Posted by BDMHistorian

Chapter 13
Casper on the Goose Meadow

"This time next week, we'll already be back home," said Shorty who was laying next to Irm in the grass and chewed on a long blade of grass. "Horrible. I don't even want to think about it." -- "Next week already?" It seemed to Irm as if it had only been yesterday that they'd gotten out of the train at the small station. She couldn't imagine how her vacation was going to continue without the others, without Kathrin and Liese, without Tramp, and especially without the woods, the fields, and the lake.

"It'll be so boring, later," and Shorty nodded. Only Ellie had a different opinion. Quickly, and a bit defiantly, she said: "I'm looking forward to going home. I'm looking forward to seeing my mom, and our garden plot, and in general -- I kinda like being by myself."

"Of course you would!" Shorty looked at fat Ellie through her cool grey eyes rather condescendingly. "You'll be glad if there are no more logs to climb across, and no more barrels to crawl through. Laying around the garden all day, and at most watering the plants a little, that's more something for you. A funny Jungmaedel you are!"

"Oh, leave her alone and don't annoy her all the time," Irm wanted to say. Ever since the boat trip she was looking at Ellie differently from the others. But Ellie had already jumped up and now stood angrily and with clenched fists in front of Shorty who recoiled in surprise.

"You take that back, you, immediately!" she yelled. "You always think you can do anything you want with me. But I have my honor, too!"

Honor was something each Jungmaedel generally took quite serious. But you didn't really talk about it, and if you looked like Ellie when you did -- a lobster red little ball -- and if your sports shirt had come undone from your pants in back so that it was fluttering in the breeze like a little flag, then it was hardly more than laughable. Irm hid her head in the grass, her entire body was trembling with suppressed snickering. Shorty, however, laughed: "Ellie, just like doing theater!" But Ellie didn't hear her. Silently, she stuffed the shirt corner back in and then ran off.

"Now she's really mad," Shorty said startled. "I didn't mean that. I think, I've just been very horrible to her." Thoughtlessly, she pulled out a new blade of grass to stick in her mouth, but then she tossed it aside and ran after the other girl.

Five minutes later, both of them returned, apparently in peaceful conversation. Irm also pretended like nothing had happened, but the good mood was still gone.

So all three of them were glad when Christel and Inge appeared with an important message. Tomorrow they were going to have a large village festival with a camp circus, games for the village children, and a parade through the village with colorful paper lanterns. But especially, they were to bring Christel's Casper dolls. "Well, you know!"

Of course they knew. During the entire time at camp, everyone had always hurried on the way to bed in the evening, so that on the back of Christel's bed, they could relive the day's events through Christel's Casper Dolls each night before Kathrin came to wish them a good night. The role of Kathrin was always played by the devil's grandmother, and the crocodile stood in for Tramp.

"Kathrin said, she's not going to have anything to do with the Casper theater," Christel explained excitedly, "Because the dolls are mine, I should make sure that I do something proper. I'm supposed to come up with a piece, and pick a place where we can put it on. I'm allowed to pick whomever I want for help and we have the whole afternoon to prepare. The others are already putting together paper lanterns. And posters have been put up since the day before yesterday. But I'm sure it's really hard to find a suitable place. Won't you help me?"

"Marvelous!" Irm and Shorty were excited and even Ellie jumped up from her seat in the grass with surprising speed. "We'll first see the village elder, maybe he can give us a field to use," Inge suggested. But the village elder was not interested in their plan at all: "I won't have you tromping through my fields -- what are you thinking, girls!"

But with a look to Inge's clueless face, he then suggested that there's the goose meadow, which isn't used on Sunday afternoons. Goose August could be rather strange at times, and you couldn't tell how he'd react, but after all, asking didn't cost them anything.

It didn't sound like a very good solution but Irm thought, he had such a nice son, so he couldn't possibly be a horrible person. And so it was that Goose August found himself surrounded by five laughing and eagerly chattering Jungmaedel who tried to convince him that his goose meadow would be the proper place to have a village festival.

