The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  Soon, Michael came trotting back up the beach, two large fish dangling in his hands. “Why, how did you catch them so quickly?” Eliza exclaimed.

  Michael grinned proudly as he fetched a shell from its place under a large flat stone. The edge of the shell had been honed against a sandy rock to make it sharp; Michael used this crude knife to scale the fish and slit their bellies. “We took willow withies growing by that stream there,” he gestured with the shell knife, “and wove them into basket traps, which we leave to float in the surf during the day. A length of kelp is tied to them, anchored under a rock.”

  Others followed with further offerings: pocketfuls of berries, crayfish, and mussels. “A thousand pities we have no pot for the making of a fish chowder,” Michael remarked cheerfully. “But the fish will roast on sticks and the mussels and crayfish in the coals.”

  “Will there be enough for all?” Eliza asked anxiously.

  “Aye, enough for all to have a taste at least. But you must have most of it, Eliza.”

  “But are you not hungry, too?”

  “Do not worry. We do most of our eating during the day,” he replied shortly and went to the mouth of the river to wash his hands, leaving Eliza to wonder.

  With no knives or plates, the food was difficult to eat, and several suffered burned fingers. But all pronounced the meal excellent. Empty shells served as cups for the water poured from Eliza’s stone bottle. Eliza went to the stream to refill it. When she came back, Hugh was building up the fire again, for the night had fallen fully. He smiled at her as she seated herself on the ground next to Benjamin. James, Henry, and Edward sat a little to one side, their long legs stretched out before them on the sand, out of the immediate circle of firelight. “Hark you now, Henry,” James said, recommencing an argument that had been going on for some days, “I tell you, the answer is not flying south. What will it serve us to go to France?”

  “It will be warmer in the winter.”

  “Not much, and where could we hope to find safe shelter there? France has people still, with the same arrows and muskets that threaten us here. No, I thank you. The New World is our only hope.”

  Henry’s only answer was to look skeptical.

  Abruptly, James grinned. “You know I have the right of it, Henry. You simply cannot bear to give way to your older brother in the quarrel, eh?”

  “I know you think we can travel that far—” Edward began doubtfully.

  “Do not doubt it! The extra light will make it possible, if we follow the path of the islands north and west—”

  “But what of Eliza?” Henry interrupted.

  James stopped. “I... don’t know.”

  Eliza’s head turned at the sound of her own name. “What of Eliza?” she repeated, cocking her head at them.

  James rose and came to kneel beside her. The other brothers exchanged significant looks and sat up.

  “We were considering our plans,” James told her. “We have lingered in England to be near you, and our mother’s grave. But we have come to wish to leave this land. It is dangerous for us here; Edward was shot in the wing several years ago. We dug the musket ball out of his arm after the sun sank, and nursed him in the woods as best we could, with what little art we had. ‘Twas weeks before he could fly again. The winters are harsh and cold, and ...” His words trailed off.

  “And now there is the news I brought to you of the Countess,” Eliza said. James’s eyes met hers levelly. “Aye.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “To the New World,” James replied. He gave Henry a sidelong glance, but Henry held his peace.

  “Across the ocean? But surely it is too great a span to cross in one day! How ... ?”

  “We must go north; the farther in that direction we fly while midsummer is at its height, the more light we will have, for the sun stays in the sky later. Why, if we go far enough, there are places where the sun hangs for days in the sky without ever dipping below the horizon! Our path will then curve west, following a chain of great islands until we come to the New World.”

  “Alas, you would leave me behind?” she said, stricken.

  He opened his mouth, but she said quickly, before he could speak, “No, you must go. Only—take me with you! I could not bear to be left alone again!”

  “Take you with us?” he repeated, astonished.

  “But Eliza,” Stephen began tentatively, “you are not... you cannot fly with us.”

  “I know, but could you not ... carry me somehow?”

  An uneasy silence fell for a moment. Finally James said slowly, “Perhaps it could be done.”

