The Sixth Swan

Kathryn Yelinek

        

         The front door was closed. In all the times I had visited Sarah during summer vacations, her family’s front door had always stood open.

         I turned off the car. It was only June, but already the dry grass crackled underfoot like static. Perhaps the need for air conditioning explained the front door, but not the pile of delivered mail on the deacon’s bench. I hurried up the front steps and rapped against the screen door. Tucked behind the “Welcome, Friends” sign was one of those leaflets that church groups leave on Sundays. It was now Wednesday afternoon, nearly three o’clock.

         The front door opened so quickly I almost toppled down the steps.

         “Mr. Miller! I was worried—”

         Sarah’s father’s eyes unfocused. Even in this heat he wore a long-sleeved shirt, buttoned to the chin.

         “We’re busy!” He slammed the screen door shut.

         “But—”

         “Go away!”

         The front door closed with a thud. A final blast of air-conditioned air hit my face before the heat billowed up.

         How could Mr. Miller not recognize me? Sarah and I had been best friends from kindergarten through third grade, when my family moved again for my dad’s work. We’d found each other by joyous accident on the first day of college, and I’d spent at least part of every semester break with the Millers.

         “Mr. Miller? Sarah?” I yelled into the dried flower wreath on the door. No answer. I chewed the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t called that morning, but just last week Sarah had assured me that I could stop by any time.

         I walked to my car, but we were in a dead spot and my cell phone didn’t work. I was embarrassed to think I had barged into some family argument and worried that it was more serious than that. This was not the way I’d expected to begin my trek cross-country, a gift to myself before embarking on med school.

         I drove to town.

         “Only one room left, it’s smoking,” the woman at the Best Western said. I hadn’t expected to stay in a hotel that night. But after eight hours in a car I couldn’t comprehend driving to Aunt Vicki’s in Indianapolis, my next stop. “You’re lucky we have that. Who’re your parents?”

         My brain was stalled on Mr. Miller slamming the door in my face. “What?”

         “You the Johnsons’ girl? Heard you went to Chicago.”

         “Oh, I’m not from around here. I was driving through and decided to visit a friend.”

         The woman stopped typing. I realized suddenly that she was unusually tall, at least six feet. “You’re not a local?”

         “No.”

         She snatched the hotel-issued pen from my fingers. “I’m sorry, we’re booked.” She plucked back the half-completed registration form. “Try Waynesville, twenty minutes north.”

         “You just said you had a room!”

         “My mistake.” She fed my form to the shredder. The grinding echoed the pounding in my temples. “Drive carefully.”

         “This is insane.”

         The woman turned back to her screen. I grabbed my purse and stomped outside.

         Since my last visit, more stores had closed, leaving grimy windows sporting nothing but “For Rent” signs. I walked past a defunct hair salon and a furniture store. The dollar store at least was still in business. I thought to buy a soda, but it was closed. I checked my watch. Three forty-two in the afternoon. The sign said it was open until nine on Wednesdays. I kicked the doorframe and wondered what was wrong with this town.

         There were pay phones in the town park, or at least there had been. I would try the Millers again before calling my aunt. Family law required her at least to offer me a room.

         The trees in the park were already dropping their leaves. I shuffled my feet through the little piles while I circled the deserted jungle gym and seesaws. Baskets for Frisbee golf hung from trees along the fitness trail. I left the trail and set out across the brittle grass, heading for the far side of the mini-lake, where the pay phones overlooked the tennis courts.

         A single line of pine trees kept stray balls from flying into the lake. I met that line and followed it along the shore. The water had receded two or three feet. Twigs, leaves, and goose feathers lined the shore, a rubber boot and mitten mixed into the litter. The metal pipe that in past years produced a magnificent fountain rose a hand’s-span above the waterline. It looked sad and forlorn, a thirsty mouth waiting for rain.

         I turned the corner of the tennis courts and stumbled over the biggest bird I’d ever seen.

