The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

The memory of that look in their eyes made her thoughtful as she watched them drink from the stream and then turn away to clamber over rocks and plunge into the fringe of the woods to scout. Several nights in their company had made much about their temperament clear to her. They were tender and teasing with her, and sometimes merry, sometimes quarrelsome with one another, like any other group of brothers. She admired the dignity they displayed despite their ordeal, a certain serenity and steadiness of spirit. Since the first night she had joined them and talked with Benjamin, none of them had spoken to her about the spell again. But underneath all she sensed a sadness, almost a despondency, painful as a raw wound.

  Shortly, a shout floated toward her from above the beach. “Come and see, Eliza,” Geoffrey said excitedly, reappearing upon the beach. “We have found a fine bedchamber for you.”

  Eliza followed him through the deepening twilight, edging her way through the thick forest undergrowth and up a slope to a site overlooking the bay. Here, a large rock dominated a clearing before the mouth of a cave. Creepers overhung the mouth of the grotto, like a fine veil. Inside, dry sand covered the cave floor. “Why, this is wonderful, Geoffrey!” she exclaimed. “We may all sleep comfortably here.”

  In the midst of everyone’s praise of Geoffrey’s find, Benjamin interrupted with sharp concern: “Look you, Eliza is shivering.”

  “Oh! It is nothing, only that my skirt is wet.”

  “We must gather wood so Hugh may start a fire.”

  They did so, and soon Hugh had a crackling blaze going on the rock before the cave. “You must sup on mussels again tonight,” James told Eliza apologetically, offering her some he had gathered as they all came to sit around the fire. “I fear they will pall upon you soon.”

  “I am thankful to have them,” Eliza said honestly, while thinking to herself that she was even more thankful that she did not need to make water weeds her dinner.

  “We must set out some rabbit snares tonight,” Stephen said.

  “I do not know how familiar the plants will be here,” Eliza said, “but I can forage tomorrow and try to find some berries or salad herbs or perhaps tubers we might eat.”

  “And our task it will be to scout,” James declared. He frowned at the darkness around them. “I hope few people live near this place, since this land is thinly settled, yet we must be sure.”

  Eliza sighed, thinking wistfully that she would not mind having other people near.

  “I fear it may be lonely for you, Eliza,” Benjamin said tentatively, echoing her thoughts. “Particularly during the days. I hope ... I hope you will not regret that you have come with us.”

  Eliza blinked and smiled at him. “Why, I may look forward to your company in the evenings.” She drew a deep breath. “And it need not be for long, if only I can find a way to break the spell—”

  “Do not tease yourself thinking of that,” Frederick said, a bit more sharply than he intended. He paused, and then continued in a tone of flat finality. “The spell cannot be broken.”

  Eliza stared at him. “Know you this for a certainty?”

  Frederick hesitated. “Aye! Nay ... it has been so long. Everything we tried failed.”

  “What did you try?”

  “We did not try anything,” Charles said with a reproving glance at Frederick. “How could we hope to brew a simple or make a charm to defeat this? What do we know of magical arts, compared to the Countess?”

  “I fear I must be as ignorant as you,” Eliza admitted.

  “We did try prayer,” Frederick snapped, clenching a fist. “The last hope of the desperate. It failed us. God failed us. And we have been left with no hope at all.”

  Shocked, Eliza looked around the circle, but although the other brothers shifted uneasily, none spoke up to contradict Frederick. And in that silence, she felt the burden of all the years of despair, of desperation and hopelessness, her brothers had endured, like a weight threatening to crack her heart. “I do not know how to answer you,” she said finally when she could trust herself to speak calmly. “Except to say that if there is no hope, I must persevere to find a way to break the spell without it. And I shall, Frederick, believe me, for have I not sworn never to rest until you are free?”

  “You have more faith than I do, sister,” Frederick said soberly, a little ashamed of his outburst.

  “Then let it give you strength as it does me,” she replied and rose. “I will go to bed now.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Heaven grant that I may dream how to save you.”

