Wingless: A New Last Chapter for The Six Swans

I miss my wings. I miss the feeling of soaring through the sky untethered, the wind ruffling my feathers. The witch thought she cursed us but really she set us free. Free from rules and expectations.  Free from the human forms that bound us to the ground.  

We were boys when we were turned into swans. Now we are still boys in the clumsy, over-large bodies of men. Everything feels wrong. In the years we were birds, our human bodies somehow kept on growing without us. They are foreign to us now, covered in pimples and body hair, filled with strange urges. 

How can we tell our sister she didn't set us free, rather chained us back to the earth we had escaped?  She sacrificed so much. She was nearly burned alive. Her feet still bear thick red scars from the flames and she stumbles when she walks. I don't know how she could ever forgive her husband but she says she has. I know when he sleeps at night she still wanders the graveyard where she used to pick nettles. I suspect that she, too, feels caged. 

Perhaps our youngest brother had it the hardest, left with one wing, a constant reminder of what he had lost. He was unable to be fully human or fully swan, an object of whispers and stares. He threw himself from the battlements a year ago. I choose to think he was trying to fly rather than the alternative. 

Our eldest brother pores over books of forgotten lore, trying to find a way to turn us back. I am torn between my desire to fly again and the knowledge it would break my sister's heart. 

 *

One Autumn, our middle brother comes to us all aflutter. He has an idea. We all listen, shocked at what he has to say. It is a bold idea and a scary one. We will seek out the witch who turned us in the first place. Our stepmother.

We were boys when we last saw her, and back then she filled us with fear. She was beautiful and terrifying. She took our childhoods from us. Now we are grown, there is nothing we fear more than living out the rest of our lives like this, wingless and full of regret. 

We set out the next day, packs slung on our backs. It is a longer, more onerous journey by foot. All along the way, we search for some kind of familiarity, some nostalgia, but find none. Here are the woods where we played as children, here is the tree where we picked fruit, here is the castle where we lived. Yet we feel nothing, nothing.

There are new children playing amongst the fruit trees and the garden beds now. At first we wonder if we have come to the wrong place until we realise one of them looks just like our father, and that girl there, she looks like our stepmother if she was young and innocent.

It is our stepmother who opens the door. She is older than we remember her, less beautiful. Less terrifying. We tower over her now, and she is slightly stooped, strands of grey in her hair.

“I was wondering when you would turn up,” she says, ushering us inside.

We sit at the big wooden table in the kitchen.

“I sent the servants away, and told the children to play outside,” she says. “I suppose you’re here to kill me.”

“Those children, are they our brothers and sisters?” one of us asks.

“They are, your father’s and mine. We were happy together, you know. He passed away three winters ago, although I used every skill I had to try and save him.”

It is our middle brother who speaks up, “we are not here to kill you. We want you to turn us back into swans.”

Our stepmother throws her head back and laughs. Once, that laugh struck fear in our hearts. Now, it is just the cackle of an old woman.

“I turned you into swans to be rid of you, and now I find that I gave you a gift. Well, I must be the worst witch there ever was! I’m afraid I have very few powers left now. Every year I grow closer to death, I grow weaker. I have only a little power now, I use it every Winter Solstice to cast a small protection spell on my children. My powers are not enough to turn even one of you into a cricket, let alone a swan.”

“So that’s it? We are stuck this way?”

“Not necessarily. There is residual magic in all of you now, from your transformation. I will give you the spell. If all of you come together on the first light of Winter Solstice it might be just enough power to work.”

We leave the house of our stepmother with an old scroll that holds all our hopes, and berry scones from her oven. We never expected our relationship with her to end like this.

When we get back to the palace, our sister is waiting for us, “I know you’re up to something, you had better tell me now!”

“We don’t want to hurt you, sister, but we want to be swans again…”

It is our sister’s turn to laugh. “Do you know how jealous I always was of you, being able to fly? Well, did you get the spell?”

“We did. We will try on Winter Solstice.”

“Good, my children and I are coming with you. We will be swans too. Free of this sham marriage I never asked for and a husband who would happily see me burn. Finally, I will fly!”

What argument is there to be made? She suffered the most of all of us, losing her children, nearly being burned alive by her own husband, then expected to carry on as if nothing had happened. She, more than the rest of us, deserves to experience the open skies.

I think of the Winter Solstice, only a month away. On that day, if luck and magic is on our side, we will take to the sky once more, five of the original swans, our sister and her children. Eight swans, flying through the light of a winter dawn. 

(c)opyright Laura Morrigan 2021