Goose Chase Read Online Free PDF

any rate, she must have realized the futility of resistance, for at length she quieted down and lay there looking up at me apprehensively.
    "I must wash the blood off," I mused. "But how? I have no water here."
    Keeping a firm hand on Little Echo to prevent her escape, I took another peek over the edge of the featherbed. This was not easy, as one was quite likely to be smitten in the face by an uplifting Goose wing. What I did see did not look encouraging. We were flying over the King's country of Gilboa now and 'twas much more populous than my own country of Dorloo. I was looking for a solitary lake or pond at which we might land so that I might bathe Little Echo's wound. Each and every single source of water, from the largest to the smallest, seemed to have a cluster of human habitations ringing it.

    When we had flown some time without finding a safe place to land, I sat back up and thought. Where could I find water in the middle of the sky? Water, I reminded myself, comes from the sky in the shape of rain. I looked up. There were a quantity of low, puffy clouds above us, some not so very far away. I knew not what clouds might be made of, but did they contain water—why then, I meant to have some for Little Echo's shoulder.
    I leaned forward and tapped Ernestina on the back. Her eyes flicked toward me.
    "Go higher," I said loudly, gesturing in case she didn't understand me. "I wish to go up."
    I wriggled over to the other front corner of the featherbed, where Alberta labored, and repeated the request.
    "'Tis for Little Echo that I ask it," I explained, feeling a trifle foolish as I did so. I am not in the habit of explaining the whys and wherefores of my actions to a gaggle of Geese,
but this was not my element. On earth I was the sovereign ruler of my household, but here in the upper air the Geese were at home and I was not. I might choose to issue commands which they might choose not to obey. And what I would do in that circumstance I knew not, to be quite candid with you.

    With powerful strokes of their wings, we began to rise. The other Geese grasped our change in direction and soon we were headed straight into a small dark cloud.
    Clouds are not what you might imagine them to be from seeing them on the ground. I used to think, ignorant girl as I was, that I should like a gown cut from a cloud. How fine and white and soft 'twould be! 1 no longer desire this. 'Twould not be decent, to speak truly. Why, a cloud does not seem to be anything but a great mass of mist or steam, and a girl dressed in a cloud gown might as well be walking about in her shift and naught else.
    However, there is water in a cloud. Upon my honor I do believe that clouds are nothing
but
water which for some reason has chosen to go very small and then wander aimlessly across the vault of heaven instead of raining down to earth as it ought, where it could be of some use.
    Within moments everything save the Geese had become thoroughly damp. The water rolled right off the Geese, as I had observed it to do during a rainstorm, but both I and the bedding were drenched.
    I was now glad to see that the bag containing my golden
wedding gown had come along with us, as it also contained a little pair of silver scissors. I realized with regret that my Princess gown would have to be at least partially sacrificed to bind up Little Echo's injury. Tearing the featherbeds would mean losing their stuffing, and my golden gown seemed to be the wrong sort of material for making into bandages. I therefore cut my hem into several long strips.

    "What cannot be cured must be endured," I sighed. "'Twas ripped already, besides."
    I instructed my Geese to drop back down into the sunlight that we might dry off and warm up.
    Obediently, they dropped with such a lurch that my inner organs seemed like to fly right out through my lips. I did not offer any remark, however, but waited in silence until my gizzards reseated themselves. I would not have Ernestina and Alberta (ever