The Golden Swan

by Nancy Springer

  I cursed the goddess by every name of hers that I knew, searching my mind anxiously to make sure I did not forget one. It took some time. After I was done with the goddess I cursed the pantheon of Ascalonia and the sacred kings, Tirell and the whole line of Melior back to Aftalun, one by one. Childish, but it helped just a little. Then I cursed that strange and unknown god who had sung this place, the One, whoever that was. And the earth did not even tremble, though Maeve did.

  Then I set about to destroy as much of the paradise as I could. It had no right to be there when Dair lay dying.

  Maeve cautiously sat down after a while, watching me. I went about kicking and gouging and snatching with my hand, breathing hard and muttering fervidly to myself, “Let them laugh now!” I blundered against fruit trees, broke sticks from them and threw them as hard as I could, shouting wildly. I found a clump of tree ferns and beat and smashed it down to the ground. I stamped and jumped on the vanquished boughs.

  “Damn—Shamarra,” I shouted between heaving breaths. “Letting me—bathe in that—deathly lake of hers, never telling me—what I was doing. She always—scorned me, laughed at me. She hated me. She—”

  Something moved in me and I felt horribly afraid. Maeve was sitting there so quiet, so vulnerable, and Dair lying helpless, and there was a beast loose in the gathering dark; did they not sense it? I did. I gasped in terror, turned and ran.

  “She killed my father!” I shrieked to the night.

  I was glad that I had lost my knife, lost the use of my arm. I had it in me to stab, slay, kill, I knew that now. The healer had murder in his heart. I myself was the reason I would not face Fabron or Tirell, the reason I had left them. I was the beast in the night. And the face, that hideous face, floated on the surface of the darkness, as if night were a deep and brooding pool.

  It seemed quite real, a tangible illusion. It fully convinced me at the time. I thought I could reach out and shatter the water, but I did not dare, boneless hands would drag me down—it was an ugly face, contorted, glaring, frothing at the downstretched mouth—monstrous—it was the face I had seen in Shamarra’s lake. Grotesque, fearsome—the face I had given the faceless spirits of the dead.

  It was my own.

  My very own reflected rage, hidden in every other way, and it sent a long spear of fear through me. I ran from it, whimpering, and it ran with me effortlessly, never leaving me. I could not have been more terrified if there had been a serpent wrapped around me, a demon clinging to my shoulders. “Please—” I begged the night, the face, but they did not answer.

  I must have run for hours through the deep of night, the black pit of night, the darkest night I have ever known. No moonlight or starlight could penetrate the veiling cloud of that mountaintop, and the fireflies one by one went to sleep; I was all alone with only my unwelcome self for company, my mirrored self, my dark twin. It chivied me through the forest, hunted me through the thickets and streambeds, harried me as the Luoni harry the departing souls of the untruthful, cutting me off at every desperate turn, driving me toward—what end? I ran blind, crazed, bloody and sweaty and exhausted. At last I blundered into some sort of benighted copse—

  I stood rooted, feeling the presence of the face at my back but unable to move. A kind of voiceless singing thrummed through me, a shivering, and I knew that I was in the presence of something holy. I scarcely breathed. I stood in terror and awe.

  A glow, a tiny glow in the darkness, like the spark deep in the heart of a ruby, down at my feet, almost hidden in earth. It grew, wavering, flaming, flaring, blood red. It was a cup of honeydew, a mystic grail of flame and blood and tears, it was a head with hair afire, it was the sunswan, flamefeathers, flamepetals, and as it grew it climbed, a small fiery beast, a living thing, as alive as I was—perhaps more so. Up its stalk it climbed until it burned at the level of my face, and in the heartred pulsating liquid light of it I could see the leaves, fern leaves, each one a frost-flake, I thought they would melt before I could move—it was the fern flower, fire flower, Maeve’s flower of hope. For Maeve—and without another thought I reached out, grasped the stem and plucked it.

  I screamed aloud as I had never screamed before. The forest rang with the sound. I can still hear the echo in my mind.

  Glory be to Eala, the pain! Intense, searing, it made my whole body cry out in sympathy with my hand. I felt as if I had snatched a rod of white-hot iron out of the coals of Fabron’s forge. Worse—a burning serpent. The stalk writhed and squirmed in my hand as if it were a live adder. I very nearly dropped it in the shock of pain and surprise, but I hung on. And then the true pain struck me.