         I scrambled back with a yelp. Not a goose, as I’d first thought, but a swan, five feet tall, with wings six feet across.

         Its neck uncurled, long and white. The beak opened, hissed.

         “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?”

         A man in shorts and flip-flops broke through the pine trees bordering the tennis courts.

         “Are you stupid or something?” He slung a gun over one shoulder. “Get out of here!”

         A shape loomed over my right shoulder. Wings buffeted my face. I staggered back, arms over my face, felt the dying grass under my sneakers give way to dirt and bracken.

         The second swan hissed. Another snapped behind it, and another, lined up like well-trained soldiers. Did they mean to drive me into the water? Then I caught sight of its beak.

         Filled with teeth, the perfectly formed dentition of an adult human, with teeth distributed for biting and chewing. I gasped.

         The swan paused in its attack. Its head turned, peering at me out of impossible eyes. They were blue, cornflower blue like Sarah’s, with black pupils. Blue eyes, with parallel rows of long, curled lashes. Human eyes to match the human teeth.

         I had backed beyond the shade of the pines into the blaze of the sun. My skin burst out in cold sweat.

         The man grabbed my arm, twisting me up to look at him. “What’s wrong with you, lady?”

         “Let me go!” I hit him full in the chest and ran. If he followed, I never knew. I ran hard and only looked back once I reached the fitness trail. The pine trees hid the swans and the man. And the gun.

         I was gasping, clutching my side and shaking as if stuck in The Blair Witch Project. I shouldn’t have turned down a raise and another summer as a file clerk in my dad’s office.

         A twig snapped. I whirled around. A voice called, “Cynthia?”

         Sarah’s twin brother, Scott, materialized from behind one of the dying walnut trees. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. He answered himself while I stared, unwilling to accept that someone actually recognized me. “You’re supposed to be staying at our house.”

         “I saw—by the lake.”

         He stiffened. “What did you see?”

         “Swans with teeth, and human eyes.”

         “Did anyone see you? Besides the swans?”

         “A man, with a gun.”

         “A swan guard. Of all the luck. Come on.” He ducked into the shade of the trees. “We have to get out of here.”

         I hurried to catch him. “What’s going on?”

         “I’m switching to Plan B.”

         The Millers’ old Ford was parked at the top of the hill. I climbed in. Almost before I could fasten my seat belt, Scott threw it into gear and raced away. He kept checking the rearview mirror in a way that made me expect the T. rex from Jurassic Park. I cracked the passenger side window and breathed the air.

         Scott slowed once we left the town limits. Here were rows of stunted corn. No chance of being knee-high by the Fourth of July.

         Scott adjusted the mirror. “Sorry about that. They expelled me from the town limits.”

         “Who did?”

         “Town council.”

         “But isn’t your dad on the town council?”

         “Yeah.” His mouth twisted. “He abstained.”

         I’d had too many shocks for one day. Scott had always been a stickler for rules.

         “Whatever for?”

         He drummed his thumbs on the wheel, unable to sit still.

         “Those swans,” he said, “they’re my brothers.”

         Nervous laughter rose in my throat. I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep it there. With a lurch Scott pulled the car over and set it in park. He turned in his seat.

         “Have you heard the story of the six swans?”

         I was still caught on the swans-as-his-brothers part and didn’t trust my voice. I shook my head.

         “Six princes are turned into swans,” Scott said low. “In order to break the spell, their sister must knit six shirts from nettles. For six years she doesn’t speak or laugh. On the last day of the last year, the swans return. She throws the shirts over their heads, and the swans turn back into her brothers.”

         “Only the youngest brother is left with a swan’s wing, I remember now, because the sister never finished the final sleeve.”

         “That’s right! No one knows that story.”

         I shrugged. “I read all sorts of things as a kid. When Sarah and I had sleepovers, we’d get into our sleeping bags, side by side, and read.”

