The Swan Maiden (7 page)

She yelped in surprise.

The shepherd pushed his hat back and scratched his curly head. “You see, Fidele,” he said in the tone of one settling an argument. “I didn't imagine her!”

The dog yipped and returned to bounce happily at his feet. Doucette crossed her arms across her chest while her thoughts tumbled over one another like gamboling lambs.

Jaume? How was that possible? Doucette must have flown even farther than she thought, to catch up with a flock that had left Beloc several days ago. Perhaps she would overtake her sisters, too.

The shepherd touched his fist to his heart. “Good evening, Lady.”

It
was
Jaume—she knew that voice! But the formality of his greeting told her he hadn't yet recognized her. Perhaps she should keep silent?

Doucette hesitated. The cold stone niche enclosed her, but she was hardly aware of the chill, since her body burned with embarrassment. Under the heat, a shimmering thread of excitement wound around her limbs. So much had changed since their last meeting. She was a swan maiden now, with a sorceress's freedom—and vulnerability.

Ice touched her spine. If Jaume took her swan skin, she would have to follow him.

She shook off the fearful thought. Jaume had never treated her with anything but kindness, even when his brothers teased him for it. And here they were, alone together in wild country, and he was waiting for her to speak.

Doucette's skin tingled with a mixture of anticipation and pure mischief she had never felt before. “Good evening, Man.” She tried to make her voice sound like a rock sprite's, or like Azelais's, haughty and aloof, but an inadvertent giggle spoiled the effect.

Jaume went completely still and then one giant step brought him so close that only the evergreen bush separated them. “Doucette?” His voice was raw with surprise and alarm. “Where's your escort? What happened to—” He reached through the juniper and seized her shoulder, then jumped back, as if the touch of her bare skin had scalded him. He glanced down and raised his eyes at once, his expression horrified. “Where are your clothes? Don't tell me—you've been attacked!” He whistled, shrilly.

Fidele stopped capering. The dog's hackles rose as she planted her forefeet and growled.

“No, Jaume, stop,” Doucette said, as he showed every sign of calling the rest of the shepherds to her aid. “It's nothing like that. I'm fine.”

“What?” His crook raised like a weapon, Jaume had turned to survey their surroundings. After the one scandalized glance, he seemed unwilling to let his eyes rest on her barely concealed nakedness.

Not sure whether she was more exasperated with him or with herself, Doucette made a face at the shepherd's back. She was sure this kind of thing didn't happen to Azelais or Cecilia. Naked or clothed, her confident sisters would never be so clumsy in the presence of a man. And, after her first fright, the situation had seemed so promising. Romantic, even, like a scene from a tale. Destiny bringing two young lovers together … until she bungled it.

“I'm not harmed, Jaume.”

“No?” Still, his eyes searched the rocks. “Then what—”

The sound of branches snapping brought both their heads around. Jaume stepped in front of Doucette's hiding place, his shepherd's crook ready to defend or attack.

Doucette wanted to cry with mortification. If this was one of Jaume's brothers, coming to her “rescue” …

Brush crackled, and a large animal leaped toward Jaume. Teeth flashed in the gloom.

Doucette screamed, only to feel woefully stupid as Jaume held up his hand.

“Osco.”

The dog woofed, then sat on his haunches in front of them.

“Good boy.” Jaume scratched the guardian's ruff. “Out with it, Lady Doucette,” the shepherd said, his back still turned to her. “Is this your sisters' doing? Have the witches left you defenseless in the wilderness?”

He sounded, Doucette thought, as if he had caught Vitor or Eri in an ill-advised prank and somebody was about to get a big brother's cuff on the ear. But she was only four years younger than he, and not his little sister; she wouldn't be treated so. “I came by myself, for your information. I flew.”

“Flew?”

Jaume's disbelief stung. The sweeping reverses of the past few moments, from terror to elation and back again, had left Doucette feeling as though she had been put in a bag and shaken. The words spilled out of her.

“Yes. My parents hid my swan skin, but I found it, and I'm going to Tante Mahalt's to study magic with my sisters. I don't care what you think about the High Arts. You can't stop me. I'm a swan maiden, after all.”

