Snow Goose (5 page)

Long before the snow goose had come dropping out of a crimsoned eastern sky to circle the lighthouse in a last farewell, Fritha, from the ancient powers of the blood that was in her, knew that Rhayader would not return.

And so, when one sunset she heard the high-pitched, well-remembered note cried from the heavens, it brought no instant of false hope to her heart. This moment, it seemed, she had lived before many times.

She came running to the sea wall and turned her eyes, not toward the distant sea whence a sail might come, but to the sky from whose flaming arches plummeted the snow goose. Then the sight, the sound, and the solitude surrounding broke the dam within her and released the surging, overwhelming truth of her love, let it well forth in tears.

Wild spirit called to wild spirit, and she seemed to be flying with the great bird, soaring with it in the evening sky, and hearkening to Rhayader's message.

Sky and earth were trembling with it and filled her beyond the bearing of it. "Frith! Fritha! Frith, my love. Good-by, my love." The white pinions, black-tipped, were beating it out upon her heart, and her heart was answering: "Philip, I love 'ee."

For a moment Frith thought the snow goose was going to land in the old enclosure, as the pinioned geese set up a welcoming gabble. But it only skimmed low, then soared up again, flew in a wide, graceful spiral once around the old light, and then began to climb.

Watching it, Frith saw no longer the snow goose but the soul of Rhayader taking farewell of her before departing forever.

She was no longer flying with it, but earthbound. She stretched her arms up into the sky and stood on tiptoes, reaching, and cried "Godspeed! Godspeed, Philip!"

Frith's tears were stilled. She stood watching silently long after the goose had vanished. Then she went into the lighthouse and secured the picture that Rhayader had painted of her. Hugging it to her breast, she wended her way homeward along the old sea wall.

Each night, for many weeks thereafter, Frith came to the lighthouse and fed the pinioned birds. Then one early morning a German pilot on a dawn raid mistook the old abandoned light for an active military objective, dived onto it, a screaming steel hawk, and blew it and all it contained into oblivion.

That evening when Fritha came, the sea had moved in through the breached walls and covered it over. Nothing was left to break the utter desolation. No marsh fowl had dared to return. Only the frightless gulls wheeled and soared and mewed their plaint over the place where it had been.

Paul Gallico was one of America's most celebrated writers. Besides
The Snow Goose—
his brilliant short masterpiece —his many best-selling novels include
The Poseidon Adventure; Love, Let Me Not Hunger;
and
The Small Miracle.
Paul Gallico died in 1976.

Beth Peck was first introduced to
The Snow Goose
in its film adaptation starring Richard Harris. It was the graceful beauty and power of the book, however, that inspired her to illustrate this Gallico classic. Her many illustrated books for children include
A Christmas Memory,
by Truman Capote, which was called "pure and lovely" by
New York
magazine, "radiant" by
Publishers Weekly,
and "beautifully expressive" by
The Horn Book. A
graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms. Peck is presently at work on illustrations for Truman Capote's
The Thanksgiving Visitor,
also to be published by Knopf.

She lives with her husband and daughter in Wisconsin.