The Flight of Swans Read online

  After several hours, the creek opened into a small, tree-sheltered lake.

  I stood, panting, at the banks, as I searched for black swans.

  Nothing.

  I slumped onto one of the boulders along the bank, too tired to search for another lake. I’d been a fool to think that in the lake-filled Northlands, I’d find the one where my brothers sheltered.

  Using my satchel for a pillow, I slept on the sun-warmed stone.

  * * *

  I woke to what sounded like voices and jumped to my feet, certain the Queen’s guards had discovered me. Instead, six black swans swept low over the lake, their wings beating the air. One by one, they landed in a spray of water.

  For days, my only company had been memories of Roden and the Queen’s curse. But now my swan-brothers had come. I’d never been so happy to see anything in my life.

  Aide—!

  I froze. I’d been a breath away from killing my brothers.

  I pressed my hands over my mouth, aghast at how easy it would be to break my silence.

  All the while, my swan-brothers circled and honked as they explored the lake, unaware of how close they’d come to death.

  Unaware of me.

  I left my boots and the satchel on the boulder and splashed into the achingly cold water, tripping over the weeds that tangled around my ankles and legs. I waded waist-deep into the water where my brothers swam.

  There was no reunion. No human speech.

  They were just swans. Black swans.

  Two of them glanced at me before darting into deeper water. One drifted near, its wings held a little from its body in warning, so close that I could see the white feathers that lined the underside of its wings.

  I needed my brothers. Surely they’d remember me if I could just touch them.

  I leaned forward, my fingers brushing the glossy black feathers.

  Trumpets! Wings! Red beaks pecked at me as I covered my face. They didn’t stop their attack until I splashed, shivering, back to the water’s edge.

  My swan-brothers were as wild as any other creature.

  Or perhaps they knew, even as swans, what I’d done.

  At home, someone would have wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. My brothers would have chased away the creatures that hurt me. There would have been warmth and comfort and at least a fire.

  Yet this lakeside wasn’t the castle, and it was my brothers who had hurt me. The night didn’t care if I was the princess of Lacharra. If there was going to be a fire, I’d have to kindle it.

  Very well then.

  I stood and wrung the water from my skirts. Cadan had provisioned my satchel so many nights ago at Roden. When I dug to the bottom of it, I found the flint.

  I knew how to start a fire with flint, thanks to my brothers and a bet that Gavyn could teach me how to start a fire faster than Owain. After some coaching from him, I did.

  Twice.

  It had been a game then, but it served me well that night. I soon had a merry little fire crackling and sparking.

  Near dusk, the swans heaved themselves out of the water, their leathery black feet flapping in the mud and reeds. They hardly noticed me as they huddled at the shore, honking uneasily.

  I stayed beside the fire, trying to decide which swan was which brother.

  The smallest was Owain, of course. Would the biggest be Aiden or Mael? Mael was taller, but Aiden was broader. One of them kept pecking at another, just the way Cadan picked at Declan, mocking him. And the one who edged so near me could be Gavyn, watching, always watching.

  Then I heard wind tearing at the trees on the far side of the lake.

  I stood.

  The swans’ frantic trumpeting was lost in the rush of wind as it roared over us.

  Owain screamed.

  Cadan’s shouts rose above the wind.

  As quickly as it had come, the wind swirled itself into stillness while the ghostly shapes emerged from the darkness.

  “Father? Father!” called Owain.

  “Where are we?” That was Gavyn, his voice low.

  I froze. They didn’t remember what had happened in the dungeon.

  I’d have to tell them how I’d tried to outwit the Queen. How I’d lost so horribly and how they—

  “Ryn! Andaryn! Are you there?” It was Aiden.

  And then it didn’t matter that I’d have to tell them. My brothers were here. I needed to see them, to have them stand around me once again, even if they hated me.

  I gathered my still-damp skirts and ran to them.

  “Stop!”

  The wildness in Aiden’s voice rooted me in place. I stood in darkness, just outside the fire’s ring of light, waiting for him to explain. He whispered something to my brothers.

