by Anne Mazer
When they were done eating they rose and went to the living room. I followed, asking questions. “Do you sleep in the air?”
My eldest brother looked out the window, and his eyes seemed to brighten. “Never.”
“Are you scared of falling?” I asked my second brother.
Sometimes as I lay in bed at night, I imagined them falling to earth—the great wings collapsing, bright eyes closing—and animals of the forest finding them and tearing their flesh. I saw them caught in trees, hung on wires. Then I woke with a gasp and a cry and could not sleep again for hours.
My brother laughed. “Why scared? Swans don’t fall. And even if I falter, the others will catch me. But it has never happened.”
“What is it like?” I asked.
My brothers gazed out the windows, checked their watches, stroked their arms impatiently.
“What is what like?” my second brother said.
“The change … you know.”
He whirled around, turned his back to me, as if protecting something I could not see.
My other brothers smiled at me and shook their heads. My eldest brother patted me on the back.
“Won’t you tell me what it’s like?” I pleaded.
The sun plummeted suddenly downward. It grew dark. My brothers stood motionless, scarcely breathing. Then their sturdy limbs, their strong legs and arms, dwindled into nothing and reformed—from a breath of air—into large wings, sharp beaks, and downy feathers. It seemed then that they wanted to speak to me, to answer my questions, but only strange, high-pitched cries issued from their throats as they burst free, flying through the doors and windows into the night sky.
I began to practice jumping, at first from our porch, then from the low branches of a tree. I spread out my arms, closed my eyes tightly, and imagined myself soaring. Yet, time after time, I fell straight to the ground, twisting ankles and bruising my legs.
My brothers looked at me, worried.
“Where did you get those bruises?”
“I fell. It was nothing.”
“From where?”
“Out of the tree.”
“The tree! What were you doing there?”
“Trying to fly.”
My brothers frowned. “You’ll only hurt yourself that way.”
“Then show me how.”
My eldest brother stroked his arms as if they were covered with invisible feathers. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
They exchanged glances.
“Why won’t you tell me!” I cried. “Why do you keep secrets from me?”
“It’s not that,” my seventh brother said. He touched my shoulder.
“We’d like to help you,” said my second brother. “But we just don’t know how.”
“You have to find the way for yourself,” my oldest brother said. “We did …”
I searched their rooms for answers to my questions. I opened drawers, looked under piles of neatly folded socks, checked beds and mattresses. I felt along windows, lifted rugs, tapped the spines of old schoolbooks. I never found a trace of what I hoped for: a recipe, a message, a clue—even a single word written on a slip of paper, a word that would give me wings.
Then I began to go to the woods behind our house. I gathered leaves, roots, and twigs and crushed them between stones, mixed them with oil, and spread the often foul-smelling mess over my arms, legs, and face. In the morning I examined myself, hoping to see the first downy feathers or perhaps the beginning of a beak.
I bathed in ice-cold water, drank cups of vile-tasting tea.
I arranged swan feathers in intricate patterns and mumbled words over them during different phases of the moon.
Still, each night my brothers left me. They changed into swans. Their wings beat wildly against the walls. The house could not contain their fury and desire. I, too, reached out my arms—held them wide—as if I might also fly. My arms ached and strained, stretched almost out of their sockets.
“Take me with you!” I cried. “I can fly. I can!”
The swan cries of my brothers grew more and more urgent. Their beaks slashed against windows and curtains; their wings dashed against walls, overturning lamps, knocking down pictures.
My arms fell to my sides. I ran to the windows, flung open the doors. And my brothers flew out in a rush, leaving feathers scattered thick on the rug.
In the morning my brothers came home. They were muddy, tired, trampled. I gave them cups of coffee and pancakes, eggs, and more coffee. I unlaced their boots, brought them soap and water, helped them into clean clothes. Then, weary-eyed and exhausted, they went off to work.
I cleaned the kitchen, washed the floor. I scrubbed their muddy clothes and put the soup on to simmer until dinner. Then I went to the oak chair in the living room.
My pile of books was waiting. I had discovered them in the attic one night when I couldn’t sleep. Old volumes with stiff spines and thick, faded pages that told of men turning into snakes, bears changing into men, birds that flew over prison walls and became young girls, and girls who became birds, who soared in the sky …
The lightness, the flight, the swiftness. The wings, the bills, the small eyes, the haunting cries. The wind and the water. The new dangers. How many times I imagined it all, sitting in my rocking chair. I read and read, often not stopping to eat, until the light dimmed and I heard my brothers’ steps on the porch.
Tending daily to my brothers, watching them come in as men and go out as swans, like wheels that turn ceaselessly, I wonder: What is it like to be broken and remade over and over again? And at the moment when they are neither man nor swan, who or what are they?
It seems to me that they are only a breath, only a thought, so fine they could pass through the eye of a needle.
Can I, too, become so fine and smooth, like a piece of silk or a breath of air, that I can turn myself inside out?
One night as they flew out the windows and doors, I felt the breeze from their wings on my face. I heard their cries growing fainter and fainter. And I pictured myself going with them.
I arched my long, narrow throat forward; I stretched my arms wide and I soared over lakes and forests until I found my brothers. When I was tired, I alighted on a rock and my brothers made a circle around me. Then, when we were rested, we rose into the air.
We were like a white necklace flung into the sky. We were like an arrow shot from a bow. We were bound into swans’ bodies, but we were free.
I have put away my books, potions, and spells. I am through with frantic searches and impatient questions.
When my brothers change into swans each night, I don’t chase after them. I sit quietly in a chair. I close my eyes. I watch the flow of my breath as it travels down my spine and through my arms and legs.
Every night I picture myself with my brothers. Each time I make the journey, I feel closer to them.
It has begun to happen. Already I have felt myself dwindle down to nothing, to darkness, to silence. Once a wing erupted from my arm and a wild cry came out of my throat. Once my body became so light it lifted from the chair. Something is stirring, awakening. A great wing is beating through my days.
About the Author
Anne Mazer grew up in a family of writers in upstate New York. Intending to be an artist, she enrolled in Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts before moving to Paris, where she would live for three years, studying French language and literature and beginning to write.
Mazer is the author of forty-four books for children and adults. Her seven novels include The Salamander Room, a Reading Rainbow feature selection and a 1993 ABC Children’s Choice; Moose Street, a Booklist Editors’ Choice for best book of 1992; and The Oxboy, an ALA Notable Book and a 1993 Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. Mazer’s short stories have been included in a number of collections, and she has published her own book of short stories, A Sliver of Glass. She is also the editor of several anthologies that are widely used in cl
assrooms from the elementary through the college level.
Mazer’s many books for young readers include the bestselling Amazing Days of Abby Hayes series, which has extended over eleven years and twenty-two books, and the Sister Magic series. Her latest work, coauthored with Ellen Potter, is Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, which was a CLA Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts in 2011 and a 2010 Cybils Award finalist.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Anne Mazer
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9349-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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ANNE MAZER
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