Chapter 2

As Blossom saw him merging back into the goat body, she turned and said to the duck, "I must get back to Yogi quickly. But now you can take your revenge and help me out too, Luke’s not supposed to go to sleep until he and his body are fully integrated, so that they don’t separate again. So you can dive bomb him, or quack in his ear or throw or drop things on him to keep him awake. If you’d do that for at least one hour, I’d be grateful! And I’m sure Yogi will reward you. Now, I must go guide Yogi here." With that, the flower-eared cricket hopped back into the forest in the direction from which they came.

The duck looked thoughtfully at the path Blossom had taken, and then thoughtfully at Luke (who was now fully goat). Since the body had been in a state of sleep while the spirit was gone, it was now lying in the glue with one side of the head stuck. Luke was feebly straining to get up, but it hurt too much to move his head, and he really didn’t want to lose the rest of his beard. The duck quacked once as she cocked her head sideways at Luke, and then waddled to the edge of the glue puddle. There she spun around three times on her webbed feet and--

Something exploded.

Luke raised his head slightly (he had been beginning to doze off) and looked in the duck’s direction. A puff of pink smoke was dissipating around the duck’s feet and she was peering down at them in perplexity. Luke did a double take as he registered the pair of glittering ruby high heels crammed awkwardly onto her webbed feet. "Quack," the duck said doubtfully. She kicked them off. Luke watched with remote fascination as the duck fluffed her wings a bit and then commenced to hop on one foot, then the other, and once again spin around three times. There was a bright, white explosion tinged with violet where the duck’s feet should have been. Violet smoke billowed away. At her feet sat a large shiny violet purse. The duck stared a long time at the purse, her expression unreadable, before giving what looked like a duck’s version of a shrug of her shoulders (if you have never seen this, it is even weirder looking than a goat shrugging his shoulders).

She paused to think for another long moment, staring at the shoes, the purse, and then the cabbage, before tucking her wings to her sides and running in a figure eight three times, and finishing with a backwards flip. Luke began to wonder if she was some kind of deranged circus duck separated from her troop when, again, white exploded at her feet (this time tinged with blue), and, as blue smoke cleared away, there sat a large blue alarm clock. Quacking with satisfaction, she used her bill to carefully set the alarm, and turned back to survey her main problem: the goat sprawled in the glue before her, looking odd with several hairless patches from the glue’s work. She took a step over to the cabbage and gave it a nudge with her bill, sniffing it thoughtfully. "Quack!" she said in disgust. Flapping, she rose smoothly into a low glide, lighting on Luke’s head.

Luke was just dozing off again when she pecked him, a sharp rap on the forehead. Of course, a goat has a hard head, so he barely felt it. Trying again, she wedged her feet behind his horns so she wouldn’t fall off, and, leaning down in front of his face, pecked his nose. Luke stirred enough to open his eyes and look at her, before shaking his head--delicately--to get her to go away. The duck made a sound something like "Humph!" and pecked him again, harder. Luke looked at her with annoyance. "Go off and bug somebody else!" he told her, shaking his head slightly again to dislodge her. She pecked him again as hard as she could manage without dislodging herself. Luke sighed, closed his eyes, and set himself to steadfastly ignoring her. The duck paused, surveying her target. This wasn’t going according to plan. Luke sighed to himself, and rolled his head slightly, trying to get a more comfortable position in the glue. Looking up and around, the duck launched herself off Luke’s head and soared straight up into the sky. Luke, relieved, smiled and began to drift into a doze. Up above, against the high noon sky, the duck paused mid-soar, seeming to hang on the air itself, and then turned gently in the air. Luke snuggled comfortably into dreamland, his astral body gently blurring the outlines of his physical body, and starting to separate again. The duck dive-bombed him, coming in at a murderous rate of speed to smack him upside the head with her own body; then, flapping furiously to keep from plunging into the glue herself, she landed on the edge of the puddle of glue.

"Ow!" said Luke, who started up with a jerk. Several more hairs pulled out of his beard with the sudden movement. "Owww! Look what you’ve done! I’ve lost enough hair as it is, and you’re making me lose more of it! By the time I get out of this mess, I’ll be bald!" Luke exclaimed, the last note ending on a wail.

A light sprang up in the duck’s eyes, and Luke knew exactly what she was thinking as readily as if she’d spoken out loud. "Oh, no! Oh, no you don’t!" exclaimed Luke quickly, but the duck was already flapping her wings and, in a moment, landed square on his head, in her old perch. Eyeing Luke sharply (she had to wedge her feet behind his horns again and lean down his face to do this), she poised her bill over his furry cheek and made as if to pluck out some hair.

"Don’t! Stop!" cried Luke, shaking his head hard, trying to shake her off. Hair on the other side of his head ripped out as he tore it away from the glue, and he stopped, moaning, "Oh, look what you made me do! Again! I won’t have any hair left after this!"

The duck peered at him meaningfully, but Luke could only stare back at her, not knowing what she was trying to get across. A wave of morose-ness swept over him, and he gave up trying to argue with her. "Fine. Go ahead," he glared at her. "Pull out all my hair. See if I care." He closed his eyes, once again set on ignoring her. The moment he shut his eyes, though, she bent her head and plucked out a tuft of hair. Despite his vow to suffer in silence, Luke’s eyes flew open immediately and he yelped. "That hurt! What did I ever do to you?"

Again the duck stared at him, not plucking at his fast-diminishing beard as long as he kept his eyes open. The minute he shut them, she took out another tuft. It began to dawn on Luke that she wanted him to keep his eyes open. "Okay, you dimwit," he muttered at her. "If it makes you happy, I’ll keep my eyes open."

The duck nodded firmly. "Quack!"

"Whatever that means," Luke mumbled, staring back at her and straining to keep his eyes open.

The rest of the hour passed in a haze for Luke. Try as he might to keep his eyes open, they would now and then slip past his guard and close on him. The duck always set things right, plucking and pinching at him to get his blood flowing again. By the end of the hour, Luke sat in a kind of trance, eyes glazed over staring into space, sleeping with his eyes open. But by then the danger was past, and his spirit had settled firmly back into the physical plane.

The alarm clock went off, squalling and making an awful racket, but Luke barely heard it. The duck launched herself off his head and landed beside the clock, where she carefully turned it off. Then, turning back to Luke, she rose and landed once again on his head. Seeing that he was still staring with eyes wide open, like a zombie, she leaned forward and gently nudged each of his eyes shut. Then, contented, she fluffed her wings and settled in between his horns. Luke sighed in relief, and dropped into a deeper sleep.

Yogi and Blossom found them that way, not five minutes later, but by then there was no waking Luke. The duck opened one eye to survey them, and then shut it firmly.