  Were they already angry?

  I took two steps toward them, and Aiden shouted again, “Stay where you are, Ryn!”

  I stopped but couldn’t hold back a silent sob.

  “We’re naked, Ryn!” called Cadan, his voice bristling with anger. “Not a stitch of clothing! What in heaven’s name has happened to us?”

  I gasped.

  Why hadn’t I thought of clothes?

  I ran to my satchel and dug through it. I had the two lap blankets and nothing else. I scooped up the blankets and the dagger. They’d have to cut pieces for themselves.

  I walked as near as I dared and dropped everything in a heap before darting back.

  Pale figures drifted closer, plucking up what I’d dropped.

  “How are you, Ryn?” called Aiden. “Are you hurt?”

  I couldn’t answer, but at least Aiden didn’t sound angry anymore.

  “Cadan didn’t mean to shout,” said Declan.

  “I damn well meant to shout,” muttered Cadan. “I’ll not have my sister see me naked as a—”

  The sound of a blow landing and a grunt.

  “You scared her!” That was Mael.

  Through it all, I heard Owain’s uneven breathing. It made my own breath catch.

  “Andaryn!” Aiden only used my full name when he was worried. “Say something! Let us know you’re well!”

  How I wanted to answer them! But I clapped a hand over my mouth, worried I’d be as foolish as when I first saw them on the lake.

  “Hurry . . . hurry . . .” It was too low to tell who spoke, but not low enough to hide the fear.

  A moment later, my brothers stepped toward me. They looked ghostly white in the moonlight, with scraps of blanket tied around their waists.

  But I didn’t care. No red eyes. No red beaks. It was their faces, their own dear faces, and their dark eyes. I ran to them, tripping in the darkness but never falling. Not once.

  “Ryn!” said Aiden. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  I threw myself at him.

  Chapter 12

  First full moon

  Aiden scooped me up. It was the world set right for a single moment.

  I turned my face into Aiden’s neck and wept. His arms tightened around me as I cried on, sobs pushing up from my belly. I felt a rain of hands on my back—some gentle, some awkward—as my brothers maneuvered me to the fire. They were so careful that it only made me cry harder, and I kept a hand pressed to my mouth to stay silent.

  All the while, my brothers talked among themselves.

  “Where do you think we are? How far from Roden?”

  “She’s gotten thin—how long have we been away?”

  One of them made an impatient sound—Declan perhaps? “Let her cry. Ask questions later.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” muttered Cadan, “so long as the Queen isn’t near.”

  Hands on my shoulders pulling me back. Cadan’s face swam into view, blurred by my tears. “Where is she, Ryn? Are we safe?”

  My mouth moved to answer him, but I kept my hand clapped over it and nodded.

  Cadan tilted his head, as if trying to figure out what was wrong. “Don’t cry, Ryn-girl! We’ll set things right soon.”

  I knew better.


  “Get something for her tears!” Mael hissed to the others. “She’s dripping all over . . .”

  “Where? There’s not a scrap of cloth left—”

  A ripping sound, and Gavyn pressed something into my hands. “For your face.”

  I pressed the bit of blanket over my eyes, hiding there for just a moment. Please, Mother, I don’t know how to tell them!

  I pulled in a shuddering breath and looked up.

  Mael leaned back enough to see me. “Better?”

  No. But I nodded anyway.

  Aiden dropped another branch on the fire, then knelt beside me as everyone else crowded around. “What’s happened, Ryn?”

  The telling felt too big for me. I didn’t know how to start.

  “Why aren’t you talking?” asked Gavyn.

  “She hasn’t said a word,” said Cadan. “Not even when I asked her about the Queen.”

  “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” whispered Owain.

  I shook my head. No.

  Cadan turned to Owain. “The dungeon.”

  “The Queen.” Aiden’s eyes narrowed.

  “Oh,” said Gavyn, who had been the last to transform, “I remember now. You struck a deal with her: your silence for our freedom. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you haven’t said anything.”