“A swan maiden,” Jaume said, his voice completely neutral.

“Yes.”

“A sorceress.”

“Yes.” Doucette sniffed. “That is, I'm going to be. I can do the one Transformation spell already.”

“Well, now. That changes things, doesn't it?” Jaume rubbed the back of his neck and sat down on a rock. “A sorceress.”

Osco and Fidele arranged themselves on either side of him. Both dogs cocked furry heads at Doucette, as if they, too, were curious to hear her explanation.

“Yes.” The light had almost gone, but if Doucette couldn't read his expression, he couldn't see her clearly, either. “So, I thought,” she began, a little timidly.

“Why'd you follow me, Lady Doucette?” Jaume said, still in that calm voice.

“I didn't,” Doucette said. “Weren't you listening? That is, I did follow the sheep, because that's the way to Tante Mahalt's, but I wasn't looking for you.” You conceited thing, she let her tone imply.

“Then it's an accident, our meeting?”

“You told me about the hot pools, remember? It's your fault, if it's anyone's.”

Jaume bowed his head. His voice came out muffled. “My fault.”

“Not that I'm unhappy to see you. I mean, since I'm a swan maiden now, and you said you admired me…” Doucette's voice trailed away. Did she have to spell it out for him?

When Jaume didn't answer, Doucette poked her head out of the concealing juniper. The man's shoulders were shaking. “What's the matter?”

“The matter?” His head lifted. He was laughing, soundlessly, in great gulps of air.

Doucette's soul shriveled. She'd as good as offered herself, and Jaume thought it a great joke. It had all been a lie, what he had said before, she realized with terrible clarity. Soothing nonsense meant to comfort a hurt child.

Jaume was a friendly soul, after all. No blame to him that she had read more than he meant into his compliments, into his offer of help.

Shudders wracked Doucette's body. No matter how hard she clenched her hands over her arms, she couldn't stop shivering.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Why had she thought the swan skin would change her into someone as compelling, as desirable as her sisters? She was still the drab one, the drudge. But she would show him! She'd show them all—her parents, the court, everyone! She would study harder than Cecilia and Azelais combined and become so great a sorceress that no one would dare laugh at her again.

If they did, she'd turn them into—into sheep!

“Leave me,” Doucette said. At last her voice sounded like a true sorceress's, as cold as the river Immeluse, foaming around the castle where the Queen of the Birds dwelt in splendid isolation.

Fidele yipped. Jaume shook his head, still unable to answer her for laughing.

“Go away,” Doucette said, more forcefully, but he didn't.

Not caring whether he saw her or not, she reached for her swan skin. “Then I will.”

“Lady…”

Her arms full of feathers, Doucette looked over her shoulder to see that Jaume had fallen to his knees.

“Doucette, stay.” Jaume extended his hand. “Sweetheart. Will you marry me?”

“Marry you?” Doucette stiffened with outrage. “I don't care how handsome you are, Jaume of Vent'roux, you can't laugh at me, then propose. I never want to see you again. I hate you.”

“Please, listen,” Jaume begged.

“No!” Frantic to escape fresh humiliation, Doucette stepped out of the crevice and flung the swan skin over her shoulders. As if it were a pool of water, she fell into her swan shape.

Osco growled; Fidele barked madly.

Swan-Doucette stretched her neck and hissed at both of them. She shot a warning look at the shepherd and bobbed her head in satisfaction when Jaume called off his dogs. As swiftly as she could paddle her feet and flap her wings, Doucette regained the sky, and freedom.

She wasn't running away, she told herself, wings pumping fiercely. She was running
to
something, which made all the difference.

Didn't it?

Chapter Nine

As she labored through the pine-scented air, Doucette's wings trembled with fatigue.

Shortly after leaving Jaume the previous night, she had found an island in a larger lake and tucked her head under her wing. Sleep, however, had eluded her. She started at every unfamiliar noise, and when at last she had slipped into an uneasy doze, she dreamed of falling. Mouth open, she screamed without making a sound, until a shepherd's crook pulled her out of the sky and into an embrace that smelled of wood smoke and mint. She had woken with a jerk and not slept again.

