Duck with a Basket
(1,900 words)
The Duck in her best blue dress waddled down the dry and sandy road in the warm sunlight. The September air was still hot during the day but winters chill had began to creep forth at night. She couldnt walk very fast on account of the wide flippers of her legs being meant for water and not for dusty country roads. In her long thin arms she carried a bucket, a gray steel one that shone in the sun like silver. She had wanted a wicker basket but could not find one. The bucket was filled to the brim with seashells. They were in many shapes and sizes but uniform in colour, isabelline or beige as the white shores where she had gathered them.
It had taken the Duck all morning to collect them all. It had been difficult because as long as her arms were, they still could not reach the ground and her long neck and pear-like figure made it laborious to bend down far enough to pick up the shells. Many times her bucket had slipped from her hands when she reached down for a new jewel of the shore and she had to start over, until she had placed the bucket down first and then taken each one at a time and dropped them in. When she had filled the bucket in such a way she had to pick it up again, but its flimsy steel handle which now lay against the side of it was difficult to grab with her feathery fingers, and as she waddled closer to get a better grip she knocked it down with her big flippers and had to begin again.
But now it was past noon and she had the bucket full of seashells and she was on the dusty road. Her flippers were not used to such rough terrain, but she waddled on, notwithstanding the small pebbles and sand particles which chafed against her soles. In the horizon ahead where the land met the sky the green earth undulated, marking her destination. She was headed for the hills.
The sun was long past its zenith when the Duck reached them. At the foot of the hills were mounds, green waves on whose crests the grass swayed in the gentle breeze. She reached one of the mounds, its side marked with round windows and a round wooden door. She went to it and knocked softly with her long thin arm, while using the other to press her bucket to her stomach to keep it from falling. She waited patiently until she heard something stir inside. Soon, the door opening slightly ajar, she saw a raccoon in pyjamas with a suspicious look on his face. The Duck extended the bucket gently towards the raccoon, and the racoon stared at the seashells. Then he turned its snout towards the Duck, snarled through his teeth I dont want to buy any seashells, you foul fowl! and slammed the door. She stood still for a moment, uncertain what to do, and then turned around and walked down the path to the next mound.
She once again knocked gently, and then waited. Soon a fox opened the door. Again she presented the bucket, and the fox pointed his quivering nose at the seashells, and then berated the Duck for her unwanted peddling.
Thus she went to every door in every mound, and every time, whether it was by a badger or by a rabbit or by a rat, the reception was the same. After the last door slammed shut to her beak, she still had her bucket full of seashells. Had there been someone to observe the Duck at that moment, it would have been difficult for them to read what the she was feeling from her expression, because her beak could neither smile nor frown, and her little black eyes could neither lit up with joy nor shed tears in sorrow. Her face a calm mask, she turned around and began waddling back the road she came.
The sun was beginning to set on her way back the dusty road, now a thread that ran through the landscape in the gathering dusk, and soon the night overcame her slow pace. She began to see shadows come alive, as if the dark of the night materialised into forms, shapeless and terrible. She heard sounds, noises that resembled voices. Laughter. She quickened her pace as much as she could, swaying from left to right on her flippers and clutching her bucket, but the voices became louder all the time and moved all around her in the dark and finally surrounded her.
She saw a flash in the dark. Teeth in the night. A grin that glowed and growled at her on the road ahead. She stopped and looked around and saw smaller teeth all around her, still in the night, but the big ones on the road approached her, and as they came nearer the shape around them became clearer, as if the shining teeth gave their own light. The matted fur and the yellow eyes of the enormous wolf was now right in front of her.
Looks like were having a feast tonight, it growled.
There were howls all around her as the Duck stood alone on the dark road. The big wolf looked like it was crouching, preparing to leap at the duck, when its eyes seemed to spot something.
Whats in the bucket, ducky? the wolf asked.
The Duck did not answer, and could not have, as the wolf plunged at her with a gnarl, knocking her down on the dusty road. Her bucket fell down and rolled away, all the seashells scattered in the dust. She was on her back, quacking loudly and trying to roll on her feet as her best blue dress soiled with sand and dirt. The wolf was sniffing the shells, and becoming more and more excited, it fell on the ground and began to roll around, its long ragged ears on the shells.
