Flight of the Five Swans
Feathered Chapter 19

Raia

Raia woke the next morning justbefore dawn to a crick in her neck and a general stiffness all over. She stretched, wincing as she flexed herfingers—surprisingly the most painful parts of her body. Her hands were cramped from knitting allthroughout the previous day and into the early hours of the morning. Yet despite her sore fingers, she could notregret the time she had spent at the task. Knitting had kept her hands busy and her mind occupied while her sistershad been away leading the guards astray from their trail. In fact, Raia had found herself unable tostop knitting even after the swans had returned safely back to the cave. She had found it a cathartic and effectiveway to keep herself from dwelling on the issue of her sisters’ now permanent avianstate—at least, permanent until Raiacould break the curse. And though shehad managed to complete another shawl early in the afternoon the day before,she still had three shawls left to finish.

So she had knit even faster,forcing her grainy eyes to remain open long past the time that they first begandrooping. Raia had at last fallenasleep, still hunched over her knitting with her back leaning against the cavewall. Her swan sisters perched allaround her, and several of them had even chosen to sleep on top of her, theirfeathers vibrating as they breathed deeply in and out in slumber.

The swans were in almost the exactsame positions around her when Raia stirred the next morning. In truth, it was by these positions that shewas slowly coming to identify which swan was which sister—or at the very leastto venture a guess. Raia was all butcertain that Thaleia was the swan with ruffled neck feathers who had claimedRaia’s lap as her nest—rather loudly and forcefully, she might add. She had hissed at the other swans that hadattempted to sit there, practically shoving them out of the way before ploppingdown firmly herself.

Yes, that was Thaleia, all right.

Two of theother swans had nestled right up to Raia’s sides, one on the left, the other toher right. Raia was reasonably sure thatthese were Cliodne and Eurielle. Cliodne—the largest swan of the bunch—had sat to Raia’s right. She occasionally bumped her head againstRaia’s hand while she had been knitting, as though encouraging her in herefforts. However, as the hours tickedon, the swan’s head bumps had become less encouraging and more forceful, asthough she had been protesting Raia’s incessant knitting, and was trying totell her to stop working and get some sleep. Raia strongly suspected that Cliodne most regretted the loss of hervoice for not being able to urge her younger sister to take proper care ofherself. She felt a stab of guilt at thethought.

‘I’m sorry,Clio.’ Raia thought, patting the sleeping swan’s head with her hand. ‘I’ll dobetter.’

The swan toRaia’s left, however, acted very differently, and Raia was able to recognizeEurielle in the smallest bird’s mannerisms. She was nestled as close to Raia as possible, burrowing herself to whereshe was almost under Raia’s hip,rather than beside it. She had also beenthe first of them all to drift to sleep—evidence beyond all reasonable doubtthat this bird was the youngest Kyorian princess. Eurielle the swan slept with her long neckarched gracefully and her head pillowed on Raia’s side, dangerously close toThaleia’s territory—a classic Eurielle move.

Callia,Raia guessed, was the swan with the gray tint to her wings snuggled in thefabric in between Raia’s legs. Heridentity was decided more by process of elimination than anything else, for thelast swan—the one with the long tail feathers—could not be anyone other thanPetra. The only one to wake before Raia,this swan had clearly been busy either throughout the night or during the veryearly hours of the morning. On the cavefloor beside Raia’s feet was piled a small collection of food that had clearly not been foraged from the forest. On first glance, she saw fresh bread andcheeses, as well as several different kinds of fruit and an entire pie. Petra herself was perched on Raia’s anklesnext to the food. Head cocked, shesimply stared between her sister and the pile of food that she had accumulated,and Raia could swear that her sister’s avian face looked almost smug.

The smellof the fresh bread reached Raia’s nostrils, and her stomach growled. Petra the swan looked positively triumphantat the sound, nestling down further between Raia’s ankles with a self-satisfiedbody wiggle. Raia smiled her thanks andreached for an apple. She tried to moveslowly so as not to dislodge Thaleia or her other swan sisters sitting aroundher. Yet as soon as her fingers touchedthe fruit, the swans suddenly awoke all at once.

