The Black Swan (49 page)

By the time she reached air and broke through the water, gasping for breath, there were four more bodies in the water with her—Elke, Ilse, Lisbet, and Sofie, the four little swans, who, being peasants, swam as well as she did. Emboldened by her example, they had come to the rescue, and she thanked God that they had, for she was spent.

Elke and Ilse already had Siegfried between them and were halfway to the shore; the other two took Odette's limp body from her and followed the others, leaving Odile to drag herself along in their wake.

But when she crawled up onto the shore, the maidens were weeping even harder, and there was no sign of life in either body. It seemed that all of their effort was in vain.

For one moment, she too despaired. But she was not going to give up. Not yet.

“Stop that!” she ordered sharply, and a sea of white, tear-streaked faces gazed, startled, at her. “My power is gone—but
you
have magic in you, magic enough that we might yet save them. Will you give it to me?”

They looked at her as if she had spoken a foreign language, and her temper finally snapped.

“Now!”
she ordered. “Decide!
Yes or no?
”

They looked at each other helplessly as Odile stifled the urge to take their magic without consent. She would
not
continue the path that her father had taken. But time was slipping away, and with it, any chance, however fleeting, of saving the lovers.

As one, the swan-maidens turned to Jeanette as default leader. She put her hand to her throat, and ventured a tentative, “Ye—es. . . .”

That was all Odile needed. As ruthlessly as her father would have, she stripped every vestige of energy from them that they did not absolutely require to remain alive themselves.

Von Rothbart had never taken power from them so abruptly, or so completely. Some of them fell over in a dead faint, the rest just dropped to the ground, as utterly spent as she had been a moment before.

As they collapsed, she poured that energy into the two soaked, limp bodies beside her, forcing the water out of their lungs, the air into them, strengthening the hearts that beat so feebly, calling the spirits back from the darkness in which they wandered. The other maidens sprawled on the shore, those who were still conscious too exhausted even to watch as she worked.

If Siegfried and Odette had been truly dead and gone, she could not have revived them; she knew that. But they were not—quite—dead; their spirits had not escaped their bodies, and she could use the tether of lingering life to drag them back, use their love to call each to the other.

Two chests began to rise and fall; with the returning breath, a bout of coughing drove the last of the water from their lungs, and they began to stir. Siegfried was the first to revive; he groaned, turned on his side, and opened bloodshot, dazed eyes. Then, when he saw Odette, he sat up abruptly, taking her into his arms just as she opened her eyes.

Odile released the remaining power back to the rest of the flock, who in turn began to stir weakly. She staggered to her feet, weary almost to death herself. She was so cold she couldn't even shiver, drenched and dripping, and wanted nothing so much as a warm place to lie down.

Fortunately, there was one very near at hand.

Using tree trunks to support herself, she staggered the few feet to the tree shelter, collapsing in the darkness and warmth onto her own bed.

After a long interval of simply lying in the darkness immersed in the most basic sensation of all, that of knowing she still existed, she finally regained the ability to put a simple thought together.

She lay unmoving as she absorbed the full knowledge of that thought. Then, at last, her own tears began.

She wept as she had never wept before, mourning, not the death of the sorcerer, but the loss of the father she had
thought
she had.

She cried for herself, that she had been lied to, manipulated, and used all her life. That she had never been more than an object, a possession, of no more importance than a cup or a vase, valued not for what she was but for what purpose she could serve. Just as easily discarded, just as easily broken.

She sobbed, unconsoled, for all the things she had never had, yet had
believed
that she had. She cried for the loss of her innocence, and with it, the loss of what had been, for her, a comforting and comfortable world. All illusion, all delusion, and now, all of it gone. Worst of all, the knowledge that all of it had been one more lie.

Finally she ran out of tears. She lay with aching eyes and burning cheeks, and stopped thinking about what she had lost—remembering, instead, what she had won.

Freedom. Hadn't she been willing to do almost anything to keep freedom, once she had tasted it? Well, she
had.
And now she need answer to no one but her own will and conscience. The whole world lay before her, and if she faced it alone, she also faced it as herself, not someone else's puppet or shadow.

Friendship. True, she might have lost the friendship of Odette and the other swan-maidens, but there were more people in the world than the flock. She could find other friends, other companions. She had learned how to do that, after all; learned how to give, and how to accept, how to ask instead of demand. She had learned that respect was not the same as fear, and that it was much more to be desired.

Knowledge, of herself, as much as anything else.

She got up slowly, for her arms and legs ached cruelly from all of the unexpected exertion. Her damp dress was ruined, the ornamental wings no more than tattered stubs. She tore it from her with distaste, shaking off the last rags, and dropped the jewels atop it. Standing naked and free of the last remnants of the fetters her father had put on her, she felt a small part of her burdens lift from her.

When nothing of what her father had created remained, she toweled herself off roughly until her skin tingled, then took the clothing that waited for her on the shelves above her bed. She took down her hair, removing the rest of the jewels from it and discarding them, combed it out roughly, and twined it into a simple braid.

Only then did she walk back out into the clearing.

The first gray light of dawn painted the sky above the clearing; the storm had passed, and the last flickers of lightning illuminated the towering clouds on the horizon with orange flashes. As the sun rose, the moon was setting. The maidens of the flock stood in little clumps, singles, and couples, watching the moon go down with anxious faces. Siegfried and Odette, shivering, clung to each other, as they, too, watched the moon. Siegfried had proven his faith to Odette, even to the point of death; was the spell broken, or had von Rothbart lied as he did so easily? And von Rothbart himself was gone, dead beyond doubt—but would his will and his magic persist beyond his death? When the last moonbeams vanished, would the maidens become swans once again?

