The Flight of Swans

by Sarah McGuire

  Then I heard the Queen’s voice as she mourned changing that first dark night after Corbin had been born.

  Changing again.

  I held the thought inside me, let it grow till I could see it fully. So much of her power involved change: Otherworldly hounds into Hunters, my brothers into swans.

  What if the Queen, too, had changed?

  The old woman had given the Queen feet. Human feet.

  She hadn’t always been human.

  I curled my fingers around the spindle, pressed it to my lips. Was this what the old woman had done? Worked the Queen’s destruction so that someone else could accomplish it?

  Would a word be enough? It was such a small thing.

  Small as the cloves that reminded Father of how he’d loved me. Small as the Kingstone fragment that reminded the Queen that we would always oppose her.

  A word couldn’t send the Queen away, but perhaps it could undo all the old woman had given her.

  And that would be enough.

  Somehow, I’d speak the word—the one small word—that would defeat the Queen.

  I stood beneath the window until the light faded, tracing the word with my fingertip, until I’d memorized it. Even if I never saw it again, I’d be able to speak it.

  When the full moon rose, I sat in the corner, praying my brothers would forgive me for losing the tunics. And I planned how to remove the Queen from our lives.

  I was sitting in the same corner when the Hunters came for me, nearly an hour till dawn. They took me from the castle, down the hill, to the lake where my swan-brothers had nested.

  When I saw the Queen, in the pre-dawn light, I didn’t flinch. Instead, I rehearsed the path before me. I could not afford a mistake.

  “Your brothers did not return to the lake last night, as swans or men. Nor have the Hunters I sent after them.” She pulled a breath deep inside as if inhaling perfume. “I expect that my son and the Hunters will return with the carcasses of six black swans.”

  I didn’t move. There was nothing I could do except hope the old woman’s madness had not led me astray.

  “Will you not reconsider?” asked the Queen. “I will be merciful if you choose to be silent for one more year.”

  No.

  I wouldn’t betray my brothers if they were alive. And if they were dead, I would join them. I’d speak the word the moment before the sword dropped.

  “Bring her to the water’s edge,” said the Queen. “It’s a powerful place, where land and water mingle. Two worlds flowing over each other.”

  The Hunters pulled me so close to the lake that my feet sank into mud.

  “Good,” said the Queen. “If the swans are here, they will come.”

  We stood there, while the sky brightened around us.

  Finally, the Queen asked once more. “Will you vow silence, Andaryn?”

  I straightened, willing my shaking to still. I wanted to look her in the face one last time. I wanted her to know that I would accomplish what I couldn’t six years ago in Roden’s dungeon: I would not give her what she desired.

  I feared her, but I wouldn’t let it overtake me. I wanted her to see it, to remember that.

  And she did see it.

  “Make her kneel.”

  The Hunters did.

  “Make her bow.”

  They did, sweeping my braid off my back so that my neck was exposed. I could feel the morning’s cold.

  I wouldn’t have time to speak my brothers’ names before the sword fell, so I recited them in my head, holding them to me like treasure.

  “It’s nearly time,” breathed the Queen.

  I heard the dull rasp of a sword being drawn.

  The light intensified, though trees hid the horizon from view.

  I heard the whisper of the sword being raised.

  There was time, still. I could feel that the sun hadn’t yet risen.

  Hands pushed me down so that I couldn’t lift my head.

  But I didn’t intend to.

  Move with the attacker, not against him, whispered Mael, and I was glad to have him with me at the end.

  Now!

  I dove forward, as if to somersault, my forehead to my knees. The Hunters’ hands fell away, and the edge of the sword scraped my shoulder blade.

  “Stop! Wait for my word!”

  Red-edged pain clouded my vision, but I rolled away and stood. One of the Hunters pulled me to him.

  I let him yank me close, and lifted my arms like I wanted to embrace him. And when I was close enough, I dropped a nettle-cord collar around his neck.

  The Hunter howled and fell back, releasing me.

