Three Good Deeds (8 page)

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 much, 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.