose for a while, and see how tired that makes you." He started to waddle toward the pond then decided he'd better check whether she planned to feed him, now that he was stuck here for the winter. "Speaking of cold...," he began.
She hadn't moved, except for dropping her cane.
But Howard knew she hadn't fallen asleep.
The old witch had died.
15. Howard and the Old Witch
Howard sat down heavily in the dust by the old witch's feet.
Now he would never regain his boy's body.
He was stuck as a goose as surely as those born to it.
What were his choices? He could spend the winter here, alone, hoping a solitary goose—a goose without much experience as a goose—could survive the harshness of the weather and the scarcity of food. Or he could start flying southward and hope to catch up to the Goose Pond geese when they stopped for the night. That was assuming he could find them, of course. Or he might happen upon another flock of geese—and he could start all over with them. If they let him.
Whichever he chose, he would never have a chance to explain to his parents what had happened. They would die never knowing whether he'd run off or been killed. Actually, now that he thought about it, he would probably die first. Under the best of circumstances, geese don't live as long as people, and his were certainly not the best of circumstances.
He looked at the dead old witch, with her head leaned back against the door, her gray wispy hair lifting in the wind.
Your fault, he thought.
But he couldn't hate her.
She had been ailing, slowing down, all spring and summer long. She had not gone into Dumphrey's Mill once during that time, and the only ones who had come here had been his parents, looking for him, and Roscoe and Alina, looking for eggs. No one had cared enough to worry about her, and that had to be hard, whether you were a witch or not.
She was still ugly, she was still old, she was still mean—but Howard couldn't just leave her like this, sitting dead on the stoop.
He flew up to the window and into the cottage. The room was messier, dustier than it had been the time she had let him in to tend his rat-bitten beak. He saw no store of wood set by the fireplace in preparation for the winter cold, the way his family would have done by now. And there didn't appear to be much food left: The bread she had been throwing out to the geese looked to be close to the last of what she had.
In the corner was her bed, and there he saw what he needed. He waddled over, then tugged with his beak at the corner of the blanket. It came loose, and he managed to drag it off the bed and across the floor.
But then he realized that the old witch was sitting on the other side of the door, so he'd never be able to push it open.
He took as much of the hem of the blanket in his beak as he could manage, determined to fly out the window. But the weight of the blanket hanging loose was too mu
ch, and the blanket slithered back down to the floor.
Howard poked and prodded with beak and webbed feet, until finally he managed to fold the blanket, more or less halfway lengthwise, then again widthwise.
This made the blanket rather thick for beak holding, and he dropped it twice more before, on his third attempt, he got most of it onto the windowsill.
Then, from outside, he tugged it down onto the ground.
Something that would have been so easy for a boy half his age had taken him the greater part of the morning to accomplish as a goose.
Stupid, he called himself.
Waste of a good blanket that could keep ME warm come this winter, he told himself.
But he knew he couldn't really survive the winter on his own, with or without a blanket.
So he dragged it to the feet of the old witch, and then—with just as much difficulty as he'd had folding the thing in the first place—now he managed to unfold it. Lastly, he pulled it up over her, covering her the best he could, because that, he knew from when his grandmother had died, was what decent people did, as though the dead person would not want people gawking.
Not that there was anybody around to gawk at the old witch.
Now what?
Blanket or not, animals would come.
That can't be helped, Howard thought. If she'd turned me into a dog, then—MAYBE—I could have buried her.
It was her own fault.
But if he couldn't bury her, maybe he could find someone who could. If he went to Dumphrey's Mill, and if he pretended to have a broken wing, he might entice someone to chase after him in hope of an easy meal, someone he could lead back here, someone who would see the dead old witch and do the right thing.
It was a dangerous plan. If Howard was to convince people he couldn't fly, then—obviously—he couldn't fly. And they might catch him, during that long trek through the woods. They might catch him and wring his neck before he could escape.
He wondered if, dead, his body would resume it's true shape.
That would be an unpleasant shock for someone.
Someone who deserved it, if they'd wrung his neck.
Howard knew going back to Dumphrey's Mill might be the last thing he would ever do. But as his future looked so bleak anyway, he decided to chance it.
Still, he felt—since he might not make it back—that he should say a few solemn words over the old witch. Not that honking generally came out sounding solemn. But that was what the villagers had done for his grandmother: called back pleasant memories, shared nice things about her.
Howard hadn't really known the old witch well enough to be able to think of much he could say about her, and what he knew for the most part didn't seem appropriate: She loved geese but hated people?
He thought again of how no one had come looking for her in all these months.
She was good at ruining the lives of innocent boys by turning them into geese?
Well, not that innocent: She'd caught him stealing the eggs of the geese who were her only friends—frivolous and silly as those geese were.
She put salve on my nose when I got bitten by a rat?
Howard stepped forward with the only thing he could think of. He said, "I'm sorry I was mean to you, and I forgive you for being mean back to me."
No sooner had the honks passed his beak than his feathers began to vibrate, his skin began to bubble, his bones made a screeching noise like nails being pulled out of wood.
Howard tipped over, and when his eyes uncrossed as he was sitting there in the dirt, he saw long, thick legs ending in sensible, unwebbed feet; he saw arms instead of wings; he saw cloth and skin rather than feathers: He was a boy again—proof that the witch's spell worked by itself, without needing her to be aware of what he'd done.
Howard looked at his hands, and thought his fingers were the most marvelous things he had ever seen. He threw his head back and yelled—yelled, not honked—"Hurray!" He liked the sound of that so well, he jumped up and—a bit unsteadily on his new old feet—ran a circle around the outside of the cottage, yelling, "Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!"
Once he stopped for a breath, he noticed that he was, indeed, still wearing clothes. They even looked—for the most part—like what he'd been wearing that day in early spring, except that certain patches seemed brighter or thicker or, well, newer than the rest.
The sight of the blanket-covered body of the old witch returned a sense of seriousness to him. He was sure she must have a shovel since she had a vegetable garden, but burying her no longer seemed the right thing to do.
He tied the blanket more securely around her shoulders, then set about moving her. Being so old, she had shrunk down to a size close to Howard's own and she didn't weigh very much, which meant he was able to get her to the edge of the pond, and then into the water where she could be, come spring, among the geese.
"I hope that's what you wanted," he said, and only then did he set off for home.
Vivian Vande Velde, Three Good Deeds
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