Odile had no idea that she had spoken that thought aloud until she realized she was the focus of every eye in the clearing. She shivered, and looked back at them all with eyes that asked for forgiveness. Her part in this had been unwitting—but how could they know that?

Although Siegfried looked at her with some doubt, Odette squeezed her hands and smiled warmly on her.

“If the spell still holds us, it does not matter,” Odette said boldly, much to the startlement of the rest of the maidens. She laughed at their expressions, and shook her head. “No, truly, what
can
it matter? The sorcerer is gone, he rules us no longer! Odile, dear friend, you have done so much for us already. Do not drive yourself into a wraith just to keep us from sprouting a few paltry feathers! If we are swans by day and maidens by night, at least we are free!”

“And any man who truly loved you would guard you by day for the sake of the hours he could spend with you at night,” Siegfried added, putting his arm fondly and protectively around her shoulders. “
I
will undertake to keep you all safe, if that be the case.”

“Until I find the cure,” Odile replied stubbornly. “I
will,
I swear it, for I owe you all that much. What my f—von Rothbart did, I shall undo, though I cannot restore all the years he stole from you, nor give you just retribution for what you suffered.”

“Look!” Katerina interrupted, her voice full of incredulous joy as she pointed at the horizon. “Oh,
look,
all of you!”

The moon had set while they spoke, and not even a hint of it remained above the horizon; the sun arose in a sky made glorious by the remaining clouds, which caught the golden rays and reflected them back in tones ranging from silver to rose.
The moon had set
—and the maidens were maidens still.

With little cries of joy, they celebrated, each according to her nature. Elke, Ilse, Lisbet, and Sofie spun around and around in a mad dance until they were dizzy, the others embraced, or, like Jeanette, dropped to their knees in heartfelt, thankful prayer.

Siegfried and Odette fell into each other's arms.

Odile alone watched the sun rise, soberly.

And now what? The end of the tale? And they lived happily ever after? No one ever explains how one manages that. Siegfried and Odette will, surely, but what of the others? And what should
I
do now, to live happily ever after. . . .

She heard the hoofbeats of approaching horses long before anyone else did. She turned, and the others gradually became aware that there were people arriving. Many people; from the sounds, there might be a hundred.

Threading their way through the forest, and led by Benno, was a crowd of folk on horseback, with several riderless horses in tow.

Despite their bedraggled finery and exhausted faces, Odile recognized them with a sense of shock.
Clothilde's courtiers—the guests from the fête—

But they no longer looked so festive. Their garments, stained with soot and rain, storm-tattered and torn, were no longer fit for a feast. Their eyes, full of fear and sunk into their pale faces, told of a long night full of horror, spent without sleep. Their faces were lined with fear and the terrible knowledge that a world they had thought stable and unchanging had come down about their ears—and they had not yet found a new center for it.

Only Benno looked anything like his old self, and his face overflowed with anxiety that transmuted magically to joy when he saw Siegfried. Then he stood up in his stirrups and whooped, waving his hat in the air, before vaulting out of the saddle and running to embrace his friend.

Self-consciously, Odile withdrew to the side of the clearing, feeling very uncomfortable and at the same time wishing with all her heart that she did not.

How wonderful it would be to have a friend like that—and a place to belong.
The thought of the manor, empty now, but full of the memories and contaminated with von Rothbart's magics, filled her with nausea. Of all the places in the world, that one, now, was the last to be called “home.”

The others dismounted slowly, but seemed very much relieved to find their prince alive and well. Quiet and subdued, they let Benno do all the talking. Which he did, at a high rate of speed, interrupted by Siegfried and Odette who related their side of the tale.

“Siegfried, this is like a miracle!” Benno laughed at last, holding his friend at arm's length. “Dear God, we were so afraid, with you running like a madman into the night and—” Then his face fell abruptly. “Blessed Virgin, I forgot. Siegfried, you are the king now. Your mother—the sorcerer was not content to drive you into the storm—he had some business with the queen as well. Lightning struck part of the Great Hall; the wall above the dais collapsed, and she was under the worst of it.”

Siegfried paled, but Benno wasn't finished. “So was Uwe.” His face darkened with anger. “But he didn't die until he'd told us the truth; he was afraid to die with such sins on his soul. Siegfried, she was in league with that sorcerer, and
he
was the intermediary! She intended to keep you from the throne forever—by beguiling you with women if she could, by arranging an ‘accident' with the sorcerer's help if she couldn't. Once you had sired a son, she intended to be rid of you.”

Odile bit her lip as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place for her.
That was why we came
here,
why it was Siegfried and not some other prince. That was how von Rothbart knew the doings of the court. And that was what drew him here in the first place—the chance to catch, not a young maiden, but a queen, a woman already heavy with the sins of betrayal.
She watched as Benno explained the little that the minstrel had confessed before dying, watched Siegfried's face reflect so many changing emotions that she wondered which one he would settle on.

It looked for a moment as if anger and hatred would win—but Odette placed her hand on his arm before he could speak, and put in her own soft words.

“If it had not been for her, the sorcerer would never have brought us
here,
” she reminded everyone. “That, to me at least, balances some of her greed and vanity; we would never have found each other if it had not been for her. Let the past bury the past, let her answer to God and not to us for her sins, whatever they are; I for one do not intend to waste a moment's more thought on her.” She turned a face full of soft wonder and pure happiness to Siegfried. “It would be one more sin to waste time on
her
that we could have spent in joy!”