by Peter Brown
Roz spent the morning watching her son swim around and around the pond. And as she watched him, she felt something like gratitude. Thanks to Brightbill, the robot now had friends and shelter and help. Thanks to Brightbill, the robot had become better at surviving. In a way, Roz needed Brightbill as much as Brightbill needed Roz. Which was precisely why she felt such concern when the mood on the pond suddenly changed.
One moment everything was tranquil, and the next moment the geese were in a panic. Something was violently sloshing through the group. It was Rockmouth, the giant, toothy pike. The fish had been a problem in the pond for as long as anyone could remember, but he’d never attacked goslings before. All the parents immediately went to protect their young—all the parents except Roz. The robot could only stand in the shallows and watch as her son left the other geese behind and desperately swam toward his mother.
“Swim to me, Brightbill! Quickly!”
The gosling kicked as fast as he could. But alone on the water, he made an easy target. The pond rippled as Rockmouth slashed below the surface.
“Mama! Help!” squeaked Brightbill.
The robot was terribly conflicted. Part of her knew she had to help her son, but another part knew she had to stay out of deep water. Her body lurched forward and then backward, again and again, as she struggled to make a decision.
And then Loudwing came to the rescue.
“Rockmouth, don’t you dare harm that little darling!” The old goose fluttered over and splashed down right on top of the fish. “Leave… him… alone!” She pecked and kicked and beat her wings against the fish until he surrendered to the murky depths of the pond.
Loudwing escorted Brightbill back to the beach, and a minute later the gosling was in his mother’s arms, safe and sound.
“Rockmouth isn’t as dangerous as he seems,” said the goose, out of breath. “But I think that’s enough swimming for one day.”
CHAPTER 36
THE GOSLING GROWS
Brightbill soon forgot about the incident with Rockmouth, and he spent his mornings cruising around the pond with the other goslings. He was becoming a great little swimmer. He was also becoming a great little speaker.
“Hello, my name is Brightbill!” he said to anyone who would listen.
The gosling was small for his age, and he always would be, but he was growing bigger and stronger by the day. His increasing size was matched by his increasing appetite. He gobbled down grass and berries and nuts and leaves. Sometimes he’d snack on little insects. If it was edible, Brightbill would eat it. And even if it wasn’t edible, he might eat it anyway. Roz felt something like fright the time she saw Brightbill swallowing pebbles on the beach. She was holding him upside down, hoping the pebbles would fall out of his mouth, when Loudwing stepped in.
“Put the gosling down,” said the goose with a laugh. “It’s perfectly natural for Brightbill to eat a few pebbles. They’ll help him digest his food. But not too many, okay, little one?”
Like most youngsters, Brightbill was incredibly curious. He explored the garden and the pond and the forest floor. And he would occasionally explore neighboring homes. He’d wander down some hole in the ground and say to whoever was there, “Hello, my name is Brightbill!” Then a long robot arm would reach in and pull the gosling back outside. “Sorry to bother you,” Roz would say, in her friendliest voice.
The mother and son slipped into a good nighttime routine. While the gosling slept, the robot might tend the fire if it was cool out, or gently fan him if it was warm. If he woke up hungry or thirsty, Roz brought him food or water. And whenever he had nightmares, she was always there to rock him back to sleep.
CHAPTER 37
THE SQUIRREL
A small squirrel was scurrying through the garden. Brightbill had never seen her before. He peered out from the Nest and watched her bounce across the lawn. After a minute of spying, the gosling shook his tail feathers and waddled outside. “Hello, my name is Brightbill!”
The squirrel froze. Then she slowly turned around. And then she started to talk.
“Hi Brightbill my name is Chitchat and I’m a twelve-and-a-half-week-old squirrel and I’m new around here and your home is really big and round and I don’t understand why smoke sometimes comes out of it…”
Reader, I’m not quite sure how Chitchat got enough air into her lungs to go on like that. And I’m not quite sure how Brightbill had the patience to listen. But he stood there and politely nodded as Chitchat rambled on and on and on.
“… and sometimes I see you waddling behind your funny-looking mother and you seem so nice that I thought I’d come down and introduce myself but now I’m nervous and I’m talking too much and my name is Chitchat I think I said that already.”
There was a pleasant silence.
Brightbill stood on one foot for a moment.
Then the gosling took a deep breath and said, “It’s very nice to meet you Chitchat I don’t think you talk too much I think you talk just enough and I like you so let’s be friends.”
A big smile appeared on the squirrel’s tiny face. For once, Chitchat was speechless.
CHAPTER 38
THE NEW FRIENDSHIP
Chitchat wasn’t speechless for long. She’d already been alive for a whole twelve and a half weeks, and she wanted to tell Brightbill about every exciting thing, and every boring thing, that had ever happened to her. And so, as the new friends played and explored and ate together, the squirrel shared her stories.
“I was born on the other side of the hill and then last week I decided I was ready to build my first drey which is what you call a squirrel nest and now I live in that tree with the weird bump in its trunk,” she said while the two of them kicked pebbles into the pond.
