“What do you mean how long has it been there? It’s always been there,” Kai snapped at SJ, hands on her hips.
“Did I miss something?” I asked.
“No,” both girls replied in unison.
I glanced at Mauvrey and she shrugged. “No comment.”
Okay then . . .
I waved a hand at SJ and Kai. “Do you two need a minute in private to—”
“No,” they replied in unison again.
Something was definitely wrong, but we were on a deadline and if they didn’t want to talk then I wasn’t going to make them. I was sure the girls could probably work out whatever this was for themselves in time.
It was night here, which meant we’d landed in a different time zone to Xanadu. The thick forest canopy blocked out the light from the moon, but the trees had veins protruding from their bark that glowed faint pink, illuminating the area. I powered on my Hole Tracker and discovered we were on familiar ground. “We’re in Camelot,” I said.
SJ came over to study the map. “I have only spent time in the Camelot citadel where King Arthur’s castle resides.” She pointed to an area in the center of the map. The blinking You Are Here icon, which marked our location, was on the upper right portion of the map. “It looks like we are on the other side of the Passage Perelous. Hopefully it is a less dangerous part of the land. It is already bad luck that we landed in this realm.”
“Why?” Mauvrey asked.
“Because like Oz, time in Camelot moves four and a half times slower than in Book. Two hours here is equivalent to nine in our own realm. We cannot afford to lose a moment.” She gestured behind me to the green path of light weaving through the trees. I was a hundred percent in agreement with SJ. We didn’t have a second to waste.
As we followed the trail, I decided to avoid checking my watch to see how much time had passed, as it would only drive me crazy. I also tried not to bug Kai since she’d asked for space, but at one point when SJ and Mauvrey were ahead of us, I couldn’t take it anymore. I checked to see that we’d been walking for twenty minutes, and then I leaned close to Kai.
“Hey, are we . . . okay?”
Kai glanced at me. “We will be, Daniel. And for once . . . I’m sorry.”
Even the owl demons in Xanadu hadn’t surprised me this much. “You? Why?”
“For not handling this properly.” She took my hand in hers. “I will now.”
Hm. I guess giving her space to regroup had worked shockingly well. It seemed like too easy of an out if I was being honest, but I would take holding hands with Kai over fighting with her any day, so I didn’t look a girlfriend gift horse in the mouth.
The treetops started to thin out, revealing a cloudless, star-riddled sky. We heard feminine laughter coming from the direction we were headed. The forest opened to a grassy area next to a huge lake with the ruins of a small castle on the other side. The building had crumbling outer walls, vines climbing its stone, and the architecture of something ancient.
The green trail angled up over the lake and shot into the sky. Far away, it curved down again and plunged into the forest in front of a mountain, which had another castle built on top of it. This didn’t hold my attention for long though. Laughter, and splashing, drew my attention back to the lake. Frolicking in the water were five young, beautiful women. A pile of cloaks, dresses, and robes lay on the bank near us.
Naked women?
Mauvrey glanced at me. Then she cracked a smile and chuckled in a kind of patronizing way. “Oh, this is not going to go well for you at all.”
“What?”
“BOY!!!”
I whipped my head toward the lake. The girls had noticed us—well, noticed me—and were freaking out. They swam farther into the water, shouting between the splashes.
“Help! Help! Boy!”
Seriously?
I looked at Kai and the others. “Should I try to calm them down?”
“I do not think that is where your focus should be,” Mauvrey responded, pointing at the castle across the lake. Seven swans—four white, two black, and one gray—zoomed out of the castle windows and flew toward us in pyramid formation. They reached us in seconds and hovered between us and the area of embankment where the women’s clothes rested. The swans flapped their wings and honked aggressively.
My friends and I stepped back. The swans did a flip in the air in unison. With seven simultaneous flashes of light, the birds transformed into men. A group of good-looking guys now faced us on the embankment. They wore Henley t-shirts made of feathers that corresponded with the color of swan they’d previously been. Only one guy hadn’t fully transformed; his left arm was still a swan wing.
