The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Selma Lagerlöf [best sales books of all time .txt] 📗

of berries. He slid along the ash branch and clambered up into the barberry bush, but he was no sooner there than he discovered a currant bush, on which still hung long red clusters. Next he saw that the garden was full of gooseberries and raspberries and dog-rose bushes; that there were cabbages and turnips in the vegetable beds and berries on every bush, seeds on the herbs and grain-filled ears on every blade. And there on the path⁠—no, of course he could not mistake it⁠—was a big red apple which shone in the moonlight.

The boy sat down at the side of the path, with the big red apple in front of him, and began cutting little pieces from it with his sheath knife.

“It wouldn’t be such a serious matter to be an elf all one’s life if it were always as easy to get good food as it is here,” he thought.

He sat and mused as he ate, wondering finally if it would not be as well for him to remain here and let the wild geese travel south without him.

“I don’t know for the life of me how I can ever explain to Morten Goosey-Gander that I cannot go home,” thought he. “It would be better were I to leave him altogether. I could gather provisions enough for the winter, as well as the squirrels do, and if I were to live in a dark corner of the stable or the cow shed, I shouldn’t freeze to death.”

Just as he was thinking this, he heard a light rustle over his head, and a second later something which resembled a birch stump stood on the ground beside him.

The stump twisted and turned, and two bright dots on top of it glowed like coals of fire. It looked like some enchantment. However, the boy soon remarked that the stump had a hooked beak and big feather wreaths around its glowing eyes. Then he knew that this was no enchantment.

“It is a real pleasure to meet a living creature,” remarked the boy. “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me the name of this place, Mrs. Brown Owl, and what sort of folk live here.”

That evening, as on all other evenings, the owl had perched on a rung of the big ladder propped against the roof, from which she had looked down toward the gravel walks and grass plots, watching for rats. Very much to her surprise, not a single grayskin had appeared. She saw instead something that looked like a human being, but much, much smaller, moving about in the garden.

“That’s the one who is scaring away the rats!” thought the owl. “What in the world can it be? It’s not a squirrel, nor a kitten, nor a weasel,” she observed. “I suppose that a bird who has lived on an old place like this as long as I have ought to know about everything in the world; but this is beyond my comprehension,” she concluded.

She had been staring at the object that moved on the gravel path until her eyes burned. Finally curiosity got the better of her and she flew down to the ground to have a closer view of the stranger.

When the boy began to speak, the owl bent forward and looked him up and down.

“He has neither claws nor horns,” she remarked to herself, “yet who knows but he may have a poisonous fang or some even more dangerous weapon. I must try to find out what he passes for before I venture to touch him.”

“The place is called Mårbacka,” said the owl, “and gentlefolk lived here once upon a time. But you, yourself, who are you?”

“I think of moving in here,” volunteered the boy without answering the owl’s question. “Would it be possible, do you think?”

“Oh, yes⁠—but it’s not much of a place now compared to what it was once,” said the owl. “You can weather it here I dare say. It all depends upon what you expect to live on. Do you intend to take up the rat chase?”

“Oh, by no means!” declared the boy. “There is more fear of the rats eating me than that I shall do them any harm.”

“It can’t be that he is as harmless as he says,” thought the brown owl. “All the same I believe I’ll make an attempt.⁠ ⁠…” She rose into the air, and in a second her claws were fastened in Nils Holgersson’s shoulder and she was trying to hack at his eyes.

The boy shielded both eyes with one hand and tried to free himself with the other, at the same time calling with all his might for help. He realized that he was in deadly peril and thought that this time, surely, it was all over with him!

Now I must tell you of a strange coincidence: The very year that Nils Holgersson travelled with the wild geese there was a woman who thought of writing a book about Sweden, which would be suitable for children to read in the schools. She had thought of this from Christmas time until the following autumn; but not a line of the book had she written. At last she became so tired of the whole thing that she said to herself: “You are not fitted for such work. Sit down and compose stories and legends, as usual, and let another write this book, which has got to be serious and instructive, and in which there must not be one untruthful word.”

It was as good as settled that she would abandon the idea. But she thought, very naturally, it would have been agreeable to write something beautiful about Sweden, and it was hard for her to relinquish her work. Finally, it occurred to her that maybe it was because she lived in a city, with only gray streets and house walls around her, that she could make no headway with the writing. Perhaps if she were to go into the country, where she could see woods and fields, that it