The Swan Kingdom (23 page)

“Shame. He was pretty.”

She reached out and seized my shoulder, picking me up with one hand. I hung helplessly from her fingers, my feet inches above the ground.

“I’ve often imagined ripping your throat out, you know,” she said quietly. “But I think this will be even better.”

She closed her hand over my throat and squeezed.

The fingers were like fiery bands of pain burning deep into my neck as they tightened slowly, slowly. I felt my face bulging, purpling with blood as my airway was ruthlessly blocked. My mouth gaped open in a vain struggle for air, my hands coming up to scrabble uselessly at her grip, tiny scraping noises breaking from my lips. My feet kicked and jerked involuntarily as the pressure increased. Something popped in my neck; the screaming agony as my windpipe gave way made my whole body convulse. A last, hollow whistle of pain escaped me and my hands fell away from hers. I realized, almost with relief, that I was dying. My vision of Zella’s smiling face dimmed into silvery, darting swirls and then into nothingness.

Then there was light – unspeakable, glorious light. It closed over me and brought me up again from the shadows where I had fallen. Runnels of consciousness streamed out of me like water from an overfilled cup, and I seemed to dissolve into nothing and expand endlessly in the same moment. I became the light, was absorbed into it, existing wherever it coalesced. I was the great shining mantle of sky and clouds, the singing of the wind. I was the humming of stone and the unfurling whisper of green things, the laughter of water. I was the blood thrumming in every vein. I cried out with birthing infants and sighed the last breaths of the dying as I swept across the land in a great, never-ending flow of tides.

Memories flooded my mind: the memories of every wise woman who had ever lived. They all existed here, ageless, caught in the instant of their greatest power, when they had accepted this, had given into this.

All except my mother. My poor mother, who had died – had let Zella kill her – rather than face this terror, this wonder. Rather than face herself. Who had been so terrified that she had kept all knowledge of this from me and in doing so had unwittingly deprived me of the powers that should have been my birthright. At long last I understood Angharad’s words, understood what my mother had kept from me. It had been within me all the time. In that pinpoint flash of excruciating clarity – the moment of death – I was everything, understood everything. I was the fulcrum upon which power turned. I was the heart of the land.

I looked into the body of the enaid – into my body – and saw the darkness that had infected it. Zella was a blot of rotted energy, a wound which had never healed properly. All her acts were like infection festered beneath the surface of the skin, leaving a trail of scar tissue in her wake. Gabriel’s poor, swelling brain, my own crushed throat…

I let the swirling of the tides carry me to the source of the infection. I flowed into the darkness, into the oozing sore of hatred and anger and black enchantment and washed it clean. I felt the shadows stream up out of me, out of Zella – out of the world – into the light and disappear like smoke. And then there were no more shadows, no darkness, only the glowing light and rushing music of the tides.

The next instant – it all lasted no more than a second – I was back in my body again, dropping heavily to my knees, gasping for breath as Zella released me. My head spun from lack of oxygen and the suddenness of the transition as I looked up.

Zella cringed back from me, her face blanched with shock and pain. Then, with a howl of rage, she dropped onto all fours. Her skin burst open into flurries of red fur, body twisting and snapping into the shape of a creature like a wolf, but too large, with a body too low to the ground and a jaw too heavy, to be any ordinary wolf. It was only there for a moment before it began to change again, heaving and folding in on itself until it was much smaller, the livid chestnut fur sinking away into a silvery-grey pelt, the heavy bone-crushing jaw replaced by a sharp muzzle. A minute later I was looking at nothing more than a small grey fox. Then the fox was gone, melting into something human.

It was a girl not much older than I, her face worn into lines of care and sorrow. She had something of the look of Zella about her: a tiny woman, with long chestnut hair. But her eyes were brown, not black, and they welled up with moisture as she looked at me.

“Thank you,” she said, a tear sliding slowly down her cheek.

“Be free, Mairid,” I whispered.

The woman closed her eyes. The tear fell, a glitter of falling water, golden in the sun, and then there was nothing left of her but a small pile of river stones, worn smooth by the water and still shiny wet.

