Second full moon
When I finally climbed out of the water, I slipped into the boy’s clothes I’d bought in Etten. Then I darted back to the hut to prepare dinner. I’d created a perch for Owain-the-hen in the corner by my bed, and she settled there, watching me work through half-closed eyes. I hoped the firelight would keep her awake until my brothers arrived.
My swan-brothers grew uneasy as dusk neared. I wasn’t sure if their minds pushed against the enchantment that bound them, or if the swans simply sensed the coming change.
As the last bit of light faded, a rush of wind tore through the pines that sheltered the hut. I knew the sound—it was more savage than any storm I’d ever heard. I waited in the hut’s open wall as the wind pulled at my still-drying hair and rolled toward the swans.
After a moment, the swans’ trumpets changed to men’s voices.
I grinned, bouncing on my toes like a little girl, willing them to hurry.
“Ryn, Ryn?” called Aiden.
“There’s a fire,” said Mael. “She’s well.”
I heard splashing as they stepped out of the water.
Cadan’s laughter rolled up out of the darkness as he discovered the clothes I’d set out for them. “Clothes! Clothes, bless her! There’s sign enough!”
Half a minute later, my brothers ran up to the hut. Aiden scooped me up first, and I was passed from one to the other and hugged close—until I reached Owain. He simply nodded.
Cadan smacked the back of his head. “You’ll wear the clothes she brought you, but you won’t hug her?”
“We wouldn’t need these clothes if she hadn’t—”
Cadan reached to smack Owain again, but I grabbed his arm. Don’t.
“Whatever you want, Ryn. What’s for dinner?” Cadan tilted his head back and sniffed. “I’ve waited all month for this.”
I motioned them to follow me to the hut.
Mael paused when we reached the hut. “I thought we were seeing the firelight through a door, not a broken-down wall.”
They stepped gingerly over the half-wall, taking in my bed and the fire in the nearby hearth. Gavyn went to the branch that propped up the roof and prodded it, nodding when it held firm.
“BWAAAAK!”
There was an explosion of noise and motion, a glimpse of feathers and beak and clawed feet, as Owain-the-hen launched herself at my brothers.
Cadan bellowed and stumbled backward. Mael reached for the sword that was no longer on his hip. The rest of my brothers dissolved into a tangle of flailing arms and churning legs as they tried to figure out what monster was attacking them.
I darted toward Owain-the-hen, thumping my chest to call her to me. She flapped away from my brothers’ reach and turned to me, as if to be sure that I was safe. I patted my chest again, and she flapped up to my shoulder and settled there.
“What was that?” bellowed Aiden.
Owain clucked smugly from my shoulder.
Cadan strode toward us, ready to wring her neck. “We’re having hen tonight, brothers!”
I kicked out, just as he’d taught me, raking the edge of my boot down his shin.
“Ow!” He rubbed his leg. “That hen attacked us, Ryn!”
I looked at him, eyebrow raised, waiting for him to hear the words he’d spoken.
Owain-the-brother snorted.
“The House of Cynwrig routed by a hen . . . ,” mused Mael.
Cadan shook a finger at him. “I didn’t say that!”
“But you screamed like it,” Gavyn pointed out.
“You all did! I wasn’t the only one!” protested Cadan.
Aiden guffawed, but Declan watched Owain-the-hen as she settled on my shoulder. “She thinks Ryn is her chick.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Gavyn. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
“That coming from a man who was a black swan an hour ago,” pointed out Cadan witheringly. “Exactly how many years have you studied hens?”
Poor Cadan. He’d come to the hut expecting a meal and had been routed by a hen instead.
The meal!
I deposited Owain-the-hen on her perch before kneeling by the fire. After making sure that she stayed put, my brothers crowded close, peering over my shoulders.
“You just put all those fish straight on the coals?” asked Mael, poking one with a stick. “The flesh will be burned. It already is.”
Aiden glared at him, eyes wide: Hush!