  “Ryn!” Mael breathed, disappointment and grief in his eyes.

  But Gavyn was piecing that awful night together, trying to remember. “I saw Aiden change—”

  “Change?” asked Cadan.

  “To a swan,” whispered Gavyn. “A black swan. We all did. That’s why we’re here, wherever we are,” said Gavyn. “That’s why we were naked. We didn’t wake up next to a lake—we changed back to men.”

  “That’s not possible.” Cadan spoke like Gavyn was a child who didn’t understand. “Men don’t change into swans. And black swans don’t exist!”

  No one answered.

  Finally Mael turned to me. “Ryn?”

  There was a world of questions in that one word! I was almost glad I couldn’t speak. I simply pointed to Gavyn and nodded. He’s right.

  Aiden sat still and released a long, slow breath. Owain shook his head. Mael looked from me to Gavyn and back again, as if waiting for someone to say it was a joke. Declan buried his face in his hands.

  “What happens if you talk, Ryn?” murmured Aiden.

  I shook my head.

  “We die,” announced Cadan. “She speaks and we die. Even I remember that much!”

  Aiden took me by the shoulders. “How long has it been?”

  I held up a finger.

  “A day?” asked Declan.

  Cadan shoved him. “She traveled this far in a day, poet? Not in the real world.”

  Declan righted himself. “We’ve gone past what happens in the real world, wouldn’t you say?”

  “A week,” said Aiden, still looking at me. “It’s been a week, hasn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t remember a moment of it,” said Gavyn.

  “How long?” asked Cadan, his voice expressionless. “How long does this last?”

  I held up six fingers, not daring to look any of them in the eye.

  “Six . . .” But Gavyn didn’t dare finish the sentence.

  “Years! Six years, Gavyn!” shouted Cadan. He stomped away, then looked back at me, firelight dancing over his face. The small, cringing part of me that couldn’t bring myself to face his anger noticed that the cut on his cheek had begun to heal, even while he was a swan. “What were you thinking?”

  “She was saving us, idiot!” snapped Declan.

  Cadan shot him an incredulous look. So did I. Declan had never spoken to him so, no matter how Cadan baited him.

  “Saving us!” muttered Owain. “We were at Roden because of her!”

  Mael cuffed him on the back of his head.

  Declan turned on him and Cadan. “We were at Roden because Ryn had to choose whether to give the Kingstone to the Queen or defy Father! Would you have handed the shard to the Queen?”

  Owain swallowed. “No. But I’d have—”

  “What would you have done, then?” pressed Declan, as fierce as I’d ever seen him. “Because I remember you sitting there while Ryn—”

  Enough! Having them fight about me was worse than them being mad at me. I pulled the Kingstone shard from its hiding place beneath my bodice.

  My brothers were as mute as I was.

  I slipped the Kingstone off my neck and handed it to Aiden.

  Cadan crowded close. “You stole it from her, Ryn-girl? That’s the best news I’ve heard all night!”

  Gavyn gave a low, wondering whistle.

  “When did you take it?” asked Cadan. “Did she explode with rage? Please say she did.”

  “Wait,” said Mael. “Let’s hear—”

  “Ryn can’t talk,” interrupted Gavyn.

  Mael rolled his eyes. “Let’s learn all that happened. Gavyn, tell us what you remember from that night. It’ll save Ryn time. Ryn, you stop him if he’s wrong.”

  So Gavyn described all that happened, beginning with when we arrived in Roden’s courtyard. When he reached the part where they were led away, I put a hand on his arm to stop him. They needed to know about Tanwen.

  I crouched beside the fire and drew in the dirt with a stick. With enough pictures and pantomime, my brothers understood Tanwen’s command that I should run—and that she’d been taken back to the castle.

  Then I let Gavyn and his near-perfect memory recount the last minutes in the dungeon when I tried to free them before Fortress Roden fell.

  “That was the best I could hear, Ryn,” he finished. “You and the Queen were standing far away. Did I miss anything?”