         That brought a sad grin. “I know. I used to listen at the door, but you never talked about anything good.”

         I contemplated a teasing remark; thankfully I reconsidered. “But this story—it’s just a fairy tale, a symbol in story form.”

         “No, it’s real.” He checked the mirror again. We were partially hidden by honeysuckle and raspberry bushes, the berries dry and hard on the vine. “If they catch me telling you this...but I have to. Listen, the spell was never broken, not completely. The youngest brother still had that swan’s wing. He had six sons and a daughter, and when they reached the right age, the spell repeated itself. It has, once every generation, down to mine.”

         I stared at him. “But your father doesn’t have a swan’s wing.”

         “The women over the years, they’ve figured out how to sew the last sleeve so only a thin line of feathers remains.”

         The long sleeved shirts, carefully buttoned, even in the height of summer. A dull knot of dread twisted in my stomach. “But it’s impossible. If for six years…”

         “Six days. The spell, it’s changed. This time, we only have six days. The spell is up, tonight, at sunset.”

         He was sweating, glistening in the full blast of the car’s air conditioning.

         “Scott,” I said, “you’re not a swan.”

         “That’s the problem!” He pounded the wheel, and the car let out an indignant honk. Scott swore and craned his neck. “The spell didn’t work. I was out filling the propane tank on the grill, and suddenly there they were, flying out the front door. You should’ve seen my dad’s face when he saw me. He has a bad heart, you know. Has ever since Mom died. I thought he’d have an attack right there in the garage. What am I going to do?”

         He turned away, rubbing his face with a sweaty hand. The car was a wreck, filled with fast food containers and the accompanying smell of grease. I could guess where he’d been staying since he got kicked out.

         He turned back suddenly. “Did they look okay, the swans?”

         “I guess.” I was no expert in swan psychology. I went back to something he’d said. “What did you mean that the sisters learned how to sew the sleeve? You don’t mean for the spell to continue?”

         “Well, yeah, it has to!” He looked at me, suddenly realizing he’d left out the whole point of the conversation. “When the shirts get thrown over the swans, there’s a burst of magic. Sarah will wish to get her brothers back, and they’ll become people again. But anyone who’s nearby can wish on that magic. Last time, six people in town won the lottery within a year after the spell broke.” He frowned at a bruise on his knuckles. “You have to realize, the jobs are gone, the ground’s bad, and now this blasted drought. People in town are relying on this spell. If it doesn’t happen, Dad could lose the house.” He shook his head. “That’s why town council kicked me out, for interfering with the spell. I have until sundown today to figure out how to turn myself into a swan.”

         I opened my mouth then closed it. No wonder Mr. Miller had failed to recognize me, and the lady at the hotel had fought to preserve the room for one of her own. If I had one wish, I’d wish to win the lottery, too. Goodbye, student loans.

         “I’m sorry,” I said, “they don’t teach that in pre-med.”

         “Well,” he demanded faintly, “what do they teach?”

         He didn’t want an answer. “You said you had a Plan B.”

         “Not much of one. I’m going to see if Sarah’s figured anything out. You might as well come along, seeing how that’s why you’re here.”

         This wasn’t exactly the visit I’d planned, but I couldn’t abandon Scott. “Do you want me to drive? You look like you haven’t slept in six days.”

         “Not sure I have. But no, we’re going in the back way.”

         “Back way?”

         It was euphemistic at best. Scott left the road a mile from the house and led us on a wild ride between fields of corn, alfalfa, and Queen Anne’s Lace. I was white-knuckled and nauseated by the time we pulled up behind the abandoned barn at the back of the Millers’ property.

         “Don’t slam your door,” Scott cautioned before I got out. He left his ajar and crept over to peer around the side of the barn. “Wait here.”

         I spent five minutes breathing through my mouth to calm my stomach before he returned.

         “What is the fire department doing here?” I demanded when he crept back around the barn. He sat on the hood of the car. He was so pale it seemed the puff of my breath could knock him over.