  As she lay down in the cave in preparation for sleep, she thought again of the woman she had seen on the moors, who had guided her to her brothers. Surely that had been an answer to her prayer, she thought hopefully. “Merciful Father,” she whispered, “Thou hast sent me help before, now in Your mercy, send it again! It cannot be Thy will that they should suffer so. Please, dear Father, send me a messenger again; show me the way to free them.” In the midst of these meditations she fell asleep. For a time she slept without stirring, and then a vivid dream came to her.

  She seemed to be flying weightlessly, high through misty air toward the cloudy palace she had seen on their journey over the ocean. The radiant figure of a fairy came forth through the cloud portals to meet her. Eliza shrank back in awe and a little fear, for the fairy’s face shone like a star, and the gaze of her gray eyes seemed to delve to the innermost secret places of Eliza’s soul—and yet those eyes looked familiar, too. Eliza had seen them in the face of the old woman on the moor, who had given her berries and told her of the eleven swans swimming nearby.

  “Your brothers can be released,” the fairy told her. “But only if you have courage and perseverance. Water is softer than your own hand, and yet it polishes stones into shapes; it feels no pain as your fingers would feel. It has no soul, and cannot suffer such agony and torment as you will have to endure.

  “Do you see this?” The fairy held up something like a green wand. “It is a stinging nettle. You will find quantities of the same sort growing around the cave where you sleep. No others will be of any use to you unless they grow upon graves in the churchyard. These you must gather, even though they burn your hands with blisters. Break them into pieces with your bare hands and feet, and they will become flax, which you must spin and fashion into eleven coats with long sleeves. If these are then thrown over the eleven swans, the spell will be broken.”

  The fairy held up a finger in warning, even as Eliza clasped her hands together in joy. “But you must remember this,” the fairy continued, her glowing face grave. “From the moment you begin your task until it is finished, even if it should occupy years of your life, you must not speak. The first word you utter will pierce through the hearts of your brothers like a dagger. Their lives hang upon your tongue. Remember all I have told you.” And as her voice faded away to a whisper, she reached out to touch Eliza’s hand lightly with the nettle.

  A searing sensation flared, enveloping Eliza in a nimbus of pain. She awoke with a gasp and lifted her head in confusion, her heart pounding. Sunlight filtered through the curtain of creepers over the mouth of the cave. Her brothers had already left for the day, leaving her alone. Eliza turned her head—and saw, lying next to her on the floor of the cave, a nettle like the one she had seen in her dream. With a cry, she sat up and hugged herself with delight. She offered up a heartfelt prayer of thanks, scrambled to her feet, and left the cave.

  Eagerly, she paced the circumference of the clearing at the cave’s mouth, and within a few moments found a thick stand of tall nettle plants, just as the fairy had promised her. Without hesitation, Eliza plunged her hand into their midst and seized a nettle stalk. At the first touch of the bristly hairs covering it against her skin, she sucked in a breath, biting her lip to choke back a cry, and hot tears rushed to her eyes at the sting. But she grasped it firmly and pulled, breaking off the stalk in her hand, and reached for another. Soon, a great heap of nettles lay at her feet. Ignoring the blisters beginning to rise on her skin, she s
tripped off the serrated leaves and trod the stems underfoot on the rock before the cave. The stalks twisted and split under her feet, coating them with green juice. The nettle sting hurt her feet, too, although walking barefoot had toughened her soles. But she fixed her thoughts firmly on her brothers to give herself courage, and began pulling out the tough fibers from the core of the nettle stems. She had a good quantity of flax broken by the time her brothers returned that evening. Henry, Charles, and Michael came in sight first, climbing up the hill from the water’s edge, and they hailed her as soon as they saw her.

  “Eliza!”

  “Good evening to you, sister.”

  “Have you enjoyed this day’s fair weather?”

  Eliza turned a smiling face toward them and set her work aside. She longed to speak, to tell them what her dream had revealed to her, but mindful of the fairy’s warning, she remained silent.

