Hilary McKay's Fairy Tales

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Alone?’ roared Mark. ‘What do you mean, alone?’

  ‘I am sending you boys to the old hunting lodge in the forest,’ said our father, in the same empty voice. ‘Elsa is there already. Alone.’

  Jacob and Joseph were already gone, saddled in record time, and galloping. Mark and Lucas were not far behind, and Toby and Timon were racing for the stables.

  I ran too. I had a dappled pony in those days; Pebble he was called. He lived in the meadow and he didn’t like being caught. He didn’t like it that day better than any other, so I was the last away from the castle.

  Around our castle there ran a swift river, and across the river was a wide stone bridge. Over the bridge, and the world was before you: towns and villages and forest and meadow. It was the gateway in and the gateway out, and on it the witch stood watching, and her child was with her, watching too.

  Pebble was running, although not quick enough for me. I was standing in the stirrups, urging him to be faster, when I heard a dreadful shriek.

  And although I was, like my brothers, on fire with anger that morning, that shriek ran cold as ice through my veins.

  Then it came again, and a moan of despair.

  The witch’s child, dandelion-headed Florian, had slipped and fallen. A witch’s power does not hold over running water, and she was helpless as she watched. He was in the river, tumbling and rolling, sinking and bobbing up, flailing and then swept down again by the rushing water. Two years old and drowning.

  But I was a sturdy twelve, and I was in that river after him before I had time to think. By great good luck I caught him by his dandelion hair. The water was deep and very cold, and we were buffeted more than once against the brown rocks that churned the current. But I held on tight and shielded him as best I could. Far down the river I fought my way to the bank at last with the witch’s child in my arms.

  I turned him upside down then, and half the river poured from him, but he was alive.

  The witch arrived, and she grabbed him from me like she thought I might throw him back. Then she stared into my face and her eyes were blazing with witchcraft and hate and another look too that I could not name.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘Get him warm,’ I told her, my teeth rattling with the cold, and she turned away.

  I wrung the water out of my jacket as best I could, and managed to catch and mount Pebble at last, and I followed the road my brothers had taken, away into the forest to the old hunting lodge that stood on the border of our little kingdom. A damp and musty tumbledown place it was.

  Still is.

  *

  One night we had with Elsa.

  And then the full moon and then the spell.

  Witches are witches all the earth over. Their greatest power comes with the brightest moon.

  It must have taken great power to weave that spell.

  She wove us into swans.

  *

  Four rushlights left.

  *

  To be a boy, and then a swan!

  To fall asleep within shadowy walls, and to wake in the morning sky, beating east into the sunrise, and far beneath you white wisps of lambswool that are clouds, and as you gaze at them you become aware of such vast height, and a drop so blue, so blue and distant as to turn your heart.

  Far beneath us was the tumbling ocean.

  And the ice whistle of the wind, and the creak, creak of huge white wings, and in front of me and beside me my brothers, snow-white swans.

  That perilous first morning of flight, it brought such joy as I had never felt before. It came from the lift of the air; the great steady rhythm of lift and beat, and lift and beat.

  Never in my warm, sweet, earthbound life as a boy had I known such bliss.

  But we were flying for our lives; there was no land in sight and no rest for us on that wild ocean. We were weary to our hollow swan bones when we saw the island.

  It was hardly an island in truth, no more than a large rock and enormous waves breaking all around. But we rested there for the night and journeyed on the next morning and we came at last to a far country, east of the sunrise.

  There were no people in that land. It was a world of spreading pools and rushes and dragonflies and enormous skies. We drifted on those clear pools with our swan reflections always beside us, and our thoughts were swan thoughts, of water and wind and sky. But each night the moon diminished from the full, until one night it was as slim as a curved blade, and the next it was gone.

  Witches are witches all the skies over. Their power fades as the moon fades. In the night with no moon we became human again, and we found our voices. We looked at each other and said, ‘Elsa.’

  But the morning found us swans again, with swan thoughts loud in our minds. One thing, though: we had learned to watch the moon.

  It grew in the night skies, from a thin blade to a bright full moon, and then we were wholly swans and we spread far from each other amongst the pools and into the heights. At those times I could not have told you my name.

  But a full moon wanes, and as it did we remembered.

  It faded back to a half and then a quarter, and we gathered, knowing something was changing. When it was once more approaching the blade, we remembered our home. And when it was just two days from the night without moon, we knew the way back and we summoned our courage to our long swan wings and set off across the ocean.

  Together we made the journey. A day to the rock, and a day to the home shore, and by nightfall at this old hunting lodge, and voices again and human form. The weight of the earth a great drag on the body after all those weeks as a swan.

  Six weeks Elsa had waited.

  Have you forgotten Cadmus?

  I had.

  But Elsa had Cadmus, and when we had done hugging her, we turned to hugging him.

  ‘I knew you would come back,’ said Elsa.

  It was my turn to hold her and I buried my face in her hair.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ she said. ‘Don’t be sad, Sweet William! I know what to do. Cadmus was watching when she wove the spell.’

  We looked at Cadmus then, and before our eyes he became a little fox, a golden bee, a spark of light.

  Then back through the changes and a hound again.