         “The bonfire,” he explained. “It’s the only way to lure the swans back. Remember the story? The swans fly in, circle the bonfire, and Sarah throws the shirts over their heads. Only this year it’s so dry we need special permission to break the burn ban.”

         He was about to say more when we heard footsteps. My heart wormed into my throat. Scott bounced off the car, and a moment later Sarah walked around the corner of the barn.

         Scott scooped her in a bear hug. She grinned at me in turn—after Scott told her about the park—and only then did it hit me that she was mute.

         Scott was prepared with notebook and pen. We sat on prickly grass in the shadow of the barn. Only grasshoppers whirled by in great, buzzing leaps. Even the birds were silent in that heat.

         “My dad’s sorry he didn’t recognize you,” Sarah wrote. “He’d forgotten you were supposed to come.”

         “How is he?” Scott asked once I’d explained what happened. “That doesn’t sound good.”

         Sarah shook her head. Scott frowned and plucked at strands of grass. The ground was hard, baked solid.

         “The shirts are all done, except the last one.” If you can write something hopefully, that was what she did. “The spell lets me use a sewing machine now,” she added for my sake. “And no nettles, thank goodness. Just cotton.”

         “That’s good,” Scott muttered. He was shredding grass by the handfuls. “We’re just missing one thing…”

         Sarah touched his knee. “It’s not your fault.”

         “I think it is. I felt something, when the spell happened. It was like a wind. It tried to grab me, only I shook it off.” He put his face in his hands. “I ruined the spell.”

         Sarah put her arms around his shoulders, but he pushed her away and stood, his back to us. Sarah turned to me. She didn’t need to write to ask for my help.

         “I don’t think it’s your fault,” I said, “and I’m not just saying that because I’m your friend. I drove through five states to get here. It’s dry everywhere, but it’s worst here. Even the rest of Pennsylvania isn’t so bad. Heck, the rest of the county isn’t this bad. What if the draught and the spell are connected?”

         “What do you mean?” Sarah wrote.

         “Well, do you do anything to feed the magic? Rituals, sacrifices, incantations?” I searched my limited store of magical knowledge. “Maybe you put out a saucer of milk?”

         “Nothing.”

         “Good. I mean, good for my idea. What if that means the magic is worn out? It wasn’t made to reappear generation after generation. It was supposed to be a one-time shot. Now it’s so weak that it couldn’t even transform all six of you,” I nodded to Scott’s back, “and it’s only good for six days, not six years.”

         I might have just told them an asteroid was about to strike the Earth. Scott swayed where he stood. Sarah shook her head again, only this time she kept shaking it, over and over. Finally Scott knelt and calmed her with a hand, stroking her hair.

         “That doesn’t explain the drought…”

         “Magic’s a part of nature, isn’t it?” I said. “I mean, you always find fairies and elves in the woods. So the magic overdrew its power, and now the environment’s out of whack, and we have a drought.”

         “It’s like a field,” Scott said dully. “You can’t keep planting and planting and expect to get the same yield. You need to fertilize and rotate the crops.” He sank back on his heels. “We have to revitalize the spell, or the drought will never end.”

         Sarah clutched the pen a long time before she wrote. “I have to finish the final sleeve.”

         “What? No, that’s not what I meant.”

         Sarah underlined her sentence and added two exclamation marks.

         “But the town depends on the magic. Dad’s on the town council because of it. Mrs. Smeltzer’s counting on getting her husband out of that coma with it.”

         “The town will die if I don’t. And then the drought will spread. Don’t you see?”

         Scott rounded on me. “You thought this up. How do we get out of it? If we end the spell, the town will chase us over the state line.”

         “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t even remember the whole fairy tale. It just made sense. Maybe I’m all wrong.”

         “No,” he said gloomily, “it makes sense. The stream out by the old factory dried up during the last spell. No one could understand it. That’s when the town started to die.” He scowled. “We’re such idiots, the whole line of us, twisting magic like this.”