I felt moisture on my face and reached up with shaking fingers to touch it. I was crying, my heart and head too dazed to comprehend what had happened. My hand travelled down to my throat. It wasn’t even bruised. But I winced as I tried to bend my little finger. It seemed my other injuries were unaffected.

There was silence in the courtyard. I glanced around to see everyone slumped together against the walls where they had sheltered, asleep. As I watched, they began to stir.

Gabriel.

I looked down and touched his face gently, but only to reassure myself; for there was no doubt he was breathing normally, his face a healthy colour again. Zella’s work had been undone in time.

He opened his eyes at my touch, blinked twice, frowned, and sat up. “What—?”

I put a finger to his lips. “Time enough later. Hush now,” I said.

“But… How?”

I left him sputtering and struggling to get up as I climbed to my feet. Every muscle in my body groaned and most of my bones clicked. I was fairly certain I had several cracked ribs, I knew my finger was broken, and my poor tooth needed urgent attention, but before I woke Rose and asked her to fix me, I needed to fix something myself.

Slowly, painfully, I lifted my arms. “Robin. David. Hugh.” I whispered their names softly, reaching out for them with my mind.

They materialized slowly, a drifting cloud of silver whiteness that gently caressed my face and hair. Things that could have been feathers or stars or tiny white flowers fell around me like snow. I heard their voices in my head.

We love you

We forgive you

We’ll always be with you.

They thought I had called them to apologize for my failure in the working to restore them. Well, I had called them to apologize, but not for that.

“My darlings, I did this to you,” I said. “It was me.”

They were silent for a shocked moment. Then their voices burst into in my mind.

What? No!

How can that be?

What do you mean?

“I’m so, so sorry.” I whispered, torn between laughter and tears. “When Zella caught you, she tried to kill you. She was using spells far beyond anything Mother had taught me, and I didn’t know how to fight them. I just reached out to try and protect you, in any way that I could; but I didn’t know my own gift or my own strength. I pushed you away, out of range of her spells – I saved you, but I trapped you at the same time. I had no idea what I had done. I didn’t even know I had the power to do such a thing. It was Great magic. In the normal way of things I could never have done it at all. But if I hadn’t, then you would all have died.”

But, but, but…

“I’m sorry! All my tunic-knitting was a waste of time.” I scrubbed my face wearily with my battered fingers. “Angharad told me what to do, but I didn’t understand. Robin, David, Hugh – this means you don’t have to be swans any more. Now that I know what I did, I know how to set it right.”

You do?

“You do?” Robin stared down at himself in disbelief. I was quite proud that I’d managed to bring him back in the same clothes he’d been wearing on the night I changed him.

“I … I’m…” He burst into tears, falling to his knees. I went down beside him and wrapped my arms around his heaving shoulders. A moment later, Hugh and David joined us, burying their faces in my hair as they sobbed.

“Oh, I missed you,” I whispered, my voice breaking as I carefully embraced each of them. “I missed you, I missed you, so much.”

I kneeled with them for several minutes, listening to their babbled threats to kill me and their deepest thanks. I touched Robin’s red hair, and cupped David’s stubborn jaw, and stared into Hugh’s summer-blue eyes in awe and gratitude. For a long and terrible time I had thought I would never see them again. Now I could hardly believe that they were really here – that I had saved them after all.

After a while there was a gentle tap on my shoulder, and my brothers parted to let a crowd of other people in. Rose and the prince, and everyone else in the courtyard, had awoken. They wanted to be sure I was well, and find out what had happened. And who were these strange young men? And thank you – very much – for getting rid of whoever that woman had been. Several of them were holding river-smoothed pebbles wonderingly in their hands.

We had to tell them everything. Who our parents had been, and who we were, what had happened to us and how we had ended up here. The only part I couldn’t tell them was how I had defeated Zella. Words, mundane, hollow words that a mouth could speak, were not designed to express something which only the soul could experience. So I didn’t try.

Finally – thankfully, as by then I was so exhausted and weary I could hardly string two words together – Rose put a stop to the storytelling.

“Enough, now. Alexandra is exhausted, and none of us are fit for standing around,” she said firmly. “I think we should all go inside and have the healers look at us.”