  ‘Cadmus says all spells have a counter-spell to balance them. And the counter-spell to Seven Swan Princes is Seven Nettle Shirts. And I am to weave them, and I must work the weaving in silence, and when they are finished they will set you free. I can weave,’ said Elsa proudly, ‘and spin and sew. But I can’t stay here. There are no nettles in the forest, I’ve looked.’

  She was nine years old.

  ‘Elsa,’ said Joseph gently, ‘you can’t weave nettles.’

  ‘The country people do,’ said Elsa.

  ‘Nettles sting,’ said Jacob.

  ‘So does sadness,’ said Elsa.

  ‘We can’t have you hurt,’ said Lucas.

  ‘I can’t have you swans.’

  ‘No, Elsa,’ said Mark and Toby and Timon.

  ‘No, Elsa,’ said I, with my face in her hair.

  But Elsa laid her finger on her lips and did not reply.

  *

  Three rushlights left.

  *

  We woke the next morning as we had woken the first time as swans. High in the sky, flying east.

  It was many years before we saw Elsa again.

  We searched. Each month, in the last day of the waning moon, we gathered and flew west to reach the old land in time for a few hours in human form. We made those journeys many times, and they each had their own peril. I only have three rushlights left, so leave that unwritten.

  Each month we would go amongst the people, asking and listening. Not our own people, you understand. We wanted no rumours reaching the castle and the witch, but still, we heard the news.

  We learned many things.

  Of the search by the country folk for Elsa and the lost princes.

  Of the death of our father and the ruling of
the Witch Queen.

  Of the trouble she brought, the failed harvests and the emptying villages.

  And at last, in a neighbouring kingdom, we heard of a silent girl who wove nettles.

  ‘Had she a hound?’ asked Mark eagerly, and they said, not a hound but a small gold fox.

  Then gradually we learned more of the story.

  *

  Elsa had been seen by huntsmen on the borders of a neighbouring kingdom. A brown-haired girl with a bundle of nettles in her arms. If I had more rushlights I would write more of this, how she slept in the treetops, only climbing down for more nettles, and how the fox brought her bread every morning.

  ‘How did the fox find the bread?’ I asked her once.

  ‘How did the hound become a fox?’ she replied. ‘How did the fox become a bee? How did the bee become a shining spark in my hair? How did seven princes become seven swans? Do you know, Billy-O?’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said.

  Well, in the end the huntsmen caught her, and they took her where they took all their best catches, to the Queen who ruled the neighbouring kingdom. There Elsa stayed, in the Royal Court, and there she spun and wove her nettles. Not the whole nettle, you understand, but the long fibres in the nettle stems, after the leaves were plucked away. The fibres spun into a pale green thread, and the thread woven into a fair green cloth.

  They told me later that all the long years she spun and wove, she never spoke a word or hummed a song or sighed a whisper, and there was a small golden bee in her hair.

  At first she amused them at the palace, so small, so quick to smile, so careful in her spinning, so uncomplaining of her sore, stung hands. They found she could dance, and ride. Sometimes she put aside her weaving to make small hollow birds out of clay for visiting children. She would dip them full of water and laugh when the children learned to blow them to make birdsong – but she never made a sound herself.

  She grew more beautiful each year, and the Queen’s son fell in love with her and he said he would marry her. But Elsa measured the lengths of woven cloth in her store, and shook her head, and she watched the sky, morning and night.

  Now, when Elsa first came to that country, there had grown as many nettles there as anywhere else. But not any longer. There were no nettles now in the parks and gardens and farms and lanes, they were all gathered and spun and woven. And Elsa measured the lengths of nettle cloth and shook her head. She needed more.

  There was one place left and it was forbidden: an old graveyard with a high wall. A thousand years of kings and queens lay sleeping there, with their rings and staffs and golden crowns, and nettles grew through the glinting green mounds.

  The penalty for trespass there was death.

  But Elsa climbed the wall.

  And so she was caught and imprisoned to await her fate, and the Queen’s son begged, and the lawyers shook their heads, and by a golden spark of light behind the prison walls, Elsa sewed her nettle cloth into pale shirts.

  Then her verdict came: death for robbing the dead, and the Queen’s son could not bear it and he said he would die with her. And there came a morning when they led her out to her fate.

  Even then Elsa would not be parted from her work. She carried in her arms the nettle shirts, greeny-gold they shone in the sunlight, and no one could get near her because with her was a great golden hound.

  *

  Two rushlights left.

  *

  It was a hound in form, but not in size. It was as huge and swift as twenty hounds, and around its feet screeched and snapped a hundred golden foxes and in the air swarmed furious bees and the whole court crackled and spat with fiery sparks and it was the day before the dark of the moon.

  Mark was leading. Seven years a swan now, and with such power in his wings as could thrust the clouds apart, and Cadmus in the courtyard below. The spitting golden light and the terrible deep thunder of his baying.

  Mark shot through blue distances like a great white arrow, and we followed after, and there was Elsa at last.

  She ran to us as we flew to her.

  Jacob and Joseph, Mark and Lucas, Timon and Toby. Over each of them as they came winging towards her she flung a green nettle shirt, and their swan shapes left them and they stood on the earth as men. Then it was my turn and the last shirt for me.