Raia was afraid at first that shehad been the one to wake them, but quickly realized that this was not thecase. Soft light filtered in through themouth of the cave, and Raia felt a stab of horrified comprehension.

It was dawn.

Her sisters were experiencing allthe pain of their transformation without the actual transformation. They all keened and hissed, their featheredbodies writhing on the floor as if they were in the utmost agony. Raia watched them helplessly, racking herbrain for anything that she could do to alleviate their pain, but there wasnothing.

Finally—finally—it was over. Her sistersstopped moving and writhing, and for one terrifying moment, Raia feared thatthey were dead. Had they made a horriblemistake leaving Soran’s castle? What ifthis were their punishment for escaping, the loophole in their curse that theyhad not anticipated?

Then Eurielle’s wing twitched andRaia released the breath she had been holding. She reached out with trembling fingers and stroked first Eurielle’shead, then all of her sisters’ heads in turn. The five swans seemed to welcome the small ministration, evenPetra. Then as one, the birds rose totheir feet. Thaleia pushed Raia’s appletowards her twin in a silent appeal for her to eat. She obeyed.

As Raia slowly ate her way throughthe provisions that Petra had collected for her, her swan sisters foraged fortheir own food. They snapped up weedsand insects in the dirt surrounding the mouth of the cave. Raia shivered slightly at the sight ofThaleia swallowing a large beetle. Clearly, her sisters had already become used to such fare after spendingthe last couple of weeks as swans during the daytime hours, but Raianevertheless found this evidence of their new diet to be slightlydisturbing—not to mention disgusting. She thanked her lucky stars that she was still human and did not have toresort to eating insects for food. Thenshe felt an immediate stab of guilt at the thought. It had certainly not been her sisters’ choiceto be transformed, nor had Raia had any control over being excluded from thecurse. It was luck—pure, dumb luck—thatshe was not also swallowing crickets like her sisters, let alone feeling thepain of their transformations.

Raia had only just finished thelast of the apples—she only had the pie left to eat—when she realized that hersisters were all standing at the cave entrance, staring at herexpectantly. Clearly, they felt that itwas time that they all got moving. Raiapacked away the pie rather reluctantly, dropping it into the pillow pouch whereshe’d hidden her knitting supplies—the same pouch that Callia and Cliodne hadbeen using the last couple of weeks to collect nettles. Her knitting, however, she kept in herhands. Raia had mastered the art ofknitting while walking when still just a child. She fully intended to take advantage of the time that they would haveto spend walking through the forest inorder to get as far as she could knitting the shawls for her sisters.

Raia felt a pang as she and hersisters walked away from the cave. Though they had only stayed there for one night, she had felt safe forthat night—her first night of newfound freedom. She could not help regretting leaving the shelter behind, though sheunderstood the need for it. After all,staying too long in one place would soon become very risky in regards toevading recapture from Soran’s search parties. Still, while she and her sisters had several other possible shelters inthe forest that they eventually planned to use in their escape, they could notguarantee when they would actually reach any of them.

The six sisters walked west throughthe forest underbrush, using the brightening sky at their backs to situatethemselves in terms of direction. Duringtheir late-night planning sessions as Soran’s prisoners, the princesses hadcollectively decided not to head directly northwards towards Kyoria after theymanaged to escape from the castle.

“It’s the first thing Soran wouldexpect.” Cliodne had arguedreasonably. “We need to outthink him.”

Her younger sisters had unanimouslyagreed with her, though some with more disappointment than the rest at thebitter realization that they would not be heading straight home. Thaleia had been the one to suggest that theyflee west instead, towards the neighboring kingdom of Hiall. Hiall was a known ally of Kyoria, thoughseparated from Kyoria itself by the antagonistic country of Ithcar. Cliodne had been in contact with the ruler ofHiall—Queen Therese—for the past several years through correspondence, thoughshe had yet to visit the country in person due to the perceived danger ofstraying too close to the Ithcarian border. Despite their limited personal experience with Hiall, however, thesisters had been convinced that they would be able to replace shelter within theirally country’s borders. Once they weresafe in the Hiallan royal palace, they would then be able to send a message totheir father or Eralie regarding the true nature of their circumstances.

