The Six Swan Brothers

THERE WAS ONCE
a King who had seven children: six strong sons and a daughter whose name was Cora. They lived in a palace on the shores of a lake, and they loved one another greatly. Their mother died on the very day her daughter was born, and the King and his sons mourned her for a long time. Later, when Cora grew up, laughter returned to the palace, and the days were as like one another as beads on a string, all sparkling with happiness.

Then one day, the King went hunting in the forest. His men rode with him, of course, but he soon left them far, far behind him. He had caught sight of a wild boar, and plunged after it into the places where the trees grew closest together, and branches knotted into one another overhead to make a canopy that kept out the light of the sun.

All at once he came to a clearing, and there was no sign of the boar. He realized that he was lost and called to his men, but there was no answer. Suddenly a woman stepped out from between the dark columns of the trees. The King knew at once that she was a witch, because her head nodded and nodded, and her yellow eyes were
weak
and rimmed with scarlet.

‘Greetings, good lady,' he said in as firm a voice as he could manage. ‘Will you show me the best way home? I fear I am lost.'

‘I have the power to send you home along straight paths,' the woman whispered, and her voice was like a rusty blade. ‘But you must do something for me in return, or I will leave you here alone and soon you will be nothing but a complicated arrangement of bones.'

‘I will do anything,' said the King, for there was nothing else that he could say.

He followed the Witch to her hut, and there beside the fire sat a beautiful young woman.

‘This is my daughter.' The Witch twisted her mouth into something like a smile. ‘You will marry her and make her Queen. That is my condition.'

‘It will be my pleasure,' said the King, and he took the young woman's hand and set her on
his
horse. The touch of her fingers filled him with a loathing and disgust he did not understand. She is beautiful, he told himself as they rode together. I should be happy, but her eyes are full of ice and darkness and her red lips seem stained with poison. He made up his mind that she should never know anything about his children, for he was sure that she would harm them if she could. And so, he took the Witch's Daughter to a house near the palace, and said to her:

‘You will stay here only until I make all ready for our wedding, my dear. Everything must be perfect.'

And she was satisfied.

That very night, the King took his children to another castle, which was so well hidden in the green heart of the forest that even he could not find it without help. He had in his possession a ball of enchanted yarn, which a wise woman had given him, and if he threw that along the ground a little way, it unrolled all by itself, and showed him the path he had to follow.

So there they stayed, the King's six sons and Cora, his little daughter, hidden and safe, while the King and the new Queen celebrated their marriage. After the wedding, the new Queen noticed that he was away from the palace almost every day, and she became suspicious.

‘He is hiding something from me,' she said to herself, ‘and I will discover what it is no matter what I have to do.'

She summoned the stable-hands, and said to them: ‘My husband leaves my side each day, and goes somewhere. Tell me,' she whispered, and her
voice
was like treacle. ‘Tell me where he goes, and I will pay you in gold pieces … more gold pieces than you will ever count.'

And because gold has the power to bend and twist even the strongest will, the stable-hands told her of the magical yarn, and of what it could do. Then, one day when the King was visiting a neighbouring country, the Witch's Daughter crept to the Treasury. There she found what she was looking for, and she took it and put it into her pocket.

She followed the silver thread as it unwound between the trees, and at last she came to the castle where the King's children were hidden. She arrived at dusk and saw six handsome young men returning from the hunt.

‘Those are my husband's sons,' she said to herself. ‘I am certain of it.'

When she considered how much he must love them, a bright flame of hatred leaped up in her
heart
. ‘It is fortunate,' she thought, ‘that my husband is far away, for I have work to do.'

She looked no further, and so she never found Cora, who was in her chamber, high up in the tower. The magic thread led her back to the palace and rolled itself up behind her as she walked.

The Witch's Daughter locked herself up in a small room and cut out six shirts from white silk. Then she began to sew with a long and wicked needle that caught the light as she worked. She sang a spell as she sat there and she sang it six times, once for each garment:

‘White as Ice

silken stitches

gifts I bring
.

Hearts may yearn

but flesh will know

how feathers grow

from poisoned silk

smooth as milk
.

Turn and burn

turn and burn

turn limb to wing
.'

When the garments were ready, the Witch's Daughter unlocked her door and went to find the ball of enchanted thread. At the edge of the forest, she spoke these words:

‘Your master returns tomorrow, but for now you are mine. Find them again, for the last time.'

The silver thread slipped away between the trees, and the Witch's Daughter came to the hidden
castle
once again. Cora saw her from the high window of her chamber, and immediately she knew that something terrible was going to happen. She hid behind the curtain and peeped out at the stable yard, where her brothers were gathered, back from the day's hunting.

‘Welcome, madam,' said the eldest. ‘Our house and hospitality await you, as they do every stranger lost in the forest.'

‘I am not lost,' said the Witch's Daughter. ‘I have brought you gifts from the King, your father. See, here is a shirt for each of you, made from white silk.'

The young men took the shirts, and before their sister could cry out to warn them, they had thrust their arms into the sleeves.

‘You will see,' said the Witch's Daughter. ‘They will become like second skins.' She turned and was gone, swallowed up in the darkness between one tree and another.

Cora found she could not move. She went on staring down from the window, thinking that perhaps she was mistaken, and perhaps her heart should not be filled with dread and foreboding. But her brothers' beautiful necks were stretching and stretching and their heads shrinking and shrinking and their brown arms flapping and growing white and soon there was nothing left of men in any of them, and the air was filled with the sound of beating wings, as six swans rose and moved along the soft currents of the evening breeze towards the sunset beyond the forest.

‘Wait!' Cora called after them. ‘Wait for me!' But they had disappeared and she was left alone.

After they had gone, she was cold with fear and the sound of her own breathing was as loud in her ears as a sighing wind. She did not know whether to try and make her way to her father's palace, or to stay where she was and hope that he would find her. In the end, she decided to leave the castle, for the rooms were full of silence, and frightened her. Cora longed to weep for her poor brothers, but she knew that she had to follow them at once, or they would be lost for ever. She filled a basket with bread and hard cheese and took her warmest cloak to cover her, and set out for the forest.

Cora walked and walked through the night and through the following day, between bramble bushes thick with thorns like little claws, and over twisted tree roots buried in the earth; with no moon to guide her and the calling of night birds to chill her blood. She put one foot in front of another all through the black hours and at last
the
dawn came. The young girl looked around her and recognized nothing, so she went on, searching the sky for swans, listening for the music of their moving wings and still, always, putting one foot in front of another. As night was falling, she came upon a hut. Her legs were stiff with weariness and her feet hurt from walking.

‘I will see,' Cora said to herself, ‘whether perhaps some kind woodcutter will let me rest here for a few hours.'

She knocked at the door of the hut, but it stood wide open. Whoever had once lived there had long ago moved on. She sank on to a bed in the corner and slept.