The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  “There are eleven of us; James is nearing forty. Most of us should have married and begun families of our own. James was already betrothed, you know, to Alice Rutland. He never speaks of her anymore, but I know he sometimes dared to fly to the home where she lived, until she married another. Losing her was the greatest part of his pain. Eleven of us. Think of how many grandchildren Father should have dandled on his knee by now! And yet, if the spell is never broken, our family line ends with us. No wives, no children, just eleven of us, living in the wilderness, growing older and older alone. One by one, we will perish—who knows? By accident, by musket ball, through cold or hunger in wintertime. We will go to our unmarked graves—if we even have graves—unwept for by anyone but one another.”

  She would weep for them, Eliza’s heart cried. She was weeping now, but the tears ran too quickly even to allow her to speak.

  “I think sometimes of what it will be like for the last one of us. I am the youngest. Very likely it may be me. Well. Now you know. Tell me then, sister,” Benjamin said in the bleakest voice imaginable, “how can we come to God with this accursed taint upon our souls?”

  The sound of her quiet weeping finally reached him. Some of the dark shapes around them stirred, lifting their heads in concern. “Oh, forgive me,” Benjamin exclaimed, turning toward her, instantly contrite.

  “Forgive my wretched tongue, Eliza. What I said should have been left unspoken; ‘tis not fit for you to hear.”

  “No!” she said, seizing his hands. “Only do not say God has turned His face from you, for did He not lead me to you? Believe it, Benjamin.” She squeezed his hands, trying to will her conviction into him through the sheer force of her touch.

  “If there is any way to break this curse, I will find it. I swear it to you. And I will never rest until you are safe and wholly free again.”

  He bowed his head to kiss her hands, holding his. “You still wish to come with us, knowing all this?”

  “With all my heart, I do.”

  The brothers awoke shortly before dawn, as usual. They gathered around the net where Eliza still slept, her hand tucked up under her cheek like a child’s. Her other hand still held the feather bundle she had made. Benjamin twitched it from her slack grasp and gently tied the ends of the braided hair around her slender neck, smoothing it so that the feathers lay between her breasts.

  “Shall we wake her, before ... ?” Frederick said doubtfully, looking down at her. James considered and shook his head. He knew it was cowardly, but deep down, he did not relish the idea of her watching during the morning change, and he suspected the others felt the same. “No. But there is more we can do to prepare. Is her water bottle full? Then bring those berry branches, and we will lash them to the net.”

  “Here are the rest of the willow withies,” Robert offered. “Lash them on, too, and they can be used for repairs if the net should burst a hole.”

  They worked quickly as the pearly sky grew lighter and the horizon in the east brightened to gold. And then they simply stood, waiting, their breath quickening, faces turned toward the east like morning flowers opening.

  As the first rays of the sun fell upon them, the magic transformed them with its familiar ruthless swiftness. Their clothes fell, empty, to the sand, and then melted away into nothingness like fairy gold. As the last flare of power died, the swans seized the loops at the edges of the net in their beaks and leaped skyward, beating their newly erupted wings against the damp touch of the dawn air. Eliza came awake with a start, her heart hammering. The wind rushing in her face made her hair whip and billow out behind her, like a silk banner. She seized the webbing of the net with all her strength and gasped as she looked around— and down.

  They flew swiftly through the early morning chill, the earth shrouded in curling mists beneath them. The swans flew on either side of her, their necks stretched out full length, feathers fluttering at the tips as their wings pumped rhythmically, their feet tucked up neatly underneath. The rush of air made their pinions vibrate with a peculiar, throbbing hum. As the rising sun slowly turned the pale, pearly gray light to a warm yellow, the swan flying directly to her right caught and held her eye with an inscrutable, silent stare. Eliza shut her eyes in terror and remained that way for many long minutes. But her brothers flew calmly and the net moved through the air steadily, without threatening to tumble her out of it. Eventually, her curiosity overcame her, and she ventured to open one eye a slit and look down. The mists were beginning to lift, and she could see now that they were following the line of the coast. She stared in wonder at the delicate scalloped lines of waves, breaking against the shore. Farther in, to the east, she caught glimpses of tiny houses and towns nestled in among the trees, and rivers, winking at her in the ever-changing light. To her left, far, far below, she saw a ship. Its miniature white sails made it look like a distant seagull, skimming and dipping over the waves.

