The Flight of Swans

by Sarah McGuire

  * * *

  Ten months later, the morning after the twenty-fourth full moon, I picked my way down into the Horned Man’s tongue, my satchel full of my brothers’ clothes. The temperature dropped as I descended, for the pit was as deep as five men, and it acted like a bowl for cold and damp long into the day. By the time I reached the bottom, I was in dim once more, for the rising sun touched only the top of the pit.

  At the bottom of the pit, there was only mud and three rough arches in the pit’s wall. There, ancient miners had burrowed into the earth, never knowing they were creating shelter for a banished princess of Lacharra centuries later.

  I walked into the opening on the left. It had the lowest arch—better to keep cold winds out—and a level antechamber, where I lived.

  The jagged walls of the antechamber were their own sort of shelves. I quickly tucked the satchel on one of the outcroppings to keep it safe from mice or insects that might have escaped Owain-the-hen’s pecking.

  There were sometimes human visitors to the Horned Man’s Mouth—that was how I’d learned the name. Most people avoided any place with a name like that, but some ventured down to see what Otherworldly creatures inhabited it.

  I’d found my own way to deal with them. As rumors of a spirit haunting the cave had grown, there had been fewer and fewer visitors.

  I dragged an old stump I’d scavenged from the surrounding forest over to another of the outcroppings. I clambered on the stump, stood on tiptoe, and reached to the very back of the outcropping, my fingers just brushing the nettles.

  I always hid the nettle-fiber, the hackle, the spindle, and the yarn on this outcropping. If I pushed it back far enough, even my brothers couldn’t see it when they stood in the antechamber.

  I’d vowed they’d never see it again until it was time to wear the tunics.

  I pulled the spindle and a distaff dressed with combed nettle fiber from their hiding place. The hackle followed them, though I wouldn’t need it that day for fibers. Then I moved the stump to the center of the antechamber and sat on it. I’d spin a few yards of yarn before I slept.

  I’d spent that night of the twenty-fourth moon with my brothers. We were a third of the way through the enchantment, and I still didn’t know whether to celebrate or mourn.

  I tried to shift the heaviness in my chest. Best to just spin.

  I licked my fingers to dampen the yarn before holding it to the fibers I’d already teased from the distaff. I looped the yarn around the hook on the spindle and let it hang before sending it spinning. The yarn twisted, taking the new fibers with it, and I slowly fed the fiber into the twist as the twirling spindle moved closer and closer to the ground. When I’d spun nearly a foot’s length, I wrapped the new yarn just above the whorl. Then I looped the yarn over the hook and sent the spindle spinning once more.

  The spindle occasionally faltered in my hands, and sometimes the yarn was so thin it broke or so thick it became lumpy. But my skill was increasing. Every time I took the spindle out, I reminded myself that this was how I fought the Queen—this was how I resisted. I might not be able to face her in six years, but I’d set my brothers free so that we could reclaim Lacharra.

  I’d almost spun another foot-length of nettle yarn when someone approached the cave, stepping through the dry twigs I’d spread near the opening so no one could catch me unaware.

  I snatched up the hackle, distaff, and spindle and dashed deeper into the shaft.

  A soft voice, as if the speaker was frightened. Very different from the bold calls of those who wanted to brave the spirits of the Horned Man’s Mouth.

  I set down everything except the hackle.

  When I heard the voice again, I pressed the iron spikes against the wall and dragged them, making an unearthly music. I trailed the hackle closer to the antechamber, as if something was rising out of the depths.

  Only silence after that.

  I paused just outside the antechamber, listening.

  Nothing.

  I counted ten slow, deep breaths, then peered around the corner.

  A red-haired woman stood there, her fine clothes smeared with . . . blood? . . . and her face streaked with dirt.

  She stepped forward. “Ryn? Is that you?”

  Chapter 27

  Tanwen.

  I drew the hackle back, ready to use it like a weapon.

  Had the Queen grown so strong that she could send phantoms to us?

  I looked behind her, expecting to see Hunters pouring into the pit, obsidian blades drawn.

