The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Part Two

The Bird of Passage

“You don’t understand me,” said the duckling. “I think I’d better go out into the wide world.”

“Do you think this is the whole world?” the mother duck asked. “Why, it extends on and on, clear across to the other side of the garden and right on into the parson’s field, though that is farther than I have ever been.”

“Say there, comrade,” the wild geese said to the duckling, “you’re so ugly that we have taken a fancy to you. Come with us and be a bird of passage.”

—Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling (1843)