The Swan Queen

A young woman returns to the place she was raised in to find out great mischief is at work.

She had always had a special affinity for the winged creatures. The swans' beauty, the fact that they were monogamous, the fact that they were attentive parents, the fact they could take off only in large spots of land and water due to their splendor, size, and breadth. She had often thought, in creation, when the Earth was lifted out of the sea; that birds such as the swan had remained stuck, on water or on land, to then have to risk becoming what they used to be before the Gods' rolled the dice again. The brilliant flutter on that day of dappled wings in small ponds, the fury of the trying.

She would warrant that they would know how to cipher her life under their feathers and down, their graceful repose. Maeve had a distinct feeling she used to be something other, something with wings.

For her most recent memory, she had woken up to the East of the castle, surrounded by swans. She was in her night dress, wet and covered with weeds, on her head a slim crown of flowers. Maeve was a stranger opening an invisible doorway on a strange universe. It chimed in her that the building above was home to her. She moved uphill and toward the castle where, upon the brink of the hill, bursting into the air, the swans flew in a cacophony of joyous black and white whirring.

When she approached the castle, more snuck up on her. More vivid pictures were drawn in her memory as her past life there came to her like a dream. She saw an auburn-haired mother who walked her down to the waters, where she met with the swans. She saw her father's face, at turns stern and salubrious. A man who she mostly saw at meals and gatherings. She saw Figgie who did care for her and her sisters. At that, she felt a deep pain in her heart. The swans ruffled their feathers at one like they were shivering. She saw the dowager Queen who was stern and had the best stories. She saw her Uncle Ivar and his flashing blue eyes.

As she walked her damp clothes clung to her legs and her thighs, the armholes far too small. She remembered this gown. Had it been made for a much smaller her?

In the Great Hall, her nose twitched at the smell of the wood smoke. Somewhere a meal had been or was being eaten and prepared. The first serving girl who ran into her dropped what she had been carrying and ran off. The second clutched a figure to her chest and began to mumble. Maeve just knelt on the floor with her, begging her to answer, "what of my family?"

The hall doors opened and the Dowager Queen entered, a rush of beautiful silks and the smell of Ambrose.

"Maeve, why should you knell on the floor and try to calm an idle brain like that one?" To which Maeve sprung up and rushed to her Grandmothers side, allowing the servant to go on praying.

"Grandmamma!" She threw her arms around her Grandmother, not allowing a precedent to count for much in the moment, feeling how frail and stick like her Grandmother was in her arms, she who had once been so hearty.

"Your Father did miss you, child. Gone for too long, you have been." The elder woman patted her on the hand, a signal that the huge hug was due to stop happening. She adjusted her outward robes, made sure the lines of her belt lay flat on her dressing gown. She reached towards a teacart, rolling it towards both of them. She poured Maeve a cup of tea and plated her a scone with a heap of honey and butter.

"How long have I been gone?" Maeve spoke up, crumbs lightly trailing out of the sides of her mouth. Rudely, she swiped at them without a napkin, with the back of her hand. Her cheeks bloomed pink.

"Where have you been? Is more my question. Ten years we have searched for you. There has not been a trace. Did you mean to flee? And why? You were so young?" The last comes out as a question, a rebuke. Her Grandmother held her away from her body, looking at her.

Maeve looked at her grandmother again, returning the powerful glare. She too had a backbone. The Dowager Queen did look older than she had imagined her before her entrance into the Great Hall. Her memories? Where had she been? In all of her memories, she was a small girl, and now she seemed grown. It seemed without her memory of the time in between. Her Grandmother sniffed at her with disgust.

"And what of these...swans, Maeve, why do you bring them into the hall?" Her grandmother looked at her harder as if by sight alone she could discover whether or not Maeve had been struck dumb in the last ten years. She had seemed to be a sharp child.

Maeve looks struck, her mouth agape, she gestured to the birds, "They just followed me in here. I was just so eager to come...." up the hill, home, reaching the unknown.

"Listen, maid, I don't want to be known as a hovel. Your mother is bad enough, bringing every injured animal in, with this strange thought that she could save it. I didn't think that woman had a heart in her body when we married your Father to her. She was all just frippery."

"Veronica? She is still here and my Father?" Maeve looked at the Dowager with tears in her eyes.

"And your Uncle Ivar. All still here. Just because you disappear for ten years doesn't mean that it's inhabitants don't continue." She said it in such a matter of fact way as if this was not a surprise to the girl.