  The sun had risen high enough that its light almost touched the arch. Any moment now, light would reveal that this wasn’t Tanwen, just a trick of the Queen.

  The apparition took a step closer, half-laughing as if she couldn’t believe it was me, and I saw the dimple in her left cheek. She held a hand out to me. “Ryn, it’s me. It’s Tanwen.”

  Tanwen!

  I dropped the hackle and ran to her.

  She caught me close, and when I opened my eyes, sunlight filled the antechamber, pooling at our feet.

  She took my face in both hands. “How I’ve searched for you! You’ve no idea what it meant when the Hunters reported that you were alive!”

  She called them Hunters too?

  Tanwen sobered, fear bright in her eyes. “And Aiden? I have to know for certain, Ryn.”

  What I’d have given to say, Yes! He’s alive!

  But Tanwen saw the truth in my face.

  She pulled in a great, shuddering breath and pressed shaking hands to her mouth. After a moment, she collected herself. “Where are they? I must see Aiden.”

  Then she noticed that I hadn’t spoken. “Are you well?”

  I nodded yes, then touched my throat. It was the easiest way to let her know I couldn’t speak. She seemed to understand that I’d explain it later.

  Right now, it was time to show her Aiden.

  I quickly returned the nettles, spindle, distaff, and hackle, then gathered a small handful of grain from my food stores. I led Tanwen out of the pit, up into the forest, and along the short path to the banks of Lake Rhywar.

  Tanwen craned her head once we reached the lake, barely able to contain herself as she looked for Aiden.

  I pulled off my boots and motioned that she should stay at the banks. Then I rolled my leggings up and waded into the shallows. I’d grown used to the cool water and my feet were tough enough that I hardly noticed the stony lake bed.

  Six black swans glided across the smooth water. I waded out a few more steps, then slapped the water the way a beaver does when danger approaches. The swans stilled, heads held high to better see me. One trumpeted to the others, and then they all swam to me.

  I looked over my shoulder at Tanwen, saw her forehead crease as she tried to make sense of me calling six black swans when all she wanted was to see Aiden.

  And then I saw the moment when she understood.

  My swan-brothers surrounded me, gently tweaking my sleeves or hair, stretching close so that I could stroke their long necks. I opened my hand and showed them the bit of grain, grinning at their trumpets and calls. They followed me as I waded out of the water and sprinkled grain at Tanwen’s feet.

  She watched, pale-faced, as the swans pecked around her feet. “Which one is—?”

  I stroked Aiden-swan’s neck. Then I took her hand and poured the last of the grain into it.

  She extended her hand to Aiden. He backed away, neck curling in the funny way of theirs. Finally, he nipped at her fingers, testing her, but she didn’t flinch. After a moment, he stretched his neck forward and began to eat from her hand. She raised her other hand and, with her fingertips, traced the curve of his neck . . . the breadth of his back . . . felt the ruffled feathers of his folded wings.

  Aiden raised his head from the grain and looked at her for a long moment.

  Then the rest of my swan-brothers pressed close, pecking each other and trumpeting. Tanwen scattered the grain on the bank and stepped back, leaving the swans to their me
al.

  “I hoped I’d be able to see him, and I have.” She smiled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You must tell me everything that has happened, and I will do the same. And then, you have to leave.”

  Chapter 28

  I motioned Tanwen to follow me to a place along the bank with exposed dirt. Then I drew all that happened at Roden: how I exchanged my speech for my brothers’ freedom, the enchantment, how I stole the Kingstone and ran into the fire.

  Tanwen was patient, carefully watching my dirt-sketches and asking questions that reached to the heart of the matter.

  Once my story was told, she nodded. “That’s why she hunts you so fiercely. You saved them—I’m sure she believed you’d speak by now. Or she thought that if you remained silent, you’d be a living doll in her court. Yet you all escaped, and you took the Kingstone with you!”

  I hadn’t thought of it as besting the Queen. I’d thought of it as survival.

  “And then she discovered you were alive! I thought her fury would consume her.” Tanwen leaned forward to rest a hand on my arm. “She hunts you, Ryn. She hunts you all. Her guards? They aren’t even men.”

