Jessica and the Golden Swan Feather

By David Osborn

Using a medieval wishing charm to escape from a big city museum where she is mistakenly locked in for the night, Jessica, along with Annie-Mae, a homeless Rag Doll, ends up not at home but in OR, where the country's evil Great Leader holds the charm hostage until brought a feather from a deified Golden Swan in Hoppitland, country of the Stick pe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dagmar Miura
• Release date: Mar 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781956744330

David Osborn

David Osborn, for over sixty years a writer, lives in Connecticut with his wife, a once American and European ballerina, then renowned in international health policy. Their daughter, a PhD psychologist, practices in Sydney, Australia. Their lawyer son is an advocate for the welfare of animals worldwide.

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Jessica and the Golden Swan Feather book cover image

Jessica and the Golden Swan Feather

David Osborn

With love for Ethan and Isobel

One

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Jessica wondered if Miss Primly would ever stop talking. Or stop leading them endlessly through one exhibition after another in the big city museum to which she’d taken Jessica’s class that day.

They had seen a score of shining suits of armor worn by knights of old along with all their swords and shields and other weaponry. They had visited the African sculpture exhibit and had looked at grotesque ebony statues beautifully carved in wood or ivory. They had studied modern paintings as well as the impressionists and classical old masters. They had ogled at endless ancient Greek sculptures and busts of all the Roman emperors. They had visited spooky Japanese costumes, the decorated wooden coffins and their Egyptians mummies, and lastly, cases filled with pottery from centuries past.

Now, here they were finally stopped for lunch at an exhibit of dresses worn by great ladies hundreds of ago, before the French Revolution, Miss Primly said, whatever that meant to her students. All the class had dived into their backpacks to retrieve sandwiches, all except Jessica.

In her rush to school she’d forgotten her thin-sliced ham on rye bread and little carton of milk that her hard-working mother had left for her on the kitchen table. With her mother, Jessica lived in a tiny fifth-floor two rooms in the poorest section of the big city and where their nights were filled with the sound of gunfire as street gangs fought it out, with the distant sounds of police and fire department sirens and the smell of the big city’s choking air.

Jessica always felt embarrassed at being the poorest in her class and at her having to wear hand-me-down, oft-mended clothes her mother had found in the flea market on the city’s outskirts. Now, watching other children happily fill themselves with cookies, thick juicy sandwiches, and thermoses of chocolate milk, Jessica only wanted to hide, to be someplace else.

Realizing she sat right in front of a gap in the wide voluminous skirts of a museum mannequin, she ducked into its concealing folds. There, vaguely hearing Miss Primly drone on and on about the next exhibit they would visit, she fell sound asleep.

When she awoke after what seemed only a few minutes, Jessica found herself in the pitch dark. Miss Primly’s voice was no longer heard, and the museum was oddly silent of its usual murmur of sound. Carefully peering out from the folds of the dress, Jessica could only see the faint moving light of one of the museum’s guards doing his nightly rounds, and she realized that not only had Miss Primly and her class gone on without her but that the museum had shut for the night.

Oh, dear, Jessica said to no one in particular, and at the same time wondering what she should do. Would she be in trouble for being in the museum when it was shut? Should she call for help or try to find some way out?

Her little backpack was right where she’d left it, just inside the folds of the dress, and Jessica, reaching into it for her flashlight, felt something big and soft like a bundle of wrapped-up cloth. It stuffed full the whole pack, jamming down to its very bottom all the things she usually carried it, like a pocket knife, band-aids, a roll of string, a small water bottle, and a compass.

At the same time, she heard a frightened little voice crying out. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was just hiding.

Startled, Jessica sat back quickly. Wh-who’s that? Who’s th-there?

I am, the little voice said. And please pull me out. I’m stuck.

Perhaps even more startled, Jessica realized that the voice