Odette

by Jessica Duchen

  ‘I make it my business to know such things.’ Von Rothbart gave her an elegant bow.

  The owl. The ‘advance guard’. Mitzi clutched her head. She’d heard an owl the day before Odette arrived. Was that him too? How did he know? What powers did this demon in her living room really have? Another shell broke apart in her brain.

  ‘It’s logical,’ he declared, apparently reading her mind. ‘If you know the velocity of the wind, the mass and weight of a swan, its aerodynamic potential, its endurance limits and the likely path of travel, then even taking into account the vagaries of journeying through a strange land with unfamiliar air currents, it’s possible to calculate quite quickly where it might come to earth. But as you told Odette, there are plenty of owls in this little country. Don’t beat yourself up over that one.’

  Harry, she realised, might be holding her arm, but had not uttered one word to either the cowering Odette or her enchanter. She had never seen a look like this on his face before: he was as pale as she must be, his eyes wide and watchful – observing, as he always did, but being careful not to show how afraid he felt.

  ‘You think I’m one of you,’ said Rob, who was not Rob, who had never been Rob. ‘You sit there reading your fairy tales, writing articles to attract people to gatherings that make them think they understand “folklore” and “magic”. You think magic belongs to children, because it’s harmless. Can’t you grasp the scale of our reality, Mitzi? You live in a little town among little people, and you think these streets, in this famous university, are old. You don’t understand the first fraction of time, age and space. If you knew how vast and ancient our universe is, how immeasurable the might behind it, your brain would burn up like one of your nice home-made vegetarian pizzas.’

  He crossed the room to her, brushing Harry aside, and took her face gently between his hands, as if it were a sheet of tissue paper that he could crumple at a touch. She stared back, paralysed, words deserting her as he spoke.

  ‘You were so easy to see through, Mitzi. You’re a good person. You lack any semblance of malice. It was so deliciously simple to find him, dispose of him and take his place – and delightfully easy to get into your heart, your head and your bed, or at least to get you into mine. You know, I think you’d have found the real Rob Winter a little less sympatico. No sense of humour, that one. You know these worthy, too-good-to-be-true types. Anyway, what was to stop me – when my swan princess had gone and I had to find her? And now this oafish creature, your brother, has violated her. You are so pathetic, so undeveloped, so numbed by your alcohol, your fashion and your technology, that you can’t see truth when it’s staring straight at you. You don’t know the first thing about nature, or God, or power, or life, or death.

  ‘Can you understand that the substance of your body and the substance of the stars are the same? That all your molecules are held together by the same force that created the earth billions of years ago? You see stars as pretty, twinkling points of light, when in reality, as you know, they are a seething, gaseous, magnificent cosmic fire. We are this substance, Mitzi, we ourselves. Can you conceive of what a human being can do and become, if other humans don’t kill his brain power with too much comfort and too little questioning? Mitzi, Harry, all you have to do to understand is look at me. I have seen it and I have mastered it. What you call magic is nature, as I manipulate it. You call it supernatural. It is not. It is nature unlocked; and I have the keys. But I still need one thing. I need my swan princess back.’

  ‘Like hell you do,’ Harry growled. ‘Just you try taking her away from me.’

  But Odette was still on her knees in the centre of the room, staring askance at Harry, her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Why?’ Mitzi demanded. ‘You’ve been holding her since 1852! Why can’t you let her go?’

  ‘Because, my dear, I don’t want to let her go. Therefore I will not. I love her, you see.’

  Von Rothbart smiled, a smile nothing like Rob’s. In slow motion he let one hand caress the length of Odette’s hair, twisting the locks between his fingers, pulling ever so slightly. She flinched, but did not – perhaps could not – move. ‘Odette is my all, my world, everything I want. Yes, I want her and I will keep her, because it’s the longing for her, the wanting, the desire, that gives me my strength. Mitzi, Harry – do you know the energy of yearning? There’s nothing like it. They say it’s the vilest thing in the world, unrequited love, but my goodness, it gives you impetus. If I had her, if I just took her, and I could, I would stop wanting her – and that’s no good at all. That’s not what she’s for. So here we are, living out our continual cycle of endless yearning. I keep you alive, my angel, and you give me my vital energy. Without each other, we’d be lost.’