  He writhed as he changed to a hound: his true Otherworld form. My stomach roiled to see the white beast with crimson ears. And while the hound tore at the collar around his neck, another Hunter caught my wrist.

  I spun closer to him, plucked a nettle collar from the front of my dress, and wrapped it around his neck.

  He, too, fell away.

  “Take aim!” commanded the Queen, and one of the Hunters nocked an arrow to his bow and leveled it at me. Before he could release it, the Queen stopped him with a hand on the arrow.

  She wasn’t sure if she could kill me yet.

  Run. Run toward her.

  I ran. I should have dropped the last nettle collar over the Hunter’s neck, but I wrapped it over my right fist, once, twice, three times, till it was tight as a mitten.

  The Hunter kept the arrow level. The Queen kept her hand on the arrow and her eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the light that would release both of us from our vows.

  “Not a word, Andaryn, my dear,” she called as I neared, “or your brothers die!”

  I didn’t even break stride. My nettle-covered fist caught her on the temple.

  She was weaker than I expected. Perhaps it was the nettles. Perhaps it was my fury. She stumbled back, and I struck her again, then spun to face the Hunter with the arrow.

  With two arrows. One was buried in his chest.

  I looked at the far end of the clearing. Finn reached behind him and nocked another arrow. The Ri broke from the forest behind him, sword drawn, running toward us.

  My brothers were not with him.

  I gathered up my grief, used its strength for what lay ahead.

  I tugged the nettle cord from my fist and threw it on the Queen, who shrieked as if it burned her.

  Another glance at the horizon. Not yet! But there was someone else who could speak—

  I ran to Finn, pulling the spindle from the front of my dress as I went.

  “Lady Ryn!”

  I caught him by his tunic and pressed the spindle into his hand, pointing to the writing. He looked down, trying to make sense of it, of me.

  I pointed again. Read it, read it!

  I heard the Queen approaching, and still Finn didn’t speak.

  READ IT! I jabbed my finger at the writing.

  The Ri’s hand plucked the spindle from me.

  “Son!” called the Queen.

  He stilled, and dread settled in my belly. He said he’d come. He said he’d save my brothers. Had she won him over after all?

  “Do you see what she’s done? Let me have it.” Her voice was a caress, full of warmth I was certain the Ri had never felt from her as a child. “Give it to me.”

  She extended a slender white hand.

  He locked eyes with her.

  And he extended the spindle to me, just as I felt the sun finally rise.

  I didn’t touch it, didn’t even look down. I simply spoke the word the old woman had carved into the spindle. “Diladh!”

  Silence as deep as the ocean engulfed us.

  Then a flash of light—a thousand sunrises all at once. I turned to it, wincing at the blaze.

  The Queen had fallen to her knees, hands raised to protect herself. A line of dark threaded the brilliance at the far end of the clearing and widened, like a curtain being pulled apart. The Queen scurried away from it, crablike, as a silhouette appeared in
the light.

  A woman so magnificent that the Queen seemed a silly sham. She spoke a single word, and the Hunter-hounds dashed into the brightness and disappeared.

  I knew her.

  The Lady Rhiannon. Her face and dress were nothing like the tapestry that had been pulled from Mother’s chambers. But the queenliness was the same.

  And so were the two birds with mother-of-pearl feathers perched on her shoulders. Their song seemed as close as thought and as distant as the stars all at once.

  The adar Rhiannon. The three Otherworld birds that sang whatever songs the Lady Rhiannon requested.

  Until one bird had tired of singing her mistress’s bidding.

  The Queen had fled to this side of the Veil, where she’d sat by the nettles and sung for the old woman. Sung with all the power she’d been endowed with until the woman had given her human form and speech.

  The Queen screamed, but there were no words in it.

  Lady Rhiannon extended her hand to the Queen.

  It was not a request.

  One final scream, dwindling to a screech. A mist gathered around the Queen, shadows given form, hiding her from us. Then a flash of ivory. Mother-of-pearl wings spread wider than a man could reach and caught the air. It was the bird that sang outside my window so many years ago.

  The Kingstone dropped to the bank the moment she changed—the moment there was no longer a human form to wear it.

