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He heard Akka's calls, but did not understand what she said. "What can this mean? Have the wild geese changed their language?" he wondered. He waved his cap to them and ran along the shore calling. "Here am I, where are you?" But this seemed only to frighten the geese. They rose and flew farther out to sea. At last he understood. They did not know that he was human, had not recognized him.
"We are quite near West Vemminghög now," said Akka, "and I thought that perhaps you might like to go home for awhile. It may be some time before you have another opportunity to see your people." "Perhaps I had better not," said the boy hesitatingly, but something in his voice betrayed that he was glad of Akka's proposal.
Flammea, the steeple-owl, had found it in a niche, in Lund cathedral. She had shown it to Bataki, the raven; and they had both figured out that this was the kind of horn that was used in former times by those who wished to gain power over rats and mice. But the raven was Akka's friend; and it was from him she had learned that Flammea owned a treasure like this.
"Since you're so fond of him," said Smirre, "I'll promise you that he shall be the first among you that I will wreak vengeance upon." Akka said no more, and after Smirre had sent up a few more yowls, all was still. The boy lay all the while awake. Now it was Akka's words to the fox that prevented him from sleeping.
"Live as I have taught you to live, and you may travel with my flock as heretofore." Both were proud and stubborn, and neither of them would yield. It ended in Akka's forbidding the eagle to show his face in her neighbourhood, and her anger toward him was so intense that no one dared speak his name in her presence.
"It is evident that you are not accustomed to look out for yourselves on journeys." Those rogues succeeded in making Akka's head swim. As near as the boy could make out, the wild geese flew round and round for a long time. "Be careful! Can't you see that you are flying up and down?" shouted a loon as he rushed by. The boy positively clutched the goosey-gander around the neck.
The boy turned half round and cast a glance toward the sea, then faced about and looked straight into Akka's bright eyes. "I think it strange, Mother Akka, that you turn me away from your service like this and pay me off before I have given you notice," he said. "As long as we wild geese remain in Sweden, I trust that you will stay with us," said Akka.
It was impossible to explain that a tame goosey-gander had come with the wild geese. "That must be the goose-king himself coming along," they said tauntingly. "There's no limit to their audacity!" "That's no goose, it's only a tame duck." The big white gander remembered Akka's admonition to pay no attention, no matter what he might hear.
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