  Mitzi, the boundaries of her world splintering, saw Odette’s downcast eyes, helpless, humiliated. She remembered Odette saying her situation was difficult to explain.

  ‘Oh, and Mitzi.’ Triumphant above the shivering Odette, von Rothbart’s eyes blazed across the room. ‘Here’s something your late father should have taught you: never take in a stranger, and never violate the terms of a flat’s lease by letting another person live there without permission. The same goes for “pets and other animals”. Because you could find yourself turfed out. As I’m effectively your current landlord, I can reveal that your lease is terminated as of tonight. Meanwhile, your precious Robert Winter is in the morgue, waiting for those bumbling little policemen to identify him, limb by severed limb – except that they won’t, because he’s not technically missing.’

  Odette rose from her knees and walked to the door without a word.

  ‘Odette,’ gasped Mitzi, with a strength she didn’t know she had, ‘you don’t have to go. You don’t have to believe him.’ Harry plunged across the room to place his substantial frame between Odette and the escape route.

  ‘Nor do you, Mitzi,’ said von Rothbart, ‘but you might have to believe Cygnford Estates when they call you, and Mrs Verjee, and the police, and the hospital that’s tending poor little Caroline. Professor Maggie is an excellent lookout. Obviously. Nice new window there, though. Let’s test it.’

  He pushed up the sash and some whirl of rearrangement in the air flung the three of them to the floor; in place of him, nothing existed except the tawny owl, its feathers the colours of Rob’s sweater, springing out into the night. Clambering to her feet, gasping for breath, Mitzi found herself making for the kitchen and lifting the knife from the chopping board where she had left it. She opened the window wider, hunting the darkened sky for any sign of the creature.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Harry demanded, helping Odette up with one hand, scrabbling for his mobile phone with the other.

  ‘Looking for the owl. What he’s done to us… I’ll kill him with my own hands.’ Mitzi knew, with the last shred of her mind that could remain detached from all this, that she’d felt such a degree of fury and despair once before. She remembered the cool silkiness of the stainless-steel bread knife handle in her fist. Pete had got it away from her, talked her down. Not this time.

  ‘No, Mitzi!’ Odette cried, from the depths of Harry’s embrace. ‘I become swan forever if he is killed.’

  ‘I don’t believe that! You think you’re dependent on him, and he’s as good as said he’s dependent on you. So he’s told you you’ll be a swan forever because that’s his way of stopping you having him killed, by your prince or Harry or me or anybody else. It’s just that you believe it! It’s rubbish. I’m calling his bluff. He’s told me nothing but lies. He’s…’ An image of him in bed flashed through her mind – his eyes closed in ecstasy, shoulders curving above her – moving with him, thinking herself in an earthly heaven, she had given herself, body and soul, to a perverted captor who lived only for his unfulfilled longing for Odette? ‘Oh God,’ she said, her gorge rising, ‘why should anyone believe him now?’

  ‘But spell!’ Odette’s face betrayed exasperation as well as fright. She shook Harry aside – he’d got through and was bellowing
into his phone, ‘Chris, mate – come to Mitzi’s now, we need help…’ Darting to Mitzi, she grasped her arm and tried to prise the knife from her fingers. ‘Mitzi, spell depends on man.’

  Mitzi rounded on her, incandescent. ‘Are you telling me,’ she said, ‘that just because I’m not a man, I can’t help you? Are you saying that friendship isn’t as strong as some idiotic infatuation? You’re my friend, I look after you, you’re my responsibility, which I’ve accepted since you crashed in here, and I love you simply as one human being caring about another. So I shall free you myself. Keep back!’

  In the chestnut tree, the outline of something black and rotund was silhouetted against the bare branches. Its feathers were dappled in reflected light from the window. Its eyes shone straight towards her, deep red, bringing her out in a cold sweat, making her nauseous. She used to dismiss the uncanny as a figment of her imagination. No way, though, could she have imagined this. The creature carried with it an atmosphere she’d never encountered before – she could have described it as a chill from the grave, a glimpse from some distant, hellish realm, but she, Mitzi Fairweather from Dorset and Cygnford, had never before described anything in such terms. Odette stood beside her, transfixed, as if in silent communion with her enchanter. Mitzi’s head was swimming. She breathed deeply, tried to focus, then leaned out of the window, the knife quaking in her fist.

