The Black Swan (35 page)

Siegfried looked away for the first time, at a loss for words—then with an effort that was visible to Odile, though not to Odette, he returned to the pretense that they were two newly met strangers with no shadow of magic about either of them. “The streams here are known for trout, and I expect that since very few of my ancestors are notable fishermen, the lake is as rich with fish life as the forest is barren of large game. At any rate, the villagers seem to be well provided for in that area.”

“You would not have come here alone, certainly?” Odette tilted her head to the side, in an unconscious, but very birdlike, pose.

“No—my friend Benno hunts the other side of the lake, and we brought servants. We have a large hunting party, actually. The queen brought many of the guests to amuse themselves, and I brought Benno and my tutor Wolfgang.”

Odette brightened, seizing on a “safe” subject. “Your tutor! Then he must be the one who taught you so much of philosophy and poetry!”

Gladly Siegfried took his cue from her. “Yes—and Wolfgang has been as much a friend as a tutor for many years now. In fact, we are working on a translation together.”

Once again, Odile ignored the topic of discussion in favor of the subtle expressions and the language of their movements.

But just as things were getting truly interesting, the two were interrupted by the fierce call of an eagle-owl somewhere nearby.

Odette started, and jumped away from Siegfried as if he had suddenly come out in plague spots.
That isn't Father, silly girl!
Odile thought, half annoyed, half amused.
Father would never announce his presence that way!

But Odette wasn't taking any chances. “I must go,
now,
” she said, edging farther away. “And so must you.”

“But wait—surely I can see you again!” Siegfried called plaintively, sounding exactly like someone in a tale.

Odette turned back, her face still and white. “Tomorrow evening,” she said, as if the words had been pulled out of her all unwillingly. “Here. After moonrise.”

With that, she fled; after a moment more of lingering, Siegfried went away as well, leaving Odile to return to the shelter, feeling as if she had been pulled away from a story before it had rightly begun.

S
IEGFRIED fought down his impulse to run after the strange maiden who'd called herself Odette, for something deep inside warned him that he would jeopardize any rapport he had thus far built with her if he did. Running after her would only frighten her, and make her sure she could not trust him.

Blessed Jesu!
he thought, straining his eyes to watch her as she flew over the grass, with steps so light she barely touched the ground.
I have never seen anything like her! What is she?

She hadn't forbidden him to watch her, and he followed her longingly with his eyes until she disappeared into the dark shadows of the forest. It seemed to him that a faint perfume, too faint to be identified as anything but a hint of sweetness, drifted after her on the light breeze.

Only then did he turn and retrace his steps, making his way back to the place where the servants waited, wandering along the shoreline with no attempt to conceal his presence from the wildlife. Sticks broke beneath his feet, rocks skittered away from him.

I am enchanted, in every sense. I have never seen a female, woman or girl, so utterly incredible. Why did she suddenly run away?
For no reason that
he
could see, she had gone from warily friendly to ready to flee. Something had frightened her—no,
terrified
her.

Who, and what, was she? The question spun around and around in his thoughts, making him dizzy. Her sad, solemn eyes seemed to hang before him in the darkness, calling up an ache inside him, a desperate need to turn the sadness to a smile. With the moon high above his right shoulder, casting brilliant light to show him the way, his progress unimpeded by the need to skulk through the underbrush, he saw the light of the servants' fire sending a long streak of reflected brilliance lancing across the water long before he expected to. He hadn't even begun to digest the things that had happened to him in the last hour; he wasn't ready to face others yet. He shivered in the chill air, and felt the grip of nausea on his throat.

But what am I going to do in the meantime if I don't return to the servants' camp? Sit down here and dangle my feet in the water?
He'd asked himself the question facetiously, but he then realized there could be unseen peril here. If the lake played host to swans who turned into women, what else might lurk
beneath
its waters? Perhaps it was a glimpse of something rising for a moment above the surface that had affrighted the maiden. It might not be a good idea to stand in one place all alone in the dark beside this lake.

He did pause with one hand against the rough bark of a tree to prepare himself to face the servants and their curiosity, although his thoughts felt as unsteady as Wolfgang after a long night of drinking. Taking deep breaths of the cooling air, he stared out at the still water, and decided exactly what he was going to tell the servants. What he told Benno, when his friend appeared, would be very different. In fact, now he wanted very badly to see Benno, to hear what Benno might think.

He kept his mind clear enough to find the easiest way back to the servants, taking the line through the trees rather than pushing his way through the underbrush. The moon was still low enough to send brilliant shafts through the trees deep into the heart of the forest, so that he didn't find himself blundering into trunks.

Soon enough the leaping flames ahead of him rivaled the moonlight, and he knew he would have to face a circle of inquisitive servants. He set a disappointed expression on his face, and strode into the circle of firelight. The servants jumped to their collective feet, but he waved them back to their seats, and chose a spot on a fallen tree-trunk for himself.

“Nothing,” he said with feigned disgust. “I didn't see a thing, and I gave up. Wherever the swans are, they've hidden themselves well, or perhaps they flew off as we were making our own way here.”

“There might be islands,” one of the servants offered respectfully, waving vaguely at the dark expanse of water. “They might be on an island.”

“It's true enough that I couldn't find a spot where a water bird could come ashore for as long as I walked.” Siegfried hoped that would prevent the ever-helpful servants from dashing out in an attempt to locate the birds for their master. “I turned back when I came to a bramble patch too thick to cut through; no point in trying to find a way around it in the dark.”

