The Flight of Swans by Sarah McGuire

Author:Sarah McGuire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fiction - Middle Grade, Middle-Grade Fiction, Middle-Grade Novel, Middle-Grade Novels, novel, Novels, Fairy Tales & Folklore, Adaptations, Family, Siblings, Fantasy & Magic, Adventure, Brothers, Carolrhoda, Carolrhoda Books, Courage, Fairy Tale, Fairy Tales, Family & Relationships, Folktale, Love, Magic, Mystery, Princess, Sarah McGuire, Sister, Survival, The Flight of Swans
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2018-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Thirty-eighth full moon

Tanwen had waited for my swan-brothers to change on eleven different moons, according to Gavyn’s timekeeper, but I would have thought this was the first. She’d grown thinner the past year. Owain-the-hen supplied eggs and the weirs provided fish, but we still walked the knife-edge of hunger. I saw it in the hollows in Tanwen’s cheeks.

Yet her eyes burned bright. I’d grown used to hearing human voices only once a month. To have Tanwen fill the days with speech and song, to have a companion, was a gift as valuable as food.

She nervously smoothed her hair back from her face, and her hand slid to her belly. She had news for Aiden, and I prayed he wouldn’t be a fool about it.

I clutched her arm the moment I heard the wind, and she grew silent.

The wind tore at us, and my swan-brothers batted their wings at it until they weren’t wings at all.

“Tanwen?” called Aiden. “Tanwen!”

“I’m here! We both are!”

Ever since that first night, Aiden called to her first. She was the wife he thought he’d lost. I knew that, in the half-second when he first changed back to a man, he always feared that he’d lost her again.

I heard a few chuckles in the dark. “Hurry, brother! Don’t keep her waiting.”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll take a dip in the lake first,” said Tanwen.

“What?” called Aiden through a chorus of everyone else’s laughter. “You haven’t objected before!”

“You’d come to your wife after a month, unwashed?” Tanwen called. I saw her nervousness in the way she bounced on her toes, but there was laughter in her voice too.

“Unwashed? I spend my life in that lake!”

The rest of my brothers guffawed.

“Never fear, my lady!” That was Mael. “We’ll give him a dunking for you.”

A tree toppling would have made less noise as they threw Aiden back into the lake. And he must have taken as many of them with him as he could. Finally, they splashed up out of the lake, dressed, and joined us, shaking the water from their hair. Owain caught me up in a hug, and I traveled from him to Gavyn, to Mael, to Declan, to Cadan, to . . .

Aiden. But Tanwen had already taken his hand and led him from the moonlight and into the forest.

Something inside me twisted to see them go. What would it be like to have someone call for me the way Aiden called for Tanwen? For someone to be happy just to have me near?

Cadan must have seen me watch them. “He missed her so, Ryn. But don’t you worry: I’ll always call for you.”

I smiled up at him and patted his cheek. It wasn’t a brother I hoped would call for me, but it helped ease my loneliness, nonetheless.

Cadan winked, then announced, “Let them go! But I won’t hold the food for them.”

We’d hardly settled around the fire and the fish before we heard Aiden’s exclamation. Mael jumped to his feet, but I pulled him back.

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