The Goose Spirit

Lingdang Village sits on the shore of a wide lake, and most of its people keep geese. Zhou Ou-niang lived alone in the three old rooms her late husband had left her, with a small pond before the door where a dozen geese swam. She was past sixty, a little stooped, the veins on the back of her hands like the threads of an old lotus root.

That spring she found a drab gosling among the reeds by the pond, its wing torn by a wild cat, trembling in a small ball. She wrapped it in an old wad of cotton, warmed it by the hearth, and spooned ground rice gruel into its beak. The gosling lived. Its down whitened day by day until it stood a size larger than any goose in the village, with a tuft of yellow fluff on its crown. Ou-niang named it Snowball.

Snowball understood people. Other geese bit at strangers; it did not. When Ou-niang went to gather eggs, it led the way, its neck stretching and folding as if counting them for her. Once a neighbor's child threw stones into the pond and the flock scattered in panic, yet Snowball only turned and herded the boy back toward the bank, as if afraid he might slip. Ou-niang watched and only smiled — the creature, she thought, was more sensible than some folk.

What she would remember all her life was one night in the sixth month.

A strange wind rose over the lake. The day had been clear, but after dark the air grew so heavy one could not breathe, and the frogs in the pond fell silent. Ou-niang slept lightly; between waking and sleep she heard Snowball beating its wings in the yard, crying sharp and hoarse, nothing like its usual calm. She threw on her coat and stepped out, and a wet, fishy smell met her. The lake had already crept over the pond's bank and was climbing into the yard.

She called to Snowball. The goose ran straight to her feet, butting her legs with its long neck, then turning toward the high embankment as if to lead her. Ou-niang came fully awake and remembered her little grandson Ahe asleep in the east room; she turned to carry him. By the time she stepped out through the yard gate with the child in her arms, the water had reached her ankles. Snowball would not leave them, running before and behind, guiding the two of them up the dike.

That night the lake swallowed half the village. One corner of Ou-niang's house collapsed, but her people were safe. At dawn Snowball was gone. On the stone step of the yard gate lay a single white feather, every filament distinct, as if someone had set it there on purpose.

From then on, each year at first frost, when the reeds by the pond turned white-headed, a white goose came alone to swim in Ou-niang's pond and rest there a day, eating nothing, making no fuss, and before leaving it would circle the house half a turn. Ou-niang did not drive it off, nor did she ever speak of what she guessed. She kept the feather from that year tucked in the crack of a window frame, and when the wind passed through, it swayed softly.

When people asked if the goose knew her, she only said that it came every year, and that was enough.