“One time a weasel chased me through the treetops until he missed a branch and fell all the way down and crashed into a bush and walked away all wobbly and he never bothered me again,” she said while the two of them crawled through a hollow log.
“Eww gross I saw you eat that ant one time I ate a gnat by accident and I didn’t like it at all I mostly eat acorns and bark and tree buds and sometimes the yummy berries that grow in your garden,” she said while the two of them took a snack break.
But Chitchat was as good a listener as she was a talker. And whenever it was Brightbill’s turn to speak, she’d keep quiet and hang on his every word.
Do you know who enjoyed their conversations most of all? Our robot Roz. The protective mother was never far away, and she felt something like amusement at the silly conversations she overheard, and she felt something like happiness that her son had made such a good friend.
CHAPTER 39
THE FIRST FLIGHT
Brightbill had spent his entire life by the pond, and he was becoming very curious about what lay beyond his neighborhood. So one day his mother said to him, “Let us go for a walk, and I will show you more water than you can possibly imagine.”
Roz placed the gosling on her flat shoulder, and the two of them set off across the island. They marched out of the forest, crossed the Great Meadow, and climbed uphill until they were at the top of the island’s western ridge. Before them was a grassy slope that descended all the way to the dark, choppy waves that surrounded the island.
“That is a lot of water,” said the wide-eyed gosling. “I’m a good swimmer, but I’m not good enough to swim across that pond.”
“That is not a pond,” said the robot. “That is an ocean. I doubt any bird could swim across an ocean.”
Waves rolled in from the horizon.
Seagulls circled above the shore.
A steady breeze blew up the slope.
Brightbill’s yellow fluff had recently changed over to a coat of silky brown feathers, and he spread his feathery wings into the breeze. And then—
“Mama, look!” For the briefest of moments, the wind lifted Brightbill off the ground. But he quickly tipped backward and thumped into the soft grass. “I was flying!” he squeaked.
&nbs
p; “That was not flying,” said Roz, looking back at her upside-down son.
“Well, I was almost flying. I’m gonna try again!”
“I have observed many birds in flight,” said Roz. “Sometimes they flap their wings quickly, and other times they fly without flapping at all. They spread their wings and soar on the wind.”
“So I was soaring?” said Brightbill.
“Almost. There, look at that soaring seagull. It seems like she is not doing anything, but if you look closer, you will notice that she is making small adjustments with her wings and tail. I think you should try adjusting your wings in the wind, like her.”
Brightbill hopped onto a rock and opened his wings wide. “The wind is pushing me backward!”
“Change the angle of your wings,” said his mother. “Let us see what happens when they slice through the air.”
Brightbill slowly angled his wings downward. The more he turned them, the less the wind pushed him backward. And just as his wings leveled off—
“Mama, look!” he squeaked as his feet left the ground. “I’m soaring! I’m soaring!” He hovered there for a second, rising a little higher than before, and then he sailed backward into the soft grass again.
The gosling kept hopping onto the rock and kept riding the wind and kept tumbling into the grass, until he started to find his wings. With each attempt he floated a little higher and a little longer, and finally Brightbill really did soar. He lifted high into the air and hung there, floating. He turned his wings down and felt himself drop. He wiggled his tail feathers and felt himself veering back and forth.
“I’m a natural!” he squeaked.
“You are doing very well,” said Roz. “But you need to keep practicing.”
And so they spent the afternoon practicing up on the ridge. Once Brightbill was comfortable soaring, he tried flapping his wings. He flapped high into the air. He flapped in straight lines. He flapped around and around in circles. A big smile appeared on the gosling’s face. Clearly, Brightbill was designed to fly.
“I’m flying, Mama! I’m really flying!”
“You are flying!” said the robot. “Very good!”
Brightbill was now a real flier. But all that flying had worn him out. He lowered himself toward the ground and tumbled into the grass one last time. His landings still needed some work.
Roz placed Brightbill on her shoulder and headed back to the Nest.
“I can’t believe I can fly now, Mama,” said Brightbill in his sleepy voice. “I just wish… I just wish you could fly with me.”
And then the gosling’s words were replaced by his quiet, steady breathing.
CHAPTER 40
THE SHIP
Brightbill was a flying fanatic, and his favorite place to fly was up on the grassy ridge. The robot and the gosling liked to spend afternoons up there, working on the finer points of flying. And it was on one such afternoon that they noticed something mysterious far out at sea.
Brightbill spiraled down to his mother, flopped onto the grass, and pointed to the horizon. “Mama, what is that thing?”
Roz’s computer brain found the right word. “That is a ship.”
“What’s a ship?”
“A ship is a large vessel used for ocean transport.”
Brightbill’s face scrunched up with confusion. “Used by who?”
“I do not know.”
It was the first ship either of them had ever laid eyes on. From that distance, it looked as though it were moving slowly, but it was actually racing through the waves. From that distance, it looked as though it were small, but it was actually one of the largest ships ever built. The robot and the gosling watched it crawl across the ocean until it finally disappeared to the south.