  Something was tickling the back of her ear, and she turned her head to see several branches of blackberries lying beside her on the net. Her youngest brother flew directly above her, and she smiled up at him as she ate the berries, grateful for her breakfast.

  The swans continued to rise until they were flying level with the clouds. One huge one, puffy and white, floated to one side, looking as vast as a mountain, and Eliza marveled to see her own shadow upon it, and those of the eleven swans, looking gigantic in size. She turned her head and gasped again to see a cloud hurrying toward them. Even as she braced herself, the swans entered it in a rush, and she laughed at her own fears, for the cloud was simply soft and damp and translucent, like fog upon a hilltop. She still could make out her brothers flying beside her, dimly, their outlines blurred into misty softness. When they shot out of the cloud into the sunlight again, infinitesimal beads of water trickled down the fringe of hair fluttering above her eyes, like dew upon a spiderweb.

  Onward through the whole day they flew, like a winged arrow. The land dwindled behind them to a shadowy smudge and then dropped below the curve of the horizon, leaving nothing but the sea beneath them. As Benjamin flew above to shade her, Eliza drowsed, watching the dark green waves underneath her through hooded eyes. The caps of foam on them looked like millions of swans swimming on the water. Eventually, she turned her head to scan the sky again. A huge bank of clouds floated before them, and to her tired eyes’ fancy, they seemed to form themselves into a range of snow-covered mountains. She wondered for a moment whether it was land she saw—one part in the center even looked like a castle, piled high with turrets and columns. She blinked, and the cloud was merely a cloud again. She frowned, wondering.

  More hours passed, and Eliza began to grow anxious. The swans were laboring hard, and yet there was still no sign of land, and the sun was sinking lower and lower. As they flew back below the level of the clouds, the weather began to grow sullen and then threatening. Gusts of wind battered them, forcing the swans to fight to keep the net level. In the distance, Eliza could see a curtain of rain falling into the ocean. Lightning burst forth from a dark mass of clouds, flash after flash, like a darting needle in a clever seamstress’s hand.

  She searched the sea with all her might as the cold finger of fear grew, but still saw no sign of land. Nell’s favorite psalm came to her again. “In Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust,” she whispered, her hands clenching the webbing of the net spasmodically. “Let me never be ashamed: deliver me in Thy righteousness. Bow down Thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be Thou my strong rock, for an house of defense to save me. For Thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for Thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.” She shut her eyes and prayed desperately, and then opened them again and cried out, for land was in sight.

  But it was still much too far away.

  The sun was touching the horizon. Eliza stared at it, sweating despite the cold, her eyes wide and dilated with fear. And then the swans darted down so swiftly that Eliza froze in terror, believing that they were falling. The next verse of the psalm flashed through her mind�
� Into Thine hand I commit my spirit

  —and then she saw the tiny speck in the foaming sea below. She sat bolt upright in the net. “My rock and my fortress!” she cried out above the storm. “Do you see it? There it is!”

  Indeed the swans saw it, and were flying toward it with the end of their strength. The sun was more than halfway below the horizon as they plummeted toward the rock. At the moment they fell upon it, the last ray of light shone only like a star and then disappeared, extinguished like the last spark in a piece of burned paper. Eliza collapsed onto the cold, wet stone as her brothers turned back into their own forms with a flash of brilliant light.

  A wave crashed against the rock just below their feet, and they all choked and sputtered in shock from the cold of the spray. “Hold the net fast,” James shouted in a strangled voice over the roar of the thunder. “Don’t let the waves carry it away!”

  Geoffrey, Robert, and Hugh pounced on the net and sat upon it. Everyone scrambled to secure their hold, for the rock was barely large enough for them all to stand upon it. Laughing and crying, Eliza fell upon Benjamin’s neck. “Ha! Are we all safe?”

