English maidens tend to be rather daft, in my experience. Giggling and fanning themselves with faces painted like little porcelain dolls, they've never really held my interest.

Anya Ryder, however, didn't wear makeup. She didn't slather strawberry juice on her lips and blueberry guts above her eyes like the other servant girls did. She never giggled, and true to her constantly cold nature, she saw no need to fan herself.

She didn't like people, much. She preferred her geese.

Goose Girl, they called her, but not as an insult. You call your male servant "Butler" and your female servant "Maid". And you call the wench who feeds your birds, "Goose Girl".

In the palace, Anya had no name. The nobles knew not who she was, nor what she did. To them, she wasn't even "Goose Girl". She was simply, "You!"

Among other servants, she reserved her title. She made friends with Chicken Boy. She made enemies with Grain Girl. She received the taunts and jeers of the Pig People and the Berry Boys.

Her life, Anya thought, read like a nonsensical poem, a bland story written in colorful ink, laden with alliteration. She sighed, sitting down with her geese. But alas, even these were not hers.

Anya owned little. She kept for herself one dress, one pair of underwear, a blanket (which doubled as a knapsack), a little pouch of coins and her father's journal. The rest, she sold and ate.

She was paid at the end of every week. A handful of farthings, a penny if she was lucky. Hardly an appropriate income to sustain a full-grown human.

I knew her father. Fine lad, he was. Simple and well spoken, with skin just as curiously brown as my own. For an English First Mate, he kept himself impressively sober.

His daughter knew nothing of him except what she found between the leather covers of his journal. From these neat, cursive letters, she came to know that her father was a pirate and her mother, a Duchess.

I didn't know the Duchess, nor did I venture to find out from Arturo how he and the noble lady ended up in bed together. All he volunteered was that the duchess had a Duke and a villa in Italy and had gained a few pounds since the girl was born.

Moses met the man too, and growled through his stories. I understood -- parental abandonment remained a sensitive subject for the both of us. I never found out what happened to my mother, but I figured, to hell with her. I was a fine young man, and if she didn't want me, that was her problem.

Anyhow, Goose Girl never ate like a pirate, nor like a Duchess. She didn't indulge herself in rum, nor did she find laid before her rich feasts of butter and sugar.

She ate like a prisoner, most nights. Bread, water, cold floor, the occasional rat. Other nights, she ate like her geese. She apologized to them as she shoveled down their scraps, their potato skins and parsnip bits. The geese ate like pigs, so Anya did, too.

She slept on the castle grounds, though this was not allowed. In the pig pen, most nights, and in the geese's coop if she dared. The pig's large, stinking bodies hid hers; the geese left her exposed and cold.

The Pig People laughed at her if they arrived before she awoke. "Pig Princess!" The taunted. They snorted at her. "Hog!"

She grew up with these words, so they hardly stung anymore. The part that hurt was their laughter.

Anya didn't like being laughed at. She may eat scraps and sleep in the mud, but she was no joke.

Chicken Boy didn't laugh, because he slept in the mud, too. He took up more space than Anya did, though, and had a habit of getting caught on the grounds, so he'd resorted to sleeping in the squishy river bank on the other side of the castle moat. He came to work each morning, newly browned with mud.

So that morning when he stumbled past the Goose Pen, clumps of brown goop falling from his clothes, she offered him a small smile and a wave. Chicken Boy waved back and held out his hand. She tossed the half-parsnip she'd saved for him through the fence. He caught it in his muddy paw.

Today, they'd arrived early, so he sat down right outside the fence to eat his breakfast. Anya lifted Dublin, the old gray goose who craved her attention, out of her lap and went to join him.

"Good morning, Goose."

"Good morning, Chicken."

The parsnip tasted of fecal matter, which told Anya the geese had gotten to the feed bucket before she had. Fiona, that damn feathered pig. She left her crap in the food nearly every day.

Chicken Boy saw her disapproving expression. "Fiona?" He asked. She nodded. "That goose needs a diaper."

This was a common joke between them. Goose Girl cracked a grin. "Perhaps I can toilet train her."

"Oh, yes. Come teach my chickens, too! We would both smell so much better."

They ate slowly savoring each bit of their tainted vegetables. Soon, the others would flood in and the castle guards would come around to ensure that everyone had returned for another day at the palace menagerie of poverty.

These animals were bred for the slaughter. The real menagerie existed on the other side of the grounds, past the thick green bushes that closed in The Range. Anya had only heard about this section of the grounds. Lions, tigers, giraffes, monkeys. She longed to see them, one day.

Well, they were sitting there at the fence, hiding from the new day when the lot of us arrived.

Unlike Anya, I got to see the menagerie. Spectacular though it was, she wouldn't have liked it. The animals seemed sad and if there was one thing Goose Girl hated, it was sad animals.

"Did you hear that?" Chicken Boy asked.

Anya nodded. "Sounds like freedom."

Yes, dear. That's exactly right.