by JunoMagic
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives-ShareAlike license
Swanmaiden
‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What are you?’
He was a mage, and it’s the business of mages to ask questions and go looking for answers in unlikely places. She, on the other hand, was a woman, and it’s always been the business of women to be mysterious – and to find things in the most unlikely locations.
But to be perfectly honest, she’d never given much thought to these questions so far. Giving the venison stew a last stir, that simmered on the hearth, she pondered the matter.
‘I’m Asa,’ she said at last. ‘A woman of the forest folk.’
That she considered a complete and accurate answer. But the mage pounced on it the way his black cat jumped the little brown mice that strayed into the hut in winter.
‘But what does it mean?’ he asked. ‘That you are Asa, that you’re a woman, that you’re one of the forest folk?’
She shook her head and laid the table for their dinner. Earthen bowls filled with venison stew, rich with mushrooms and onions, fresh nut-bread still warm and soft from the oven, roasted chestnuts, mugs of sparkling cider – autumnal riches from the bounty the forest offers to his people.
Then she turned to him with a smile. ‘It means that you’re lucky to have me to cook for you and clean for you, to warm your bed at night, and to teach you the ways of the woods and the lays of the forest folk.’
He thanked her graciously and tucked in, hungry after a week of roaming and thinking and listening. Asa, however, was quiet throughout the meal, preoccupied by the mage’s questions.
What did it mean, she wondered, that she was Asa, that she was a woman, and one of the forest folk? Beyond her life and love with the mage, beyond her duties to the forest-lord, her father, beyond her life bound by the seasons of the woods?
~~~*~~~
Early the next morning she went to visit her father in his Green Hall. She brought him a bottled imp in thanks-giving from the mage, and the mantle she’d woven for him. Blue-grey shadows of November wrapped around the trees and stretched their fingers to tickle the last leaves from the poplars’ limbs. On the lake, the wild geese gathered for their flight to sunnier quarters.
Asa shared sparkling spring water with her father, and listened to the news he had of the comings and goings under the trees. But for some reason, the mage’s questions still haunted her. What was the meaning of it all? What was her meaning? Could there be a meaning beyond her days in the forest and her nights in the mage’s bed?
‘Daughter,’ said the forest-king, ‘you’re deep in thought. What weighs down your heart?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Asa replied, and thought, ‘Only everything …’
Aloud she said: ‘Just a few questions the mage asked last night that I can’t get out of my head …’
‘Ah,’ her father murmured. ‘But you know what they say about mages and questions …’
She smiled and nodded, thankful that her father didn’t say ‘I told you so’, although he had, more than once. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’
The geese took off with a great rushing of wings, their sonorous, honking cries echoing far and wide.
The forest-king smiled. ‘Then you will also know the reason wild geese cry “why, why, why”.’
Asa frowned. ‘No, father, I don’t think I know that.’
Her father’s smile deepened into a smirk. ‘Because the first male wild goose used to be a mage once upon a time. Only he met a witch in the woods – and asked her one too many questions.’
Asa snorted, hugged her father and took her leave.
~~~*~~~
But the mage’s questions stayed with her, day and night.
When she glimpsed her pale face, bramble-black hair and plum-dark eyes in the glittering water of the spring, she wondered: Who is Asa? Who am I? And what makes Asa who she is?
When she wandered the woods, gathering pine cones and nuts, mushrooms, parsnips and wild carrots, dusty sloes and bright red rose hips, she thought of what it meant to be a daughter of the forest, and to understand the whispering voices of the woods.
But although she’d lived in the forest all her life, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something vital, something essential that she did not see. Something she should know …
And when she lay in bed at night, the mage buried deep within her, making her fly with pleasure, she still felt heavy.
~~~*~~~
Then winter came and the woods filled up with snow, every branch thick with it, every hollow soft with it.
And one night, instead of drawing her towards the ladder up to the warm nest of their bed under the roof of the cabin, the mage took her warm cloak off the hook and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. He himself slipped on his travelling robes, dark and heavy, smelling of smoke from fire and incense.
