The Black Swan (15 page)

As she looked about, the spell of accelerated growth gave her the answer for shelter. She selected one of the animals, a muskrat, and altered the spell on it alone. Instead of mud, she had it bring her a handful of willow shoots. Then she waited; when the island was large enough for all the girls to sleep on it in comfort and without undue crowding, she dismissed her helpers and banished the first spell. As the other spells continued to work, keeping the island dry, and making the grasses and moss thicker by the moment, she planted the willows around the edge of the new land and set them to grow.

By this time, even the weary swans had gathered around the island, eying the new ground with curiosity. Odile kept from smiling with difficulty; it was altogether gratifying to have an audience for her magic, especially one as attentive as this one.

As the trees grew, she paid careful attention to
how
they grew, their drooping branches intertwining at her order to the outside of the island and above it, until they shaped a thick canopy covering the entire island, with plenty of room to stand beneath it. Now she stopped their growth, and altered the spell to make the leaves grow larger rather than increasing the height of the trees—

Larger? She made them
huge.
One leaf could easily serve as a rain shelter for a cat before she was done! The leaves overlapped so well that they formed an actual roof and round walls, many layers thick, proof enough against dew, chill, damp, breezes, and even light rain.

As for warmth—now that she had the shelter, that was the next order of business. She considered spinning blankets of grasses and spider silk, but dismissed the idea as too time consuming. Instead, she bent and pulled up grass by hand in the center of the island until she had a circle of bare hearth. There she kindled a perfectly ordinary fire.

Well, I suppose it's not ordinary.
This was magical fire, like the one that burned on the hearth in her room in the manor. It consumed nothing on its little scooped-out hearth, and gave off an insect-repelling perfume rather than smoke.

It was dark outside, and the moon would soon be up, but inside the shelter it was warm, fragrant, and welcoming. Now that her work was done, Odile was suddenly very tired. She dismissed the last of her growing-spells and tucked herself into an odd-shaped little nook away from the central hearth, but still within the effective range of the perfume. She couldn't lean against the willow walls, for they weren't strong enough to support weight, but they made a comforting barrier between her and the swamp, and were rather like a tent with foliage painted on its walls. With her legs folded under her, her face in shadow, she hoped that she blended into the darkness.

The last light faded outside the door, and a chorus of frogs and night insects rose outside, surrounding the shelter with song. Shortly after that, Odette, still in swan form, poked her head into the shelter.

She was followed by the rest, who crowded in after her. As Odette walked slowly to the fire, neck stretched out suspiciously, the moon climbed above the horizon. The swans dropped to the grass as if stunned, and the shimmering mist of magic hovered over them all, obscuring them.

The mist lifted; Odette rose, the folds of her white silk dress settling around her feet. She turned away from the fire, and her gaze alighted on Odile.

She said nothing, but her expression was speculative. Odile met her gaze, wondering what was going on in her mind.

Then Odette turned back to the group of girls—weary, but very relieved girls, who hadn't the energy to do much more than find places under the boughs, but had regained enough strength to marvel aloud at Odile's creation.

Odile remained silent, pulling up grass and moss to make a pillow, trying to stay inconspicuous. As the interior of the shelter warmed further, the girls selected sleeping places to their liking and dropped down onto the grass, grateful for the softness and the dry ground beneath it.

One of them commented on the thick carpet of greenery, and Odette smiled crookedly. “And when we are done sleeping on it, we can eat it,” she pointed out with undisguised irony. “So our keeper serves us twice with a single gesture. Very efficient.”

“Your
keeper
could have left you to make your beds in the mud!” Odile retorted, stung into a reply. “I do not expect thanks, but you may keep your scorn to yourself.”

Odette's cheeks flamed, and she bowed her head for a moment. When she lifted it again, Odile was surprised to see her expression was apologetic. “You are correct; I was wrong to accept a gift, then offer derision to the giver,” she said quietly. “I was rude, and I beg your forgiveness.”

Odile nodded in acceptance and acknowledgment, still too surprised by Odette's reaction to reply. In all the time that Odette had been her father's captive, they had not exchanged words more than a dozen times, and none of those exchanges had led her to think of Odette as anything other than proud and aloof. Was she changing—or was Odile simply seeing more of the real Odette?

She pondered that as the other girls settled into their chosen sleeping places, and dropped into dreams, lulled by the gentle warmth of the fire. Tonight Odile intended to get ample sleep herself. The girls were not going to wander off into the swamp, after all, so there was hardly a need to guard them.

She dimmed the light of the fire, but not the warmth it created, nor the insect-chasing perfume; she gave it the semblance of a bed of red coals, just for the sake of familiarity. Outside the shelter, thick fog caught and held the moonlight before it ever reached the water, swathing the island in a soft, dim glow. As she watched the remains of the fire and listened to the steady breathing of the sleeping girls all around her, she was aware of Odette's gaze still centered on her.

Finally, she turned her head slightly and met the dark eyes that watched her so warily. “What is it?” she whispered. “Why aren't you asleep? You'll need your rest for tomorrow, you know.”

“Did you do all this—” a wave of Odette's hand indicated the shelter, “—because the sorcerer ordered you to?”

The abrupt question caught Odile by surprise, and she answered honestly, before she had time to think. “No. He didn't give me any orders, but I knew we'd need a place to sleep, and I didn't see any other way of getting one than to create it myself.”

“No?” Odette's soft voice held a touch of irony. “You
could
have just built a cocoon of magic for your use alone—you could have left us to fend for ourselves and find our own place to sleep in the swamp.”

