100-Word Fiction: ‘The Goose and the Merchants’

After the merchants were pardoned and the townsfolk were sent to the fields, Tom the goose laid three golden eggs. The first hatched to reveal a hundred bronze brooches. In the second were a hundred silver goblets; in the third a hundred golden swords. The merchants pinned the brooches to their hearts, filled the goblets with ale and drank till they were mortal drunk. Then they cursed each other, took up the swords and fought till they were dead. Tom shook his wings and flew above the city, which had grown in its own egg, and waited to be born.