Maeve's ears were met with a hearty laugh, her young Uncle Ivar (though, not so young now, at thirty) rushed into the hall, scooping her up. He held her strongly in his very muscular arms. Like she would just fly away if he let go, and laughing again, he did just that. He swung her to the ground, noticing then her wet, torn outfit. He pulled a rug off the hearth, swinging it over her shoulders. One of the swans screwed up his neck and ruffled her feathers at him.

They were not announced into the Great Hall, yet their hurried but stately sweep into the room seemed to take away Maeve's breath. Her Father, while still as tall as in her memories, carried gray at his temples. Veronica was far thinner; her features melted, turned ashen, her beauty swept away along with the last traces of her youth. She now carried her head, if anything, haughtier. Scanning the entirety of the room, turning her emotions as if inside themselves, to only smile as brightly as her husband. "How can this be?" He said running to embrace Maeve.

"Father, I know not!" She gasped. His hug so tight, so filled with love. Had he thought her dead? "I understand I have been gone for ten years!" She couldn't quite understand the immensity of the concept herself.

Her Father unleashed her from the hug, looking at his daughter.

"Yes. Ten years where we could not find you, and we did scree everywhere we could! But, you were as silent as an angel drug into the underworld. Is this you - quite returned? Am I getting old and feeble brained?" He clocked an eyebrow at his daughter. "Are you my daughter, a spirit? A spirit sent to enlighten or punish me for some unremembered thing? I think not. And on this occasion  let me happy be!" She looked straight into her fathers' eyes, her own glistening:
"I would not do anything to abuse you of the truth Father; for I am really here, very much real as I can see, but cannot answer you as to where I have been or as to who I have been with because I know not of these things. I trust that you would understand that if I had known more, were I able to return quickly, I would have." She could tell she had hit him well. He had missed her more than anything else. "And my brothers?" Her whole family gathered but her brothers, three, two of which were twins and one older by a year and a half. She had not seen Figgie yet. Did she guard them as they  napped?

The room had become unbearable, as if every eye was on her. She shuddered as she realized it was. Even the swans were watching her every move. Her Father went to sit at the table in the Great Hall and supper began. New court musicians played beautiful music. She felt as if she had not heard music in a very long time, and her heart soared at the lutes sound in the quiet hall.
She could not eat a bite of food. It seemed too hot in her mouth, and the bloody meat looked repugnant to her. Maeve glanced over at the swans and yearned to be with them. Her cup of water always seemed empty, and the water server was learning not to leave her side, as she emptied each glass quicker and quicker. It seemed there could not be enough water to fill her belly. Ivar glanced at his niece who drank water like a drunk drinks ale. She also ate like a monk on a day of fasting, and he did not remember those being details of her character. The King, her Father, spoke and she had not heard what he had said, so busy was she gulping deeply. Veronica was quick to jump on her stepdaughter.

"When the greatest man in the land, of your family, speaks you should listen. And answer." She huffed, straight at her stepdaughter. "Did you not hear him, or not deign it of no import that you answer him. Her Father took from it a different sign, and lay his large hand on his daughters slim forehead, cupped her small neck. "She is burning up with fever, Veronica. The girl meant no disrespect. It's amazing that she is even conscience." With that she was thrown over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes and taken to her room.

When Maeve was but six months, her father had enfolded her in another's' family, having done so thinking that Maeve would be sewing their families rend herself. That he had to sacrifice her bride price to a man whose very self he disliked to create a future accord plagued him. Here Maeve was, sixteen years old and many a moon after her Father had signed the pact. Veronica held her wrist between her fingers, over the dinning table, as she angled her chin towards Donegal. They had sat in a very dark carriage, riding up to his battlements in deep quiet and then waited for the Lord to even look up from his plate and acknowledge them, his mouth greasy and his nails ragged and dirty.

Veronica had been a Queen of the North. Women there were known to be fiercer. She was Queen and, as such, taught to be a warrior and a priestess. Veronica had been brought in when her mother was cold on her death bed. She had not been treated as Queen in an age and she begged her husband for the same fate for her children, let them escape the crown to have impunity from death. But he disagreed, and knew that one of his children was fated to have the crown. When Veronica could not have a baby, hate grew in her heart for the children of Donegal. She saw in her mind her children being crowded from the thrown by many dark feathers. There were too many heads for the crown. She did not think like the Queen who had come before her and would protect her children before herself. Veronica did not have the courage nor the heart. She would protect herself before even thought of progeny.