         “You didn’t know,” I said. “We used to think there’d be an endless supply of oil, or forests. Magic’s even more unknown.”

         “We have to tell Dad.”

         “No!” Scott stilled Sarah’s pen. “He’ll blame himself for everything—the drought, the factory closing. He’d probably find some way of blaming himself for the entire economic state of the country. No, he doesn’t find out, ever.”

         Sarah wrestled the pen back. “Then how do I explain finishing the sleeve?”

         “Just do it,” he said. “He’ll find out soon enough.”

         Sarah nodded. Her eyes were big. I thought suddenly of the swans, their blue eyes copies of her own. “What if it doesn’t work? You’re still not a swan.”

         Scott stared a long time at the words in the notebook. He’d never been one for subtlety. “Well,” he said, “we all have to die sometime.”

         Cars started arriving around eight-thirty that evening. The fire department had set up a barricade a dozen yards away from the fire pit where we used to make s’mores. Now the pit was filled with a mountain of brush and logs. Two fire trucks sat parked at a right angle from the barn.

         Scott and I took the sandwiches and bottled water Sarah brought us and scrambled into the barn loft to watch the crowds descend. It was eerily quiet. A fussy child was quickly hushed. My chewing seemed loud. I swallowed and tried to chug the water silently.

         “It has to work,” Scott said. I turned and realized he didn’t know he’d spoken aloud. He rested his chin on one knee. A vein on his brow throbbed.

         “When does the show start?” I whispered. Maybe I should have used another phrase, but Scott seemed beyond matters of lexicon.

         “Soon. They’ll need the blaze going and everyone in place by sundown.” He turned his head on his knee. In the dimness of the barn, his skin seemed to glow. “If things get ugly, go to the car and lock the doors.” He put the keys into my hand. “Don’t wait for me.”

         “Scott—”

         He shook his head. “It was good seeing you again. Sorry we couldn’t be better hosts.”

         “At least I’ll have something to think about during my all-nighters,” I tried to joke.

         He grinned. “That should give your professors some interesting reading.”

         “Person-as-swan would make a fascinating anatomy class discussion.”

         “One of those mysteries of magic better left unexplained.” He took a swig of water. “I’m glad I never got to find out what it’s like. They knew what was happening to them, didn’t they?”

         I didn’t need to ask who he meant. I let my silence answer.

         Scott’s mouth set. “This has to work.”

         The crowds swelled. One delegate from each household in a town of twelve thousand swarmed over the fields and pressed against the front of the barn. I worried that someone would sneak in to find us in the loft, but Scott said no. The belief remained that you must be in the open air to make a wish. No one would risk a chance at wealth or healing.

         Fireflies had begun to wink in the corner of the field when Sarah finally slipped out the back door of the house. Two uniformed police officers escorted her through the whispering crowds and up a low platform in front of the fire pit. One of the officers read from a stack of notecards. I wondered how he could see in the twilight. There was no microphone; the words sounded little more than a drone. Perhaps it was a ritual saying because at one point Scott jerked his head up.

         “That’s my cue. Wish me luck.”

         “Luck,” I said, but he was already down the ladder. I wrapped my arms around my knees. I was shaking in every limb.

         The officer stopped speaking and turned to Sarah, who nodded. At once a firefighter lit the bonfire.

         It was built well, and the kindling was dry. The fire raced up, engulfing the mountain of fuel until I had to slit my eyes against the brightness. I wondered how Sarah stood the heat.

         A person in the crowd gasped. I should not have heard it over the crackle of the blaze, but the sound carried like gunfire. The crowd looked up. Five swans flew low over the roof of the house. While Scott forced his way through the distracted crowd, his brothers circled in ever-lower sweeps, biding their time with impatient spirals above the wild flames.