As furtherincentive to adopt this plan, the route to Hiall through the forest presentedby far the quickest way to escape Deturus’s borders. Where it had taken the princesses’ firsttravelling party nearly a month to reach the Deturian palace on horseback fromthe Kyoria-Deturus border, the journey to Hiall from the royal Deturian castlewas at most a week and a half using the same form of transportation.

Unfortunately, making their escapefrom Deturus on horseback was not a viable option, as the sisters had decidedto err on the side of caution in order to avoid recapture. It had been determined that stealing a mountfor Raia for their journey would garner far more attention than they couldafford to gain. To make matters worse,the same had also been decided in regards to the swan sisters’ flying—apartfrom their initial escape, of course. However way they looked at their situation, the princesses could notdeny that the sight of five large swans flying daily over the forest was boundto draw the gazes of passing travellers and villagers.

And thus the swans weregrounded. They were forced to waddlealongside Raia on the thin forest trail, and as a result, the pace of theirtravel was laboriously slow.

Cliodne led the way, her white tailfeathers swaying gently from side to side. Having explored all the possibleavenues for their escape over the past several weeks, Cliodne was the one most familiarwith the route the princesses had agreed upon, and was serving as navigator forthe little group. She also determinedthe times throughout the day that they rested, signaling each break to hersisters with a definitive honk.

Behind Cliodne waddled Callia andPetra, both of whom had been placed in charge of replaceing nourishment for Raia,though in very different ways. Here,Callia’s previous lessons in identifying edible plants were used to theiradvantage. At several occasionsthroughout the day, Callia broke away from the group to seek out a sprig ofburdock or other edible flora in the forest underbrush, though she did notwander more than a couple of feet away at any given time. Returning to the group with the plant claspedtightly but carefully in her beak, she would drop whatever she had found intoRaia’s hand, waggling her tail feathers in a manner almost reminiscent of adog. Raia smiled and accepted eachoffering from her sister gratefully, stroking her sister’s head in thanks.

Petra, however, wandered muchfarther afield than her elder sister in searching for food for Raia, oftendisappearing from their sight completely for fifteen to twenty minutes at thevery least. Raia gave a silent sigh of reliefeach time her sister came back into view carrying whatever pastry or legume shehad managed to snatch that time. ThoughRaia accepted these offerings with just as much gratefulness as she didCallia’s, she could not help but wonder each time where Petra had managed toreplace the food. Was she raiding kitchensor gardens in the area? Raia stronglysuspected that to be the case, and could not help feeling guilt at the thoughtthat she was eating stolen food.

Thaleia also tended to stray fromher sisters so that she could scout the surrounding area for possible dangers,whether human or animal. Though thistask had once again been agreed upon by the princesses prior to their escapefrom Soran’s palace, Raia’s heart remained lodged in her throat every time hertwin sister vanished from sight. Herheartbeat only returned to normal when Thaleia once again returned to her view.

Raia herself walked slowly behindthe group of swans in order to check her pace, with Eurielle almost constantlyunderfoot. The youngest swan princessseemed unable and unwilling to detach herself from Raia’s skirts—a clinginessthat Raia had not seen in her sister since Eurielle had been a very smallchild. As the artistic ones of thegroup, Raia and Eurielle had shared a bond growing up that almost rivaled thatbetween Raia and Thaleia. Still, Raiafelt slightly worried at her sister’s newfound attachment; she was afraid thatsuch a reversion in behavior was evidence perhaps of a more seriousdeterioration as well.

Not to mention that having Euriellewalking so close made it difficult for Raia to continue her knitting. On several occasions already, the swan hadnearly become tangled in her skirts and as a result, Raia was now constantlywary of tripping over her sister. Yetdespite this and other newfound difficulties in their journey through theDeturian forest, Raia kept her eyes fixed on her knitting needles. She only glanced up from her work throughoutthe day to occasionally check that her path was clear, and that her sisterswere still waddling doggedly on in front of her. She ducked reflexively under low hangingbranches that the swans had not even noticed. She hopped over small puddles through which her sisters had seemed happyenough to trod. Thorns snagged and mudsplattered on her skirts as she walked.

And through it all, Raia knit.