Goose Chase (6 page)

"And so say I," muttered Nellie drowsily, hugging her distended stomach by the fire. "She do be a better cook nor any o' us. I hain't eat so good in fifty years. Hey, Tessa? Meal weren't bad, were it?"

I awaited Tessa's verdict with some trepidation. 'Twas she, I felt sure, who would decide my fate.

"No meat," said Tessa's bald pate briefly. Her bearded head drew back its lips in a grimace, displaying a large set of yellowed teeth.

"Still and all, we can't expect the maid to bring down a stag with her bare hands, can we? Not while she's tied by the hair, nohow. 'Tain't reasonable," Nellie said.

"Humph," said Tessa.

"Do I understand, madam," I said, "that you are offering me a position in this household?"

"What y'
should
understand, and what y'
don't
understand, is that yer to keep yer trap shut up tight," Tessa snapped.

"I only ask because I was wondering what my wages might be," I explained.

"O, wages, is it? I'll wage you, I will," snarled Tessa.

"Yes, thank you, I realize that. I'd just like to know what the wages would
be.
"

"Why you—!" Tessa turned so purple that I feared for her health. "How so be it if we don't kill you? How would that be for wages?"

"Well, frankly, my lady, I was hoping for a bit more," I said.

"Blast and stummergast thee, if I don't—"

"O, don't be such an old wart, Tessa," interrupted Lucinda. "Don't see why we need t'untie her until we're ready to let her go, but she could have that necklace thing, couldn't she?
We
never use it."

"How dare you even mention the jewels, y'mutton-headed hag? Rubies the size of hen's eggs, and ye want to hand them over to any pretty face that wanders by."

"'Tis a small enough thing to keep the maid sweet tempered. Words, ye know," Lucinda said, winking significantly at Tessa, "do be as free as air."

Tessa's two heads turned to commune silently with each other for a moment, then back to Lucinda. "Hunh," said the bearded head, but no further objections were made.

Lucinda said, "Don't ye worry, little missy." She winked again at Tessa. "Ye'll git yer wages when ye go."

And so I became a servant to the Ogresses.

1 cared nothing for the promised necklace. I had only asked for wages to distract Tessa from the question of meatless meals. In any case, a promise is easy enough to give when you have no intention of honoring it. I was tied by the hair still, however much I might argue and complain. If the Ogresses tired of my services and the meals I supplied, why, I was a tethered meal, requiring only to be killed and cooked.

'Tis dreadful inconvenient, being tied by the hair. I must confess that the hair did at least have the common decency to grow or shrink depending upon my distance from the iron ring on the post, so that we were not all tripping over leagues of the stuff when I worked about the house. Still, there is no getting away from the fact that 'twas a most villainous nuisance. The further I got from the cottage the heavier it grew to drag along behind me, until I could scarce move forward for the weight of it. Then too, it was always getting wound round trees and caught up in bramble bushes, and 'twas more tedious than I can tell, unwinding and unpicking myself everywhere I went.

One might expect that the hair would grow dull with dirt and filled with burrs, but it never did. Nay, it shone like the rising sun and curled as sweetly as a grapevine tendril. So I had not even the excuse of washing it as a pretext for being untied.

I was unable to cut it, as I had threatened. When I returned that first day I found that my scissors had been removed from my sewing kit, though all else remained. No other tool had I to sever the hair, since the butcher's knife I used for cooking must be begged from Lucinda and promptly returned.

Nor was I able privily and by stealth to untie the hair. Indeed, it did not appear to be tied at all, but grew in a continuous circle round the iron ring. In my desperation I tried biting through it, but 'twas as tough as gold wires.

After the first morning, I neither saw nor heard my own dearling Geese anywhere. The only sign that I had not lost them altogether was that each day a white feather, weighted down with a small white pebble, appeared on a certain large rock near the cottage. Next to them was always a Goose egg, which helped me in my quest for food. Each day I put into my sewing bag the feather and pebble and also the broken halves of the Goose egg after we had eaten it.

As the days went by the Ogresses became more and more impatient with the meals I served, growing nostalgic for their former diet.