At her direction David picked me up and carried me into the hall. Hugh and Rose between them helped Gabriel’s grey-faced and rather subdued father along behind us. Gabriel, still shaky after his own encounter with Zella, was supported by Robin – but somewhere along the way he managed to find my hand, and clasped it carefully in his.

As our bedraggled group walked through the hall to the stairs, I smelled something intoxicating and sweet, and felt a dizzying sense of familiarity. I recognized the fragrance instantly. It was the scent I had smelled in my drugged sleep, so many months ago. It was the scent of roses.

I looked up, over my brothers’ heads, at the ugly, thorny vine clinging stubbornly to the pierced stonework – and there, among the black leaves, I saw the golden gleam of new petals unfurling.

So we come to the end of my story. A year has passed since Zella attempted to invade Midland, and much has happened.

With the prince and princess of Midland’s support, my brothers returned to the Kingdom and reclaimed it for David. We had worried there might be some resistance from Zella’s court, but the majority of her supporters had already fled, and the others, returned to their senses now that she was gone, submitted without a whimper.

The rest has not been so easy. Our land is suffering a second year’s crop failure, the long-term effect of the terrible drainage of its enaid, and of my own absence. I realize now that if only I had stayed in the Kingdom, Zella’s task would have been impossible, for the life of the land would have had its heart to return to. Instead I was pouring my energy – unconsciously – into Midland. But I cannot regret the course of the past, not when I see the fields of Midland fertile and rich after so many years of barrenness. Gabriel and I hope that with all the help we can give, the Kingdom’s people will survive, and the land recover.

Today the soil of the Kingdom is beneath my feet again. I have come home.

As I sit here in the long grasses by the river, I can see the damage which time has wrought to the place where I grew up. The once grand Hall has fallen into disrepair, the thatched roof caved in, the walls rotting, and all overrun with parasitic plants. Such houses are not built to survive neglect, and the Hall was forgotten when Zella persuaded my father to leave it; but David is determined to rule from this place as his Ancestors did, not from the half-built stone monstrosity which Zella squandered so much gold to build. Somewhere inside the crumbling shell, my brothers – and Gabriel too, of course – are wandering around, making plans for its reconstruction. Gabriel is determined to see my former home restored before we return to Midland together. It will take a lot of work, and a lot of time. But we are in no hurry.

In the meantime, the court has made a small camp, over the brow of the hill. There Gabriel’s parents wait for us. It is in the camp that my betrothal to Gabriel will become official tonight, witnessed by both our families, among the brightly coloured tents and snapping flags, the garlands of flowers and the rugs spread on the grass. It will be merry and chaotic, like a picnic party gone mad, and not civilized at all.

My mother would have loved it.

Mother’s gardens, to my great sorrow, have not survived. The plants are all dead. I believe, with some foundation, that they may have been that woman’s first target when she wanted to drain the power from the land. Replanting and restoring them to their rightful beauty will probably take longer than the rebuilding of the Hall itself, but it will all be worth it, for there cannot be Hall without a gardens.

From the border of the gardens I hear my name called, and when I turn, Robin and Gabriel are standing there together, waiting for me. I look fondly at Robin’s face, his eyes scrunched against the sunlight as he scans the field, calling for me again. But my gaze turns – as always – to Gabriel, who stands beside him. His hair is tousled into untidy ripples by the rising wind, and even from where I sit, I can see how the afternoon light makes his freckles glow.

Getting to my feet, I brush the dry leaves from my crumpled skirts and walk back to them through the waving grasses and wild flowers. When I reach them, I go up on tiptoe to kiss Gabriel and he tucks a curl of my hair back, and takes my hand in his. Robin smiles and rolls his eyes at us.

I pause for a moment and look back. From where I stand I can see the soft amber fronds of the meadows where I played as a child, and the shadow-green river with grass seeds and fallen leaves drifting on its surface like flakes of gold. I see the gentle rise of the hills beyond, marked by fields and forests. And I can see the enaid, skating through the clouds and on the wind, shining in the green things and shimmering in the water. I hear its susurration in the rustle of leaves and grasses, and taste it in the sweetness of the air.