The Flight of Swans

by Sarah McGuire

  But I had to leave now. I knew it so deeply that I didn’t have room for panic.

  Go! That was Mael, urging me back to the hut.

  I stood.

  No shout. No sound of footsteps. Nothing but the hum of insects and the whisper of water lapping against the reeds.

  I crept along the edge of the lake, back toward the hut, cutting through the pines behind it to the portion of the lake where my swan-brothers nested. I’d scare them away before I left. By the time they wanted to return to the lake, instinct would urge them to follow me.

  Yet I saw nothing when I stepped out of the pines and onto the bank.

  No swans.

  I waded softly in the shallows to see farther.

  Still no swan-brothers. I didn’t dare call them and draw the Hunters to this part of the lake. All I could do was to leave and pray my brothers followed.

  I darted back to the hut and slipped inside, thumping my chest with the flat of my hand when I entered, hoping Owain-the-hen had returned from her morning hunt for food.

  No answer—and there was no time to find her.

  I started shoving everything into my pack and satchel: my brothers’ clothes, my blanket, my dagger, the nettle yarn, the spindle, and the hackle the spinster gave me. The pack went on my back, the satchel over my shoulder. I snatched up the burlap bag I’d used to carry Owain-the-hen from Etten. I had no time to look for her, but if I found her . . .

  Then I took Mael’s cudgel and stepped out, walking to the back of the hut, toward the rocky bluff.

  I felt a pricking between my shoulder blades and knew someone watched me.

  Don’t act like prey. Don’t run.

  I hitched the satchel higher on my back, moving toward the hill’s rocky shoulder and the wilds beyond.

  I heard a scuffling in the brush ahead of me and tensed.

  The bush trembled again and Owain rushed out, chasing a bug.

  I took two long strides toward her, ready to scoop her up.

  Then I heard a branch break behind me.

  I dropped into a crouch by the remains of the fire circle my brothers and I gathered around on warm nights—only a stride from Owain.

  It’s an animal, I told myself. Just an animal.

  But no animal was heavy enough to break such a branch.

  My breath came fast—I didn’t have courage to look behind me. Instead, I watched Owain, just out of reach, as she stretched her head up, eyeing whatever was behind me. She didn’t growl or spread her wings and attack. She just stood there.

  I wanted to run, but it was like Gavyn was there, his hand on my shoulder: Stay quiet, stay still.

  I heard a whisper of leaves brushing against something off to my right. I turned toward the noise. Three bearded men stood at the edge of the pines. They wore leather breastplates.

  Two other Hunters appeared ahead of me, near the outcropping.

  Five, now.

  I closed my eyes. I’d lose my courage altogether if I saw any more of them.

  “Princess?” asked one in a voice that sounded disused. “We mean you no harm, she-child. The Queen would have our heads.”

  She’d found us.

  Me. She’d only found me. I had to keep her from finding my brothers.

  The same voice spoke again, smoother this time, as if he’d grown used to speaking. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? We are here to serve you.”

  My body relaxed. They weren’t allowed to kill me. The Queen had agreed that night in the dungeon. Maybe I could let the Hunters take me back to the castle. I’d be safe, and it would be better than trying to fight them.

  No. I’d be a decoy. The Hunters only had to hold me until my brothers arrived by day’s end.

  I couldn’t fight, but I could run.

  Even a rabbit can run, murmured dream-Declan.

  It was time.

  I patted my chest. Don’t make me leave you, Owain!

  She huddled in front of me—just out of reach. Could I use the cudgel to sweep her close? I looped the burlap bag’s makeshift strap over my shoulder, afraid even that small movement would bring the Hunters down on me.

  I glanced over my left shoulder. Two other Hunters appeared from the trees.

  Seven Hunters, now.

  I looked back at the man who’d spoken. His voice was gentle, but his eyes held violence.

  Use the cudgel, Ryn. That was Cadan.

  I adjusted my grip on the cudgel. Then I slowly scooped up a handful of old ash with my free hand.

  That’s right! Teach them not to touch a princess.