  The bird shrieked and circled, trying to escape but unable to fly away from the Lady.

  Finally, she flew to the figure who stood in the rift.

  When the white bird touched her Lady’s hand, both disappeared. The rift closed. The light dimmed.

  The Queen had returned to the Otherworld. To her Before.

  Chapter 64

  I was free for the first time in six years, but I greeted the dawn alone. The tunics had burned—my brothers would not stand as men in the morning sunlight.

  I gathered up the deserted Kingstone fragment with trembling hands and slipped it over my head. It was a hollow victory to wear it again without my brothers beside me.

  I turned to the Ri, who stared at where the rift had closed, like a man stunned. Of course he was stunned. He’d seen his witch-mother in her true form, and I’d been the one who sent her back to the Otherworld.

  But my brothers!

  I ran to the Ri, motioning to the empty lake. Where are they? Where’s Carrick?

  “We didn’t go to the cave immediately, Lady Ryn. We couldn’t afford to lead my mother’s men there. Finn and I led them from it and then disposed of them well away from Ionwyn and Carrick. We didn’t reach the cave till after dark. Your brothers fought valiantly against the other soldiers who were already there, but—”

  I saw the grief on the Ri’s face.

  I didn’t want to hear the end. I rushed to the lake and waded into the shallows, the mist curling around me. I slapped the water, calling them as I had so many times.

  No answering trumpet. No sound of wings.

  Nothing.

  I almost shouted for them but stopped. I didn’t want to speak if my brothers weren’t there. Perhaps that was a good thing. There were some stories that should never be told.

  “Lady Ryn.” The Ri took me by the elbow, tugging me back from the water.

  I pulled my arm free and waded farther into the lake. I’d let him tell me all that had happened soon. But I couldn’t hear it now. I needed to stand in the water, skirts billowing around me, till I was sure my brothers wouldn’t return.

  “Lady Ryn!” He caught me again.

  I pressed farther into the water. If I looked at the Ri, I might cry and never stop.

  “Ryn!” a voice shouted.

  I didn’t believe my ears at first, but I stopped, the water past my knees.

  “Rynni!”

  I swung to face the sound.

  Aiden stepped into the clearing. He wore a nettle tunic.

  No. I gulped in a shuddering breath. No, it couldn’t be him.

  I looked back over the lake and saw that the sun had truly risen, the horizon a wave of light behind the trees.

  “Ryn,” said the Aiden-ghost, “we’re here.”

  I heard the Ri shouting something about it being over as I dashed from the shallows.

  I didn’t care.

  Only a fool would walk toward the Queen’s enchantment, but I did. The man looked so like Aiden, and the others who stepped from the trees looked like my brothers. But they couldn’t be.

  They couldn’t. She’d burned the tunics.

  Aiden-ghost stopped in front of me, chest rising and falling as rapidly as my own. But he just stood there and let me look up at him.

  Brown eyes. Carrick’s eyes. He seemed taller in the dawn, my forehead only reaching his shoulder.

  I touched the tangle of stitches on the right cuff of his tunic. I hadn’t had time to rip the rows out and make them straight, for it was the first tunic I’d made. I’d simply finished the sleeve, working a few extra stitches into the gap so that Aiden wouldn’t be left with feathers on his arm.

  I stepped back, hand pressed to my forehead. I saw the tunics burn!

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember. No. I saw Cadan’s tunic burn. Had the Queen only found Cadan’s and used that to threaten me? I opened my eyes, looking behind Aiden at the figures emerging from the trees.

  No. Please, not Cadan—

  He, too, stepped from the trees.

  “Ryn? Ryn!” he shouted and ran up to me. “Didn’t I promise I’d always call for you?”

  I watched him approach, shaking my head. When he stopped in front of me, I gripped his tunic in both hands. I saw it burn!

