The Six Swan Brothers by Adèle Geras Page B

day, between bramble bushes thick with thorns like little claws, and over twisted tree roots buried in the earth; with no moon to guide her and the calling of night birds to chill her blood. She put one foot in front of another all through the black hours and at last the dawn came. The young girl looked around her and recognized nothing, so she went on, searching the sky for swans, listening for the music of their moving wings and still, always, putting one foot in front of another. As night was falling, she came upon a hut. Her legs were stiff with weariness and her feet hurt from walking.
    â€˜I will see,’ Cora said to herself, ‘whether perhaps some kind woodcutter will let me rest here for a few hours.’
    She knocked at the door of the hut, but it stood wide open. Whoever had once lived there had long ago moved on. She sank on to a bed in the corner and slept.

    And as she slept, she dreamed. In her dream, six swans flew in through the window and stood around the bed.
    Cora cried out: ‘Why are you not the brothers that I love? Where, where are they?’
    â€˜We are here,’ said a voice, and Cora thought the voice was speaking in her head, and opened her eyes at once, for surely that was her dear brother speaking? It was then that she saw them all, standing around her in their glorious human shape, gazing down and smiling.
    â€˜There is no time for joy,’ said one. ‘We are allowed to return to our human forms for a few minutes only, every evening, and after that we are swans again.’
    â€˜Is there nothing I can do?’ Cora wept. ‘I would do anything … anything in the world to break the spell.’
    â€˜What you would have to do,’ said her youngest brother, ‘is too much.’
    â€˜Nothing is too much,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’
    â€˜You must weave six shirts from starwort and river reeds,’ he said. ‘One for each of us.’
    â€˜I will do it,’ Cora said. ‘I will walk beside the rivers and the lakes and I will do it. It will take time, but in the end you will be men again.
    â€˜But,’ said her eldest brother, ‘you must not speak a single word nor make a single sound until the starwort shirts are on our backs, or the spell will never be broken in this lifetime.’
    â€˜Not a sound?’ Cora felt her heart like a knot of hard wood in her breast.
    â€˜Not the smallest sound in the world,’ he answered, ‘or we will be swans for ever.’
    â€˜It will be hard,’ she said, ‘but I can do it.’
    They nodded and went to the door of the hut. The sun’s last rays slanted in through the window and then there was a storm of snowy feathers and Cora saw the swans rising into the mauve twilight and growing smaller and smaller as their wide wings bore them away.

    She started her work the very next day, and for many weeks all she did was wander beside rivers and streams and little brooks, picking starwort and the stoutest reeds that she could find, preparing herself for the weaving she would have to do. She took shelter under trees and in caves and hollows, and the rain fell on her and the sun burned her, and all the words she was forbidden to speak buzzed in her head and fixed themselves into rhymes which she said over silently to herself without the smallest breath of sound passing her lips. This is the song that Cora sang in her heart as she worked:
    â€˜River reed and starwort stem
    cut and dry and weave and hem
    twist and stitch and pull and bind
    let white silence fill my mind
    gather plant and gather stalk
    stifle laughter stifle talk
    sew and fold by candlelight
    all the hours of every night
    like a statue let me be
    till my brothers are set free
    freeze my words before they’re spoken
    let the evil spell be broken
    river reed and starwort stem
    cut and dry and weave and hem
.’
    The weeks passed and the months and the making was slow and hard. At first, Cora’s