"O for a haunch of child meat," said Tessa, sighing wistfully and picking over as nice a stew of wild mushrooms, garlic, and coltsfoot as you could meet in a day's march. 'A good little boy of no more than six years, f'rinstance, round and sweet as a butterball. What wouldn't I give?"

"Much too rich," I said. "You'd be awake all the livelong day with indigestion and you know it. And if you
did
manage to snatch a few winks, I have no doubt you would keep everyone else awake with your bad dreams."

"O pshaw!" she responded, but she held her peace, merely glancing resentfully at her sisters, who were snorting and poking one another and nodding in agreement.

"Terrible, she be, after a meal of fresh child-flesh. The moans and groans are enough to break your heart. Still," said Nellie wistfully, "it do be a treat, now and then.
1
miss it, I will confess." She raised a dripping handful of stew to her mouth and eyed me speculatively as it trickled down her chin.

Apparently they'd eaten up all the inhabitants of the deserted little village nearby. They were now obliged to find their dinner in the village graveyard, and even this source of protein was giving out at last. The occasional unwary traveler such as myself was a real windfall.

I did my best to satisfy their cravings for flesh, indeed I did. I contrived to bring back a few birds and small beasts for the cook pot with a catapult made from a thong of leather I found lying about (best not to wonder whither the leather came from!) and a forked stick.

'Twould not do for much longer. Even I was growing weary of boiled cattail tubers
every
evening. Still, I did my best to keep the upper hand as long as I could.

"Nellie, watch how you are holding that bowl," I scolded. I had transformed some of the sawed-off skulls into bowls, but they were awkward to manage, being full of holes, imperfectly stopped up. "You are slopping stew
all
down your front. Now I'll have to wash that dress again and you won't have a thing to wear until it's dry."

"Awww," she said, ruefully inspecting her dress. "It hain't so dirty. Why do y'got to wash it fer?"

"Y'know what's happenin' here, don't yer?" demanded Tessa. "She's reformin' of us, that's what she be doin'. Next thing y'know,
she'll
be the one runnin' the show." Tessa snorted. "Y'notice that? Whooo be it what issues the orders around here lately? Me, what's the eldest of a long and proud lineage? Or her, what's a servant and what should of been our dinner?"

"Her," agreed Nellie.

Tessa made an unlovely noise deep in both of her throats. Her four eyes followed me as I moved about the room.

I could not feel easy in my mind about my future prospects in this household. Besides which, some of my duties were rather repellent to a person of fastidious tastes. 'Twas as if I were playing nursemaid to a trio of gigantic children with particularly nasty personal habits. The number of times I had to break up quarrels over some old bone,
or prevent Lucinda from pulling Nellie's hair out by the roots! Well, you simply would not believe me if I were to tell you.

Of course any one of the three could have crushed me like a beetle underfoot. Tessa in particular was at least eight feet tall and five feet wide, while I was rather slender and delicate of frame, though wiry and strong after years of fending for myself.

O my friend, I tell thee that there were nights when I did dream of naught but Tessa's teeth.
Both
sets of them.

'Twas the morning of the twelfth day that the Ogresses caught yet another unhappy traveler. I knew it to be the twelfth day because I had eleven white feathers, eleven white pebbles, and twenty-two eggshell halves in my sewing bag, and had not yet gone out to forage for food, which is when I normally found them.

I got up before dawn as usual and tidied the cottage, sweeping the usual gold dust outside, where I carefully dispersed it over the dooryard dirt. I was most vigilant in performing this duty, and in dusting every surface of the cottage, for I did not wish the Ogresses to know any more about my gifts than I could help. You might wonder that I did not offer my wealth in exchange for my freedom, but if you do so wonder, kindly recall the result of my previous attempts in this direction.

Once every gleaming grain of gold was gone, I began cooking our great meal of the day as usual. Suddenly I
heard a tremendous tumult coming up the path: roars and moans, shrieks and groans. There came a sound of heavy bodies falling about into the shrubbery.

I rushed to the doorway to see what was the matter. This was a bit difficult to tell at first. There was such a confusion of gigantic arms and legs and massive chests and hips that I couldn't immediately decide what I was looking at, and the fact that the sun was not yet up did not help. Presently, however, I determined that it was the three Ogresses wrestling with a large black sack which was in violent motion.