  “As safe as in God’s own pocket, dear sister. As you knew we would be.” She could feel him trembling with exhaustion in her arms. She pressed her cheek against his, overcome with thankfulness, and let the tears fall freely. In the rain, no one could see them, after all.

  Chapter Twelve

  I am not trying to romanticize that time into some cornucopia of sexual plenty. Its densities, its barenesses, its intensities both of guilt and of pleasure, of censure and of blindness, both Jot those who wanted a multiplicity of sexual options and for those who wanted clear restrictions placed on those options, were grounded on a nearly absolute sanctioned public silence. . . .

  —SAMUEL R. DELANY, THE MOTION OF LIGHT IN WATER

  February brought a thaw to the city. The blackened piles of snow melted just enough to uncover a jumble of cans, scraps of dirty paper, and cigarette butts. Then the weather froze again. Stripped of Christmas decorations, the streets looked even grimier than usual. Even the corner drug dealers seemed depressed.

  Business started slacking off at the photo shop once the holiday rush was over. “And that means Rick has too much time on his hands,” Tony groused to Elias one morning as they hung twinchecks on the film coming out of the processor. “He gets like this every February after doing the books. Money always comes in slow after Christmas, and the recession’s making it worse. The month’s short for bringing in cash to cover expenses, anyway. Just watch; he’s gonna get a bug up his butt about how the bills ain’t getting paid. Since he can’t do anything about that, he’s gonna start rearranging everything in the shop. And breathing down our necks.”

  Tony, on the other hand, handled February by turning up his country radio station in the darkroom and becoming even surlier than usual. Both symptoms were hard to take.

  Nothing seemed to go right on one particular day. A large order came back from a custom framing house with the wrong color matting; Elias had written up the order incorrectly. “Of course we’ll pay to have the mistake corrected,” Rick assured the customer; Elias could see by the set of his shoulders how expensive correcting that mistake was going to be.

  Then a batch of film came out of the processor inexplicably ruined: orange and contrastless. Rick groaned when Elias showed it to him. “Oh, no. That’s the old Kodachrome X crap; it’s supposed to be processed in the C-22 chemistry. Customer must have bought a whole bunch of it and bulk-loaded his own cassettes.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Elias said, stricken.

  Rick shook his head. “Not your fault. If he doesn’t mark the cassettes right, how’re you supposed to know? Kodak stopped making that stuff a few years ago when they switched to VPS and Kodacolor n, and everything runs in C-41 chemistry now.” He sighed. “I hope the guy didn’t want those pictures real bad.”

  “We can’t do anything to fix them?”

  “Well, we can’t. Maybe a pricey custom house can save ‘em. If he takes out a second mortgage.”

  Then an argument erupted when Rick discovered and confiscated a space heater Tony had snuck into the small darkroom.

  “Aw, shit, Rick, I’m freezing my ass off in there.”

  “I don’t care if it’s as cold as your ex-wife’s tits. The glow coming off that thing throws the color out of balance. You’ve wrecked every job you’ve printed in there this morning.”

  Rick turned his sights on Elias as Tony swore again under his breath and stomped off. “Did you change the stabilizer solution?” he growled.

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Okay, then. You need to take your break now. Be back in an hour.”

  Glad to escape, Elias retrieved his bag lunch and left the shop. He took a few steps in the direction of Central Park and then hesitated. Sitting on a cold park bench, looking at a frozen pond, and feeling the wind send icy fingers down the back of his jacket didn’t seem appealing. He felt restless, and so, after eating his sandwich, he decided to walk down Madison Avenue to get some exercise. The buildings lining the street looked flat and featureless, and sported the names of big corporations: General Motors, IBM, AT&T. The crowd was nattily dressed and in a hurry. Women strode by him, swinging their narrow briefcases, their heels ringing sharply on the concrete. Perfume drifted in their wake, mingling with the smell of auto exhaust.