Where had the ship come from? Where was it going? Who was on board? Roz and Brightbill had many questions but no answers.
CHAPTER 41
THE SUMMER
On clear summer days, Roz and Brightbill and Chitchat liked to go exploring. They investigated the island’s sandy southern point. They marveled at the rainbows that curved up from the waterfall. They surveyed the forest from the branches of tall trees. They met new friendly creatures, and sometimes they met new unfriendly creatures. But the only creatures they had to worry about were the bears.
One time, they came upon a bear fishing in the river, and Roz whispered, “You know what to do.” Brightbill flew up and away, Chitchat scurried home through the treetops, and Roz melted into the landscape as only she could. Later, they met back at the Nest and told the neighbors all about their brush with danger.
On dreary summer days, they would stay inside. Roz asked Brightbill and Chitchat about dreaming and about flying and about eating and about all the things they could do that she could not. But the youngsters had too much energy to sit still for very long. They spent one drizzly afternoon kicking acorns around the Nest. Chitchat piled them up, and then Brightbill swung his big foot and the acorns went flying. The little friends chased the acorns as they bounced and rolled and spun across the floor. Then they made a new pile and kicked them again. Sometimes an acorn would bounce off Roz’s body—clang!—and everyone would laugh and giggle together. Even Roz laughed. “Ha ha haaa!” said the robot, trying to act natural.
On clear summer evenings, they would sit outside and watch fireflies twinkling around the pond. Then they’d lie back and gaze up at the darkening sky.
“That big circle is the moon,” said Chitchat. “And those little lights are called stars and one time I tried to count them all but I can only count to ten so I just kept counting to ten over and over and I have no idea how many stars there are but I know it’s more than ten.”
“They are not all stars,” said Roz. “Some of them are planets.”
“What’s a planet?” said Chitchat.
“A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star.”
“What does ‘celestial’ mean?”
“Celestial means something that is in outer space.”
“What’s outer space?”
“Outer space is the universe outside the atmosphere of our planet.”
“What’s the universe?”
“The universe is everything and everywhere.”
“Oh, so the universe is our island?”
None of them would ever really understand the universe, including Roz. Her computer brain knew only so much. She could talk about the earth and the sun and the moon and the planets, and a few stars, and not much else. The night sky was full of streaking, shimmering, and blinking lights that she simply couldn’t identify. Clearly, Roz was not designed to be an astronomer.
On dreary summer evenings, Roz and Brightbill would curl up together, just the two of them, and listen to the rain pattering on the roof of the Nest. The robot would tell stories of annoying pinecones and terrible storms and camouflaged insects. But the sound of rain always made Brightbill sleepy, and he’d be out before his mother could ever finish a story.
CHAPTER 42
THE STRANGE FAMILY
It was a sweltering afternoon, and the heat had put everyone in a bad mood. Roz was standing in the shade watching her son out on the water. The other goslings were teasing him about something when they suddenly burst into laughter, and Brightbill turned and hurried home with a stormy expression on his face. He stomped into the garden and right past his mother without saying a word.
“What is wrong, Brightbill?” said Roz as she followed her son into the Nest.
“Nothing!” he squawked. “Leave me alone!”
“Tell me what is wrong.”
“I don’t want to talk about it!”
“Maybe I can help.”
“Mama, the other goslings were making fun of me.”
“What did they say?”
“They called you a monster and then laughed at me for having a monster mother.”
“They should know by now that I am not a monster. Would you like me to talk to them?”
“No! Don’t do that! That’
ll just make things worse.”
The robot sat next to her son.
“Mama, I know you’re a robot. But I don’t understand what a robot is.”
“A robot is a machine. I was not born. I was built.”
“Who built you?”
“I do not know. I do not remember being built. My very first memory is waking up on the northern shore of this island.”
“Were you smaller back then?” said the gosling.
“No, I have always been this size.” Roz looked down at her weathered body. “However, I used to be shiny, like the surface of the pond. I used to stand straighter than a tree trunk. I used to speak a different language. I have not grown bigger, but I have changed very much.”
The robot wanted to explain things to her son, but the truth was that she understood very little about herself. It was a mystery how she had come to life on the rocky shore. It was a mystery why her computer brain knew certain things but not others. She tried to answer Brightbill’s questions, but her answers only left him more confused.
“What do you mean, you’re not alive?” squawked Brightbill.
“It is true,” said Roz. “I am not an animal. I do not eat or breathe. I am not alive.”
“You move and talk and think, Mama. You’re definitely alive.”
It was impossible for such a young goose to understand technical things like computer brains and batteries and machines. The gosling was much better at understanding natural things like islands and forests and parents.
Parents. The word suddenly left Brightbill feeling uneasy. “You’re not my real mother, are you?”
“There are many kinds of mothers,” said the robot. “Some mothers spend their whole lives caring for their young. Some lay eggs and immediately abandon them. Some care for the offspring of other mothers. I have tried to act like your mother, but no, I am not your birth mother.”
