The Wild Goose

On the Yanmen road lay Wild-Goose Marsh, shallow water and deep reeds. In it a gander lost his mate and flew alone for three years. A hunter's bow had once struck his wife; the arrow took her plumage and she fell, and the gander cried the whole night through till all the marsh-folk heard.

The lone gander took no other. Each spring returning north he circled the marsh thrice, as if to find the old trace. An old fisher said: this goose is spirit-touched; he had seen it stand on the shoal, neck stretched to the moon, uttering words like a man's, unintelligible.

That autumn a young hat-seller came new to the marsh's edge, calling himself 'Hong' — black clothes, a white-feather mark at his throat, slow in speech, as if his tongue were still learning. He rented half a thatch-shed in town and wove hats for a living, but in his idle hours was always at the eastern weaving-house. In it worked a girl called A-Ling, with a red birthmark on her left wrist shaped like a goose's bill. A-Ling spoke little, but loved to hum a wordless tune, clear and long-turning, at which the marsh geese fell still.

Hong at first only watched from afar. Later A-Ling's loom broke and he silently mended her shuttle; A-Ling's mother fell ill and he went through snow thirty li to gather medicine. A-Ling asked him why; he said, 'The tune you hum, I heard it when I was small.' A-Ling paused, and asked no more.

The townsfolk called Hong honest. A matchmaker came, to wed A-Ling to the young master of the southern goods-shop. A-Ling shook her head, but her mother pressed, and in the end she consented. Hong heard, and neither raged nor pleaded; he only set twelve woven hats, each shaped like a goose, quietly at the weaving-house door.

After the Double-Ninth the north wind rose. Hong told A-Ling, 'I must go a while; I shall surely return next spring.' A-Ling saw him to the marsh's edge, and watched him stand on the shoal, then spread his arms — clothes turning to twin wings, white plumes covering his body — and with one long cry he shot into the sky. He was that lone gander, who flew south every year without fail; he had taken a man's shape only to seek, among men, that thread of an old tune, and to wait with her a season.

Afterward, each spring and autumn, the lone gander was sure to sweep over the marsh, wheel a while, and turn south again. A-Ling, married, still loved her wordless tune.

The seventh autumn, the goose came, wheeled thrice, and dropped a white feather on the weaving-house roof; then he beat his wings south and returned no more. A-Ling kept the feather in her jewel-box. Inside it, the twelve small hats had long since gathered dust.

The Chronicler says: A bird's devotion to its mate outdoes many a human vow. Hong took a man's shape to keep watch, and flew south each year without fail — it was a goose's faith, and a goose's folly. Men, having found love, often yield it to rites and custom; a goose, having lost it, gives his own body. Yet a feather a year for seven years, and A-Ling to her old age — who says the beasts know nothing?