A Captive of Wing and Feather A Retelling of Swan Lake - Melanie Cellier Page 0,50

crossed his face before he shook his head and continued on without comment.

He probably thought me as brave and foolhardy as him, and I was glad my lack of voice spared me any guilt at not telling him the truth—namely that I had no intention of finding myself alone in the woods at this juncture.

The barking continued with occasional pauses until it was split by an eerie howl. The sound sent shivers up and down my back. That one had sounded like a wolf.

My heart beat fast and every noise around us seemed impossibly loud and startling. My muscles would ache in a few hours from all the jerking I was doing. Assuming I was still alive, that was.

A smell hit me—a mix of wood smoke, animal droppings, and something like wet fur. Every instinct in me suggested I start hurrying in the other direction, but I forced myself to continue onward.

We reached a thicket with thick knobby branches twining through glossy green bushes. Something pink and flowering had gotten caught in the mix, and small, elegant blossoms peeked out from the mess of green and brown.

Gabe paused in front of it and frowned for a moment before tipping his head backward. I followed his gaze toward a tall elm just behind the tangle of bushes. When he glanced back at me, I nodded.

He leaped up, grabbing the first branch and swinging himself easily up to squat on it. I could tell he had plenty of practice, with neither his bag, his bow, nor his quiver causing him any grief. He stopped there and reached his arm down to help me scramble my way up, my skirts tucked up as far as they could go and still maintain some propriety.

In that manner, we managed to climb up several more branches, eventually finding ourselves sturdy nooks where we could wedge without danger of falling. In winter, the position would have left us completely exposed, but the thick foliage of spring surrounded us, effectively hiding our presence.

And when I finally managed to find an angle that let me peer through the leaves, I could only be glad to be safely out of sight. On the other side of the thicket, the ground became clear, sloping down to the shores of a lake. Any grass or flowers that had once grown there had been trampled, the area a morass of mud and tracks.

It took my mind a moment to process the reason for the mangled ground because the patchwork of leaves made the unbelievable sight even harder to absorb. But the more I stared, the clearer the picture became. We had found the wolves.

Chapter 15

A wolf pack drank at the lake—despite the sun high in the sky above us—and what must have been an entire second pack lay to one side of the cleared ground, in a small patch of shade. A little further around the shore, a shifting mass of legs and heads and ears and furry wrinkles appeared to be a large group of mastiffs. Some drank, while others nudged at each other or stuck their noses in the air, questing for a scent.

I drew back instinctively, as if that could prevent their smelling us. It must have been these dogs we heard barking earlier, although I was sure none of them had given the bark that called away the wolf pack the day before. That one had been unmistakably wolf.

“Adelaide,” Gabe breathed, and I didn’t need to ask him what he meant.

Three enormous, shaggy bears ambled into the clearing and approached the water. All of the dogs and both packs of wolves looked up, the wolves’ ears perking as they watched the bears’ progress. None of them moved, however.

The shivers now ran over my body in an unceasing wave. Nothing could be less natural than such a grouping of animals or such behavior toward each other.

As if the scene needed to get stranger, all seven of my swans appeared, gliding down to land gracefully on the water of the lake. Fear gripped me, and I had to suppress the urge to call out and warn them to leave. But unlike with the bears, only a few ear twitches and a handful of head turns marked their arrival. The birds seemed equally unconcerned at the presence of such a large number of predators. Their honking calls added to the grunts, splashes, and yips—the latter coming from a litter of wolf pups I hadn’t initially seen. They leaped, tumbled, rolled, and climbed