Sofia and the Goose had left the woods and were walking on a road. Tobias had mentioned this road when he arrived from the Black Market, so Sofia thought, in absence of any map, they might as well try it. There were white lyridina flowers sprouting in the grassy banks on the sides of the road. This was the flower Tobias had as a lapel pin. These flowers were alive, however, and their long white petals danced in the wind. They were like a group of people in the far distance, waving white flags in surrender.
It was time to return to their quest for the Black Market. In truth, Sofia had no idea what the Black Market would even look like. There was a flower market in the square near her building in the Capital. They had bins of incredible flowers ready for sale. The flowers had drops of water on them, as though they had just come out of the shower. She imagined the Black Market looking like that. Except it wouldn’t be filled with flowers—it would be filled with stockings, and handguns, and foie gras, and notebooks.
“Maybe there will be a bottle of pop, and when you drink it your head will be filled with bubbles. And there will be coffee—it is so nice to drink. And books we can read in our own language. And wine so we can be tipsy. And shampoo! You will see how good your feathers feel after you have taken a bubble bath. And chocolate! And fancy outfits. There will be ties you can wear around your neck and look every bit like a gentleman.”
The contents of the Black Market exploded in their brains like the fruits and flowers of spring.
She was making a list of her favourite things from when she was a little girl. And Sofia saw that the Goose was quietly staring at her. It seemed as though nothing in the world could distract him, and she was delighted. And continued her magical grocery list of items they would retrieve from the Black Market. She was truly more satisfied with the feeling his attention gave her than with any of the objects on her list. And she got it into her head that when they got to the Black Market and were able to stuff their pockets and suitcase with these extraordinary items, then she would reveal to the Goose the depth of her feelings towards him. Thus, she believed it was the Goose’s love that she was going to buy on the Black Market.
“What will you buy all this with?” inquired the Goose. “You don’t have your ring anymore.”
“I happen to have, in my inner pocket, a very important document that will have to be worth something.”
The Goose stopped as though he was going to say something about this, and then shrugged his wings and walked along next to Sofia.
Sofia felt she and the Goose were happy together for the first time in weeks. Even if they never found the Black Market, the idea that it was just up ahead would have lasted them at least several more wonderful days. They felt they were so close to the Black Market. It might appear before them at any minute, the way grand cities surprisingly revealed themselves to travellers. The Goose moved his neck around happily, almost as though he were whistling.
The clouds looked like the bodies of overweight women floating on the surface of a lake. They were on holiday. If their children went and got themselves killed, they would not be able to be reached.
Sofia had to pass near a small village. She was surprised to see so many people on the road. They were milling about as though there was not a war going on. She wasn’t at all sure what had been happening to the people in the towns. She expected they were all being massacred. They would have all been put on trains and sent off to the Enemy country to be murdered. But these people did not seem afraid. She had not realized going into the woods that when she came back out, her people would be entirely different. She thought she could just pass through this town easily. How could the Enemy possibly tell she was not one of the peasants?
But the peasants were regarding her with suspicion. As they passed, they gave her looks that communicated, in no uncertain terms, that they knew she wasn’t one of them. They knew she was a stranger. Their eyes seemed to say, I know who you are—and I have power over you. I can turn you in at any second. Everybody is eventually betrayed by their own.
She was terrified of her own people. These were the survivors. These were the people who had not been killed by the Enemy. These were the turncoats. These were the traitors. They had done nothing at all while the cities were being viciously attacked. They had let the soldiers ride into the cities. She was certain of it. Nothing belonged to her anymore. She was in a very strange country. It was not the country she had grown up in at all. It was all gone. She could tell that now.
Perhaps she would have been more trusting if she had not been tricked by Tobias. She had already had her eyes opened to the treachery of her fellow Elysians. She remembered all the meetings the resistance had had. It was perhaps better that they had all been shot in the head. Otherwise, they would have to know that the peasants and all the citizens outside the Capital had turned against them.
Maybe this was a victory of sorts for the peasants. After all, the Enemy really supported and revered the rural life and regarded the big cities as sites of decadence. And so did the peasants.
