Flight of the Five Swans

Feathered Chapter 21

Raia had long lost track of the number of days since she and her sisters escaped the Deturian palace and Soran's clutches. She knew that it had certainly been longer than a week since their grand escape—perhaps even more than two weeks. The days and nights had merged together in her mind from hours spent walking and knitting and stumbling through the forest. Raia was certain that she must look a right sight from tripping over roots and sloshing through countless mud puddles on a daily basis. Her feet had already developed blisters on top of blisters, and her shoes—the sturdiest boots that she owned—were all but falling apart. Her dress was stained with the forest, despite all of her efforts to wash it—and herself—in the river by which they had camped only the night before. Though Raia still tied her hair back daily in her usual chignon, it was also getting harder and harder for her to untangle the strands with her fingers.

Her swan sisters, of course, did not have the same problem, as their grooming consisted mainly of ensuring that their feathers remained white and clean. The swans' appearances did not reflect the difficulties of their forest journey to the same extent as Raia's; it was a distinction that Raia found herself envying on more than one occasion, particularly as she struggled to wash her hair without soap or shampoo of any kind. Yet despite the challenge that maintaining her personal hygiene presented, Raia would have given anything to ensure that such minor issues were the extent of her worries.

But her days on the road were also filled with the never-ending fear of discovery—and of their subsequent recapture. Raia and her sisters had initially gone five days without seeing another human soul, but by the sixth day, it was clear that Soran and his men had at last realized that the princesses were not, in fact, on any of the roads heading back to Kyoria. Deturian search parties could now be heard or spotted in the forest nearby, though they had yet to actually cross the sisters' paths on the tiny forest trail that the princesses had been following. The game trail that Raia and her sisters had been using to guide them was all but deserted apart from themselves. Clearly, Cliodne had done her research well in selecting their route out of Deturus.

Still, Raia saw the presence of Soran's soldiers in the forest as excuse enough for the princesses to be more cautious both during the day and at night. The smallest trace of guards in their vicinity was enough to send Raia and the swans scrambling for cover, so that their presence would not be detected. As the scout, Thaleia would honk once at her sisters to signal that soldiers were moving around nearby. The sisters would stop walking immediately, ducking into bushes and up trees in order to hide themselves from sight. Raia all but stopped breathing in these moments, waiting with bated breath for Thaleia's low hiss—the signal that the strangers had moved on and that the coast was clear. While Raia regretted the time lost traveling during these short interludes, she nevertheless welcomed the respite they offered from the incessant walking.

She did not, however, welcome the break from knitting that was forced upon her. These mad scrambles for cover in the forest underbrush were among the only times of the day when Raia would stop knitting, but only because she was terrified that the low clatter of her needles would attract the attention of the people from whom they were hiding. She regarded each and every pause with unbridled impatience, eager to resume her work.

She needed to resume her work.

Raia felt the pressure of this task like a heavy weight on her shoulders—a burden that she was forced to bear silently to fulfill the terms of the ritual. She felt as though words were bottling up inside of her, desperate to be released, but time and again she bit them down. Her sisters were counting on her to finish the shawls to break their curse, and she was determined not to let them down. But Raia's vow was complicated by these new forced pauses in her work. Being in constant motion had already slowed down the progress she was making in knitting the third shawl, and she chafed at the addition of further delays.