         Finally Scott burst through the mass of people. At once the lead swan dove. Quick as a wink, Sarah threw the first shirt up. The swan checked, bending to catch the shirt around its neck. Two, three, four, five shirts went up and slipped over swan necks. The swans flew low, feet extended, to land in the dead grass before the fire.

         “Here!” Scott yelled over the fire’s roar.

         Sarah spun. Scott caught the last shirt one-handed and yanked it over his head. First one arm, then the other jammed into the sleeves. He pulled the shirt down. Both sleeves extended to his wrists.

         There was a blast. The light came first, blinding white light followed by a boom that I felt in the cavity of my chest just as it plowed against my eardrums. I lay on the floor of the loft, shaking my head, with a ringing in my ears, when I first heard the screams.

         I dragged myself to the window. Thirty seconds could not have passed. In the brown grassy space before the platform, Sarah hauled five brothers to their wobbly feet. Behind them, the fire had exploded into a raging, whirling vortex of flame. I leaned out the window, no longer caring who saw me. The sky had turned blackish-yellow, a sickening, churning color like a bruise turned liquid. From it, a long, thin finger of cloud reached down to meet the upturned twister of flame. Between this and his brothers, Scott stood silhouetted against flame and magic. His red hair whipped out like a halo.

         I couldn’t stay in that barn.

         The officers were yelling, people streaming over the fields. I scrambled down the ladder to the sudden, futile hiss of a fire truck’s hose.

         Outside I swam against wind and people and water drops turned to missiles. “Scott!” I had lost him in the mayhem.

         The firefighters gave up their hoses. Above the steam engine roar of the wind, they told us to run, run, find cover.

         “Cynthia!” Sarah grabbed my arm through the mass of people. “Help them.”

         Her brothers staggered towards the house, saddled with unfamiliar bodies. I threw someone’s arm—Tobey’s?—over my shoulders and dragged him up the deck steps to the house. I craned my neck, searching for the red halo of hair.

         Mr. Miller threw the door wide. “Inside! Inside! Into the basement!”

         We tumbled down the stairs, the house shuddering as if to stop us. The lights flickered, and there were the flashes of fire turning to wind, and the howl of magic unleashed, and then the roar of the tornado rushing away.

         And Sarah’s voice, tremulous with sudden use. “Where’s Scott?”

         It rained for four days afterwards, a light, soaking farmer’s rain that brought the corn out of the ground. The tornado leveled the barn, but the insurance check meant that Mr. Miller could keep the house, at least for another year, and that alone proved the spell fulfilled one last set of wishes.

         They found Scott that night beside the lake in the town park, where the tornado had carried him over ten miles. There wasn’t a mark upon the body.

         “You’ll sit with the family for the funeral?” Mr. Miller asked me, and at Sarah’s insistence, I did.

         The sun made a thin line of gold against the last of the rain clouds as half the town returned to their cars, leaving the Millers and me alone with the casket. Scott would be buried alongside his mother.

         “We want to apologize,” Tobey said with a wave of his hands that included his brothers. His remaining brothers. “For, you know, attacking you like that.”

         “It’s ancient history.” Even then, I knew it was the type of history that lives.

         “I thought Scott would like this,” Sarah said. She opened her hands to show me the little saucer of milk she carried. “You can see the dry riverbed from here. See, over there, above the abandoned factory. I thought, if I brought a little, every day, maybe I could make the river flow again.”

         “It’ll take an awful lot of milk,” I said.

         “An awful lot.” She nodded.

         “I’ll help.” The saucer she handed me was still warm from her skin, the milk aglow in the evening sun. I poured out my first offering to the thirsty earth.

 

Copyright 2007, Kathryn Yelinek

Cover: "Voyager"

The Voyager Maiden edges toward the waterline as she awaits the setting of her planet's twin.

Copyright 2008, Victoria Zamudio

Victoria Zamudio is a student artist.  This is her first work to appear as a cover for Double-Edged Publishing.