  The address on one building snagged a memory: Jerry Simms worked there, Sean had mentioned once. Impulsively, Elias ducked inside, scanned the lobby listing, and went to find an elevator. When the elevator doors opened on the sixteenth floor, disgorging him into an oak-paneled lobby with deep leather chairs, he wondered with a faint twinge of alarm whether coming up here was really a good idea. Warily, he eyed the flower arrangement on the receptionist’s desk. It had probably cost the equivalent of a week’s worth of his salary. The receptionist looked like the same type of woman as those who wore evening makeup behind the cosmetic counters in department stores, the kind Sean called “well shellacked.”

  “May I help you?” she said in a discouraging sort of tone that suggested she rather doubted she could.

  “I wondered if Jerry Simms might be in. Um, I’m Elias Latham, a friend of his. I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping he might be available.”

  “Please have a seat, Mr. Latham. I’ll let Mr. Simms know you’re here.” She turned to her phone console, and Elias obediently went over to perch gingerly on the edge of a leather wing chair. It looked as though it should have had a sherry cart pulled up next to it.

  In a few moments, Jerry came out into the lobby. “Elias,” he said in a tone of surprise and came forward, hand outstretched.

  “Hullo, Jerry,” Elias replied, rising to shake it. “I just wanted to stop by and see how you’ve been doing, since the funeral and everything.”

  Jerry’s face assumed a frozen blank look, and his eyes darted involuntarily to the receptionist. Elias, seeing this, uneasily followed his gaze. The receptionist was answering the phone.

  “I’m sorry, Jerry,” he said humbly. “Maybe I should have called first.”

  “No,” Jerry said automatically. After a moment, he seemed to give himself a mental shake and realize he really meant it. He smiled. “No, I’m glad you stopped by. Are you on your lunch break?”

  Elias nodded.

  “Dorothea,” Jerry said to the receptionist, “tell Kimberly I’ve stepped out of the office for lunch.” He fetched a topcoat from a discreetly disguised closet in the corner, and they headed for the elevator together.

  When they stepped inside and the door had closed behind them, Elias said, “What happened just now—I mean, did I say something wrong?”

  Jerry hesitated and then smiled. It was a tight smile, more like a nervous tic. “It’s okay. It’s just that... I’m not out at work, you see.”

  “You’re not—? God, I’m sorry, Jerry. You don’t, uh, think what I said—”

  “Dorothea wa
s answering the phone; I don’t think she heard anything, anyway.”

  They rode in silence until they arrived at the first floor. “Is Manny’s okay with you?” Jerry said as the doors opened again.

  “Um, sure. That is, I’ve never been there. Actually, I’ve already eaten—”

  “Oh, but you’ll join me, won’t you? Or do you have to get back right away?”

  Elias glanced at him, and the anxiously wistful look on Jerry’s face startled him. “I’ve got time,” he said. “I could use a cup of soup or something, I guess.”

  Manny’s was apparently a place where ad executives and attorneys with lavish expense accounts met for business lunches. The walls were a cool jade, hung with botanical prints, and the dark green leather banquettes were large, with screens between them, keeping conversations private. A cup of soup there cost more than Elias had paid for a meal in a month. Elias selected the clam chowder. Jerry ordered a Caesar salad, picked out the anchovies, and spent the rest of the meal shoving the lettuce around the plate with his fork.

  “So nobody at your office knows about Rafe?” Elias ventured.

  Jerry shook his head. “No. I buried him, and that night I flew to Houston for a three-day deposition.”

  “My god. How—” Elias stopped, not certain what he wanted to ask. How can you stand it? Or How can you be so callous?

  “I’m not saying I was worth a damn. Opposing counsel thought I had stomach flu ‘cause I kept asking for breaks to go to the can. I’d shut the door to the stall and just...” Jerry’s mouth quirked.

  “Well.” He took a sip from his water glass. “But I kept our witness from blowing up the case, and nobody was the wiser.”

  There didn’t seem to be any adequate answer to that. “How are you doing now?” Elias asked gently. Jerry’s hand clenched his fork, hard, and for a brief, horrible moment, Elias was afraid he was going to break down into tears. “Sometimes work’s the only thing that keeps me going. It’s kind of like a refuge, because no one knows there. I’m just the same guy to everyone in the office; I can almost pretend it didn’t happen. But then I get mad at myself for even thinking that. I mean, I cared about Rafe.”