  “You certainly have been busy foraging,” Charles said, smiling down at her as he walked up. “What is this—ouch!” Snatching back a hand that had reached out to touch a nettle, he put his finger in his mouth to soothe the hurt and stared at her, wide-eyed. “What are those things for? They can’t be good to eat!”

  “Look at her hands!” Michael exclaimed, appalled. “Eliza—what are you doing?”

  Eliza hesitated and then placed one of her swollen hands over her mouth and shook her head. Henry knelt beside her and took one of her hands in his own to examine it. “God’s blood, Eliza,” he muttered, and then placed a hand on her cheek and looked deeply into her eyes. “Can you not speak, my dear?”

  She shook her head again, and winced as he squeezed her fingers in agitation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stricken.

  “James!” Michael shouted, his voice rising in alarm. “Edward, Stephen, everyone, make haste! Come quickly!”

  Soon, all the brothers were gathered around. Henry explained the situation in a few words, and they all stared at Eliza in fearful perplexity.

  “Is it—” Stephen stopped and swallowed. “Could it be some new sorcery done by the Countess?”

  “Surely her magic cannot reach across the ocean!” Geoffrey began in horror, but Eliza was shaking her head again. She held up for them to see some of the fibers she had pulled from one of the stalks that afternoon. With gestures, she tried to make them understand her purpose, but they simply shook their heads, as puzzled and alarmed as ever. She blew out a breath in frustrated chagrin, reflecting ruefully that if she had only taken a moment to think before seizing her first nettle, it might have occurred to her to wait to inform her brothers that night of what she intended to do, before beginning her task.

  “Oh, your poor fingers, Eliza!” Benjamin exclaimed, falling to his knees before her. With infinite gentleness, he took her hands in his own. “Are you . .. Have you found some way .. . Are you doing this for us?”

  Her face lit up in a radiant smile, and she nodded at him, beaming. The brothers stared at one another, and then back at her.

  “All this pain ... is for us?” Benjamin said in a choked voice. He brought her hands up and gently pressed them against his lips. His tears fell upon her skin, and it seemed to Eliza that where his tears fell, the pain in her hands ceased.

  The next day, Eliza took some of the broken nettle stalks she had soaked overnight and began picking some of the fibers out of the inner pulp experimentally. The fibers pulled free much more easily than she had expected. She stared down in wonderment at them, curling suggestively around her fingers. Although she had never worked with nettles before, Eliza was very familiar with the steps necessary to harvest and prepare linen flax, and she knew it to be a long, wearisome process. Linen flax had to be dried in the sun and then left to rot in running water for several days. After more drying, the stalks had to be beaten with the flax brake and scutched with a swingling knife, to separate out the plant material from the fibers. Next came the hackling, or combing of the fibers, and then spreading and drawing, when the fibers were sorted according to fineness—in all, twenty operations were necessary to prepare linen flax for the spinning wheel.

  She would have expected nettle flax to require similar preparation. But now, when she twisted the fibers she had culled, the nettle sap seared her skin, making her hands burn and throb, but the strength of the crude thread held when she tested it with a hard tug.

  It was impossible, she realized, sitting back and staring at the tow thread in her hand. Impossible, and yet it was happening.... It occurred to her that perhaps this was why the fairy had said the only nettles to be used were those growing by the cave and in the graveyard. They were the only ones that would allow her to prepare the thread so quickly.

  Trying to work with the fibers still full of sap would make the job all the more painful, but after all, Eliza reflected, she did not have time to wait for the work not to hurt. If the coats could be prepared all the more quickly, so much the better for her brothers. Looking around, she spied an apple tree at one side of the clearing, which suddenly gave her an idea.

