Three Good Deeds by Vivian Vande Velde Page A

enough to cause the rat to let go of the egg. But then it shifted it's attention
and teeth to Howard. It leaped, landing on Howard where his beak met his face. It bit. And it kept on biting. Holding on with it's teeth, the rat dangled from Howard's face, kicking at Howard's throat with it's sharp-clawed back feet.
    Howard shook his head and flapped his wings, but the rat wouldn't come loose.
    There's a rat on my nose!
Howard screamed to himself. But he was too hurt and frightened to make any more sound than a hiss. Then he remembered: He was a goose. A goose who lived by a pond. Howard ran and stuck his head under the water.
    Finally the rat let go.
    Before Howard could decide if he was angry enough to go after the rat or frightened enough to never want to see it again, the rat paddled to the edge of the bank and disappeared into the weeds.
    By then Always-First-to-Molt had made it to his mate's side.
    "See?" Scared-by-a-Rabbit honked at him. "See? Didn't I say something was going to come after our eggs?"
    Despite the throbbing in his face, Howard waddled up to them and winced at the remains of the egg, cracked wide open, with most—but not all—of the in-sides gone. "I tried to help," he said. He could feel the trickle of his own blood running down his beak. If he could only keep from fainting, surely the other geese would realize how brave he'd been.
    "Go away, How-Word," Always-First-to-Molt ordered. "We have our other eggs to protect."
    His tail drooping, Howard went to the old witch's cottage. He would have pecked at her door, but his beak was too sore for
that, so he just honked until she came to investigate.
    "Ooh," she said, "what's happened to you?"
    "I fought off a rat," he told her. "Big rat." He held his stupid, flightless wings out to show how big.
    The old witch was rummaging around through little pots and containers in her kitchen, which he would have thought meant she wasn't interested, but she asked, "After eggs, was he?"
    "Yes," Howard said.
    "Did he get one?"
    Howard considered saying no, but he figured she would check with the other geese, making sure before she worked her magic on him. "Yes," he admitted.
    The old witch found what she was looking for. "Come closer," she said.
    Howard came forward, waiting to be changed back into a boy, though he wondered why, this time, she apparently needed some witchly potion.
    She put something greasy on his beak. Something greasy that smelled like a bad combination of fir trees and fish. Something greasy and smelly—and that stung.
    "Ouch!" Howard cried. "Is that supposed to turn me back into a boy?" He would be a greasy, smelly, sore boy with—he suspected by the feathers he was still losing—very little left of his clothing.
    But he didn't turn back into his former shape, and the old witch said, "No, this is a salve to help you heal and to keep your nose from scarring."
    "Well, that's very nice," Howard said, though—now that the excitement was over—he thought a little scar might make
him look manly and bold. "But you mean you aren't going to turn me back into my real self?"
    "Howard," she snapped at him. "Three. Good. Deeds. Not one. Not two. Three."
    He supposed it was her way of saying that
trying
to save Scared-by-a-Rabbit's egg wasn't enough—even with injuries. "That's not fair!" he honked plaintively. "I tried. Trying should count."
    "But what was your intent?" the old witch asked. "
Why
did you try?"
    "To do a good deed!" Howard shouted at her.
    "Yes, yes. That's my point." She shooed him out of the cottage. "Go away, I need to take a nap."

14. A Change in the Wind
    The days grew longer and warmer as spring bloomed into summer.
    Those eggs that were going to hatch, hatched.
    The goslings that came out of them grew from little balls of fuzz into geese just slightly smaller than their parents.
    The adult geese, used to Howard or mellower now that there weren't young ones to protect, grew less territorial. Not friendlier,