Flight of the Five Swans

Feathered Chapter 19

Raia woke the next morning just before dawn to a crick in her neck and a general stiffness all over. She stretched, wincing as she flexed her fingers—surprisingly the most painful parts of her body. Her hands were cramped from knitting all throughout the previous day and into the early hours of the morning. Yet despite her sore fingers, she could not regret the time she had spent at the task. Knitting had kept her hands busy and her mind occupied while her sisters had been away leading the guards astray from their trail. In fact, Raia had found herself unable to stop knitting even after the swans had returned safely back to the cave. She had found it a cathartic and effective way to keep herself from dwelling on the issue of her sisters' now permanent avian state—at least, permanent until Raia could break the curse. And though she had managed to complete another shawl early in the afternoon the day before, she still had three shawls left to finish.

So she had knit even faster, forcing her grainy eyes to remain open long past the time that they first began drooping. Raia had at last fallen asleep, still hunched over her knitting with her back leaning against the cave wall. Her swan sisters perched all around her, and several of them had even chosen to sleep on top of her, their feathers vibrating as they breathed deeply in and out in slumber.

The swans were in almost the exact same positions around her when Raia stirred the next morning. In truth, it was by these positions that she was slowly coming to identify which swan was which sister—or at the very least to venture a guess. Raia was all but certain that Thaleia was the swan with ruffled neck feathers who had claimed Raia's lap as her nest—rather loudly and forcefully, she might add. She had hissed at the other swans that had attempted to sit there, practically shoving them out of the way before plopping down firmly herself.

Yes, that was Thaleia, all right.

Two of the other swans had nestled right up to Raia's sides, one on the left, the other to her right. Raia was reasonably sure that these were Cliodne and Eurielle. Cliodne—the largest swan of the bunch—had sat to Raia's right. She occasionally bumped her head against Raia's hand while she had been knitting, as though encouraging her in her efforts. However, as the hours ticked on, the swan's head bumps had become less encouraging and more forceful, as though she had been protesting Raia's incessant knitting, and was trying to tell her to stop working and get some sleep. Raia strongly suspected that Cliodne most regretted the loss of her voice for not being able to urge her younger sister to take proper care of herself. She felt a stab of guilt at the thought.

'I'm sorry, Clio.' Raia thought, patting the sleeping swan's head with her hand. 'I'll do better.'

The swan to Raia's left, however, acted very differently, and Raia was able to recognize Eurielle in the smallest bird's mannerisms. She was nestled as close to Raia as possible, burrowing herself to where she was almost under Raia's hip, rather than beside it. She had also been the first of them all to drift to sleep—evidence beyond all reasonable doubt that this bird was the youngest Kyorian princess. Eurielle the swan slept with her long neck arched gracefully and her head pillowed on Raia's side, dangerously close to Thaleia's territory—a classic Eurielle move.

Callia, Raia guessed, was the swan with the gray tint to her wings snuggled in the fabric in between Raia's legs. Her identity was decided more by process of elimination than anything else, for the last swan—the one with the long tail feathers—could not be anyone other than Petra. The only one to wake before Raia, this swan had clearly been busy either throughout the night or during the very early hours of the morning. On the cave floor beside Raia's feet was piled a small collection of food that had clearly not been foraged from the forest. On first glance, she saw fresh bread and cheeses, as well as several different kinds of fruit and an entire pie. Petra herself was perched on Raia's ankles next to the food. Head cocked, she simply stared between her sister and the pile of food that she had accumulated, and Raia could swear that her sister's avian face looked almost smug.