  I shook my head. I showed how I snatched the Kingstone from the Queen and ran into the burning fortress to escape her.

  The Kingstone—and its fragment—wasn’t a signet ring. It didn’t impart the ability to make laws, but it meant something, nonetheless. I hoped that even if the nobles of Lacharra became completely smitten with the Queen, it would rankle that Father had chipped off a piece for her. And whether it meant anything to them that she lost it, it meant the world to me that I’d kept her from having it.

  “You ran into the fire?” exclaimed Owain.

  I nodded, then sketched the walls falling over.

  “She thinks you died in Roden, then,” murmured Aiden.

  Mael grinned. “I’d bet my chances with any Lacharran maid”—Aiden elbowed him in the side—“that the Queen has those wild men of hers poking through the rubble trying to find the Kingstone.”

  We were silent a minute.

  Aiden handed the Kingstone back to me. “She won’t look for you. That’s good.”

  “Unless she hears rumors of you,” added Gavyn. “Then she’ll hunt you and the Kingstone.”

  Aiden couldn’t take his eyes off the Kingstone. “I should have stopped this—”

  Mael dropped a hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “No more of that! The blame isn’t ours alone: Father shouldn’t have brought her home. And yet she found him when he was sick. Look what she did to us when we were well and whole.”

  Aiden blew out a breath. “Very well. No blame, then.”

  Gavyn cleared his throat. “What happens now, Ryn? How long before we turn back to swans?”

  I quickly drew a sun rising over the horizon. Dawn.

  “We have hours, then.” Aiden stood, brushing dirt from his hands. “Let’s see to Ryn.”

  Chapter 13

  First full moon

  Over the next few hours, my brothers helped me prepare for the month ahead. Cadan and Owain hunted for food.

  “No wonder I’m so hungry!” muttered Cadan as they strode away. “I haven’t eaten in over a week!”

  Gavyn looked up from the time-keeper he was making me. “If we’re anything like normal swans, we feed several hours a day. You’ve probably had four meals today already!” he called to Cadan’s retreating back.

>   Mael rolled his eyes, but I didn’t mind Gavyn’s talk. Cadan complained to the world when things were wrong, and Declan found refuge in stories and songs. Gavyn didn’t feel better until he could explain.

  I just felt sorry for whoever had to listen to the explaining.

  “Here, Ryn,” said Mael, his hands full of vines and longer branches he’d gathered. “We’ll make a weir, one small enough that you can carry it on your back.”

  He arranged the branches into a cone. I held them steady while he wove the vines around it till it looked like a poorly made basket. That was shaped like a trumpet.

  I shook my head.

  Mael didn’t look up from his work. “I saw that, Ryn. It’s supposed to look like this. Water goes through, fish don’t. Though it won’t work in still water. We need to find the rivers that feed into or out of the lake.”

  He led me along the bank, gingerly, for he was barefoot. And he was already beginning to shiver.

  My brothers needed shoes. And clothes.

  I resolved they’d have them by next full moon.

  Finally Mael found a small river, a dark ribbon edged in moonlight. He made me wedge the weir between two rocks so that water flowed into the wide end. “It won’t pull many fish, but it’ll keep you from starving.”

  Gavyn showed me a strip of linen the moment we returned to the fire. “You need to keep track of the days that pass. You don’t have anything to write with or on, so this will have to do for the first year, at least. I’ve frayed the edges. Every night, you must tie a knot in one of the strings: one day, one knot. On the full moons, we’ll tie a second knot in that day’s string so that we can keep track of those too.” He looked down at his handiwork, satisfied. “It’s as important as traps and shelter. We can’t have you speak too early.”

  “Or too late,” added Declan. “I’d never forgive myself if Ryn stayed silent even an extra day because we didn’t keep track.”

  Mael looked up from his work on Mother’s belt. We’d decided that I should use it to buy supplies, but the gold links needed to be broken apart so that it wasn’t recognizable. “I’ll keep track of time, don’t you worry. The first thing I’ll do is strangle the Queen. I don’t care if the entire court of Lacharra watches.”