In general, he didn't seem to be opposed to the idea, as Christel soon realized. But he only wanted to know where the spectators were going to sit, and when he heard they were supposed to sit in the grass, he scratched his head. There was lots laying around the goose meadow, he said, which was okay for the geese but not quite proper for the Sunday best of the spectators.

Christel quickly looked around. Hm, Goose August wasn't entirely wrong. But were they supposed to just say no to this nice location? But Karli, who'd appeared just at the right time, had the solution. "We'll just sweep it away," he explained behind his father's back and winked at Irm. "If the old broom maker's woman will lend us a couple of her huge brooms, we'll be done with that in no time."

Sweeping it away! Of course, what a great idea! When the geese had been driven home that night, Karli and five Jungmaedel got to work on the meadow. It wasn't a bad job, especially since it gave them a chance to think about what they were going to do tomorrow. After all, it wasn't enough that the Casper dolls looked nice, they also had to talk and act.

Of course they could've made fun of camp life, but when Inge started on that, Irm and Shorty made a gesture that suggested an incredibly long beard. So that wasn't going to work.

"Karli, what do you think?" Shorty finally asked in despair. After all, Karli had already made another good suggestion today. But this time, he just shrugged. First, he couldn't think of anything, and second, he still had a lot of hard work to do that night -- he had an essay due for Tuesday and that didn't write itself, either.

"An essay! Well, of course…" Shorty was entirely understanding. "What do you have to write about?" Karli told them the fairytale about the beautiful maid Kunigunde who had been living below the Knuppel mountain on the other side of the village for hundreds of years, waiting for prince charming to free her. "But nobody has found her yet, because whoever wants inside the golden catacombs first has to fight death and the devil and defeat them."

Christel was quite surprised how eagerly Shorty was about this story and how she kept asking about all the details. After all, what business of hers was Karli's essay? But when Shorty suddenly stopped and leaned onto her broom and explained, "That's what we'll put on tomorrow," even Christel understood. That was a great idea already! Casper as prince charming, freeing the princess Kunigunde from her spell! He had to defeat death and the devil -- with a trick, of course, because after all, he was Casper -- and then ride into the catacombs on a white steed.

"I just have to draw the horse," said Christel, but Karli disagreed. "I'll make the horse," he said, "You city girls don't really know what a horse looks like. I can draw. Tomorrow morning, I'll cut it out from cardboard for you."

"But real quick," Irm said, and Karli didn't really take that badly. When the six parted from each other in front of the church, the outline of the play had been decided. With a sigh of relief, Christel went to bed that evening. Things would go well, that much was certain.

The Casper theater on the goose meadow turned out to be a great success. Even Willem, the horse driver from the manor house, who was generally critical of everything, said that he didn't enjoy a village festival this much in a long time, and Stine from the farm next to the church had brought a whole basket of homemade poppy cakes, which she gave to the Jungmaedel because it had been so nice.

Christel herself had lots to criticize, however. In particular she didn't find that the Princess Kunigunde had not been gentle and noble enough. It definitely wasn't right that she'd greeted the knight Casper, who reached her catacombs after braving many dangers, with the words, "Man, I've been waiting for you forever!" Shorty blushed because she'd played the role of Princess Kunigunde. But the village elder thought that wasn't a big deal. After four hundred years of enchanted imprisonment inside a dark mountain, even a princess could loose some of her manners.

In the evening they held a parade with the colored paper lanterns. Their path snaked through the entire village, and when they passed the schoolhouse, the teacher stood on the steps and laughed and waved. "Well, Karli," he said when he saw him pass carrying a blue paper lantern with a yellow moon on it, "still out this late? Is the essay done already?"

"I'll write it tomorrow, teacher!" -- Karli felt very brave within the protection of the many Jungmaedel -- "And besides, the Princess Kunigunde has been freed already. The story is no longer right." -- "Then you'll just have to add the correct ending," the teacher called after him, and Karli, 20 steps away already, called bravely back, "Will do, teacher!"

Then he gave Irm, who walked next to him carrying a fire red lantern with a blue heart on it, a shot in the rips. "Well, that's the first essay in my life that I've had fun with."