  More stirring in the trees around my camp. Two more Hunters in front of me. Nine in all.

  They’d nearly surrounded me. The only reason they hadn’t was because of the tumble of boulders ahead and to my right. I’d run to that. Run to it and up it. And push down that tangle of tree limbs onto any following Hunters once I passed it.

  “Rest easy, Princess. Come, eat with us. The White One desires only your company—and the Kingstone you stole from her.”

  One . . . , counted Mael, and I focused on the boulders a few strides beyond Owain. Two . . .

  “Princess?” The voice wasn’t comforting now that I’d seen his eyes. “Let us help you.” His eyes kept darting to the other Hunters behind me.

  . . . three!

  I launched myself toward the boulders, terrifying Owain-the-hen, who flapped straight up.

  Please . . . please! I swept open the lip of the burlap bag, and Owain tumbled into it.

  I ran straight over the remains of the fire, dead coals crumbling beneath my feet. And in that moment—with the ash billowing around me—I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t courageous. I simply listened for my brothers’ voices as I ran.

  Even a rabbit can run.

  Faster. Only a few strides more.

  Two of the Hunters stepped in front of the boulders, and I pulled the cudgel back, ready to strike.

  Not the face, Ryn, said Cadan. Be smart!

  The Hunter to my right put his hands before his face to block the blow. But Cadan’s voice reminded me of a better strategy. I swung the cudgel down and brought it up between the Hunter’s legs.

  He dropped to his knees.

  I threw the handful of ash into the other Hunter’s eyes. He swung out blindly, tearing my cheek, but it bought me the sliver of time I needed to shoot past him and onto the boulders.

  The next moment, I’d scurried halfway up the rocks. A hand caught my foot, but I shook free. A quick shove sent the dried tree down onto whoever tried to follow me. I was running before I heard the frustrated shouts behind me.

  “Get her!” There was nothing gentle in the voice anymore. “Remember, the Queen wants her unharmed!”

  I was at the far end of the boulders now, and I listened for more shouts as I ran.

  Nothing. That scared me even more. They didn’t want to give away their position.

  A whistle behind and to my left rang out, their way of communicating.

  I stopped at the end of the rocks, scanning where to go. The Hunters could easily outrun me.

  Think! Where can you hide?

  I could climb a tree, but if I stayed there, my brothers would still return to Cairwyn Lake that night.

  And they’d be killed.

  Then I saw the nettle patch a quarter mile away.

  I ran for it, pack beating against my back, satchel and burlap bag sagging almost to my knees.

  Another whistle off to the left. They were trying to flank me.

  Run! Run and hide! It became a prayer I sent into the forest, something to focus on instead of my aching lungs and burning throat.

  As I ran, I yanked one of my brother’s shirts from my satchel. I threw it over my head, wrapping a sleeve around my exposed neck for protection. The patch was already wilting from frosts, but they could still sting.

  I hit the nettles without breaking stride, my cudgel held before me, scattering the plants to either side.

  More whistles off to my left.

&
nbsp; One or two behind me—not in the nettles, though.

  I knelt and pulled the shirt up around my mouth to muffle my breath. I kept expecting to hear Hunters crashing into the nettles, but there was silence.

  More whistles off to my left, growing softer over time.

  The nettles were protecting me once more. I listened as the whistles retreated. Were they hiding me too, or were the Hunters toying with me? I stayed hunched in the nettles until my breathing grew even and the forest grew silent.

  I couldn’t be here when my brothers changed. The Hunters would find them.

  Slowly, I pushed through the nettles till I found the far side of them, determined to run as far as possible before my swan-brothers joined me.

  I froze again at the sound of footsteps. Had the Hunters found the edges of the nettles?

  I looked up, saw clouds racing across the sky.

  Then I heard a sound so deep that I felt it in my bones.

  A minute later, the sky gathered itself into one great storm that threw itself at the world. Wind drove the rain in sheets that swept across the nettles. If I had any chance of slipping away from the Hunters, it was now.

