A warning about swans, p.4
A Warning About Swans, page 4
creeping
toward mine as dusk spread
its phoenix-fire over the lake.
(Had I really spent
the entire day beside him?
Time had moved so quickly
in the presence of a friend.)
My father
died not long ago, Richter murmured.
Despite his vows, he left me
nothing but his debts.
Now I live in a castle
that feels like it, too,
is dying.
I can’t stand being there,
confined to its crumbling halls—
to the cage
my life has become.
So I wander
to the lake, the town,
to the places that whisper
about what my future could be.
If only
I had the power to seize it!
(Like a magician.
Like Odin.
Like someone who deals in more
than death.)
I reached for Richter then,
closing my hand around his.
He was so warm,
summer
in the shape of a boy.
I know
what it’s like to feel trapped
in your own home, I told him.
My sisters are content
with the lives our father gave us.
But I can’t be.
I still envy you.
Richter’s smile
hung uneasily from his mouth,
a broken wing
never to be mended.
You have companionship.
And I
am almost always
alone.
I threaded a hand
through my hair,
trying to tame the blaze in me.
I feel more alone
beside my sisters
than I ever do
when I’m away from them.
Richter raised a brow.
Do you feel alone now?
Here, with me?
I smiled and said,
Less so
than usual.
Chapter Thirteen
What I learned from the boy beside the lake:
How to dance a Viennese waltz
on the bankside,
how to let him lead me
through the steps until we were
winded and laughing.
How to name
the world around me
with a human tongue,
from Lake Forggensee to the town of Füssen
to the great city of Munich.
How to forget who I am
and where I come from.
I showed Richter moments of magic,
weaving dreams
of crisp apples and warm dens
for voles and mice,
and laying out
the whole of my life
(and my cloak)
on the lakeshore
for him.
We sat back-to-back,
Richter’s shoulders
pressing against mine.
(Wingless and empty.)
I felt how anchored he was
to the ground, the lake, the moment.
The boy was not
a son of air
like me and my sisters;
he was all earth.
My own stories felt quaint
compared to all the places
Richter spoke about.
But he ate up my tales eagerly
with his bread and butter.
My sisters
teach blue jays to fly
and foxes to run.
They drive
vultures from the beeches
and blizzards
from the sky with the beat
of their wings.
And I take souls and send them
into the wind.
But I’ve never seen
a city,
never walked paths
shaped by more than deer.
My life is so small
it was held
inside my father’s dreams.
Your duty to your woods
is a difficult one, Richter said.
I don’t know anyone else
who could shoulder it.
In the human world,
there are no girls like you.
(Half a bird,
half something else.)
But there are girls
who lead armies to victory,
whose ink-stained fingers
pen fantastical stories,
who dance like snowflakes
for hundreds to see.
In the human world,
none of us were born for a purpose.
None of us exist
in the confines of someone else’s dream,
to be forgotten upon waking.
In the human world, we can choose
the forms
our own lives take.
I closed my eyes and imagined
dancing on light feet,
not weighed down by a single soul
that wasn’t my own.
I imagined
laughing with friends like Richter,
uninterrupted by the moan of spirits.
I imagined
being human.
(Or close to it.)
Without your cloak,
would you be human,
just like I am?
Richter asked suddenly.
Would your magic
fade like the mist does
each morning over this lake?
I could have lied.
I could have told Richter
every drop of my magic
was locked in the starlit seams.
I didn’t.
This boy had been open
about his own truths,
and a friendship
(my first)
can never survive
on lies.
I told him:
Without the cloak,
I can’t turn
(back)
into a swan.
I can’t hear souls
and free them
from their unquiet bones.
My cloak, my wings, the silver road
are a part of me now—
whether I want these gifts
or not.
But with or without it
(and my wings),
I can still make dreams
real.
And I will live much longer
than any human girl.
I can’t change
what I was born as—
a wish-maiden
down to the marrow.
There is no escaping
the magic in me.
Chapter Fourteen
I arrived at the lake
on the eighth morning…
but Richter was not there.
I paced
on the bank, wondering
if he’d grown tired of our conversations
and the longing tinting them
lupine purple.
Maybe my adventure with the boy
who ached for magic
was finally at an end.
I was about to abandon the lake
and fly back
to the woods, the lost souls, my sisters
when Richter
burst from the trees.
He held his side;
I could almost feel
the stitch forming there,
a lesser version
of Odin’s old wound.
Hilde! Richter gasped.
The light in his eyes
was wild,
a star
on the verge of its last dance.
I found an injured boar
in a strawberry patch
not far from here.
Can you help it?
It’s in so much pain!
I can try, I told him.
Richter gave me a nod—and a promise.
I’ll come with you.
My breath
snagged in my throat
as my fingers had snagged
on blackthorn before.
My sisters
never offered to follow
the final murmur of a heart
with me.
But this human boy had.
Thank you, I said to Richter,
and slipped my cloak on.
The instant I did,
I heard
the mournful bellow of the boar—
its cry so much louder
than the wail
of my own thoughts.
Richter and I
(boy and swan)
dove into the trees
to find it.
