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Elsie lifted the lid of the nesting box and found only straw. She pushed her hand into the hollow at the center, then along both corners. Nothing but dry grass and one small grey feather. She replaced the lid and stood with her fists on her hips.

The ducks were already down by the pond’s muddy edge. She counted them the way she did every morning, tapping her finger at the air: the brown one, the white one with the tattered wing feather, the small black one. All three present. None of them looked in her direction. The brown one plunged its bill into the water and shook its tail.

“You have been laying somewhere else,” Elsie said.

The ducks paid her no attention.

She walked the yard first, because that was where a practical duck ought to lay. She searched behind the rain barrel and under the flat stone beside the kitchen door. She peered into the old wheelbarrow with its rusted bottom and found a snail. Then she crossed to the pond, stepping wide around the soft ground. She parted the reeds where the ducks sometimes slept. No eggs. The white duck waddled a few steps away from her and then stopped to watch, shaking out its wings.

Her mother came out with a basket of wet washing. She saw Elsie pushing aside nettles near the hedge.

“Elsie,” she called, “what have you lost?”

“Not lost,” Elsie said. “Mislaid. The ducks have built a new nest somewhere and they have not informed me.”

Her mother set the basket down. “They can be secretive.”

“Ducks are not secretive,” Elsie said. “They are careless. But I know every place they like. I only need to check the shed and the bank.”

Her mother agreed to help for a little while. Elsie instructed her to look along the far side of the hedge while she herself searched the shed. She opened the shed door and felt her way along the shelf where the seed boxes stood. She checked behind the stack of garden canes and inside the old wooden crate that held rope. She found a dead beetle and a tin of nails, but no eggs. Outside, her mother shook her head.

“Nothing by the hedge.”

“They have gone beyond it,” Elsie said. “I will need you by the bank.”

Her older brother came out then, filling a bucket at the yard tap for the horse. Elsie told him to set the bucket down and help.

“I am not chasing ducks,” he said.

“You are not chasing them,” Elsie said. “You are looking under a bush while I stand here and tell you where to look. That is not difficult.”

He left the bucket and followed her to the bank above the lane. She sent him to the lower side, where the grass grew long beneath a hawthorn. She searched along the top herself, lifting the edge of a broken fence rail and prodding the soft earth with a stick. From the pond, the brown duck let out one flat quack. The other two went on dabbling.

When her brother came back, he was empty-handed. “No eggs.”

“You did not look behind the stone,” Elsie said.

“I did.”

“The flat one near the gatepost?”

“There is no flat stone near the gatepost.”

Elsie walked over and showed him. He looked behind it. No eggs. They searched the long grass at the edge of the vegetable plot until her mother said it was time for dinner. Elsie straightened and brushed the seeds from her skirt. The ducks had left the pond and were now poking along the path as though they had nothing to do with the morning’s trouble.

By evening she was tired. She had checked the hedge a second time and walked the lower field as far as the fence. Her mother found her sitting on the back step with her chin in her hands.

“Still nothing?” her mother asked.

“They have been laying every day,” Elsie said. “I was going to sell you the eggs. And now there is nothing to sell.”

Her mother sat down beside her. “Maybe they have hidden them beyond the places you look.”

“Then a fox has found them,” Elsie said. “Or a crow. If I cannot find the nest, I cannot collect the eggs, and if I cannot collect them, they do not count as mine.”

Her mother did not argue. “We can look again in the morning, when the light is better.”

“The light was fine today,” Elsie said.

“Then we will look with a different pair of eyes.”

At bedtime, Elsie stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was not quite ready to give up the day. Her mother waited on the landing, holding a candle.

“Perhaps I shall dream of them,” Elsie said.

Her mother smiled. “Perhaps you will.”

The dream was brief and green. A grey rock stood in long grass. Yellow broom leaned over it. Mallow with pale, dark-veined leaves grew close against the stone. Under the tangle of stems was a hollow lined with soft brown down, and inside lay a clutch of pale blue eggs.

Elsie woke with the three things still clear: grey rock, broom, mallow. She sat up and said it aloud before she had remembered where she was.

“I did dream of them.”

She dressed quickly and went down to the kitchen. Her mother was slicing bread. Her brother was at the table.

“The eggs,” Elsie said. “I dreamed them. They are between grey rock, broom, and mallow.”

Her brother looked at his plate. “You dreamed them.”

“Listen,” Elsie said. “The grey rock, the broom, and the mallow. They are all in the same place. They are in the Poney’s Field.”

Her mother turned from the bread. “The Poney’s Field.”

“Yes,” Elsie said. “I have to go now.”

She was already pulling on her boots. Her mother told her to eat something first, but Elsie took a piece of bread and ate it walking to the door. Her brother said he would go with her, mostly, Elsie thought, because he wanted to see her be wrong. That was all right. She was not wrong.

They took the path past the pond and through the gap in the hedge. The field was short and sloped slightly upward. The grey rock stood halfway up, a low, split stone. Yellow broom grew beside it, and mallow straggled along its far side. They looked exactly ordinary in the morning light.

Elsie went to the rock and walked around it once. She pushed the broom aside with her arm. She lifted the lower branches. Nothing. Her brother stood with his hands in his pockets.

“There is no nest,” he said.

“It is here,” Elsie said.

She crouched at the base of the rock and pulled the long grass away from the mallow stems. The ground looked solid. Then she saw a narrow opening beneath a shelf of matted grass, hardly wider than her arm. She lay on her stomach and reached in. Her fingers found a soft hollow. Then they found something smooth and cool.

She took out one egg. It was blue-white and whole. She set it gently in her brother’s palm and reached in again. There were five more. She brought them out one by one and arranged them in the cup of her skirt.

Her brother said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “You were right.”

Elsie stood up, cradling the eggs against her skirt. “Of course I was right. They are my ducks.”

They walked back to the house. Her mother came out to meet them and looked at the eggs. She did not ask how Elsie had known. She went inside and came back with six pennies, which she counted into Elsie’s hand.

“A fair price,” her mother said.

Elsie counted them again herself. Then she went to the dresser and took down the small green tin where she kept buttons and useful string. She tipped the buttons into a pile and put the six pennies inside. The lid made a satisfying click.

Her brother said, “You likely saw one of the ducks go that way yesterday and thought nothing of it.”

“Maybe,” her mother said.

Elsie was not much interested in that. She walked out to the yard, where the ducks were pulling at a scatter of grain she had given them that morning.

“Next time,” she said, “you are to lay somewhere more convenient.”

The brown duck looked up with grain in its bill. Then it put its head down and went on eating. The other two did not look up at all.

This story is based on a true account included in Andrew Lang’s The Book of Dreams and Ghosts. You can read the original account in the free Project Gutenberg edition. And if you are interested in fresh and modern content about dreams that came true, you can find them in my book “Dreams That Wake You Up”, a collection of real dreams and real outcomes, directly from my clients, printed with their consent.

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