  I darted forward, moving as fast as I could until I found an already-swollen stream. I waded into the center of it so I wouldn’t leave any evidence behind: no footprints, no crushed plants.

  One look back.

  I couldn’t see far, and I could hear nothing over the roar of wind and rain. But there was no evidence of the Hunters. The storm had given me the chance I needed.

  I hitched the pack higher up onto my shoulders and began to hike upstream.

  Chapter 25

  Sixteenth full moon

  That evening, I sheltered at the edge of a gray lake, praying my brothers would find me.

  The storm had abated a little, but I couldn’t see the middle of the lake. The wind roared through the trees endlessly, making it impossible to distinguish the wind that heralded my brothers’ change—if they were even here.

  Finally, when the world was a sweep of gray, I saw six black shapes approach the shore. My swan-brothers pulled themselves onto the bank, trumpeting protests. I quickly set out their already-soaking clothes and stepped back into a copse of nearby trees.

  One moment, my brothers were swans, huddled against the storm. The next, they were ghostly figures nearly hidden by the rain as they scrambled to gather their wet clothes.

  I beat my cudgel against a stone so they would know I was there—and follow the sound to find me.

  “What happened?” demanded an already-soaked Mael. “Why aren’t we at the hut?”

  I motioned as if pulling back a bowstring.

  “A bow?” asked Owain.

  “Hunters, you fool,” hissed Cadan. “Even I know that.”

  “Why would hunters make you run?” asked Gavyn. “I’m sure they’d move on soon enough.”

  I saw the moment when my brothers realized that it was the Queen’s men doing the hunting.

  “How near?” asked Mael, already peering out into the darkness.

  I shook my head.

  Declan caught my chin and turned the cheek I’d been trying to hide. “They were close once, at least.”

  Cadan’s sigh was more a hiss than anything.

  “We need to find shelter,” said Aiden. “And then you’ll tell us everything.”

  It would have been hard to see through such heavy rain during the day, but to search for shelter in the dark with no fire or moonlight?

  We ended up huddled at the base of a small bluff, where sheets of slate reached out into the night to cover us. There was no getting away from the rain, but the bluff protected us from some of the wind.

  Nothing protected us from the cold. We crowded together, my brothers in a circle around me and Owain-the-hen cowering on my lap in her burlap sack.

  “I never thought I’d be this close to a hen,” muttered Cadan.

  I put a hand over Owain’s head and scowled at Cadan. I’d never admit it, but it felt good to argue with him. It was the only normal thing on that wretched day.

  “It was the Queen, wasn’t it?” said Aiden.

  I nodded.

  He cursed.

  “How do you know, Ryn?” asked Mael.

  It was difficult enough to communicate with my brothers when I had dirt to write in, but that night, with the rain streaming down, I had only my hands. I was hungry and tired and if it hadn’t been for Owain sitting on my lap, the rain’s cold would have settled bone-deep.

  It took a full five minutes for one of my brothers to understand that there had been a black swan decoy.

  “Black feathers on the decoy?” confirmed Gavyn.

  I nodded.

  “Only the Queen would know about black swans,” said Aiden.

  Mael nodded. “Then what, Ryn?”

  The rest was pantomime. Cadan especially liked how I’d used the cudgel. “Well done! He won’t walk straight for a few days, I’ll wager!”

  But Aiden remained grim, the rain running in small rivers down his temples and into his beard. “Now she knows you didn’t die at Roden.”

  “How did you lose the wild men?” asked Gavyn. “They would have been faster than you, better trackers.”

  I pantomimed a nettle patch—and me running into it.

  Owain whistled. “You ran into a nettle patch?”

  Yes.

  “That wouldn’t stop them.” Mael said.

  It would if the Queen hated nettles.

  “You still think nettles will save us,” said Declan.

  I know it.

  Why didn’t they believe me? Escaping the Hunters was proof that the nettles would work.

  Gavyn squinted, trying to understand. “Even if nettles would hold her wild men at bay, how did you get out of the nettle patch? Why weren’t they waiting for you?”

  I’d pondered that as I slogged through the creek, and I thought I knew. If I was right, we were safe.