  The pain of truth. The enormity of it, that I should hate my brother whom I loved, my father whom I loved, Shamarra—yet it was so. My own depravity stabbed me like my missing knife, stung worse than the burning thing in my hand. How could I be so—monstrous, so ignoble? I heard all the green things I had hurt crying aloud in pain. Truly. Their small voices sounded right inside my head, making a chorus of lament that matched my own. And the face still leered before me.

  I sank down and wept.

  HE KILLED MY SEEDMATE.

  My love, the purity of my love, lost.

  HE HAS TORN OFF MY LIMBS, MY LEAVES.

  All my life I had thought of myself as one generous of heart—

  HE HAS BROKEN ME, TRAMPLED ME DOWN.

  A healer, a chivalrous warrior, the most loyal of followers to my brother—I had been great, in my way. At the very least I had been good. And now all that was gone, it seemed. My heart was full of spleen.

  WHY HAS HE HURT US? WHY?

  What was I to do, how could I live—

  HUSH, the fern flower said. THE SWAN LORD HAS COME AT LAST. LOOK, HE WEEPS.

  BUT HOW CAN THAT BE?

  THE SWAN LORD, A DESTROYER? IT WAS SAID HE WOULD BE A HEALER—

  I TELL YOU, IT IS HE. The voice of the fern flower shivered through me, warm.

  BUT WHY HAS HE HURT US?

  PAIN IS IN THE PATTERN. Oh, the love, the gentle forgiveness in those words. My eyes were closed in agony, but I heard.

  HEALING IS FOR WHOLENESS. WAIT AND SEE.

  A rustling went through the forest like the stirring of leaves before dawn.

  THE SWAN LORD! one soft voice said.

  THE SWAN LORD HAS COME! breathed another.

  BUT IF IT IS HE—

  IT IS HE. That flameflower, that voice like a lover’s—

  THEN IT IS TRUE WHAT HAS BEEN SAID, THAT THE SEED WILL BE SPREAD.

  IT IS TRUE. Words vibrant with joy.

  THE MAIDEN GOES TO BRIDEBED!

  AT LAST WE WILL BE HEARD!

  There was more, a paean of rejoicing, but I remember it only confusedly. Something was happening. The fiery pain in my hand was easing, but that was the least of it. A sense of strong comfort was coming to me. The pattern—I was very tired, and I could not think of the things Maeve had told me. I could think only of a quiet lake, a fair black swan with a reflection of white. Healing is for wholeness.… A face floated into view.

  I opened my eyes. It was there before me, calm, almost smiling, the face on the surface of the dark. It was—was it really my own freckled visage? But it was beautiful, as beautiful as Dair’s! As I gasped it rippled and blurred, fading.

  “Wait!” I cried, I wanted to shout, though my voice came out a husky whisper. “Please—” It was awash as if in tears. “Please stay,” I begged. It was dark and lovely, and it was me, mine or part of me. In that moment I could not bear to lose it.

  I AM NOT GONE, it said gently. I AM IN YOU, FOR YOU HAVE ACCEPTED ME. REST NOW. SLEEP. And it swam away.

  Away or within—at once the words comforted me. I lay down on the ground, my face nestled to loamy earth, the fern flower held close to my side, and for a few hours I slept. I remember that sleep as deep and refreshing, and yet it was full of dreams. Voices chanted in my dreams.

  THE TURN OF THE TIDE

  THE MAIDEN GOES TO BRIDEBED

  THE TURN OF THE
GREAT TIDE

  THE MAIDEN GIVES THE SEED

  THE TIME OF DEATHLESS PEACE

  THE WILLING SACRIFICE

  GIVING, LIVING

  THE MAIDEN TAKES THE SEED

  I dreamed that it was a woman who lay by my side, a woman fair as a flower, all clothed in petals of light. Petals caressed my face, her lips brushed my face, and they burned like fire. “The kiss of the goddess,” she said. “You will not always be a virgin, Frain.” My tears ran down and mingled with her fire, and the two together made a new and lovely thing. I dreamed again. I saw the midnight swan, the white swan and the golden swan, the sunswan in my dreams, and then I awoke, full of the feeling of blessing. It was just dawn.

  Dawn. It had been a rather short and crowded night. The sun comes up early on Midsummer’s Day. I got up, blinked in the dewy light and looked at what I held in my hand.