  Henry turned to him, amazed. “How? What do you propose?”

  James brooded for a moment. “We learned to shape the willow withies to make a fish trap. Perhaps

  ... if we twined the withies with kelp to make the lengths flexible ... could we not weave them into a kind of net to carry her?”

  “But could we hold it and fly at the same time?” Frederick objected.

  Benjamin laughed and jumped to his feet. “We can and we will. James, you are brilliant! Come, let us away to the river, to begin gathering them.” He snatched up the shell knife and hastened away, with several of the others at his heels.

  James waited until they were gone and then said to Eliza in a low voice, “Sweetheart, are you certain you have the courage to go? For I will not lie to you; you must understand the danger. Carrying you will force us to fly more slowly, and we will be flying over water. If the sun should set before we reach land

  ...” His voice trailed off, but the picture conveyed by his words was clear to them both. Sobered, but grateful for his frankness, she answered him just as honestly, “I can do no less than to risk myself, when you will all be endangering yourselves equally for me. But if you leave, I must come with you.”

  James smiled approvingly. “Brave heart! Whether we all live or perish, dear girl, we shall not be separated again.”

  “Then I will pray that God will watch over us all.” She leaned forward to kiss him. “Thank you, James.”

  Benjamin, Michael, Robert, and Stephen eventually returned to the fire with lengths of willow withies and kelp draped like fantastical necklaces over their shoulders. They heaped them into a pile and the entire group gathered around to start the work. Making the net took several false starts. But Eliza had learned the principles of weaving from her foster father, and the brothers’ experience in shaping the withies made the work go more easily. Soon enough, a large net, strong and firmly knotted, took shape under many busy fingers.

  “But will it hold me?”

  Henry grinned. “Climb upon it now, and see.”

  Eliza scrambled onto the net. The brothers picked it up, using loops they had set along the edges, at the ends of braided withies. “Together now—heave!” They tossed her into the air, like a child in a blanket toss at a fair. The withies and kelp creaked, but held. Laughing, she righted herself again in the net’s center.

  “It will serve,” James announced with satisfaction as they set her down on the ground again. “We must rest now, look you, for we have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.”

  They lay down and arranged themselves in a group for sleep, with Eliza in the center, still on the net. Benjamin spread his coat over her and settled himself to lie down beside her. She sidled over to make room for him, surreptitiously studying his face in the dying firelight. He was young, only two years older than she, but the shifting play of light and shadows made his features look drawn and sad. After a moment, she rolled toward him and asked timidly, in a low voice so the others would not hear, “What is it like, Benjamin, to become a swan?”

  He lay silently, staring into the sky above for so long that she wondered if he had heard her. Just as she opened her mouth to speak again, he turned toward her, raising himself on one elbow, and said,

  “Have you asked any of the others about this?”

  “Nay, I thought but to ask you.”

  Benjamin nodded. “Th
at is well, I think. Robert might speak of it, if you asked, or Frederick, or perhaps Hugh. James, now ... I would not ask James, were I you.” He shifted his position, stretching his legs out, and gave her an appraising glance. “You are fifteen now?”

  She nodded.

  “I must be seventeen, then,” Benjamin said reflectively. “It happened eight years ago.” He sighed. “I was but nine years old.”

  Something in Benjamin’s eyes made Eliza look away. She lay back and looked up into the sky. Someone tossed a last piece of wood onto the fire, making sparks rise and spiral toward the stars above until they winked out, spent.

  “Henry and I were out riding that day,” Benjamin said. “I should have been studying with a riding master by then; all of the others had started by age six. But she—” Benjamin paused, and said carefully,

  “Our father’s wife told Father a riding master’s wages would be wasted on us. We were stubborn, she told him, and lazy, and refused our lessons. It wasn’t true, of course. But all the same, Father believed her and the riding master was sent away.