  The sound I’d heard before the storm hadn’t been thunder. It had been the horn calling the Hunters back to the Great Hunt in the Otherworld.

  But before I could answer, Aiden asked, “You’ve been harvesting nettles all this time?”

  This was my chance. I’d show them all I’d done.

  I scooped up Owain and plopped her in Cadan’s lap. Before he could protest, I pulled out the nettle fiber, the hackle, the spindle, and the yarn I’d spun. I’d come so far in this year!

  I knew my brothers wouldn’t exclaim over the handiwork. But I thought they’d at least look at it.

  “Where did you get this?” asked Mael.

  I motioned that the spindle had come from the old woman.

  “And that?” he asked, pointing to the hackle. I signed that it had come from Etten.

  “You traveled into Etten? Did anyone see you?” asked Aiden.

  He saw the answer on my face before I could hide it. “Her men saw you there, didn’t they?”

  I clenched my fists. Why couldn’t they see the entire story? That I’d found a way to save them? Hadn’t I proved it today when the Hunters couldn’t follow me into the nettle patch?

  But Aiden’s face was set. “They saw you there?”

  I nodded.

  “So the Queen knows that you’re alive . . . and her wild men know where we are . . . because a crazy woman told you to make us clothes out of stinging nettles?”

  I stood silent.

  He waved an arm out to the storm. “Her men are out there, and we can’t protect you once the sun rises!”

  I tried to sign that I was safe, that I was sure this storm meant that the Hunters had been called back to the Otherworld, but Aiden wouldn’t look at me.

  “No more,” he said in a low voice. “I want you to stay safe.”

  Stay safe? I had stayed safe in the wilds for over a year. A year after I’d stolen the Queen’s Kingstone and escaped the destruction of Roden.

  Since then, I’d grown a few inches taller—not that they had noticed. I
’d learned to handle a woman’s monthly flow without a breath of help from anyone. And I’d done it all while surviving winter and summer in a hut. While feeding myself and watching over my swan-brothers.

  But I didn’t sign any of that to them. I wasn’t the child I’d been a year ago. If they couldn’t see that, I wouldn’t try to change their minds.

  So I simply tilted my head at Aiden. Anything else?

  “Nettles will not fix this, Andaryn. You will not endanger yourself.” He picked up the hackle and swept the rest of the nettle goods into his arms. Then he strode away into the rain.

  I lunged after him, but Declan held me back.

  “It’s for the best, Ryn.” Declan pulled me closer as I beat against him. “We didn’t know the hold it had on you. We can’t let you hurt yourself.”

  And then I was crying, tears mixing with the rain on my cheeks. Aiden was throwing away the only things that would save them! A year’s worth of work!

  “It’s not just you, Ryn,” said Gavyn softly. “There’s no breaking the spell if something happens to you. We need you.”

  Cadan put a hand on my shoulder. “He doesn’t want you to hurt yourself for us.”

  I shrugged his hand away.

  I pulled Owain-the-hen into my lap and ignored my brothers. After a while, they stopped trying to talk to me or explain what they’d done.

  When Aiden returned an hour before dawn, his arms were empty.

  Chapter 26

  It took me two days to find everything that Aiden had thrown away that night. I waded the shore and scrabbled along the banks to recover the few lengths of yarn and the hackle and spindle. The fiber was half-rotted and useless by the time I found it.

  After nearly a month of travel north and a trip through a nearby town for winter provisions, I found a new home near Lake Rhywar. There was no living to be had on the bank of the lake, but there was a nearby cave in an old mining pit. My swan-brothers followed me to the lake, nesting along its rocky banks.

  The cave—I later learned it was called the Horned Man’s Mouth—seemed a dismal place after the hut by Cairwyn Lake. But I needed shelter from the coming winter. The pit, as broad as a merchant’s house, did look like a rocky-sided mouth opening in the forest floor, with the cave openings in the pit walls looking like an open throat. There was one wall that slumped down to the bottom of the pit: the Horned Man’s tongue. It served as my entrance into the pit.