"Hold his feet, ye! Nellie!"

"Ugh!"

Nellie was toppled like a tree in a tempest as the black sack suddenly jackknifed.

"Hold him, can't ye? Lucinda, make y'self useful."

Lucinda wound her enormously long arms around and around the sack like a snake, and Tessa settled the issue by sitting down on both Lucinda and sack at once.

"Gerroff! Gerroffuvit!" came Lucinda's muffled roar from underneath her sister's weight. Tessa did not move, however, but simply sat there. Both of her heads grinned ferociously.

I could see a rather elegant, well-polished boot protruding from under Lucinda's body, a boot which did not belong to Lucinda; obviously this was not some woodland creature which they had snared for the pot.

I opened my mouth to order them to immediately release whatever unfortunate soul they had imprisoned in that sack, when I caught the expression, identically reproduced, on each of Tessa's twin faces. Two sets of eyes glinted wolfishly, and two tongues darted out of two mouths in an expression of naked greed. But 'twas me she was looking at, not the sack.

Now was not the moment to exert my precarious authority.

I closed my mouth and then reopened it.

"Excellent," I said cheerfully. "You've brought home some dinner, I see. How clever of you all."

I
T IS A DEAR COLLOP THAT IS
CUT OUT OF THY OWN FLESH.

—J
OHN
H
EYWOOD,
P
ROVERBS

Jessa was most grievously disappointed, I could see. Trying to make them let the man in the sack go might quite easily have been fatal for me, and Tessa knew it. Lucinda and Nellie were simply not in the mood to be told that ladies never eat human flesh. They had, with considerable difficulty and after many days of nearly meatless meals, caught themselves an unfortunate knight whose skill and valor had not been equal to the brute force and size of the three Ogresses.

They now intended to cook him and eat him, and if I chose to object, why then I was welcome to join the benighted traveler in the pot.

"Drag him inside and tie him up with the golden thread while we decide what to do with him," I instructed.

"What do ye mean, decide what we do with him?" demanded Tessa. "We be agoin' to kill him, that's what we be agoin' to do with him. Hand me that knife, Lucinda."

But Lucinda, being underneath Tessa and with her arms wrapped several times around the man in the sack, was unable to comply.

I took the opportunity to walk over and inspect what I could see of the sack. He appeared to be wearing very little armor; apparently his errand had not been of a warlike nature. He was no merchant, however. I could see plain as day that his coat of arms was embroidered into his surcoat, though most of it was obscured by the sack. This was of no moment, as I was ignorant of the devices of the noble houses in this part of the world.

"The gentleman appears to be a bit underfed," I remarked, leaning down to pinch his leg. "Most likely he has been wandering in the woods for days without a bite to eat." I shook my head. "I fear he will cook up lean and stringy."

Nellie ceased her wild dance and eyed me suspiciously. There was a mutinous look on her face as she said, "What of it? He'll taste a mort better nor a mess of old cattail roots, I warrant."

I nodded, as though much struck by her observation. "Verily you speak true. But wait!" I cried, as Nellie turned a greedy face toward the sack and Tessa began to cautiously ease herself off Lucinda. "I have a notion. Why should we not fatten him up for a few days before we eat him? We could give
him
the cattail roots, you know. There wouldn't be any need to cook up anything special for
him
."

"Well..." said Nellie.

"Now lissen here, missy," said Tessa.

"I'm hungry now," Nellie whined.

"Mmmph!" said Lucinda.

"Tessa, you have to let Lucinda up in order to get the knife, you know," I pointed out. "And the moment you do
that
he'll make a run for it. You will have to tie him up."

In truth, I doubted that the man could have gotten away, not blinded as he was by the sack. Mercifully, even both of Tessa's heads put together had not the wit to see this. They turned on me a look of pure dislike and then the bald one barked, "Nellie! Get me the golden thread that her is allus agoin' on about."

I swiftly produced the great skein of golden thread and handed it to Nellie. In a trice Tessa had bound the sack sufficiently for both Lucinda and Tessa to get off it. The sack did not stir throughout all of this. Mayhap he was half suffocated and crushed, poor fellow. Or wholly suffocated and crushed, perchance.