  With mounting excitement, she notched a stick at one end with a sharp stone and then picked an apple from the tree and jammed the stick through the core. Now she had a crude drop spindle. She started the thread by twisting some of the fiber with her hands and tying it to the part of the stick that emerged at the apple’s bottom. Then she drew the twisted fibers up over the apple’s side and fixed them around the notch at the top of the stick with a loop. She set the apple spinning. As she let the spindle drop, she added more fibers to the end of the thread just above the stick’s notch. The apple’s rotation twisted the fibers into a continuous thread. When the spindle touched the ground, she drew it up, undid the loop from the notch, and wound the thread around the stick just above the apple. Refastening the thread’s end to the notch, she reached for another handful of fiber and began again. In this way, she worked all morning and well into the afternoon, preparing and spinning a coarse tow thread. As she spun, she considered how the coats might be fashioned. After some thought, she got up and found two young saplings growing closely together. She tied an end of thread to one of the saplings, then wound it tautly around both trees, setting each loop of thread just above the previous one, up the length of the trunks. When the loops set on the trees were half the length of a man’s body, she broke the thread and tied it off. Taking a second length of thread, Eliza wove it up and down through the loops in the opposite direction to fashion a tube of flax. It would work, she thought in satisfaction as she pulled the thread tightly. She could make sleeves the same way, using sticks set at a narrower distance apart, and then baste them to the body of the coat.

  When her brothers returned that night, they were grieved to find her still silent, but she showed them a smiling face, cheered by the thought that she might soon be able to free them. On the following morning, after transforming back into swans, the brothers rose in flight from the small, secluded bay where they had taken shelter with Eliza and circled away toward the west. Their course took them over the roofs of a town lying only a few miles inland. One of the houses they flew over belonged to the Reverend William Avery, who was just sitting down at his writing desk that morning, with an inward sigh, to craft his Sabbath-day sermon. He found concentration difficult, for the day had dawned fine and clear, and an eddy of air, laden with the luxurious scents of summer, crept underneath the window sash to slyly tickle his long nose. In comparison, he reflected ruefully, the apostle Paul had never before seemed quite so dry and dusty. As he reached for one of his precious sheets of paper and a pen, a man appeared on horseback in the lane below. William Avery paused in the act of setting pen to paper and leaned forward with interest, for the man was his neighbor Jonathan Latham. Jonathan was a handsome man in his early twenties, with carelessly cut dark hair that tumbled haphazardly around the collar of his shirt. He certainly had managed to rivet the fascinated attention of almost every maiden in the town. Although he was one of the youngest county magistrates in the history of the colony, n
o one could say that he did not deserve the honor. He had a keen intellect, and an unpretentious self-confidence and ease of manner with his fellow men that the minister uneasily suspected he lacked in comparison.

  “Good morrow, my good Reverend,” Jonathan greeted him cordially. “Have you time enough to bear me company today?”

  “Good morrow, Mr. Latham. Alas, no, for I must prepare my sermon—”

  “Ah, your sermon, of course. What is your text?”

  “It is taken from the seventh chapter of Romans, on the nature of sin and the law. The subject is a difficult one, but I have preached upon the text before, to my previous congregation.”

  “Hmm.” Jonathan’s quick eye noted the minister’s rather wistful air. He cocked his head with an irrepressible twinkle in his eyes. “You might save paper by simply using your former notes rather than rewriting afresh what is no doubt an already admirable homily.”

  The idea, the Reverend reflected, seemed alarmingly tempting. “Did I not know you better, Mr. Latham,” he replied sternly, although in fact he was secretly amused, “I would think you an irreligious man.”

  “Well then, it is my great fortune that you do know me better!”

  The Reverend smiled. “What is your errand that requires my company?”

  “Why, to go hunting with me, and Goodman Hubbard and Goodman North. You have been as busy as myself with the council of safety; your larder must be as bare as mine.”

  William Avery was very gratified by this invitation. He sometimes privately thought it a little odd that he should so treasure any sign of warmth of regard on the part of the younger man. One would think the natural order of things should have dictated instead that Jonathan Latham seek favor from him, a clergyman and community leader. But Jonathan, it seemed to William, did not want his approbation, but instead, even more flatteringly, his friendship. And William Avery, who had left his previous congregation in a cloud of recriminations and rancor, and knew without a doubt that he had never captured any maiden’s fancy, was grateful for that friendship. He felt comfortable with Jonathan Latham as he did with few others.