The Six Swan Brothers by Adèle Geras Page A

neighbouring country, the Witch’s Daughter crept to the Treasury. There she found what she was looking for, and she took it and put it into her pocket.
    She followed the silver thread as it unwound between the trees, and at last she came to the castle where the King’s children were hidden. She arrived at dusk and saw six handsome young men returning from the hunt.
    â€˜Those are my husband’s sons,’ she said to herself. ‘I am certain of it.’
    When she considered how much he must love them, a bright flame of hatred leaped up in her heart . ‘It is fortunate,’ she thought, ‘that my husband is far away, for I have work to do.’
    She looked no further, and so she never found Cora, who was in her chamber, high up in the tower. The magic thread led her back to the palace and rolled itself up behind her as she walked.

    The Witch’s Daughter locked herself up in a small room and cut out six shirts from white silk. Then she began to sew with a long and wicked needle that caught the light as she worked. She sang a spell as she sat there and she sang it six times, once for each garment:
    â€˜White as Ice
    silken stitches
    gifts I bring
.
    Hearts may yearn
    but flesh will know
    how feathers grow
    from poisoned silk
    smooth as milk
.
    Turn and burn
    turn and burn
    turn limb to wing
.’
    When the garments were ready, the Witch’s Daughter unlocked her door and went to find the ball of enchanted thread. At the edge of the forest, she spoke these words:
    â€˜Your master returns tomorrow, but for now you are mine. Find them again, for the last time.’
    The silver thread slipped away between the trees, and the Witch’s Daughter came to the hidden castle once again. Cora saw her from the high window of her chamber, and immediately she knew that something terrible was going to happen. She hid behind the curtain and peeped out at the stable yard, where her brothers were gathered, back from the day’s hunting.
    â€˜Welcome, madam,’ said the eldest. ‘Our house and hospitality await you, as they do every stranger lost in the forest.’
    â€˜I am not lost,’ said the Witch’s Daughter. ‘I have brought you gifts from the King, your father. See, here is a shirt for each of you, made from white silk.’
    The young men took the shirts, and before their sister could cry out to warn them, they had thrust their arms into the sleeves.
    â€˜You will see,’ said the Witch’s Daughter. ‘They will become like second skins.’ She turned and was gone, swallowed up in the darkness between one tree and another.
    Cora found she could not move. She went on staring down from the window, thinking that perhaps she was mistaken, and perhaps her heart should not be filled with dread and foreboding. But her brothers’ beautiful necks were stretching and stretching and their heads shrinking and shrinking and their brown arms flapping and growing white and soon there was nothing left of men in any of them, and the air was filled with the sound of beating wings, as six swans rose and moved along the soft currents of the evening breeze towards the sunset beyond the forest.
    â€˜Wait!’ Cora called after them. ‘Wait for me!’ But they had disappeared and she was left alone.

    After they had gone, she was cold with fear and the sound of her own breathing was as loud in her ears as a sighing wind. She did not know whether to try and make her way to her father’s palace, or to stay where she was and hope that he would find her. In the end, she decided to leave the castle, for the rooms were full of silence, and frightened her. Cora longed to weep for her poor brothers, but she knew that she had to follow them at once, or they would be lost for ever. She filled a basket with bread and hard cheese and took her warmest cloak to cover her, and set out for the forest.
    Cora walked and walked through the night and through the following