  “Finally, Henry took pity on me and offered to teach me. We had been working together for most of the morning in the courtyard. I remember my despair at my own clumsy seat, for I was afraid of the horse at first, and it didn’t come naturally to me at all. But Henry was very patient. He persuaded one of Father’s men to ride outside the gate with us—”

  “Was it Robert Owen?” Eliza interrupted.

  “Aye,” Benjamin answered, surprised. “Do you remember him?”

  “Yes,” said Eliza thoughtfully. “Yes. I do.”

  “We had reached the edge of a field—” Benjamin stopped, and then continued more slowly as the scene played out in his memory. “Henry had just pulled on his reins, and was turning to tell me something, when suddenly he gave a cry and doubled over in his saddle. I felt it, too, a moment later.”

  Even without seeing his expression, Eliza could hear in his voice the memory of mingled bewilderment and fear. “Felt it—paugh! It... exploded within me, like a ravaging fire. It seized my bones, wrenching my fingers and toes out to an impossible length, and compressing my skull until I felt my head begin to shrink

  . I heard all the bones in my neck and back popping, and my shoulders—and my feet— ah, sweet Jesu!”

  His voice cracked.

  Eliza reached out blindly toward him and seized his hand, which clenched into a fist under her fingers. She could hear his harsh breathing over the murmur of the waves.

  “I tried to cry out, too, but I couldn’t,” Benjamin continued, his voice trembling. “I could not see Henry, or aught else, only a blinding white light. My skin—the feathers were erupting over my entire body. I lost all sense of the horse beneath me, and I felt a confusion of sound and motion, as if a fierce wind had seized me and dragged me from a cliff. I was terrified—” He stopped himself abruptly and intertwined his fingers with hers. “Your pardon, sister—I little thought ‘twould be so difficult a tale to tell after so long. But then, I’ve never told it to anyone before now.” He lay back again and turned his face up to the sky. “There was no one to hear it.”

  A tear slipped down Eliza’s cheek, trickling toward her ear, and she squeezed his hand.

  “When I came to myself again, I was flying!” Benjamin laughed softly, with a note of remembered wonder. “Flying through the air, in an utterly strange body. But it was my body, and I knew how to use it. I knew how to fly—how to spread my feathers to search for updrafts, how to wheel and dive, and how to pound the winds with my wings to gain altitude. The field, the hall, the park and the pastures surrounding it—all the dear familiar landmarks I had known all my life dwindled away beneath me till they were but wee shapes and dappled colors.” He paused, remembering that first incredible sight of the fields under his wings like a patched gypsy’s coat spread out in the sun to dry, the river flashing through them like a curving seam of silver thread.

  “A swan flew beside me, and I could see others, flying up from the grounds below. I couldn’t think, the way I do when I am human, but somehow I knew that we belonged together, those other swans and I. We were simply a muddled group at first, flailing away at one another in panic. But we sorted ourselves out into a flock eventually and flew away into the west.

  “I do not remember very much about that first day. None of us do. We must have traveled quite a distance from our home, and of course, we weren’t accustomed to flying. Long before sunset, we had landed on a lake to rest and swim in the shallows. I thank God for that, for when the sun slipped below the horizon, we became men again.” Unexpectedly, Benjamin laughed. “I suddenly came to myself flailing around in mucky water. Fortunately, I was near enough to the shore that I could stand up on the lake bottom. Stephen was next to me; I remember him staggering there with the water streaming down his face, picking water weeds out of his hair with a dazed look on his face. Geoffrey and Edward had to rescue Charles, who had been swimming in deeper water when he transformed back.

  “Somehow we dragged one another out of the water. And once we had collapsed onto the shore, we whooped and pounded one another on the back, so relieved we were to be human again. We didn’t understand at first, you see.” Bitterness made his throat swell. “All we knew was that we had all been changed into swans at the same instant. Even if the spell was over, we were leagues from our home, utterly lost. We had no fire, and so we all huddled together, meaning to sleep as best we could and try to find our way back in the morning.