Each man drew a sword from the sheath at his belt and directed it at us.
“Be gone from here!” said the man at the front, the tallest of them. He was probably only a couple of years older than me but had a decent-looking mustache.
I wonder how I would look with a mustache.
Focus, man.
“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “We’re not here to make trouble. We’re just following that trail.” I pointed to the green light overhead.
Mustache glanced at the trail. “That light ends in the Land East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon. Von Rothbart’s castle overlooks that part of the kingdom, and your young maiden friends would be in great danger if he laid eyes on their beauty.”
“Thanks. You lot are not exactly eyesores either,” Mauvrey said with a smile. “The four of us are seeking a magic flame that caused this trail as part of a quest we are on. We could simply keep searching for it and bid you all adieu now, but I gather from the naked girls, and the swans, and this lovely body of water, that we have entered some sort of Swan Lake scenario. Maybe you could explain what is going on here exactly so we do not fall victim to this great danger you were nice enough to reference.”
My friends and I looked at her, surprised by her directness.
Mauvrey shrugged. “Tara had control of my body, but everything she learned as me is in my head.” She gave Kai a look that I couldn’t read before continuing. “That includes fairytale history. For a villainess, Tara was a really good student and she absorbed a lot of info, so I get the general gist of what is happening here. Though since Mulan’s story was more complex than we ever realized, I figure we should get the breakdown on this Swan Lake situation from the source so we know precisely what we are dealing with.” She pivoted toward the lead guy again. “So how about it? What is the story here?”
Mustache still seemed hesitant, but lowered his weapon. “These maidens are cursed.” He pointed to the girls in the lake. “Von Rothbart, the wicked warlock who lives atop the Crystal Mountain there, captures and enchants any unmarried girl he finds in the forest. The girls are cursed to turn into swans and can only shed those forms in the evening when the sun goes down. A Swan Maiden’s curse is only broken when a male suitor steals her swan robes and forces her to marry him, whether she wants to or not.”
“Typical,” SJ sighed.
“Which is why we are suspicious of any eligible young men who come near this shore,” Mustache said, narrowing his gaze at me.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m not eligible. I’m Daniel. That is my girlfriend, Kai.” I gestured at her. “And these are our friends Princess SJ and Princess Mauvrey. We seriously don’t want any trouble, but the latter makes a good point and we would appreciate any information about this kidnapper warlock guy or other magical danger we may come across as we follow that light.”
“You’ll forgive us if we seem apprehensive about sharing,” Mustache said, still eyeing me. “It’s not an average man who travels in the company of three beautiful girls. And it is not an average man who comes upon a lake of lovely, disrobed girls and does not think impure thoughts.”
“Happy to not be average,” I said dryly. “I don’t believe I caught your name, or your deal.”
“I am Anderton,” Mustache guy said. “These are my compatriots—Billy, Thomas, Brinkley, Ca
leb, Gideon, and Dudley.” He pointed to each of them as he said their names. “We are not human. We are naturally-born swans that Von Rothbart enchanted. Unlike the girls who can only turn human at night, we can transform at any time. Von Rothbart wants his Swan Maidens to either live eternally cursed or forced into marriage. So he created and tasks us with protecting them from threats like hunters and predators when they are in their swan forms. But we care about the maidens so, unbeknownst to Von Rothbart, we also protect them from opportunistic men looking to steal themselves a wife.”
I glanced at the lake. The ladies were floating there, treading water so that the surface came up to their clavicles. When they saw me looking, they abruptly ducked so only their eyes were left above the water. It kind of embarrassed me.
“Why don’t you guys just marry the girls?” Kai asked. “You seem really suspicious of men taking advantage of them. Who protects them from you doing the same thing?”
A guy with a blond fade haircut—I think his name was Caleb—snort laughed. All the guys seemed fairly amused by the question.
