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With these remarks Bataki subsided, and the boy grew even more thoughtful. "I wonder what your purpose was in telling me that?" he queried. "The story dropped into my mind when I saw the old smithy again," said Bataki in an offhand manner.
Once more he walked the length of the snake; then he stood in a deep study, and scratched his neck with his foot. "It isn't possible that there can be two such big snakes in the forest," he pondered. "It must surely be Helpless!" He was just going to thrust his beak into the snake, but suddenly checked himself. "You mustn't be a numbskull, Bataki!" he remarked to himself.
To-day the boy took advantage of the rest hour, when Akka was feeding apart from the other wild geese, to ask her if that which Bataki had related was true, and Akka could not deny it. The boy made the leader-goose promise that she would not divulge the secret to Morten Goosey-Gander.
"Oh, you may be sure that he has dragged himself down to the strand to get the latest news about Grayskin!" Both the boy and the raven jumped to the ground, and hastened down to the shore. All the geese had come out of the lake, and stood talking with an old dog, who was so weak and decrepit that it seemed as if he might drop dead at any moment. "There's Karr," said Bataki to the boy.
"No! I have not dreamt," said Thumbietot, and he told the stork all that he had experienced. Then Herr Ermenrich said: "For my part, Thumbietot, I believe that you fell asleep here on the strand and dreamed all this. "But I will not conceal from you that Bataki, the raven, who is the most learned of all birds, once told me that in former times there was a city on this shore, called Vineta.
But the boy insisted that he had, and then the raven told him the whole story about Karr and Grayskin and Helpless, the water-snake. When he had finished, the boy sat quietly for a moment, looking straight ahead. Then he spoke: "I seem to like the forest better since hearing this. I wonder if there is anything left of the old Liberty Forest." "Most of it has been destroyed," said Bataki.
"Well, this is a stroke of ill luck!" said Bataki finally. "But we know that they are travelling toward the south, and of course I'll find them as soon as the mist clears." The boy was distressed at the thought of being parted from Morten Goosey-Gander just now, when the geese were on the wing, and the big white one might meet with all sorts of mishaps.
"Yes," returned Bataki, "I remember one about a smith from Härjedalen who once invited two other master blacksmiths one from Dalecarlia and one from Vermland to compete with him at nail-making. The challenge was accepted and the three blacksmiths met here at Kolsätt. The Dalecarlian began. He forged a dozen nails, so even and smooth and sharp that they couldn't be improved upon.
It was not long before the mist went away as suddenly as it had come. Then the boy saw a beautiful landscape, with high cliffs as in Jämtland, but there were no large, flourishing settlements on the mountain slopes. The villages lay far apart, and the farms were small. Bataki followed the stream southward till they came within sight of a village.
"The trees look as if they had passed through a fire. They'll have to be cleared away, and it will take many years before the forest will be what it once was." "That snake deserved his death!" declared the boy. "But I wonder if it could be possible that he was so wise he could send sickness to the caterpillars?" "Perhaps he knew that they frequently became sick in that way," intimated Bataki.
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