Flight of the Five Swans
Feathered Chapter 21

Raia

Raia had long lost track of thenumber of days since she and her sisters escaped the Deturian palace andSoran’s clutches. She knew that it hadcertainly been longer than a week since their grand escape—perhaps even morethan two weeks. The days and nights hadmerged together in her mind from hours spent walking and knitting and stumblingthrough the forest. Raia was certainthat she must look a right sight from tripping over roots and sloshing throughcountless mud puddles on a daily basis. Her feet had already developed blisters on top of blisters, and hershoes—the sturdiest boots that she owned—were all but falling apart. Her dress was stained with the forest,despite all of her efforts to wash it—and herself—in the river by which theyhad camped only the night before. ThoughRaia still tied her hair back daily in her usual chignon, it was also gettingharder and harder for her to untangle the strands with her fingers.

Her swan sisters, of course, didnot have the same problem, as their grooming consisted mainly of ensuring thattheir feathers remained white and clean. The swans’ appearances did not reflect the difficulties of their forestjourney to the same extent as Raia’s; it was a distinction that Raia foundherself envying on more than one occasion, particularly as she struggled towash her hair without soap or shampoo of any kind. Yet despite the challenge that maintainingher personal hygiene presented, Raia would have given anything to ensure thatsuch minor issues were the extent of her worries.

But her days on the road were alsofilled with the never-ending fear of discovery—and of their subsequentrecapture. Raia and her sisters hadinitially gone five days without seeing another human soul, but by the sixthday, it was clear that Soran and his men had at last realized that theprincesses were not, in fact, on any of the roads heading back to Kyoria. Deturian search parties could now be heard orspotted in the forest nearby, though they had yet to actually cross thesisters’ paths on the tiny forest trail that the princesses had beenfollowing. The game trail that Raia andher sisters had been using to guide them was all but deserted apart fromthemselves. Clearly, Cliodne had doneher research well in selecting their route out of Deturus.

Still, Raiasaw the presence of Soran’s soldiers in the forest as excuse enough for theprincesses to be more cautious both during the day and at night. The smallest trace of guards in theirvicinity was enough to send Raia and the swans scrambling for cover, so thattheir presence would not be detected. Asthe scout, Thaleia would honk once at her sisters to signal that soldiers weremoving around nearby. The sisters wouldstop walking immediately, ducking into bushes and up trees in order to hidethemselves from sight. Raia all butstopped breathing in these moments, waiting with bated breath for Thaleia’s lowhiss—the signal that the strangers had moved on and that the coast wasclear. While Raia regretted the timelost traveling during these short interludes, she nevertheless welcomed therespite they offered from the incessant walking.

She did not,however, welcome the break from knitting that was forced upon her. These mad scrambles for cover in the forestunderbrush were among the only times of the day when Raia would stop knitting,but only because she was terrified that the low clatter of her needles wouldattract the attention of the people from whom they were hiding. She regarded each and every pause withunbridled impatience, eager to resume her work.

She needed to resume her work.

Raia felt the pressure of this tasklike a heavy weight on her shoulders—a burden that she was forced to bearsilently to fulfill the terms of the ritual. She felt as though words were bottling up inside of her, desperate to bereleased, but time and again she bit them down. Her sisters were counting on her to finish the shawls to break theircurse, and she was determined not to let them down. But Raia’s vow was complicated by these newforced pauses in her work. Being inconstant motion had already slowed down the progress she was making in knittingthe third shawl, and she chafed at the addition of further delays.

An even more pressing concern wasRaia’s rapidly decreasing supply of nettle yarn. Prior to their escape, Raia and her sistershad tried to spin as much nettle yarn as possible with the hope that theirsupply would be enough to create all five shawls. As Raia knit the third of the five shawls,however, she kept a worried eye on the nettle yarn still remaining. She was doubtful that the yarn that she hadleft would stretch to complete all of the necessary garments, and Raia was at aloss as to what she could so should she run out. While she was sure that there would be aplethora of nettles to be found in the forest, she no longer had a spinningwheel with which to spin them into yarn. Furthermore, Raia could no longer count on her sisters to help her inspinning more nettle yarn, given their permanent avian state.

In fact, she was beginning to doubtwhether they would even be able to aid her in gathering nettles as they hadbefore. As the days passed by, Raiafound herself worrying more and more about her sisters. She suspected that their prolonged removalfrom the magic lake—and the subsequent rupture of their nightly humantransformations—was beginning to take a toll on their minds. Raia noticed with fear and dismay that theyhad begun to act increasingly less like princesses—or even less like humans atall. Her sisters were now behaving moreand more like… swans.