“Putting aside the fact that we respect that none of these girls want to get married, which is why Von Rothbart cursed them in the first place,” Anderton said, “they’re not our type. We’re not into their kind.”
“Swan people?”
“Maidens.”
Ohhhhh.
“I paid attention in school too,” SJ said, stepping forward. “And Mauvrey is right; there are a lot of tales inspired by you gentleman and the ladies in that lake. The Swan Maiden, The Six Swans, The Three Swans, The Swan Maiden and the King, The Feathery Robe, The White Duck, and the surprisingly hard to follow The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peacocks to name a few. You said my female friends and I would be at risk because the warlock Von Rothbart only curses unmarried girls. Why?”
“Revenge,” Anderton said.
“Sexist,” Caleb coughed into his fist.
Billy shrugged in agreement with both. “Many parts of Camelot still have very old-fashioned values. Traditionally young maidens, particularly the beautiful ones, are supposed to get married. In the past, the norm was arranged marriages, or a situation where a guy saw a hot girl and basically claimed her as his own. Love wasn’t a priority and free will for females wasn’t even considered because customarily the only thing girls were good for—and meant for—were marriage, taking care of their husbands, and bearing children. Old men like Von Rothbart who haven’t evolved with the times are offended when young ladies want to pursue something else, so he takes action against them. The guy is a super skilled potionist and he has potion-enhanced wolves seek out strong, independent girls in this part of Camelot. He captures these girls and then curses them to this fate.”
Anderton nodded. “From Von Rothbart’s viewpoint, if they want independence so much, they can spend their lives as lonely birds only able to turn human at night. If they want to be human again full time, they have to get married.”
“Even then they’re not off the hook,” Caleb cut in. “Von Rothbart sucks, so his curse comes with a parting gift. Once the girls get married, every day for the rest of their lives that they don’t transform into swans, their skin will feel like its burning. We try to save the girls from that horrible fate by protecting them from the men who would marry them and cause it.” Caleb addressed me specifically. “Plenty of men over the years have stalked these maidens and stolen their robes while they are bathing in order to force their hands into marriage, not caring about the pain that life will bring upon the ladies.”
“So you thought I was some creep who came here to spy on skinny-dipping girls, steal the clothes that make them swans, and force one of them to marry me?”
Anderton nodded. “No hard feelings, it’s just happened a lot. Sometimes the girls manage to escape from their husbands by finding where the men hid their magic cloaks and reclaiming the garments, but the husbands always seem to track them down again.”
Ugh. Why are so many dudes in fairytales such jackwagons?
They give the rest of us a bad name.
I was beginning to understand why Knight used to have a chip on her shoulder against male protagonists. For every brave and noble King Arthur, Peter Pan, and Wizard of Oz, there’s some dillweed hiding in the bushes ready to jump a magical girl who’s just trying to have a bath.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Anderton and the Swan Men. “I didn’t do anything, but I’m sorry on behalf of my gender, I guess. I would never disrespect a girl, let alone force her into being something she didn’t want to be. I have no right to do that. No guy does. I consider the girls in my life as heroic and strong as me, if not more so, and girls in general to be my equals. Can you communicate that to your friends? I feel bad for freaking them out.” I glanced over at the ladies in the lake again. Like before, they ducked lower into the water when I looked in their direction.
“We shall,” Anderton said. Then he pivoted to his swan brethren and nodded. The guys stowed their swords. “And you’re right,” Anderton told me. “You are not average. Most of you classically handsome, heroically strong, straight guy types are all about the hunt, or the prize, or the glory. Humility and caring about others are not usually what define your stories. Which is why . . . we will help you. If your flame landed in the Land East ’o the Sun and West ’o the Moon, you will need more than information; you’ll need special assistance. Von Rothbart has likely descended from the Crystal Mountain to investigate that trail. If he sees your female friends, he will curse them into Swan Maidens. Come with us to our castle across the lake. We have something that could help you beat him to your destination. We’ll have to go the long way around the lake though. Without feathers, there is no faster way across.”