There were several little girls holding hands and hurrying down the path. They stopped in their tracks when they saw Sofia. They were frightened and wary of her. They began circling her as though she were prey and they were intending to eat her. They were looking for an opportunity to attack.
She saw it in their gestures and their mood. They had taken the contempt and hatred of the Enemy and had internalized it. They did not seem to have the expressions of girls. She recalled going to the zoo when she was little. And looking into the enclosure filled with wolves. These little girls all had the same suspicious and inscrutable eyes.
They began speaking to her all at once, not letting her answer any of their questions.
“Where are you from?”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“She’s from the Capital. I can tell by her stupid look.”
“You are from the Capital? You started all this trouble. It’s because of you that my cousin was killed. And he was the most handsome one in our family.”
“We were always having to turn away people from the Capital at the beginning of the war.”
“It’s been a while since one came. What do you think we should do with her?”
“We should set the dogs on her.”
“We will tell on you, and they’ll hang you from a tree.”
“Do you have any coins?”
“You have to pay us something before we can let you pass.”
“Or we will turn you in.”
They stood in front of her with their hands linked, as though they were paper dolls.
The girls looked so small and pathetic to her. She realized they did not perceive her as one of them. Her arrival was a threat, the way an adult’s might be. She had come out of the woods, and she was no longer a child. Nothing would ever make her a child again. And nothing could make her feel intimidated by other children again.
She had sometimes considered that life would have been easier had she climbed into the trucks with the other children. She would be buried now in a mass grave. But she was not a child even when she had boarded the train. She already had begun to be a woman. And it was that part of her that insisted she get out of the train and run. It was that part of her that wanted to survive. That insisted she survive.
Sofia opened her mouth and made the long honking noise of a goose. The girls all stepped back as though she were a monster.
A man yelled for them brusquely. Upon hearing his call, they forgot that Sofia and her Goose existed. They were like dogs that had been called to dinner. Dogs that were often whipped. Even though they were pretending to be wild and independent, they were subservient little beasts. That was why they were so brazen. That was why they were loud. Because they had no actual power. The way small dogs bark the loudest.
Sofia was no longer a child. She was a young woman. She belonged to no one in particular. Her life was unpredictable now that she was a young woman.
“You scared them all away,” the Goose said. “With your astounding honk. You were magnificent. We showed them!”
“Thank you,” Sofia whispered. “But I don’t feel safe at all. Let’s leave this place.”
As they hurried out of the village, Sofia had an odd feeling. Soldiers had an aura that preceded them. It was like being able to sense the snow or feel the calm before a storm. She could not shake the presentiment that there were soldiers near. She and the Goose turned onto a road, and soldiers appeared in front of them. They turned around as if to flee and noticed soldiers behind them as well. They were surrounded.
There were too many of them to bother running. You could hide from the soldiers successfully, but once they found you, you were finished.
There were about fifty soldiers. Every time she turned around to look, more of them appeared. It was as though they multiplied every time she thought about them. There were always so many of them. They seemed to manifest as many as were needed to vanquish whoever they needed to.
She hadn’t ever experienced the numbness of this kind of fear before. She watched the Goose squabbling and honking. She couldn’t make out anything he was saying. He was reacting so strongly. He was reacting for the two of them. That was the nature of having a travel companion. You could take turns occupying yourselves with certain tasks.
One of the soldiers pointed to the Goose. “We will eat this,” he said with a thick accent in Sofia’s language.
“No!” cried Sofia. “This isn’t an ordinary goose. It is a talking goose!”
The soldiers looked at her and at each other. They weren’t sure she was saying what she was saying. They did not speak her language well. They knew the children they had come across had all gone mad.
“It can talk! It can talk!” Sofia yelled again. The Goose pressed himself up against her, terrified and quiet.
A man who was older and clearly in charge pushed through the crowd. He wore a long black coat that went down to his feet. It was like the cloak of the Grim Reaper. He had a birthmark under his eye that looked like a tattoo of a tear. It made him look wicked.
“We arrested a thief,” he said, speaking the girl’s language clearly. “He said we were to go to the church to find a member of the resistance. He gave you up to get himself free, but we did not believe him. And sure enough, all we find is a little girl and a goose. But we will take your goose, as we are hungry. And you can be on your way. I am not going to harm a child today.”