  “Ah,” he said and smiled down at me. “The Queen showed you mine, did she?” He nodded to the trees, to Ionwyn and Carrick. “Ionwyn—now there’s a fine woman!—dropped the satchel in the last desperate run to the cave. She discovered later that she had gathered up all the tunics but mine. No time to snatch it up before the Hunters reached it. It’s a good thing she had your nettle cape, isn’t it?”

  I looked closer at his tunic. It had no embroidery and was cut, the sides joined in a rough seam. One of the sleeves fell down over his hand, and he shook it back, pushing it farther up his arm. He winked. “I think she was worried she’d cut the sleeves too short and I’d be left with half a wing—”

  But I didn’t believe my eyes. I closed them against the dream, shaking my head to clear it.

  The Ri was talking to Aiden, telling him it was over, the Queen was gone.

  “Rynni,” said Owain, using my pet name, “you’re not dreaming.”

  When I looked again, I saw Ionwyn. She held Carrick in her arms.

  Finally I turned back to the Aiden-dream. I lifted a hand to his cheek and touched his tunic one more time and felt his warm arm beneath the sleeve. He wasn’t a ghost risen from the grave to break my heart.

  He was real.

  “It’s me, Ryn,” he whispered. “I promise. I’m so sorry we were late. We fought so long and traveled to the castle as soon as we could, but the Queen had already brought you here.”

  I covered my face with my hands and cried.

  But he wouldn’t let me cry, oh no. Aiden crushed me to him and laughed into my hair, that soft chuckle of his that let me know all was right with the world.

  The moment he released me, Cadan held me at arm’s length. “You were right, Ryn! Right about the nettles and the tunics and maybe even your bargain with the Queen, do you hear me?” There were tears in his eyes too. They he caught me up with a whoop and swung me in circles. “I’ve never been so glad for nettle-nonsense in my life!”

  And then to Gavyn and Declan and Owain, dear Owain who had grown so much taller than me. But I threw myself at him and felt him lift me high. He’d been a boy when this started, a boy with smooth cheeks who thought he’d outgrown his twin.

  Finally I turned to Mael. He pulled me close.

  I felt the brush of feathers and looked down.r />
  Mael had wrapped a black wing around me.

  No.

  Mael shook his head and smiled. “The tunic was perfect, Ryn-girl. But it was torn in the fight at the cave, and I didn’t notice until we were running here. And I wasn’t about to make them stop and find some solution. We guessed you might have only seconds, and we were right, Finn says.”

  I shook my head.

  Mael swiped away my tears with his thumb. “None of that. You gave us six years. A wing is nothing, you hear me?”

  Then he glanced over my shoulder at my brothers gathered near and smiled. “It’s your turn, Ryn. What do you have to say?”

  I looked up at him, my breath stuttering in my throat. For six years, I’d waited to speak. I’d imagined what I’d say a thousand times, the words I’d throw at the Queen, the curse I’d send out into the world.

  I’d given her six years of speech. I wouldn’t let her have those first words too.

  The first light spilled over the treetops and across the land until my brothers were blinking in it. Aiden held a hand against the sunrise but didn’t look away. It was the first time he’d seen daylight in six years.

  I walked to him and spoke his name, nothing more. “Aiden.”

  It was enough.

  The wind didn’t roar over us to pull them away. They didn’t turn back into swans.

  I could speak!

  I turned to Mael, grasping the front of his nettle tunic in my excitement. “Mael.” Then the rest of my brothers: “Declan. Gavyn. Cadan. Owain.”

  Each name was like a spring thaw, melting my frozen throat after all these years.

  I turned back to Carrick, still in Aiden’s arms, and took his dear face in my hands. “Carrick!”

  His eyes opened wide and he held his arms out to me. I took him, and he buried his face in my shoulder. “I have so much to tell you,” I whispered against his hair. “I want to tell you about Tanwen.”

  I closed my eyes against the tears. I’d longed to speak her name to Carrick for so long.

  “Andaryn.”

  I kept my lips against Carrick’s soft curls, even though the Ri’s voice made me want to laugh and cry, run and stay all at once.

  “Andaryn. That’s your true name, isn’t it?”

  I turned to face him, and Aiden plucked Carrick from my arms.