He didn’t say anything, just pulled her along, their footsteps crunching noisily on the harsh crust of frozen snow. The snow sparkled in the light of the moon and the stars, and the fir trees moaned and creaked under its weight. Now and again a tree shuddered and with white whoosh, its icy load sliding to the ground. Once their heard the agonised crack of a tree breaking, its bones breaking, a victim of winter. Walking along, their breaths puffed clouds of mist ahead of them, that blew cold and clammy back into their faces.
At last they reached the lake.
Here, the mage stopped.
For a long moment they stood hand in hand at the edge of the frozen lake, the darkest evening of the year. From afar, beyond the forest’s edge, they heard the faint echo of bells. But before them, the depth groaned with many voices, sometimes shrilling eerily.
‘Come,’ the mage said, and stepped onto the ice. He turned back to Asa and extended his hand toward her. ‘Come, it’s quite safe. The lake is completely frozen.’
‘I know that, silly,’ replied Asa. The forest-king himself had told them as soon it was safe to tread on the ice.
The mage waited, hand outstretched. With a sigh, she took it and allowed him to lead her from beneath the shadows of the woods into the cold-bright moonlight.
They slipped and skidded, until they collided into an embrace in the middle of the lake.
Here, the mage stopped. He took her hands and looked at her in silence for a while. In spite of the moonlight she couldn’t see the expression on his face, only solemn shadows.
‘I am sorry,’ he said suddenly. ‘I asked questions when you were not ready to face them, and I know that has brought you pain and grief this autumn and winter. But you know what they say about mages and questions.’
Asa shivered, suddenly scared. But she kept her reply light-hearted and innocuous. ‘Indeed I do know what they say about mages. And even a bit more than that.’
Normally this would make him chuckle and kiss the tip of her nose. But not tonight.
He drew her closer toward him, still holding her hands, and forced her to look into his eyes. They were dark as the night, but the light of the stars and the moon were mirrored in their depths.
‘Look,’ he whispered.
She smiled, taking in his beloved features, and the tiny reflections of her own – eyes, nose, wind-swept curls.
And again. ‘Look’
She obeyed.
There was the forest, there the lake. The hills beyond, snow everywhere. The crystal sculpture of a frozen waterfall. Her breath mingled with his, gentlest of mists, rising between them, around them.
‘Look.’
The ice beneath her feet. Where the wind had swept the snow aside that covered the frozen surface of the like powder, the ice gleamed black and deep, distorted by ominous cracks and crevices.
Above them, even blacker, the sky. No clouds tonight. The stars blazed, brighter than diamonds on a queen’s ball-gown of black velvet. The moon round and gentle, nodded a benevolent smile just above the hill.
Asa shuddered. Her heart felt tight and wide at the same time, a bittersweet ache pulsed in the pit of her stomach – and suddenly she knew.
Here, now, just out of sight, just out of hearing, just beyond her reach, was her answer.
Forever elusive.
She only realised that she was crying when the mage kissed away her tears. For many heartbeats he stared at her. Then he caressed the outline of her face, his fingertips barely grazing her skin. Sad he looked, and sombre.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘listen.’
He leant towards her as if he wanted to kiss her, tenderly, at that sweet, sweet angle of jaw and throat, just below her ear.
He whispered her name.
But not ‘Asa’. He was a mage after all, and her first lover. Thus her true name had been revealed to him long before she thought to search for it herself.
A name of water and wings, of wide skies and winds, from east and south, west and north, breezes and gusts, zephyrs, tempests, storms, a name of sunlight and moonlight and starlight.
With a great scream she burst forth from her cloak, in a flurry of white feathers.
She spread her wings and flew, high and higher, while the moon smiled and the stars sang.
Swanmaiden.
That was her name, her essence, her destiny.
She would have wept, had swans any tears to cry.
~~~*~~~
The mage never saw Asa again, but each morning after midwinter, he found a single white swan feather outside his window on the sill.
Song of the day:
Link(s) of the day:
Swan Maidens—various fairy tales | “The Swan Maiden’s Feathered Robe”—essay by Midori Snyder | “The Swan Maiden”, as told by Kelly Ryan, a grade six student for the ArtSmarts Project “Tell Me Another One”
…and my wish for you today is:
At the right times in your life, may you have the strenth to give and receive the most precious and most painful present of letting go.
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Beautiful! So terribly sad and wonderful and beautiful!
Wheee! I’m happy you like this.
Beautiful and sad, but if you love something so much, then you will let it go.