“The goose can talk. You would be foolish to kill him. He can make you a fortune at any opera house. He is miraculous. He is a once-in-a-lifetime creature. He will change you.”
At least they should know exactly what they were killing. Even if they could be blasé about killing him now, it might come to haunt them later on. If they ever tried to be good people in the future—and who knew, some people did—then this act would destroy them. For their whole lives, they would have to be the people who had killed a magical goose.
Sofia pulled the folded-up yellowed piece of paper from the inside pocket of her coat. “Here,” she cried.
The officer took the paper and looked at it. “Well, this says to spare your life, but there is nothing about a goose, I’m afraid.”
“Take me and kill me if you must, but let my goose live.”
The officer turned to his men, ostensibly translating this, and they all burst out laughing.
But Sofia knew she meant it. The Goose’s life was more valuable than hers. She was only an ordinary girl. She had no value. She had done nothing in her life. She probably wasn’t going to do anything of note. What could be the point of ordinary people other than to protect the extraordinary ones? She would sacrifice herself for the Goose. He was all that was left of the magic in her country. If he was killed, perhaps the trees would stop walking from place to place.
“You must listen to him,” Sofia said. “It is wonderful to hear an animal speak. He is more intelligent than anyone you know. The way he speaks, it seems as though he has been educated in the most important schools. As if he has made a twenty-year career of lecturing on human rights and important subjects like that. He has more lectures to give and books to write. Books to write!”
“If the goose can speak, we will let you both go.”
He then turned and shouted something in his own language to the men, and they all burst out laughing.
“Of course,” said the first soldier with the heavy accent. “If the goose can speak, we will let you both go, and I will shoot myself in the head.” He repeated this to the men, and they again exploded with mirth.
“If the goose can speak, I will shoot all my men in the head,” the officer said. The soldiers whispered this to one another in their own language but did not laugh.
“You all won’t stop talking, but are you going to let my goose speak for himself?”
Sofia stepped one pace away from the Goose and nervously held out her hands as though she were performing a magic trick. They all moved closer in their circle to stare at the Goose. She wanted to see their faces when they realized she had something to teach them about the universe. She wanted them to be profoundly surprised and in awe.
She waited for the Goose to speak. She waited for the Goose to begin one of his intellectual discussions. He would impress them with only a few phrases.
But the Goose was silent. He looked at her with wide eyes. As though supplicating her to come to his rescue. He took a step towards Sofia. But a soldier put out an arm to hold Sofia back. The Goose stopped and stood quietly in place. The Goose didn’t say anything. He opened his mouth and made a honking noise. It seemed as far from human speech as any animal sound could ever be.
Looking at the Goose, she realized he wasn’t playing games at all. This was the manner in which he communicated. It was the only way he could speak. Whereas the other children had been willing to play along and pretend the Goose was speaking, the soldiers were not. The children had decided to see the Goose through her eyes. The soldiers were most certainly not going to stoop to seeing anything through a girl’s eyes.
Sofia was staring incredulously at the Goose, and the Goose was staring incredulously at her. Then a soldier leaned forward, grabbed the neck of the Goose, and broke it.
Sofia screamed so loudly, it surprised the soldier and he dropped the Goose onto the ground. She wrenched her body away from the others. She fell on her knees and held the Goose in her arms. She began weeping hysterically while stroking the Goose’s neck. She wanted him to come back to life. There was nothing that could make the Goose’s neck stand up again. It was so limp, it now seemed impossible that it had ever been able to hold itself up. Being alive defied physics. Consciousness went against all the rules. It was a miracle. It was a miracle that had to perform itself every minute of the day.
The soldiers were mystified by the intensity of Sofia’s reaction. Was she genuinely that upset the goose had been killed? Did she truly think of it as a pet, and was she now reacting as though her dog had been shot? Or did she want to eat it herself? Perhaps she had a starving family waiting for that goose.
She stood and she held the goose in her arms as though it were a body. She reminded them of sculptures they had seen of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus in her lap. And they did not know what to make of this. How could a filthy atheist enemy with a goose resemble the Virgin Mary and the Son of God?