She looked in The face of Donegal and flashed her teeth like each were made for counting. She spoke to him in a gentle, murmuring tone. The children did not break the mood of the feast except when they were asked direct questions, picking the skin of the chicken off with their knives. They then answered in short, quiet bursts between eating. Veronica ate in small, mincing ladylike bites while the children ate all at once, wolfing the food down. They answered Donegal politely, how a lords son addresses someone of like station. They were children, tired and scared. Veronica seized on this and found her excuse to leave dinner and the quickly approaching hands of the Southern king. It was always hard to tell when you were just tempting enough, she had found. She paraded the children in front of her, little flotillas of stuffed tired baby flesh, Maeve at the end of the line; her head bobbing and weaving, heady with the small beer. When the stately emerald garbed woman moved them out the outer staircase and onto the beach, Maeve shook herself. She knew she wasn't supposed to be here in this place, with oily Donegal who did not want her, and her mysterious stepmother. Maeve made a small noise, only if to see that Veronica knew she was there. To that she threw an elbow into her step-daughter's stomacher, making her heavily moan.

Veronica placed Maeve down in the sand against shale worn rock, the boys looked on with wide eyes. Siegfried looked like he was so angry he could cry. Veronica rerouted back to face the boys, replacing her smile on her face. "Now that your sister is more comfortable." She removed a very small knife from her belt. Her fingers stroked the symbols on the hilt, her iris's growing wider and wider as a thought activated in her mind. She stared at them like a lazy terrier does with an exhausted rat who he has caught and is playing with. Her pupils huge and visible in the moonlight, like a bird of preys, or a wolves. Sanders felt his bladder explode and pee shoot down his limbs. Veronica's laughter was a chime on the wind. She intended to kill them all. "Don't be so afraid little ones. You had already lost by giving your trust to me." Siegfried, Sanders and Shelton had all invited her to take room in their hearts when she came to live with them. They all saw how happy their Father was, and knew how saddened he had been by their Mother's death. Maeve was the only one who held back her affection. Maeve had been nice to her, but not warm. In fact, no true warmth had emanated from her since their Mother had died. It was as if her internal sun had gone off. Now within her it was only night. And Maeve thought and thought at night. Now, the golden haired princes all wished they had been like their raven haired sister.

Veronica kept calling as much power into herself and into the blade as she could. The silver grew hot in her hand. It screeched to be used. Veronica could not bring herself to cut the young boys' throats, though. To frighten them, maybe. To dessert them. But to sacrifice them? She found she could not do that herself. She focused the energy of her stored power onto the boys - she herself emotionally dripping with fright, regret, chaos of emotion. And the magic dripping out of her looked like that: a wave of green with silvered edges, hiding monstrous dark screams, blood bubbling up like swamp gases. And she focused all the hate of her heart on their sister, on Maeve. While she really was dispatching of her right now, it felt so good to express her abilities. So good that every once in awhile someone can loose track. It was almost without thought that Maeve, Siegfried, Sanders and Sheldon went from in front of her eyes; very scared but healthy, and in human form, to a clutch of swans. Three white and one black. Veronica had to hold back from squealing with glee.

Maeve breached the water first feeling it slick against her dark plumage. She could imagine the droplets of water slicking against each feather, spreading out as against fingers, and then sinking into the coldness of the sea. Again and again her feathers accepted the seas assault. She buoyed herself against the moderately sized waves, for a moment trapped between bird and woman, she was still worried about her brothers. Then, she continued on with the lapping of the waves and rode them out to the sea until she made purchase on the tide of the wind to move with it, to fly. From then on, Maeve remembered nothing of her human life or her brothers for those nine years.

*
They bathed her with milk and with honey. They had filled cisterns of cool water from the lower river to catch fat leeches and were to apply them to her to sup the illness from her; when the Nurses' assistant and the Bathing Assistant did bump into each other and the salty water from the cistern coated her skin, they saw her hands and eyelids twitch, her mouth make the smallest of chirps. The two assistants (both sure that they would loose their jobs) hugged each other in red cheeked joy like global explorers on the brink of new land. If a drop could do that, then what would the whole cistern do? Dare they find out? The Nurse removed (and saved) the leech for later, while the Bathing Assistant covered an unused sponge in pond water until the girls' skin glistened. Then they waited, puffed up, like proud hens, squealing like little girls at any sign of consciousness. As if bathing a girl was a strange idea.

#WIP #Notdone

Reviews

[JessyJacob]

i am just losing the intent, read after read, in the middle i felt that i should start over again, i am just wondering time can be spent like this too where you just confuse and block the mind, which direction to go, i mean what is that i understood, just can be utilised by, nice one.