“Have you considered skewering them and then creating a frame so that you can roast them over the coals instead of on them?” asked Gavyn. “That might produce a better meal.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d cooked fish on the coals for weeks. If you waited till the coals were just right, the meat cooked perfectly even though the skin charred.
“And our dinner wouldn’t be able to look back at us.” Cadan scowled at the fish with their wide, dead eyes.
“Since when does that bother you?” asked Aiden.
“Since they got all shriveled from sitting on the coals.”
“Oh, for sweet pity’s sake,” muttered Declan. “You face an enchantress, but these fish make you shudder? I could have composed and sung an entire song about your cowardice in the time that you’ve moaned about them.”
He reached down to the coals, gingerly felt the tail of one of the fish, and then tugged it off the coals.
I handed him the dagger. In a few deft movements, he peeled the skin back, revealing tender meat beneath. He looked up at me and saluted with the dagger. “Excellent! May I have their fish too?”
I grinned and nodded.
At the threat of losing their dinner, all my brothers surged forward, pulling fish from the coals and settling into the dinner.
Finally, Aiden wiped his mouth, brushing a few scales from his beard. “It was an excellent meal, Ryn. Never mind what they tell you.”
Mael threw the bones of his fish back into the fire to keep pests away. “Now.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “Tell us about your journey here.”
So much to tell them! But now that it was time, I was frightened. I took a deep breath and tapped my temple.
“That’s easy,” said Cadan. “You’ve been thinking.”
I drew the Queen, arms outstretched, in the dirt floor.
“About the enchantment.”
I nodded, then held up six fingers.
“After six years, we’ll be men again,” said Cadan, as if reciting a lesson he knew by heart.
One heartbeat. Another.
I shook my head. No.
Silence.
“What?”
It took a minute to sign that I’d be able to speak in six years, but that they would still be swans. It took much longer for my brothers to accept it, with me signing over and over exactly what the Queen had said in Roden’s cellar: After six years, you may speak without killing your swan-brothers.
Before they could discuss it, though, I held up a finger and began to sign that the Queen had mentioned the old woman. Then I drew the map Aiden had me follow to the hut, and pointed to where the old woman lived.
“You found her? She knew the Queen?”
I nodded and went straight to the important part, drawing a swan turning to a man on the dirt floor. She knew how to change you back.
“How?” asked Aiden.
I went outside and picked up the clump of nettles I’d harvested, using the hem of my tunic to protect my hands. Then I dropped them by the fire.
Gavyn bent over them. “Mint?”
Before I could shake my head, he touched them, then yanked his hand back. “Nettles?”
Yes.
“How will nettles—of all things!—break the enchantment?” asked Mael.
I signed turning the nettles into yarn and the yarn into tunics.
“How did you harvest that?” asked Declan.
I held up a dagger.
“And your hands? How are they?”
My left hand and forearm still hurt like fire, but that wasn’t the point. Why couldn’t they see that nettles were important?
“How do you know it will work?” asked Gavyn.
I tried to explain that the Queen hated nettles, that the nettles around the cottage had stopped her and her wolf men.
“Nettles wouldn’t stop warriors.” Mael shook his head. “It wouldn’t stop farmers.”
“It stopped Cadan,” said Owain. “Do you remember the time you stole Cadan’s clothes while he was swimming? And then Cadan took the wrong path back from the lake?”
Cadan raised an eyebrow. “I doubt our Ryn was stung in the same places.”
Declan choked on a laugh.
Cadan scowled. “I couldn’t sit for a week!”
“Nettles make no sense,” declared Mael. “And that’s not the most puzzling part: How does a forest crone know the Queen?”
Gavyn shrugged. “Actually, I believe that part. We know the Queen was in the forest. Why wouldn’t she know someone who lived there? What did the woman tell you, Ryn?”
Finally! One of my brothers was asking an intelligent question.
I began to recount what I’d learned. My description of the woman’s ramblings would have been confusing if I could speak, but my signs and drawings only made her sound more crazy, if that was possible.
“She gave the Queen a tongue?” asked Owain.
“And feet? How do you give someone feet?”
