He was sure he'd faint if he attempted it.
The wild geese were not flying very high because the new travelling
companion could not breathe in the very thinnest air. For his sake they
also flew a little slower than usual.
At last the boy just made himself cast one glance down to earth. Then he
thought that a great big rug lay spread beneath him, which was made up
of an incredible number of large and small checks.
"Where in all the world am I now?" he wondered.
He saw nothing but check upon check. Some were broad and ran crosswise,
and some were long and narrow--all over, there were angles and corners.
Nothing was round, and nothing was crooked.
"What kind of a big, checked cloth is this that I'm looking down on?"
said the boy to himself without expecting anyone to answer him.
But instantly the wild geese who flew about him called out: "Fields and
meadows. Fields and meadows."
Then he understood that the big, checked cloth he was travelling over
was the flat land of southern Sweden; and he began to comprehend why it
looked so checked and multi-coloured. The bright green checks he
recognised first; they were rye fields that had been sown in the fall,
and had kept themselves green under the winter snows. The yellowish-gray
checks were stubble-fields--the remains of the oat-crop which had grown
there the summer before.
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