  A length of fern, the most delicate of ferns, and on the stem a single flower. I had never seen any flower like it, even amid all the wonders of the Source. It was all the colors of sunflame, crimson and cloud pink and ruddy gold, and it held its petals cupped like sacral hands. The calyx was of copper color, and just at the heart of the flower I saw a fine-veined stain of blood red, so red it looked as if it were moist—perhaps it was. I didn’t dare touch.

  THE DAYSPRING COMES, sang the wind.

  LIFT HIGH YOUR HEADS, flowers told each other. SPREAD YOUR PETALS WIDE.

  HEY HOOTOO HOOTOO GOOD DAY! shouted a pied bird.

  Sunlight touched the upper leaves of the trees.

  “Have I hurt you?” I whispered to the fern flower, speaking in a tongue that was not my own, a far more ancient tongue, the Old Language—it had come to me, and I had hardly noticed amid all the terrors and marvels of the night.

  EVERYONE HURTS SOMETHING SOMETIME.

  “I am very sorry,” I faltered.

  BUT WHY? I AM MEANT TO BE YOURS.

  Not mine—Maeve’s! With a start I plunged off to find her. I had strayed a long way from the Tree. I found a stream and drank from it, then followed it back to the Very Source. It took at least an hour at the best speed I could muster. When I got there at last, Maeve was still sitting where I had left her, leaning against the Tree with Dair’s head in her lap. I hurried up and knelt before her.

  “Your flower,” I said. “Maeve, here is your flower. Look.”

  She only gazed back at me with a small, glad smile. She didn’t move.

  “Take it,” I urged. “It will let you talk again. Alys said so. Here.”

  THERE IS NO NEED, she said. She spoke to me as the flower had—her voice sounded right inside my head. That was the way the dragons had talked to Tirell.… I stared at her openmouthed.

  HELP DAIR, she said.

  Dair! He had to be dead. After all the killing I had done, could he still be alive? But he was, his breathing shallow and shaky, his face toadbelly gray.

  I thrust the fern flower at Maeve. “Hold that for me,” I muttered. I gathered Dair up into my one-armed embrace and pressed us both hard against the mighty metal Tree. Then I waited, feeling as empty as a dry shell on the seashore. My night of rage and anguish had left me purged, but what was to fill me again? Love was not enough.

  “Alys,” I whispered. “Aftalun.”

  Dair could not wait long.

  “Moon and Sun—”

  Wolf and dog, she had said. Night and day. Wholeness.… All the Source seemed hushed, breath-holding, even the laughing bird.

  “Almighty One!”

  The tide rolled in.

  The power rushed and surged in me or through me, from far beyond or deep within, from the World Tree, the world, the sky, the flood beneath, drumming, beating, unbearable, my eyes saw only white fire—it was fire, fire and the flood; I can describe it no other way. It was a torment and an ecstasy, as always, as I remembered it from years before, but never so strong before, and so long, never! I thought I would die, and I knew Dair would live, and I forced myself to hold him to the Tree, not to tear away; I was crying like a virgin on her wedding night with pain and joy. Healing, healing power—then it was gone, leaving me drained and weak, as always—though never so weak before—and Dair was sitting up against the Tree, tanned and healthy, looking back at me in bewilderment.

  “Dair!” I hugged him with all the feeble strength that was left in me. I never wanted to let go of him. “Dair, you’re alive! I thought you were dead—Dair!” I remembered further cause for joy. “Dair, talk to me, say something! I can understand you now, truly I can! We can really talk together after all this time—” I drew back a little to look at him. His mouth was moving soundlessly. He seemed stunned. I glimpsed Maeve off to one side, smiling as broadly as I had ever seen her. I ignored her.

  “Dair, would you say something?” I pleaded. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Frain, you idiot, haven’t you noticed—you’re mauling me with both arms!

  The twist was gone out of my left shoulder. My left hand rose to greet me. I stared at it, unbelieving, reached over with the other one and touched it, felt firm muscles and flesh. There was a ragged scar on the left wrist, white and healed. There was a white weal across the palm of the right hand where I had held the fern flower, and they told me later there was a small white crescent mark on my face. Nothing bled, nothing hurt. Dair touched my raised left hand with his own.