The Swan Men stepped forward. Three of them offered their arms to SJ, Mauvrey, and Kai. The girls looked a little cautious, but accepted the gesture, recognizing it as a sign of respect. These guys were guardians after all, not babysitters or predators.
“Ladies!” Caleb whistled to the women in the lake as the other guys moved ahead with my friends. “We’re good here. Go about your business. This guy is not a threat.”
“Does he play for your team?” called a girl in the lake.
“No!” Caleb called back. Then he darted his eyes back to me and looked me up and down. “No, right?”
“Girlfriend.”
“Just checking.”
We congregated in the living room of the castle with Anderton, Billy, and Caleb. The other guys had ventured off to do whatever Swan Men did at four o’clock in the morning.
Despite the shabby exterior—which I guess was intended to deter curious travelers—the interior of the castle was well kept. It still had the essence of an old-fashioned place with stone walls, iron chandeliers, and many candles, but the furniture and décor were modern. The sleek black couches were low-backed. Instead of tapestries, paintings that looked like big splotches of ink hung on the walls. The roaring fireplace was white while the floor was composed of light-gray, speckled tile.
“They should sell these in stores,” Mauvrey remarked, holding up a magnificent, floor-length hooded cloak constructed entirely of gray swan feathers. The Swan Men had brought one out for her, a white version of the garment for SJ, and a black one for Kai. I, on the other hand, had been given a white Henley t-shirt made of feathers like the Swan Men wore.
“I mean, clothing that can turn you into a swan, but you can shed it as easily as a normal cloak or shirt,” Mauvrey continued. “I cannot be the only one impressed by this.”
“They’re associated with an evil man’s bird curse, Mauvrey,” Kai said. “How can you be impressed? It’s offensive.”
“As someone who has been cursed, I am not offended by any piece of clothing that is both cute and functional, regardless of its colored history. And I am simply asserting that Von Rothbart should get out of the cursing business and go into the clothing business. It would be far more profitable. Maybe he could afford to build a castle somewhere ot
her than atop a precarious mountain.”
Billy laughed. “Who cursed you? Another crazy old warlock?”
“No, a blonde villainess who earned my trust as a child and performed a possession spell during a slumber party.”
Billy’s smile faltered, his eyes growing wide.
“Back to the cloak . . .” Anderton said. “The garments cannot be mass-produced. Occasionally Swan Maidens and Swan Men are killed by hunters. When they die, their bodies dissolve into dust, but their enchanted feathers remain, so we gather and keep them.”
Now Mauvrey’s expression sank. She lowered the cloak. I also eyed my shirt with new, morbid appreciation.
“Your entire person, as well as anything on your person—clothes, weapons, and so on—will transform into a swan with you when you activate the power of the garment,” Caleb explained. “With the shirt, you have to button the top button. With the cloak, pop the hood. When you’re a swan, do a forward flip in the air and you’ll turn human again.”
Caleb took a few steps back to demonstrate. He buttoned the top button of his white shirt. A glimmering swirl of light encircled him. Two blinding seconds later, the light vanished and there was Caleb as a white swan. He jumped while flapping his wings to get airborne and did a forward flip. FLASH—he landed crouched on the floor as a human.
“You may borrow these for your quest,” Anderton said. “As swans, you will be able to fly over the dense forest, which would otherwise take you half a day to navigate. You may be able to reach where your light trail ends before Von Rothbart finds the flame you are after. Should you run into him, or be seen by any of his wolf spies, you will be in disguise, so you ladies will be safe from his curse.”
I nodded in thanks, ready to get my feathers on and get going, but then a clatter of footsteps and voices came from the connecting hall. The smallest Swan Man—the one with the wing arm—entered the living room with the five girls from the lake. Each of them wore a feathered, floor-length hooded cloak over her clothes. Based on the cloaks, there were two white swans, two gray swans, and one black swan among them. They’d looked like attractive girls from afar, but up close they were some of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen.
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