  The tree trunk partially concealed the owl. As she strained to see it, there was an upheaval among the twigs and, spreading its wings, it launched itself into the air. She mustered strength and flung the knife. It dropped into the front garden as the owl disappeared into the night.

  Odette, in a white flash, bolted for the door. Mitzi heard her footsteps tearing down the stairs.

  ‘Harry! Come on,’ Mitzi said.

  ‘What’s she doing? Where are we going?’

  ‘To help Odette, and if you don’t come with me I shall never see you again!’

  Odette was running along Richardson Road, a pale slip of a figure with her head back, scanning the sky. Mitzi searched the dark soil in front of the house for her knife; half concealed by a tree root, it caught the gleam of a streetlight. Her fingers closed around its handle. A hundred yards behind Odette, sprinting, she felt the wind catch in her throat. A wide-winged, soundless shape was circling above Solstice Green across the water. Odette, heading for the footbridge, cut into the road; a car hooted and braked as she darted in front of it. Its headlamps lit up her face – transfigured, desperate. Mitzi and Harry had been gaining ground, but a stream of oncoming traffic left them stranded while Odette ran on, over the bridge and onto the grass. Although Solstice Green would be lively with bicycles and joggers during the day, now there was not a soul to be seen. The owl, wheeling in the sky, seemed to have taken possession of it.

  The traffic cleared and Mitzi shot ahead of her brother onto the bridge. Odette was standing still, the owl gliding lower and lower above her. She reached up towards it and Mitzi heard her voice, speaking in Russian, pleading – not tearful, but true and strong. Odette fell to her knees, her arms extended to the bird; it was teasing and worrying at her, retreating, approaching, attacking. Mitzi, powered by an anger and a love each more ferocious than the other, would not plead with the owl, or the man who had so used them; she gripped her knife and lunged, while Harry flung himself at the creature as it swooped, its outstretched talons aiming at Odette’s head. He tried to separate them, but the owl and the girl were locked in struggle. One wing flailed into Mitzi’s face, knocking her to the ground. Pain slammed through her left leg and a deep, cold darkness blotted out her vision. The creature turned on Harry, the wings struck his temples and as he fell its red eyes willed him to lose consciousness. Odette cried out in pain, the owl seizing her by the hair.

  ‘Be strong, Odette!’ Mitzi cried, hauling herself up. Her left ankle was badly twisted and her jeans soaked with blood from a cut acquired from the knife, she did not know when. And, hearing her, for a moment Odette seemed to be gaining the upper hand. She broke free. The owl soared towards the street. Mitzi took aim as it circled above her. She flung the knife in a strong, clean arc, glinting silver under the moonlight.

  The blade caught the bird by one wing. A few feathers spiralled down through the air. The creature reeled, flapped, then tumbled, a mass of feathers, into the road. Odette let out a scream.

  ‘He’s not dead, Odette,’ Harry gasped with what breath he had left. The owl was fluttering on the tarmac. Odette ran into the road towards it, straight into the path of an oncoming bicycle.

  Mitzi just had time to recognise the rider as Chris, responding to Harry’s summons, when he swerved to avoid the girl and his bicycle’s front wheel instead struck the fallen, disoriented owl full on. The bike jolted. Chris tumbled over the handlebars, crashing down on top of the owl’s body, his glasses slipping off to the side. Harry and Mitzi rushed to him. Odette stood white-faced and petrified. The owl was lying still in Richardson Road, squashed by a bicycle and its rider, nothing now but a heap of dark feathers matted with blood.

  Chris staggered over to the kerb and slumped there, head down, trying to get his breath. ‘What the fuck was that?’

  ‘Odette,’ said Mitzi, her voice shaking, ‘the owl’s dead. However it happened, it can’t follow you any more. You’re safe.’