  I’d known it for nearly a year, but I still shivered to hear it spoken in the morning light.

  Tanwen nodded grimly. “There are some things better left in the dark, but you need to know about the Hunt—”

  I held a hand up to stop her, then pressed it to my chest as I nodded. I already know.

  I quickly drew the Hunt with a squiggly line between it and me—a veil that separated the two. Then I circled one of the riders and pointed to our side of the veil: I knew the Hunters were Otherworlders.

  “She hasn’t called Otherworlders, Ryn. She called their hounds.” Tanwen’s face crumpled in disgust. “White hounds with burning eyes and crimson ears and muzzles. She fashions them into men who do her bidding here.”

  I sat back, horrified, remembering Declan’s story of the chieftain who’d set his hounds on the snow-white boar.

  Tanwen swept a hand over the Hunt. “The day after I was carried back to the castle, soldiers reported that Roden had fallen to Danavirian soldiers and that Lacharra’s six princes and one princess were slaughtered in the attack.”

  She shook her head. “The ambassador was thrown into prison and the entire country mourned. The Queen came up with an elaborate story of how she’d lost the Kingstone in her escape, though she never explained why she was at Roden in the first place. I lived somewhere between sleeping and death for months. It was grief, but I also knew that if I was myself, I’d draw the Queen’s attention—and her ire.

  “Then, last spring, her Hunters arrived from Etten with news that sent her into a rage. Had they seen you?”

  I nodded. That was when I’d visited the spinster.

  “So I secretly sent two of our most trusted soldiers, men who mourned Aiden, to Etten to search for you, though I knew nothing except that you were alive. The Queen sent more of her dog-men to Etten to hunt you, and I prayed my own would find you first. Her Hunters never returned—they’d been called back to the Hunt before they could report to her.”

  I nodded, remembering the sound of the call as I hid in the nettles so many months ago.

  “The Queen can only pull hounds from the Hunt if they’re not needed elsewhere. They’re summoned by the first great storm, and once they’re wanted for the Hunt, they must answer its call. I think the only reason she can pull them here is because of a kindness to the Hunt’s leader: she once sang a song that soothed his horse.

  “Now, tell me how you hid when they found you at the lake. The Hunters said you hid where they couldn’t sense you. They said something about blackness, blindness.”

  So the nettles had hidden me as well as protected me!

  I signed and pantomimed my escape, ending with how I’d hidden in the nettles.

  Tanwen leaned forward, elbows propped on her knees. “Why nettles?”

  I signed the story of the old woman to Tanwen, trying to show her madness and her fierce love for the Queen. How I’d been told that the Queen hated nettles, because they reminded her of Before, whatever that was.

  “I wondered if the Queen was an Otherworlder, for how could a human call the hounds like she does? But no Otherworlder would mind nettles like she does! Iron, perhaps, but not nettles.”

  I’d puzzled over that a thousand times.

  “Perhaps she was one of the women caught up into the Hunt ages ago,” said Tanwen, “when the Veil between the worlds was thinner.”

  I nodded. It would explain how the Queen seemed so old sometimes. And her story of escape from a stern mistress.

  That reminded me: How had Tanwen escaped? I tried to sign the question, and when she understood me, the smile fell from her face.

  “Her hound-men spent the winter in the Great Hunt and didn’t return to her until a few months ago. They brought news of your escape—and of the soldiers I’d sent to search for you. The men didn’t talk before they died, but it was easy enough for her to guess that I’d sent them.”

  I shook my head, imagining the Queen’s rage.

  Tanwen smiled grimly. “She said if I longed to find you, I should travel with her Hunters. She surrendered me to their Hunt—and I became a human decoy for the ones who hunted my husband and his kin.”

  We’d been discovered again. I leaped to my feet.

  Tanwen tugged me back down. “You’re safe, Ryn. For a little while, at least.”

  How long? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t dare interrupt her.