I tried to sign that I thought the Queen had run away from another land. That the old woman had nettles, and the Queen hated them because they reminded her of the cottage—or of the place she had left. That they were the key to breaking the enchantment.
My brothers just stared at me in silence.
Aiden shook his head. “The enchantment isn’t your fault, Ryn. And it isn’t your responsibility to save us. That’s where the interest in nettles comes from, isn’t it?”
I stared at him.
He didn’t just think I was foolish. He worried that the nettles were a morbid fascination, a sickness of heart or mind.
I’d fretted about how to explain the nettles, but I never thought my brothers would understand my signs and pictures and still not believe me.
I looked away, heartbroken.
“Then what happened?” asked Declan, attempting to move to safer subjects. “Tell us about Etten.”
I explained, but all joy was gone from the telling. They felt it, too, though they tried to act as though nothing had changed. Then I signed that I’d seen one of the Queen’s wolf men in Etten and run away.
“Did you see him again?” Mael leaned closer.
No.
“That’s good. Very good,” said Gavyn. “If the Queen’s man had seen you, he would have found you. I’m sure the Queen still believes Ryn is dead.”
It was so close to what I’d imagined him saying on the road that I almost smiled.
Almost.
Owain-the-hen clucked in her sleep. I looked at her, grateful for the distraction.
Mael chuckled. “I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad you have a hen who thinks you’re her chick.”
“What do you call her?” asked Owain in a snide tone. “Mother?”
I’d wondered whether I should change Owain-the-hen’s name, because my brothers would tease Owain unmercifully if they knew.
But Owain made the decision easy.
I pointed at him.
“You named her Owain?” Cadan cackled.
I raised an eyebrow and nodded.
They laughed just as hard as I imagined, ignoring Owain’s protests.
Finally, Cadan walked to Owain’s perch and made a low sweeping bow to the sleeping hen. “My lady Owain, on behalf of my brothers, I thank you for protecting Ryn. I think you are crazy—”
She merely blinked.
My brothers hooted, but Aiden became grim. “We need to end it. Ryn shouldn’t have to live like this for six years.”
The laughter faded.
Aiden stared at Owain-the-hen, but he wouldn’t have noticed if she’d flown straight into the air and turned somersaults. “Ryn should have more than a hen to protect her. And I don’t know what’s happened to Tanwen. Or Father. I can’t not know for six years.”
“Then we end it,” said Mael. “We end the Queen.”
Aiden nodded.
Suddenly, the fire didn’t seem warm enough.
“What if killing the Queen makes the enchantment permanent?” asked Gavyn.
“We have to do something! She should be confronted!”
“Ryn will need warmer clothes if she’s going to walk back to the castle this side of winter,” said Gavyn.
Aiden shook his head. “Ryn isn’t going anywhere.”
“Isn’t she? If you want to face the Queen the next full moon, Ryn must lead us there. It’s no mistake that we arrived here after she did. I’ve been thinking about it: we follow her, and we nest where she settles. The only time we won’t be able to follow is when we molt in late summer. You see, swans lose their flight feathers and are flightless for several weeks—”
Cadan smacked the back of his head to stop the lesson.
Aiden just pushed the dying coals in on themselves.
“We’d have to time it perfectly,” said Declan. “We’d have only hours and we’d lose even that if she locked herself in a room till sunrise. One whisper of black swans, and she’d know we were coming.”
Mael had fought too many times to stomach such talk. “What do we do for the next six years, then? Run away?”
I saw the same grief on their faces that I’d weathered that first night at Roden. I picked up a log and threw it on the fire, glad for the spray of sparks that made my brothers stop.
I tapped my chest. Look at me!
They did.
I made a motion like a plant shooting up.
They stared blankly.
I made the silly face that Owain and I used when we were little and played war with wooden swords.
Owain recognized it. “We die?”
I shook my head, No! Then mimicked a plant sprouting up—the opposite of dead.
“We live,” said Aiden.
I nodded. We live.
I looked at the pile of nettles that my brothers had dismissed. We live—and I’ll make your nettle tunics, whether you believe in them or not.