Taking to the air at first light, Doucette had found the Immeluse, then flown above the river without stopping. Far below, the rocky scrub changed to meadow and then to forest. After many weary hours, she glimpsed her destination ahead.

Pearly gray in the morning light, the castle's stone shoulders parted the river like a lady rising from her bath. A most private lady, who disdained company. No bridge spanned the torrent that poured past the island stronghold. The closest road, hardly more than a dirt track, emerged from the forest to cross a shallow stretch downstream from the castle. Beyond the ford, the road disappeared once more into the trees.

As she neared the Château de l'Île, Doucette counted four towers encircled by a high wall. Wide balconies ringed the top portion of each tower, and she puzzled over their purpose. Defense? Decoration?

The inside courtyard was planted with fruit trees, their bare branches sporting white and pink buds. Arched windows and doorways pierced the castle's stone walls at intervals, but only, Doucette realized, on the interior sides. The outer walls turned blank faces to the river, the forest, and the sky.

“My sister will know who seeks her,” Doucette's father had told the armsmen who escorted Azelais and Cecilia, but on this peaceful morning, the castle appeared deserted.

No—not quite deserted. Several white doves swirled out an open window, over the castle wall, and into the forest.

Doucette descended, listening in vain for a human voice raised in a shout or laughter or song. She didn't hear any of the Château de l'Aire's usual noises: axes chopping wood, squealing pigs, the scrape of a shovel against a stable floor. Although the sun had risen in the sky, Doucette could see no sign of a meal being prepared; no plume of smoke rose from cook fire or oven, carrying the smell of fresh bread.

Unsure of her welcome at this silent castle, she decided to stop and feed. Perhaps when she felt stronger she would know exactly what to do.

Exerting her tired muscles, Doucette searched for a quiet patch of water in which to land. A rocky gorge contained this stretch of the Immeluse, channeling it into a foaming rush. Where the steep banks gentled at the ford below the castle, several women were washing clothes in the shallows. Doucette veered away from them and spotted a break in the trees where cultivated fields surrounded a huddle of houses.

Curious, she flew closer. At the edge of a tidy-looking village, a millpond beckoned. Doucette sank gratefully out of the sky. She splashed down and paddled to the side of the pond farthest from the mill gate, then plunged her head underwater to forage among the reeds. Digging deep, she didn't see the mill door open, or the man with the net come out.

The miller hiked his white-spotted brown tunic over his knees. Bare feet silent on the muddy ground, he crept around the pond and cast his net.

“Got you,” he crowed.

Doucette whipped her neck out of the reeds as the mesh settled over her.

A net?

Had she escaped from one man only to fall prey to another? She hissed in fear and bit at the mesh.

Careful to avoid her snapping beak, the miller waded into the pond, pulled the sides of the net together, and towed his catch toward the bank. “Calm yourself, my beauty,” he soothed. “No neck chain, eh? So you're not one of hers. Fair game, I say. Very fair.” He chortled at his own wit. “Nobody to miss you, and the four of us to welcome you at dinner.”

At dinner? The man planned to roast her because she wasn't wearing a necklace?

Despair froze Doucette's blood as she considered her choices. She could change, but then she'd be a naked girl in a net and the miller would know exactly what prize he had caught. Besides, if she could get free for a moment, a swan had a better chance of escape. One blow of her powerful wings could break a man's arm. A buffet could stun him.

“Bodo! Ravioun!” The miller waved at the two flour-dusted boys who had come to gape at the spectacle. “Give me a hand, you louts. See what I've caught!”

“A swan, Father?” The smaller boy's eyes were round, dark holes in his white-speckled face. “Is it safe?”

“Unmarked!” The older boy whooped. “Last one there's a blood-sucking leech!” He ran at Doucette, shouting over his shoulder. “Leech, leech, Ravioun is a sucking leech.” He splashed into the pond and tugged a corner of the net.

The younger boy had stopped to pick up a stick. He reached the melee as his brother jumped backward.

“Hey!” The taller boy let go of the net and sat down in waist-deep water, shaking his hand. “It bit me!”

Doucette barked and hissed.