  “The day might have been a blur, but that night I will never forget. The rocks chafed underneath us, and the insects bit. We were all cold and hungry and frightened. I finally slept a little, curled up between Henry and Stephen—but something caused us all to start awake again just before dawn. It was the magic beginning to steal over us again.” A harsh edge crept into Benjamin’s voice. “After eight years, we have become expertly attuned to the rising and setting of the sun, even when ‘tis entirely hidden by clouds. We had an instant of realization before the spell took us and changed us again. The pain was not as great the second time. But in that moment, we began to understand what our fates would be.”

  Benjamin fished a pebble out from underneath his back and tossed it aside. “We are swans by day, and men by night. Yet to say it so simply does not even begin to convey the cunning, the ... the viciousness of the Countess’s malice. Every day, our minds are blunted and shadowed by magic, by our natures as mute animals. How far did I fly today? How many weeds and snails did I eat? Did I spend many hours preening myself?” In the darkness, he shrugged. “I could not tell you surely. Our days pass, one by one, year upon weary year, as if in a strange mist. Only at night can we think about what we have lost, forever estranged from our own kind.

  “Think of it, Eliza. For eight years, I have not even been able to warm my hands in the sun. I have not looked upon my father’s face, nor the faces of anyone else but my brothers. We have avoided all sight of men ever since Edward’s injury. Bitterest of all, we cannot come to the Lord’s table to receive His body and blood, or hear His word preached to the congregation.”

  “But what can bar you?” Eliza faltered. “There are evening services. I know you fear the treason charges, but surely after eight years few could recognize you—” “No!” He sighed in frustration. “You do not understand.” “Then help me,” she begged. “Help me understand, Benjamin.”

  A moment. Then, softly, “We are too ashamed.” “Ashamed?” She frowned, puzzled. “But why?”

  Benjamin wavered, torn between the desire to unburden his heart and the habits of long silence. The sea waves rose and fell, rose and fell, hissing gently as they withdrew from the sand. Around them, the others had all fallen silent. One or two were asleep, but the rest were listening. The fire had burned low, and Benjamin could see only the dim outline of Eliza’s profile in the friendly darkness. Somehow, the shadows obscuring her face gave him the courage to continue.

  “We kept watch over you, you know.
We didn’t dare approach you as men, for fear we might somehow endanger you with the Countess. But we did fly past your foster home to see you.” “Truly?”

  she answered, touched.

  “We never saw you with any young man, and we wondered. .. are you a maiden still, Eliza?”

  She raised an eyebrow, surprised, and was grateful the darkness hid her blush. “I never was a lover yet.”

  “Is it wrong to ask?” he asked ingenuously. “I know little of the ways between men and women. I was so young, and there has never been opportunity.... I have spent almost as many years caught in this web of sorcery as I did as a human boy. Sometimes I think, if the spell were broken, I would not even know anymore what my true state should be, a swan or a man. I do not think I would know how to be a man. Simply a man.”

  He sighed. “Well,” he continued, his voice low, aware of the ears of others, listening around them. “I spoke of shame. You see, when the magic comes to take us ... I think it is what it must be like to be imprisoned in the grip of... of a merciless ravisher. Imagine it if you can, Eliza—being held captive, in the power of a faceless thing that creeps to you at every dawn to take you, to use you. Struggle hard as you will, you cannot resist it, and you cannot escape.” At the sound of his ragged breathing in her ear, Eliza felt her flesh crawl. “When it releases you again at sunset, all you feel at first is relief at your freedom. Yet you know it will steal to you at dawn again. And you will suffer that humiliation, that” —his voice dropped to a growling croon— “that... debasement all over again.

  “Imagine what it is to have everyone you have ever trusted turn his face from you. The only ones who understand, your only company, are your fellow prisoners, who suffer as you do. Search your heart as you might, you don’t know why it happens, what you have ever done to deserve it. You don’t know if your ravisher understands or even cares how your soul writhes as its touch invades you, defiles you. All you know for certain is that it will return to possess you again. And again, and again. Until you had liefer die, if only to end it!