The ocean! it growled. I can hear the ocean!
All the other wolves ran to the road and joined their leaders ecstatic cavorting to the symphony of the sea on that dusty road in the night. As the beasts frolicked the Duck had managed to get on her flippers and was waddling away as fast as she could. On her way her flippers struck something hard: her bucket. She struggled to pick it up as fast as she could, a few times kicking it out of her reach, but finally managing to scoop it up. She left the party of brutes behind her in the dark.
*
The Sun rose from the sea, painting the sky and the ocean orange and the clouds black. The white pure sand of the shore was imprinted with a long line of wide prints, a long tail that trailed the Duck as she waddled down the beach. She still wore her best blue dress, the sand and dirt from the road now firmly established in patches all over it. In her hands she held the empty bucket. She was looking for more seashells, but could not find any. The shore was bare, as if some invisible tongue from the ocean had sprang up and licked all the seashells up to its submerged mouth for breakfast, and now the satisfied waves gently lapped against the clear sands.
She waddled around in circles for a moment, as if she was searching for something she had lost. Then she stopped, facing the forest next to the shore. She began the long trek towards it with the warm rays of the morning sun on her back.
In the forest she looked up and seemed to have found what she was looking for. She put down her bucket and opened a pocket on her best blue dress and took out a folded red and white checkered picnic blanket. She spread it on the grass floor of the forest in an oak tree grove.
She found a tall thin stick and began to brandish it at the lower branches of the oak trees laden with acorns. The acorns were plumb and ripe, ready to fall at the smallest poke. The ground was scattered with acorns now, and she used her flippers to move them on the blanket to gather them in a pouch. But when the pile of acorns was ready on the blanket she saw a squirrel on the edge of it. She tilted her head slightly to see what the little creature wanted when it ran on the blanket, grabbed a nut, and ran away. Not bothered with losing a single acorn, the Duck went to one end of the blanket to place all four corners of it on top of the pile to lift it, when she saw more squirrels. A lot more. They ran down from the trees, and she could do nothing but quack and reach out with her long thin arms as the endless stream of squirrels ran off with her acorns, one by one, up the trees and in all the directions of the compass, to hide them for when winter would cover the whole forest with its own white blanket. She waddled back and forth quacking to protect her work, but to no avail. When the squirrels had vanished, she was left with an empty blanket next to her empty bucket.
Hoot, hoot, a voice came from the treetops. Poor duck left with no seashells and no acorns. Hoot hoot.
The Duck turned her beak to the sky, and on a thick branch of an oak tree sat an old owl ogling down at her with his head tilted and eyes crossed. Rough and tumbled and feathers ruffled, the Owl was not accustomed to being awake at such an hour and seemed ripe and ready to fall down like an acorn himself from the slightest touch.
I have followed you, dear duck," the owl said with a voice that was devoid of interest but still wise and reassuring. I have followed you from the shore to the hills and back again. Your dress is dirty, your seashells meant as gifts stolen by wolves, your acorns meant as presents robbed by squirrels. But grief not, dear duck. The squirrels will feed on the acorns all winter, filling their tummies with the fruits of your labour. They will not remember the Duck who gathered them, but their every bite and nibble will be a celebration to this day. The wolves who stole the seashells will not change their cruel ways, but for one night they who are too afraid to dip their paws into the sea could hear the ocean and its breezes and its waves lapping gently against the shore. Your seashells were not lost to wild things when for one night those beasts could be a part of a world they had never known and the forest safe from their savage jaws. Do not lament the fate of your gifts. They found their owners, for the ghastliest beast can be worthy of a gift, as a steel bucket can be a basket just as well as the finest wicker basket. Your work has not been in vain, dear duck, and now its time to rest.
The drowsy owl spread his wings and took flight. The Duck craned her neck to follow with her small black eyes as the nocturnal bird wove its way through the autumn air amidst the trees. She looked down at her blanket and her basket. She was a duck who had done her best.
