I could barely make out his face now in the deepening night.
Pain flared across my body. I had momentarily forgotten its imminent arrival, and I gave a soft cry.
A swift streak of movement, more heard than seen, shot down from the sky and nipped at Gabriel’s arm. He shouted and leaped forward.
Eagle. I really was distracted if I’d failed to notice that the one black member of my wedge was missing.
“Eagle! Stop it!” I managed to squeak out the words, and the seventh swan swooped toward me. When she reached me, she butted at me with her head, and I didn’t need any further prompting.
Ignoring Gabe, who called my name, I took off running through the trees. The pain was growing worse, leaching the strength from my limbs, but I knew I had to push on. I kept both arms raised, my forearms protecting my face as I careened through the darkness. Only two years of familiarity with this path kept me from colliding with the now invisible trunks, and twice I tripped over roots or fallen branches and went sprawling across the ground.
The second time I fell, the pain kept me glued to the ground, my head spinning. My swans had taken to the sky, but when I didn’t get up, one of them came flapping down to peck gently at me. She grasped my cloak in her beak and pulled, trying to get me moving again.
Tears dripped silently down my cheeks, but I managed to haul myself up with a groan, resuming my stumbling run. Ahead of me, I glimpsed light between the trunks and leaves. A final burst of strength propelled me forward through the last of the trees.
With a deep, trembling sigh, I sank to the ground and pressed my face to my hands. The pain was gone, but tremors shook my wrung out and exhausted body.
Long seconds passed as I recovered my equilibrium. The moon shone on seven elegant shapes gliding down from the sky to land gently in the smooth waters of the small lake in front of me. All seven of them paddled in my direction, but I raised a weak arm and waved them away.
“I’m fine. I promise.” My voice came out croaky, and I tried to remember how many nights it had been since I bothered to talk to them in the hours of dark. There seemed little point when my words came out in a language unfamiliar to them.
Although they didn’t understand me at night in the way they did during the day, my gesture and tone must have conveyed something of my message. Four of them broke off with soft honks, up-ending themselves immediately in search of food.
But Snowy and Sweetie continued in my direction, heaving themselves from the water to come and lie beside me, their hot bodies and soft feathers pressing gently against my still-shaking body.
Shadow followed behind more slowly, standing in front of me and honking assertively.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was an unsettling day, and I lost track of time. I guess I lost track of a few things if I let the prince follow me that far. None of you were hurt, were you?”
She gazed at me, her head slightly cocked to one side, but clearly unable to understand me. I sighed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any real explanation anyway. At least not one likely to make any sense to a swan,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
Snowy and Sweetie’s calming presence worked itself gradually into my core, relaxing me. The pain—so searing and disabling only minutes ago—was already a distant memory, gone the moment I stepped into the clearing.
I pulled myself up, stroking my hand against my friends’ feathers as I went, and walked over to the lake for a drink. The cold water sharpened my mind, driving my thoughts back to the prince. Was he stumbling around lost in the dark?
I chewed on my lip. I didn’t want him to follow me here, but neither did I want him to die in the forest. Here in this small tranquil oasis we were safe but was the same true of the wider forest? I had heard rustling on my walk here, but it could well have been him from the beginning. I could only hope so—for his sake.
No such sound presaged the tall, thin man who stepped into the clearing, shattering the illusion of tranquility. All seven swans responded aggressively, flapping their wings as they grunted and hissed. None of them offered him any