“No, sire,” the same servant said respectfully. “If my prince will forgive my speaking out of turn, it's as dark as the inside of a pocket in these woods; you could be hunted by an entire pack of wolves and never know it until it was too late.”

“A bit hard to fire off arrows in the dark and expect to hit anything, Peter,” another added laconically as an aside to his fellow. “You couldn't hardly defend yourself, no matter how good you was. I bet there's bears there, and wolves, too.”

Siegfried nodded absently and stared into the fire, bent over with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands loosely clasped before him. He hoped he was giving a good imitation of disappointment, the kind that put him in a mood where he really didn't want anyone chattering at him.

Seeing that he didn't need or want any entertainment from them, the servants lapsed back into their own gossip, quiet mutters which didn't interest Siegfried nearly as much as the lovely creature now monopolizing his thoughts.

Why did she come here? Where is she from? What is she?
How could a swan suddenly turn into a maiden except by magic? But what kind of magic would do such a thing, and why? Who could the magician be?

He took refuge in his scant store of magic tales gleaned from the songs of minstrels and the ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts he shared with Wolfgang.
What do I know about swans who turn into women?

The only similar tale he could think of was the myth of Zeus and Leda—but it was Zeus who had turned into the swan, not the maiden. It didn't seem to Siegfried that Odette could be a pagan goddess.
Why would a goddess be frightened of anything? And she
was
frightened. Even when goddesses were caught by their spouses doing something wrong, they were never afraid—

She'd once crossed herself, too, which meant she was a Christian, which made it unlikely that she was a pagan goddess.

Given that—then either
she
was an enchantress, like Circe, who transformed herself, or she was in the grip of some dreadful enchantment herself. What reason could she possibly have for turning herself into a swan, of all things? For that matter, why would she turn an entire flock of other girls into swans? Swans made fine targets for hunters; it would be a stupidly risky choice of form, if it had been assumed by choice.

He moved so that his feet were closer to the fire; it was getting much colder now that the sun was well down.

If Odette herself was the magician, why would she have waited so long to transform when threatened? A heartbeat later, and he would surely have killed one of the swans, if not her.

What had she told him about herself? Her name, which he had not recognized; she had given him no title, though the rest of her flock treated her with the deference due a queen. She had said that the flock had arrived at the lake no more than a few days ago. Everything else had been questions of her own, which he had been dazzled enough to answer. Perhaps that had been foolish, but he couldn't help himself, and even now he did not regret a single answer.

He looked about him as the servants forgot his presence and raised their voices to a normal conversational level. They only disturbed him for a moment, then he went back to his ruminations.

She's nobly born; she can't be anything else. The manners, the mannerisms, are too ingrained for her to have merely been tutored in them. No peasant, no merchant, would behave as she did.
She addressed him by the correct title; she accorded him the precisely correct amount of deference due to the heir of one kingdom from a visiting prince. Such things were subtle; second nature to one born royal, difficult to master for one who was not.

He shifted on his log; it wasn't the most comfortable seat he'd ever had.

She had acted, once she discovered who he was, with relief—and that was odd, now that he came to think of it. Why would that be? Had she been expecting him, or someone like him, to appear at the lake? Had she been told about him? By whom?

That implied things about her that he didn't want to consider. A latter-day Circe
could
have transformed herself, and yet could be frightened of a greater power than herself. A witch—as he had thought the poor gypsy girl was—

He shoved the unwelcome thought away.
She can't be trying to trick or trap me, no matter how arcane her origins. I can't believe that . . . she's too sweet, too gentle.

But then there was that folk tale—“The Woman Without a Shadow”—where a perfectly sweet and innocent-seeming woman had sold her soul to the Devil, and being desperate to get it back, lured young men into pledging
their
souls to the arch-fiend for love of her. That was why she had not had a shadow; the lack of one betrayed that she had no soul. Had Odette possessed a shadow? He couldn't remember, and a shiver went up his back, a chill passing over him that the warmth from the fire couldn't counter.

But what if a sorceress had plans to usurp a throne—wouldn't she pretend to be an innocent victim, to lure her prey into her trap?

Oh that was ridiculous, what was there to covet about
his
land?
Why would she pick this place? No, that can't be right at all; she didn't seem to know anything about my kingdom, and surely a sorceress with plans for a kingdom of her own would have studied the place she planned to take!

But what if a greater magician intended to use her—

What greater magician? I've never heard
anything
about such a sorcerer, and anyway, why wouldn't he just use magic directly against us and take the throne quickly and easily?
He couldn't imagine a plot so convoluted; it made no sense to expend that much time and effort on something that could be accomplished in a straightforward manner.

He lapsed into rapt contemplation of that beauty as he stared at the flickering flames. Even given that moonlight was particularly flattering, he couldn't recall another woman he had ever seen who was quite so near to perfection as Odette. Her silver hair had gleamed like the finest silk in the moonbeams; her eyes, large and soft as any doe's, held an immensity of sorrows and mysteries. A clear, broad brow promised intelligence, and her conversation fulfilled that promise. Soft lips, full and tender, had tempted him to steal a hundred kisses.

She may not be the trap,
a nasty little voice warned him,
But what if she is the bait?

He wanted to ignore the ignoble voice, but grudgingly admitted to himself that the cautious thought might provide the answer to all of those unanswered questions.