Cliodne at the front of the partyhesitated every time they came to a new crossroads in their path, wherepreviously she had been so certain of the route that they were on. Raia worried that her elder sister wasstarting to forget the maps that she had so painstakingly memorized in theweeks of planning their escape. She heldher breath every time Cliodne paused, letting it out again only after the newpath had been chosen. Raia could onlyhope that she and her sisters were still on the correct path to reach Hiall;she had no way of knowing exactly where they were, and she mentally kickedherself for not having brought a map with them. She and her sisters had been so confident in Cliodne’s ability tonavigate them out of Deturus that they had thought stealing a map to be anunnecessary risk. None of the princesseshad ever imagined that Cliodne’s lightning-quick mind and photographic memorymight become unavailable after her prolonged experience as a swan.

How Raia regretted that decisionnow.

Eurielle was also slowing down theparty even more, for she had seemingly lost all sense of urgency to escape fromDeturus. No longer constantly underRaia’s feet, the youngest and smallest swan often lagged behind the group,waddling slowly and lazily as if she had all the time in the world. On several occasions, Eurielle had stoppedwalking entirely, plopping herself down in the middle of the path and tuckingher head under her wing as if about to take a nap. She had had to be nudged awake once more byRaia and then pushed forward a couple of steps before she could be urged tocontinue walking.

Raia found that her sisters alsoseemed less cognizant of her presence among them—or at the very least, theyseemed to have forgotten that her needs were different than their own. Neither Callia nor Petra sought out food forRaia as often as they had before, and what food they did bring her wasincreasingly more in the line of their own diet—pond reeds and berries inediblefor humans, and once, a whole beak full of crickets. Raia had only barely refrained from screamingaloud when Petra had dropped the insects into her hand, with the same look ofpride on her avian face that she wore every time she brought Raia something toeat. Raia could still feel the sensationof the tiny legs crawling over her palm, and she shuddered at the thought. Following this cricket incident, she hadtaken to foraging for her own food rather than relying on her sisters’ offerings,which took even more time away from her knitting.

To make matters worse, the group oftravellers was forced to stop more and more often by the sound of Thaleiaalerting them of danger in the vicinity—even when there was none to befound. Thaleia had begun sounding thealert for increasingly innocuous reasons, the most recent being the presence ofa lost tomcat in the forest nearby. Theswans had immediately bunched together in a protective circle, their necks outstretchedand bobbing threateningly as they hissed. Though a confused Raia had managed to shoo the cat away with a simplewave of her hand, it had taken several minutes before her sisters had calmedtheir fear enough to continue on their way.

In fact, the swans’ behavior at thelast several alerts had provided Raia with a new area of concern. Rather than hiding in the bushes and trees asthe sisters had previously agreed upon for their strategy, the swans nowinvariably circled together to face the perceived threat head-on. Though these last few alerts had all beenfalse alarms involving no real danger, Raia did not like to think what wouldhappen should she and her sisters encounter one of Soran’s men now. She had a horrible feeling that her sisters’new defensive strategy would make it incredibly difficult for her to ensurethat they all evaded notice. In truth,Raia doubted her ability to hide five swans from sight when the swansthemselves seemed more inclined to fight.

The only silver lining that Raiacould replace was that the pain that her sisters felt at dawn and at nightfallseemed to be dissipating. While theswans still keened and hissed at those times of the day, their frantic writhinghad diminished to a simple shaking. Itwas as though the deep agony that her sisters had felt previously during theirfaux-transformation had lessened to a gentler ache. Though Raia was relieved that her sisterswere now spared the worst of their daily torture, she also regarded this changeas yet another sign of the curse worsening still more.

And it frightened her.

What frightened Raia—and saddenedher—even further was that her sisters no longer seemed to desire the samephysical comfort as they did before—the same physical comfort of which shestill felt in dire need. She had come tocherish the feeling of her sisters’ avian bodies nestled beside her at night,their heads and sometimes even their wings spread wide over her. And then several nights prior, Petra hadtucked her head under her wing and slept with her body barely grazing Raia’sskirts.

Raia’s heart broke a little.

The next night, Cliodne and Calliaslept in the same position, heads tucked and wings close to their sides. Only Eurielle and Thaleia still nestled inclose to Raia, each using her leg to pillow their heads. Raia drew comfort from the contact, but shemissed the warmth of her other sisters.

That night, Raia choked back a sobas Eurielle curled her neck and placed her head under her wing like the otherswans. Raia did not dare look down atThaleia by her side—the last of the swans to fall asleep. Her hands trembled in their knitting when shefelt Thaleia begin to settle in beside her hip. Raia’s eyes were misty with unshed tears as she waited, half dreadingwhat her twin sister would do.

Thaleia stretched out her wings widebefore pulling them in close to her body. She wiggled once to make herself comfortable. Then she lowered her head onto Raia’s leg,and closed her eyes in sleep.

Raia wept silent tears of relief.