The boar lying in the strawberry patch
was already dying,
like the wolf, like hundreds of others
before it.
The arrow
jutting from its red belly
told me a hunter had been here…
and vanished into nothing
but memory.
(As specters always do.)
I was
(I am)
not like Eir
(my fifth sister)
who knows the sweetest lullabies.
But I could still
wrap my wings around the boar
and whisper to it
in the language
of the birches and alders,
soft and silver
as the path
its soul would soon wander.
It’s calm
where you are going.
It’s bright
where you are going.
So be still
with me.
The Other Wood
is waiting for you.
The boar’s soul
looked like a vine
curling from the soil
as I eased it out of its skin
and up
to the flawless spring sky.
Richter watched, as unblinking
as any mortal can be.
The sight of a spirit
undressed from its bones
was almost a miracle,
even to a boy
born into a fairy-tale bloodline.
I sat with the boar’s body after,
digging
my claws
into the strawberries.
I let myself go cold;
I let the berries weep
when I couldn’t.
I was used to welcoming death…
but I never met it
with a smile.
(That was the last time
I touched a soul.
Maybe it will be
the last time
I ever do.)
Alone with the dead
and the boy
(both bleeding out
desperate dreams)
my thoughts
filled with visions of my lively sisters.
They found peace in
the soft moss under their feet,
the sight of snug rabbit warrens,
the song of the larks.
But they had not been called
by the Other Wood;
they were not the sole member
of the Wild Hunt,
the spirits they carried
crushing their own.
Only I
had to face that darkness.
If I lived
in the human world,
if I were a girl
who waltzed in satin shoes
rather than one running
river-wild,
souls and sobs caught
in the breeze around me,
could I find the peace
Odin’s gift had stolen from me?
By abandoning
my wings and my duty,
could I be
more than my loneliness,
more than Odin’s forgotten creation?
Could I finally
be
happy?
I tore
the cloak from my shoulders
and I stood,
a girl once more.
Chapter Fifteen
Richter carried my cloak as he and I
(boy and girl, nothing
more and nothing
less)
walked back to the lake, our steps
mountain-heavy.
When I reached
the water’s edge, Richter offered me
my cloak again.
He began:
Hilde…
I stared at the cloak.
To accept my wings again
would be to reenter a life
where I held death
more closely than any friend.
To refuse my wings
and the (unwanted)
power in the starlight
would be to set off
on a new path.
I met
Richter’s gaze,
the steel of it, the sharpness.
He was not the forever-companion
the crow had spoken of,
home in the heart of another.
But he was a friend
and I believed he could be
the key to unlocking a door
that would lead me far from the woods—
and the silver road.
And I believed I could be
the same for him.
I chose.
Will you let me come to the human world
with you? I asked Richter.
Will you show me Bavaria,
the cobblestone streets and the kings?
Do you think if I became
more girl than bird,
more girl than a half-lost story,
you and I could throw away
the burdens our fathers gave us
and make
new lives for ourselves?
Yes!
Richter gasped,
my cloak escaping
his fingers.
Oh yes, Hilde.
I have nothing now
except my dreams,
and they can take the two of us
no further
than this lake.
But if you make those dreams real,
we can both be
whoever we can imagine ourselves
and our tomorrows as…together.
Then teach me
to walk in your world, I said.
Teach me to be human.
And in exchange,
I’ll bring your dreams
to life.
In the woods,
a bargain between two creatures
must be sealed in blood.
But one made between friends
requires only faith
and a promise.
It was a promise
Richter extended—
along with his hand.
Yes. I will help you…
and you will help me.
I took the boy’s hand;
I took back my future.
I would be
my own creature,
my own girl,
not a pinprick of magic
in someone else’s sky,
not a scythe used to sever
a spirit from its bones.
I owed Odin nothing
but my unhappiness.
And now
(I hoped)
that, too,
had come to an end.
Chapter Sixteen
Richter’s castle was a vulture
hunched
at the foot of a hill.
The castle’s façade was haggard.
Its turrets
pierced the mist like spears;
its windows were dark
and dusty.
I’d never seen anything
so enormous
that was not a mountain peak.
A serpentine road
wound up to a great wooden door.
Richter and I followed it,
careful not to trip
over the many missing stones,
worn smooth by rain
and the centuries,
held together by weeds.
Entering the castle
was like walking into the mouth
of a monster.
Everything around me
(chipped stone walls,
dimly lit hallways,
tapestries woven from ancient threads
and the dust
of Richter’s forefathers)
was gray,
decaying,
cold.
Yet whenever
I brushed against the walls,
I felt a hint of old magic,
growing like ivy, thick and green.
It might have been
what kept the ramparts from buckling,
the roof from caving in,
the colored glass in the little chapel
from cracking.
Was your father a witch? I asked.
There are enchantments here
that go deep.
Richter shook his head.
If there was ever true magic
in this place,
it’s a ghost of itself these days.
I nodded.
I understood why Richter
hated his home and sought solace
(and strength)
elsewhere.
There was none to be had
in the castle.
A ghost
can comfort no one—
