am enjoying it.’
‘I thought you were. What were you sent for?’
‘To learn my education.’
They grazed in silence, until his own words reminded him of something he had wanted to ask.
‘The sentries,’ he asked. ‘Are we at war?’
She did not understand the word.
‘War?’
‘Are we fighting people?’
‘Fighting?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘The men fight sometimes about their wives and that. Of course there is no bloodshed – only scuffling, to find the better man. Is that what you mean?’
‘No. I meant fighting against armies – against other geese, for instance.’
She was amused.
‘How ridiculous! You mean a lot of geese all scuffling at the same time. It would be fun to watch.’
Her tone surprised him, for his heart was still a kind one, being a boy’s.
‘Fun to watch them kill each other?’
‘To kill each other? An army of geese to kill each other?’
She began to understand this idea slowly and doubtfully, an expression of distaste coming over her face. When it had sunk in, she left him. She went away to another part of the field in silence. He followed, but she turned her back. Moving round to get a glimpse of her eyes, he was startled by their dislike – a look as if he had made some obscene suggestion.
He said lamely: ‘I am sorry. I don’t understand.’
‘Leave talking about it.’
‘I am sorry.’
Later he added, with annoyance, ‘A person can ask, I suppose. It seems a natural question, with the sentries.’
But she was thoroughly angry.
‘Will you stop about it at once! What a horrible mind you must have! You have no right to say such things. And of course there are sentries. There are the jar-falcons and the peregrines, aren’t there: the foxes and the ermines and the humans with their nets? These are natural enemies. But what creatures could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood?’
‘Ants do,’ he said obstinately. ‘And I was only trying to learn.’
She relented with an effort to be good-natured. She wanted to be broad-minded if she could, for she was rather a blue-stocking.
‘My name is Lyó-lyok. You had better call yourself Kee-kwa, and then the rest will think you came from Hungary.’
‘Do you all come here from different places?’
‘Well, in parties, of course. There are some here from Siberia, some from Lapland and I can see one or two from Iceland.’
‘But don’t they fight each other for the pasture?’
‘Dear me, you are a silly,’ she said. ‘There are no boundaries among geese.’
‘What are boundaries, please?’
‘Imaginary lines on the earth, I suppose. How can you have boundaries if you fly? Those ants of yours – and the humans too – would have to stop fighting in the end, if they took to the air.’
‘I like fighting,’ said the Wart. ‘It is knightly.’
‘Because you’re a baby.’
There was something magical about the time and space commanded by Merlyn, for the Wart seemed to be passing many days and nights among the grey people, during the one spring night when he had left his body asleep under the bearskin.
He grew to be fond of Lyó-lyok, in spite of her being a girl. He was always asking her questions about the geese. She taught him what she knew with gentle kindness, and the more he learned, the more he came to love her brave, noble, quiet and intelligent relations. She told him how every White-front was an individual – not governed by laws or leaders, except when they came about spontaneously. They had no kings like Uther, no laws like the bitter Norman ones. They did not own things in common. Any goose who found something nice to eat considered it his own and would peck any other one who tried to thieve it. At the same time, no goose claimed any exclusive territorial right in any part of the world – except its nest, and that was private property. She told him a great deal about migration.
‘The first goose,’ she said, ‘I suppose, who made the flight from Siberia to Lincolnshire and back again must have brought up a family in Siberia. Then, when the winter came and it was necessary to find food, he must have groped his way over the same route, being the only one who knew it. He will have been followed by his growing family, year after year, their pilot and their admiral. When the time came for him to die, obviously the next best pilots would have been his eldest sons, who would have covered the route more often than the others. Naturally the younger sons and fledgelings would have been uncertain about it, and therefore would have been glad to follow somebody who knew. Perhaps, among the eldest sons, there would have been some who were famous for being muddle-headed, and the family would hardly care to trust to them.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is how an admiral is elected. Perhaps Wink-wink will come to our family in the autumn, and he will say: “Excuse me, but have you by any chance got a reliable pilot in your lot? Poor old grand-dad died at cloud-berry time, and Uncle Onk is inefficient. We were looking for somebody to follow.” Then we will say: “Great-uncle will be delighted if you care to hitch up with us; but mind, we cannot take responsibility if things go wrong.” “Thank you very much,” he will say. “I am sure your great-uncle can be relied on. Do you mind if I mention this matter to the Honks, who are, I happen to know, in the same difficulty?” “Not at all.”
‘And that,’ she explained, ‘is how Great-uncle became an admiral.’
‘It is a good way.’
‘Look at his bars,’ she said respectfully, and they both glanced at the portly patriarch, whose breast was indeed barred with black stripes, like the gold rings on an admiral’s sleeve.
There was a growing excitement among the host. The young geese flirted outrageously, or collected in parties to discuss their pilots. They played games, too, like children excited at the prospect of a party. One of these games was to stand in a circle, while the junior ganders, one after another, walked into the middle of it with their heads stretched out, pretending to hiss. When they were half-way across the circle they would run the last part, flapping their wings. This was to show how brave they were, and what excellent admirals they would make, when they grew up. Also the strange habit of shaking their bills sideways, which was usual before flight, began to grow upon them. The elders and sages, who knew the migration routes, became uneasy also. They kept a wise eye on the cloud formations, summing up the wind, and the strength of it, and what part it was coming from. The admirals, heavy with responsibility, paced their quarter-decks with ponderous tread.
‘Why