  “I traveled with them for months. They hoped that rumors of the widow of the crown prince would draw out your family—and I learned their secrets.” She shuddered. “I’ve seen them as hounds on new-moon nights.

  “And I listened in each town we traveled through. When I heard about a spirit that haunted the Horned Man’s Mouth, I wondered if you’d found shelter here.” She smiled at me triumphantly. “I was right!

  “Now listen: you must leave. The Hunt—and the hounds she pulled from it—are limited to the lands between the old barrow roads they traveled in ages past. The last barrow road stretches across the moor. You must travel beyond their reach, even though that may not protect you in coming years. If the Queen suspects you’ve hidden beyond the barrow roads, she’ll negotiate with the Hunt-Lord himself to send her Hunters there.

  “But that is a matter for another year. You must leave here now. Today. You only have a little time.”

  I sketched a Hunter in the dirt. What happened to the Hunters you traveled with?

  “I sent them back to the Otherworld.”

  I shook my head, confused.

  “They were close to discovering you. So I gathered a drug from the forest to make them sleep. And as they slept, I put one of their swords through each of them.”

  I studied the smears on her skirt. One was the shape of a hand. She’d wiped her hands on her skirt.

  “I’m not a warrior,” faltered Tanwen. “To pierce them through till they changed from men . . . to hounds . . . and finally returned to the other side of the Veil . . . I’ll see it till I die, and perhaps beyond.

  “The Queen will call them back to this side of the Veil soon, and then they’ll sweep here, all of them. I’ve bought you time to flee beyond the moor’s barrow road, but you must leave now.”

  It was nearly time for my swan-brothers’ yearly molt. Once they began to lose their white flight feathers, they wouldn’t be able to fly and follow me beyond the moor. Tanwen was right: we needed to leave immediately.

  It took less than an hour to pack. My brothers’ clothes and all the nettle fiber, the yarn, the spindle, and the hackle went into the pack. I filled my satchel with what we’d use each night: blankets, the tinder box, and the few handfuls of dry tinder. Owain-the-hen’s latest eggs and the last of the grain would sustain us as we traveled, and I’d bring two of the five weirs I’d woven.

  It would be a lot to carry, but manageable with Tanwen’s help.

&
nbsp; As I rolled the last of the blankets, she introduced herself to Owain-the-hen, who’d wandered in for a mid-afternoon roost. Owain maintained an uneasy alliance with my brothers, but she immediately warmed to Tanwen, who discovered that the hen loved to be tickled under her wattle.

  I tied the weirs to the pack, then shrugged into it, handing the satchel to Tanwen. Finally I patted my chest, and Owain-the-hen fluttered to my shoulder.

  Tanwen shook her head as she looked at me, her lips twitching a bit at Owain. “I thought I’d find the girl I knew two years ago. Instead I find a young woman. You’ve escaped the Queen twice now, and you’re closer than anyone else to knowing her secret. I’m sure of it.”

  She kissed my forehead and handed the satchel back to me. “I’m not worried for you, Ryn. You’ll do just fine.”

  I stepped back as her words sunk in. I jabbed a finger at her and then pressed my hand to my chest. You’re coming with me.

  “No. I’m not. It’s so much for you to carry, but it’s better this way. The Queen’s Hunters believe I’ve desecrated their Hunt. When she calls them back, they’ll come for me. I won’t have you beside me when that happens.”

  I dropped the satchel on the ground. Then I sat down on the tree stump, arms folded.

  “Don’t be foolish, Ryn!”

  Foolish? Foolish? I hadn’t been this angry since the Queen first came to the castle. How dare Tanwen give up like this?

  Tanwen looked just as furious. She always did have a fine temper. Good. Maybe she’d learn sense as well.

  “I’m not going with you.”

  I shrugged and made myself comfortable on the stump. As you wish.

  “Ryn, you don’t have time for this!”

  I raised an eyebrow. So you say.

  Silence. I stared down at my feet.

  Finally, she whispered, “Don’t ask me to endanger Aiden. I won’t.”

  I pressed my fingers to my stinging eyes, knowing I’d do the same thing, trying to think of an answer.