  Odette took both Mitzi’s hands in her own. The dark eyes met the blue in a profound contact – and then, as her friends watched, a violet radiance began to quiver in the air around them. Her fingers slipped away from Mitzi’s. The vibrating air trembled, space rushing into a vacuum.

  Helpless, Mitzi watched the swan take the sky towards the north-east – and now the full knowledge struck her, the understanding, the shattering, the loss. She thought she could hear somebody screaming. Harry was holding both her arms, pinning them to her sides. She struggled free, wondering where the noise was coming from, and struck him across the cheek.

  ‘You!’ She couldn’t recognise her own voice amid its screams. ‘It’s your fault! What you did to her! What you did!’

  ‘Hush!’ Harry put his arms round his sister, trying to calm her down. ‘How was I to know? I’m sorry, Mitzi – hush, now…’

  Mitzi fell to the pavement, hammering it with her fists. Physical pain seemed all that could ease the agony as every hope, plan and dream lay in pieces in the road with the dead owl that had never been Rob Winter, or fled with the friend who had brought in the magic that gave life to those dreams. Chris, though bemused, terrified and nursing a damaged knee, managed to crouch beside her, coaxing her to get up and lean on him. His eyes, sharing her pain, followed the great white swan while it soared away from them forever.

  And Harry walked aside, gazing into the night sky as the swan’s shape diminished, and continued to stare long, long after she was gone.

  23

  The swan had never flown by moonlight before. Winging along the expanses of sky that encased the fenland, she found it hard to see her way. She made slow progress. Her heart, beating human, overflowed with despair. She could still hear Harry’s voice calling out to her as her fingers began to dissolve into feathers, and Mitzi’s cry of anguish as dark hair folded into white plumage. Her spell would commit her to life as a swan forever, but – like Mitzi and Harry, who couldn’t be blamed for not understanding – she could scarcely take in the emotional impact, such was the scale of this recognition.

  If only she could have kept her human voice long enough to explain: to tell them that the Baron would have come after her no matter what happened, determined to spirit her away home where he believed them safe from interference; to tell them that he would stop at nothing, that there was no subterfuge or crime or transformation he would not effect in order to recapture her. Now, if Chris’s bicycle was to be believed, the Baron was no more – could it be true?

  What now? Could she live a normal life as a swan? At one time this might have seemed a reasonably attractive prospect: an avian mate, cygnets and a natural death after a natural
lifespan. But now she knew the mystery of human intimacy, the soft touch of a man’s fingertips, the mingling of breath and being, and to go back from that to the lakeside seemed a cold, cruel prospect.

  Travelling onward, the icy landscape reflecting back a shimmer of moonlight, she discovered she was beginning to feel sorry for Harry. This wasn’t his fault; he hadn’t known the truth. Should he have? She had been complicit in deceiving him. She could have told him. She hadn’t. Her sorrow calmed her as she flew. The moon rose higher above her, huge and impersonal; closer to it than she had ever been, she remembered staring at it as a child from her castle casement. Perhaps she would soon see her home again.

  Later, when the moon was turning from milk to copper against a veil of cirrus clouds, the swan began to feel tired. Nearby, she could glimpse the coastline and beyond it the sea she had crossed in the storm not quite two weeks before. The wisps of cloud heralded a great bank of darkness rolling across the sky from the north. Soon there would be snow – and a long journey lay ahead, this time with the wind against her. She must rest first; she couldn’t attempt the crossing in a blizzard. She tilted towards the earth, scanning the ground for reflections of light that might indicate a lake or river. Close to the estuary that led into the northern sea, there lay a slice of mirrored sky. Some ducks were asleep on it.

  She slid out of the air, extending her feet to skim the lake’s surface. The water welcomed and rested her. A drake looked round, curious, but decided to ignore her. The swan dived for food, which was plentiful and good, then swam to the shore to find a place to shelter, disconcerted to experience night in her bird form. She clambered onto the bank, chose a shadowed spot in a hollow formed by the roots of a giant oak and settled there, cold and miserable, her head under her wing. Overhead, the gathering snow clouds blotted out the last of the stars.