  “You’ve healed yourself as well,” Maeve said gently, coming to my side. She could talk after all, it seemed. It was all a bit too much for me. White fire flashed before my eyes again, and I fainted.

  Chapter Six

  The fern flower did not wilt. It continued to bloom where it lay on the grass; if anything, it grew larger and more lovely. I know, for I sat and watched it for days, lazing about and picking up twigs and things with my left hand for the sheer joy of it, stretching the arm and flexing the fingers. Hand and arm were as able as they had ever been. And Dair was as strong and well as he had ever been. I was very weak, but that was to be expected and it would pass. Dair and Maeve fussed over me enormously. I liked that, but best of all I liked it when they sat with me and talked. We talked for hours every day. None of us could get enough of it.

  I was halfway to somewhere else, Dair said. It was as if I were flying overhead, circling the World Tree and looking down on my body lying beneath it. You picked me up, and I could not feel the embrace, but I saw the—tears on your face.…

  That reminded me of Tirell so strongly that I almost wept again. All my anger against him was gone. I felt that I understood him now. Truth is a fearsome thing, and he had faced it in the end, as I had.

  Then the sun scorched me suddenly and drove me back, Dair said.

  I looked at him curiously. “Was it hard to fly?”

  No! It is lovely. Well, you know I have done it before. He laughed, a blithe, barking sound. Odd—I had so much trouble standing on my own two human feet, but none at all taking wing. I think the seasickness cured me of all such ailments at once.

  I looked up at the World Tree and the misty sky beyond, wondering if I would ever be able to fly with such ease. “We all pay one way or another,” I muttered.

  Yes. Dair inched closer. Frain, this brother Tirell of yours—

  Now, how had he known I was thinking of Tirell? “He paid,” I said.

  Yes. So did Trevyn. He smiled in that eerie, wolfish way of his. I no longer minded it.

  “They are very much alike.”

  Yes. I have heard that Trevyn was a proper headstrong young fool—

  “He certainly was!” Maeve broke in, hearing the name. She came over to us from where she had been peeling fruit nearby. “I think Trevyn and Tirell are twins of a sort, or reflections. Light and dark—Isle and Vale are both magical. Bright or black, magic is yet magic.” She handed me a piece of fruit and frowned. “Frain, get something on your feet. You’ll catch cold, worn out as you are.” She went and fetched Dair’s discarded shirt and came at me with it.

  “Maeve,” I said in mild annoyance
, “I am all right. Why must you always be mothering me?”

  She put the confounded rag on my feet and looked me full in the face. “With me it is a choice between mothering and coupling,” she said.

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “Well, mother me as much as you like.”

  Sometime early in my convalescence the griffin came bounding into the meadow on its lion legs, talons upraised, stunning in the light, so golden. I thought it had come to punish me for the sake of the green things I had attacked. I knew I would not resist it, so I did not move as it ran up to me. Nor did Dair, who sat beside me.

  “I am sorry,” I told the griffin. “I have given my apology to all of them, and my word. It will not happen again.”

  To my astonishment the griffin arched its leonine body and touched its great beak to the earth at my feet. My lord, it said, your pardon. You have come at last, and I did not recognize you.

  “I am no lord,” I said.

  Ah, but you are. Lonn D’Aerie.…

  It was my name in the Old Language, meaning Swan Lord; I knew that by now. Elfin name or true-name, Dair called it. He had a true-name as well, but it was just his own—Dair. Everything about him was true.

  I am greatly honored and relieved, the griffin said, still gracefully bowing. I thought I had let in a destroyer, and all has come to good nevertheless. My lord, am I free to go?

  “I am no lord,” I said.

  Anyone can see that you are the greatest of lords. Please, good Lonn D’Aerie, my dismissal.…

  “Certainly,” I said dazedly. “Go.”

  It arose, wheeled and bounded off, let out one metallic cry and vanished into the forest. I turned to Dair.

  “I am no lord,” I half pleaded. But he only grinned at me in that aggravating way of his.

  I let the matter drift out of my mind. I was not ready to deal with this lordship, whatever it was. For several days I lay in abeyance, letting the future take vague form in my dreams. I would return to Vale, I thought. I would be able to face Tirell now, maybe even bring about some sort of accord between him and Shamarra. Perhaps Dair and Maeve would come with me; I hated to think of parting from them.… I began to walk, to exercise myself, and I found that I could venture a little farther each day.