“I could have, but then you'd have been in no fit state to fly tomorrow, would you? The baron would be annoyed if you were too tired to fly.” Odile wasn't certain she wanted Odette to presume she'd built this shelter out of altruism, so she deliberately kept her tone cool and unemotional.

“You speak as if you are ashamed to admit you were willing to help us,” came the soft reply. “And that, quite frankly, puzzles me. I wish I knew what you were really thinking.”

Odile couldn't think of an answer for that, and turned her gaze away from Odette's, pretending an indifference she did not feel. Eventually, the silence and warmth prevailed, and sleep claimed both of them.

By the time Odile woke, all of the swans but one were out of the shelter, foraging in the swamp, and morning sun glinted off the water outside, burning off last night's fog. The swan left sleeping was Lisbet, the same young one that had run into trouble yesterday; exhausted by her efforts, she still dozed. The scent from the fire still filled the shelter—which was a blessing, since the miasma of the swamp wasn't to Odile's taste.

Odile stood up and stretched, touching the tips of her fingers to the branches overhead, but moving quietly so as not to startle the sleeping swan, who would react with a swan's instincts if she woke abruptly. She wouldn't think, she'd try to flee, and the blow from a swan's wings was strong enough to break a man's arm.

So Odile made quiet, nonthreatening sounds as she stretched and moved about the shelter to limber up her limbs, stiff from a night spent on the ground. Lisbet woke easily, raised her head from where she'd tucked her beak into her back feathers, and looked around cautiously.

It hadn't escaped Odile's attention that all of the grass on this little island had been nibbled down to within an inch of the roots. The swans
had
eaten their “bedding” once they'd awakened, just as Odette had cynically predicted—no harm in that, but they hadn't left anything for the late riser. So the others had a head start on feeding, which might once again put this little one at risk of lagging behind if
she
didn't get quite enough to eat. Odile weighed the alternatives and the consequences, and decided that a little expenditure of power now was warranted to prevent a similar expenditure at a point where it was more difficult for her to work magic.

She
had no need to join the others in foraging for wild rice and water weeds for her breakfast; every morning she used a little magic to “call” her breakfast from the manor. Sometimes the baron shared it with her, and sometimes he didn't, but she always brought in enough food to take care of both of them. She usually repeated the spell at the end of the day, once they'd taken a landing spot for the night; the fact that she forgotten to last night what with all the work she'd needed to do meant she was ravenous now. She was as much in need of sustenance as the swan.

“Wait here,” she told the swan, who had gotten gingerly to her feet; she obediently sat back down onto the grass. Odile was grateful that Lisbet was the one of the little swans who took orders meekly; it always irritated her when she had to force someone to accept something she was doing for their benefit.

She banished the magical fire and knelt beside the warm hearth, readying her magic. She cupped her hands over the bare earth and concentrated, building a glowing sphere beneath them that lit up the shelter with the power of a tiny sun.

Then, abruptly, the sphere vanished, and in its place were the items she had “called” from the manor. Rich, nutritious journey-cakes—excellent when fresh, as these were, but rather poor fare when they'd spent too much time in their parchment wrappings—were piled six high on a large patter. Beside them were a pat of fresh butter on a little plate, and a jar of honey, plates, a bowl of strawberries and manchette cake with beaten, sweetened cream poured generously over them, and a platter of thinly sliced ham and creamy cheese. There were far more cakes than Odile and her father could eat, which had been her intention; she took a double handful of them and crumbled them in front of Lisbet, who needed no encouragement to begin gobbling the crumbs. She reserved two cakes for herself, spread with the honey and butter, and two for her father, plain, and continued breaking the dense, crusty golden rounds between her fingers until all the rest were in a form easy for the swan to devour. Only then did she turn her attention to her own breakfast.

As she began eating, a shadow fell over the opening to the shelter, and von Rothbart stooped and entered. He sat down on the grass beside Odile, helping himself to the food.

“You were busy last night,” he commented, layering the ham and cheese atop one of the cake rounds, then taking a bite. “I did not expect—all this—when I arrived this morning.”

“It was an efficient solution to the problem I was faced with, given that there was no solid land on which to rest,” she retorted, keeping her tone level. “But not the one you would have taken?”

“If I had been in your position, I would have kept them—and myself—as swans through the night,” he replied. “Then there would have been no need for a shelter.”

She thought quickly; was he annoyed, and if so, would he be mollified by good reasons for her actions? “I had several problems here, at least as I saw it. I didn't know what sorts of animals roam this place, nor how dangerous they would be. As swans we would have no defense against something like a wolf or a bear that crept up on us while we slept, and no way to detect something that could seize one of us from beneath the water. But no land-walking predator would be able to cross easily to an island, and no water-dwelling creature could get at us on land. And if anything
did
try to swim across, we would smell like humans, not swans, and there would be the unfamiliar perfume from the fire that would further confuse the scent—” She handed him the second round of journey-cake, and finished her own, dividing the strawberries and cream between them. “I rather think that any night-hunter would fear that combination, and seek some easier prey.” She considered a moment longer, as her father ate in silence, and decided to add a little something. “And—a mouse is not a human. I don't know that
I
could have kept them all swans until your return. I knew that I could do all of this; I controlled the swamp creatures to build the land, and sped the growth of plants to make the shelter; that doesn't require as much magic as holding the transformation spell. Only my fire was purely magical.”