  Afterwards Elsa said it was because she had so little cloth the last sleeve was short. Maybe, maybe not. I know that I flinched away as it touched me, and it slid from my left shoulder.

  Swan Wing, they call me. I have been William Swan Wing for many years now.

  Elsa married the Queen’s son and now she has her own princes and princesses.

  Jacob and Joseph ride less and move more slowly on their feet.

  Mark and Lucas sit together in the sun.

  Toby has grown round and Timon has grown thin, but Lucas still plays his lute now and then and Cadmus is as he ever was. Perhaps a little greyer around his muzzle.

  It seems to me that the lightness has gone out of the days.

  *

  One rushlight left.

  *

  I remember the great lift of air under my wings. I remember the blue pools and the rushes. I remember the endless height and depth of the sky.

  I remember the bliss of it all.

  I heard a rumour. The witch was fading fast, they said.

  And so I travelled back to the old country.

  Now I’ve seen her.

  She lies in bed as small as a child, shrunken with the years. Her voice is almost gone, and her eyes are closed.

  ‘I’m Will,’ I said. ‘Remember me. I was the plain one.’

  ‘You were,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ve come to forgive you,’ I said.

  She turned her head, not wanting my forgiveness.

  ‘Your boy?’ I asked. ‘Young Dandelion?’

  Two tears slipped from the closed eyes.

  ‘Gone?’ I asked, speaking soft as I could. But she did not reply.

  Better angry than sad, I thought then, so I changed the subject to rouse her up.

  ‘This place has got right mucky,’ I said. ‘The windows all grime and the ceiling all webs and the lilies half choked in weeds.’

  That worked. I saw her brace her shoulders with temper.

  ‘I want to fly again,’ I said. ‘You owe me that. For my lost home and the seven years and my little sister alone and the long journeys, not knowing what had become of her.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘And for young Dandelion pulled out of the river.’

  Long pause.

  But I knew she remembered.

  ‘Yes,’ said the witch.

  ‘You owe me.’

  ‘I do owe you for that,’ she said.

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘I have no longer the power,’ she said. ‘Not for wings.’

  ‘Ah!’ said I. ‘But I only need one!’

  Then she opened her eyes at last.

  There was still fire blazing there, but this time there was no hate. Just the look that I had seen long before, when I handed her Dandy, all dripping with river.

  ‘What’s the moon?’ she whispered.

  ‘Near full,’ I said.

  ‘It will have to be full.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘It won’t hold for long.’

  ‘So long as it gets me there,’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ she murmured, but her voice was full of doubt, and I could tell that she knew that great ocean with its small rocky island, and the reeds and rushes and blue pools of the country east of the sunrise. She knew them as well as I.

  ‘Beyond reach.’

  I don’t know if it was her said that, or me.

  Then we were quiet, though she was still looking at me.

  ‘One wing,’ she said at last.

  ‘The sky,’ I told her, taking hope again. ‘That’s where I’m aiming! The wind in the heights and the blueness.’

  ‘The blueness,’ she murmured, remembering wi
th me.

  ‘Never mind what comes after.’

  ‘Swan Wing,’ she said, and smiled.

  And so here I am, back at the old hunting lodge. Just for this night, for old time’s sake and the memories.

  Full moon tomorrow.

  It was love in her eyes that I saw when she looked at me; I knew that before I left.

  She said, ‘You’ll reach the sky, Swan Wing, Billy-O, Sweet William.’

  *

  And that’s my last rushlight gone.

  About the Author

  Hilary McKay is a critically acclaimed author who has won many awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for her first novel, The Exiles, and the Whitbread (now the Costa) Award for Saffy’s Angel. Hilary studied Botany and Zoology at the University of St Andrews, and worked as a biochemist before the draw of the pen became too strong and she decided to become a full-time writer. Hilary lives in Derbyshire with her family.

  About the Illustrator

  Sarah Gibb studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art (now Central Saint Martins) before completing her MA in Illustration at Brighton College of Art. After landing regular spots in the Telegraph and Elle magazine, Sarah went on to illustrate Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series, many classic children’s fairy tales and even the Harrods Christmas window display. She lives in Wandsworth, London.

  Bibliography/Further Reading

  These are some of the books that helped me write this collection:

  Bernhardt, S., Moreau, H., Murreigh, H. et al. The Silver Fairy Book. London: Hutchinson and Co. (1895).

  Farjeon, Eleanor. The Silver Curlew. Oxford Children’s Library: Oxford University Press (1953).

  Grimm, J. L. C. and W. C. Grimm’s Fairy Tales (translated by Mrs Edgar Lucas). London: Constable & Company, Ltd (1909).

  Lang, Andrew. The Fairy Books (Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Crimson and Orange). Paternoster Road, London: Longmans, Green & Co. (1889–1906).

  Perrault, Charles. The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales from the Old French (retold by Arthur Quiller-Couch). London: Hodder and Stoughton (1912).

  Tolkien, J. R. R. ‘On Fairy-Stories’, Essays Presented to Charles Williams. Oxford University Press (1947).