A Captive of Wing and Feather A Retelling of Swan Lake - Melanie Cellier Page 0,20

interest in being seen emerging from the forest in the early hours of the morning in your company. The townsfolk already see me as odd—and therefore suspicious—enough as it is.”

I also had something else I needed to do before heading for Brylee—but I didn’t intend to tell Gabe anything about it. Not yet, at any rate.

He looked as if he meant to question me further, but a spear of light thrust between the trunks of the trees, significantly brightening the scene around us, and I grimaced. My hand rose instinctively to my throat, and Gabe cut off whatever he had intended to say. Conversation was over between us until night fell again.

“I will be here again tonight,” Gabe warned—although perhaps he meant it as a promise.

I gave him a tight smile and a quick nod before turning to my sleeping swans. Several of them had woken, stretching and flapping their wings, and at my attention, they began to waddle toward me. I glanced at Gabe out of the corner of my eye, considering.

I had been thinking of sending Sammy with him—she was one of the steadiest and most reliable of the birds. But irritation at his intrusion welled inside me, and when I bugled to the swans, I found myself directing my instructions elsewhere.

“Eagle,” I said. “Can you make sure he gets back to Brylee safely?”

Let Gabe deal with the most ornery of the swans. And Eagle would probably be at her most cantankerous, too, since she wouldn’t like being left out of our usual morning task. But she had been the one to bring him to the clearing, after all, so it was a fitting punishment for them both.

The black swan gave a strange sound almost like a chortle and glided over from where she had been floating on the far side of the lake—a dark patch almost lost in the still dim scene.

I hadn’t expected such an amenable response from her, and I felt an irritating moment of concern on Gabe’s behalf.

“And promptly,” I added in a warning squeak. “Don’t let him spend half the day wandering around the forest lost.”

Eagle trained one beady eye on me, and I could sense her disapproval. I didn’t need words to know that the task had lost its appeal for her if she was to be denied the right to make mischief.

Shadow gave a commanding honk from behind me, and Eagle ruffled her feathers, regarding us all with weary resignation from the edge of the water.

Gabe looked warily from the swan to me.

“She’s the one you want me to follow? Why do I feel like I just missed something?”

I shrugged and pointed toward the trees in the direction he should begin.

Eagle stared at him for a moment and then in one big movement, lifted her body from the water, her wings unfurling and holding her just above the surface as she ran along it for some way before breaking free and soaring into the sky. She disappeared above the level of the trees in the direction I had pointed.

I raised both eyebrows and indicated with my head that Gabe should go after her. He hesitated for only a moment before wishing me farewell and breaking into a jog. Within moments he had disappeared between the tree trunks.

All of the swans had now taken to the lake, searching for breakfast and calling to each other. When I didn’t move, Shadow looked back in my direction, honking at me. I couldn’t tell whether she meant it as inquiry or instruction, but I shook myself and returned to my shelter.

Digging out the food supplies I kept there—provisions from Cora combined with fresh berries from the clearing and surrounding forest—I ate quickly. I was already late leaving, and I needed to get going.

When I set out, I ignored the stretch of forest Eagle and Gabe had departed into and headed instead for the trees that had emitted Leander the night before. I moved quickly, almost as familiar with this path as I was with the one that led to Brylee. The stretch of forest looked much like all the others, and yet I could never shake a feeling of foreboding when I passed through it. Once again I tried to tell myself that it was entirely my own imaginings, and that the lingering shadows were no darker here than elsewhere, that the trees creaked no louder, and the undergrowth grew no thicker. But the feeling remained, grown stronger on this occasion when combined with the