The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. Part 4.
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‘Well!’ said Mrs Gregg. ‘Thank goodness that’s over! I never want to sleep in a nest again!’ She got up and looked over the side…
‘Help!’ she cried. ‘Look! Look down there!’
‘What is it, my love?’ said Mr Gregg. He stood up and peeped over the side.
He got the surprise of his life!
On the ground below them stood the four enormous ducks, as tall as men, and three of them were holding guns in their hands. One had Mr Gregg’s gun, one had Philip’s gun, and one had William’s gun.
The guns were all pointing right up at the nest.
‘No! No! No!’ called out Mr and Mrs Gregg, both together. ‘Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!’
‘Why not?’ said one of the ducks. It was the one who wasn’t holding a gun. ‘You are always shooting at us.’
‘Oh, but that’s not the same!’ said Mr Gregg. ‘We are allowed to shoot ducks!’
‘Who allows you?’ asked the duck.
‘We allow each other,’ said Mr Gregg.
‘Very nice,’ said the duck. ‘And now we are going to allow each other to shoot you.’
(I would have loved to have seen Mr Gregg’s face just then.)
‘Oh, please! cried Mrs Gregg. ‘My two little children are up here with us! You wouldn’t shoot my children!
‘Yesterday you shot my children, said the duck. ‘You shot all six of my children.
‘I’ll never do it again!’ cried Mr Gregg. ‘Never, never, never!’
‘Do you really mean that?’ asked the duck.
‘I do mean it!’ said Mr Gregg. ‘I’ll never shoot another duck as long as I live!’
‘That is not good enough’, said the duck. ‘What about deer?’
‘I’ll do anything you say if you will only put down those guns!’ cried Mr Gregg. ‘I’ll never shoot another duck or another deer or anything else again!’
‘Will you give me your word on that?’ said the duck.
‘I will! I will!’ said Mr Gregg.
‘Will you throw away your guns?’ asked the duck.
‘I will break them into tiny bits!’ said Mr Gregg. ‘And never again need you be afraid of me or my family!
‘Very well’, said the duck. ‘You may now come down. And by the way, may I congratulate you on the nest. For a first effort it’s pretty good!
Mr and Mrs Gregg and Philip and William hopped out of the nest and flew down.
Then all at once everything went black before their eyes, and they couldn’t see. At the same time a funny feeling came over them all, and they heard a great wind blowing in their ears.
Then the black that was before their eyes turned to blue, to green, to red, and then to gold, and suddenly, there they were, standing in lovely bright sunshine in their own garden, near their own house, and everything was back to normal once again.
‘Our wings have gone!’ cried Mr Gregg. ‘And our arms have come back!’
‘And we are not tiny any more! laughed Mrs Gregg. ‘Oh, I am so glad!’ Philip and William began dancing about with joy.
Then, high above their heads, they heard the call of a wild duck.
They all looked up, and they saw the four birds, lovely against the blue sky, flying very close together, heading back to the lake in the woods.
It must have been about half an hour later that I myself walked into the Greggs’ garden. I had come to see how things were going, and I must admit I was expecting the worst. At the gate I stopped and stared.
It was a queer sight.
In one corner Mr Gregg was smashing all three guns into tiny pieces with a huge hammer.
In another corner Mrs Gregg was placing beautiful flowers upon sixteen tiny mounds of soil which I learned later were the graves of the ducks that had been shot the day before.
And in the middle of the yard stood Philip and William, with a sack of their father’s best barley beside them. They were surrounded by ducks, doves, pigeons, sparrows, robins, larks, and many other kinds that I did not know, and the birds were eating the barley that the boys were scattering by the handful.
Mr Gregg lowered his hammer and looked at me. ‘My name is not Gregg any more,’ he said. ‘In honour of my feathered friends, I have changed it from Gregg to Egg!’
‘And I am Mrs Egg,’ said Mrs Gregg.
‘What happened?’ I asked. They seemed to have gone completely dotty, all four of them.
Philip and William then began to tell me the whole story. When they had finished, William said, ‘Look! There’s the nest! Can you see it?
Right up in the top of the tree! That’s where we slept last night!’
‘I built it all myself, Mr Egg said proudly. ‘Every stick of it’
‘If you don’t believe us, Mrs Egg said, ‘just go into the house and take a look at the bathroom. It’s a mess.’
‘They filled the tub right up to the brim,’ Philip said. ‘They must have been swimming around in it all night! And feathers everywhere!’
‘Ducks like water, Mr Egg said. ‘I’m glad they had a good time.’ Just then, from somewhere over by the lake, there came a loud BANG!
‘Someone’s shooting!’ I cried.
‘That’ll be Jim Cooper, Mr Egg said. ‘Him and his three boys. They’re shooting mad, those Coopers are, the whole family.’ Suddenly I started to see red…
Then I got very hot all over…
Then the tip of my finger began tingling most terribly. I could feel the power building up and up inside me…
I turned and started running towards the lake as fast as I could.
‘Hey!’ shouted Mr Egg. ‘What’s up? Where are you going?’
‘To find the Coopers, I called back.
‘But why?
‘You wait and see!’ I said. ‘They’ll be nesting in the trees tonight, every one of them!’
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