The Bonny Swans: The Miller's Daughter (2/4)

[nepenthe]

The Miller’s Daughter

 

My father, my daddy, tells me there is a pond here heated year-round and home to a pair of swans. The mortician (a new word I have learned to-day) keeps them. He feeds them and clips their wings so they cannot fly away. I think that is why big, free birds don’t like him as I did not. Father tells me to stay away.

 

I slip from the mourners taking Bonny, my cousin and bosom friend, with me. She glides over the snow as I trudge through it. We saw the pond when we passed the gates into the yard. It is not hard to find. I’m thrilled; I’ve never seen a swan in life, not even stuffed. I only know them from my mother’s stories. Sometimes, they are princesses bewitched into birds. I wish to meet a princess.

 

The pond ripples because the wind is strong and cold to-day. It has blown my petals away, over the hill to the pond’s brim. I know it isn’t a real pond. The wild pond in the woods behind our home is ugly and shallow. Thorny trees and bushes grow all around. This pond has nice edges marked with stone, the snow melted around yellow-brown peaks. I follow them to the reeds. Reeds would make a fine home for a swan-princess.

 

I find no swans in the reeds and check the depth of the water with a pebble. The ripples are burgeoning half-moons until their pattern reflects off a floating body, its clipped feathers like lace; moons become sapphire diamonds surrounding her.

 

I smile and return to my father.

 

“Father, oh Daddy, here swims a swan! Come, see her.”

 

“Imagining things, little dove?” my father says to me. “It is winter, too cold for swans. They are kept in the menagerie ‘til spring.”

 

“Oh.” I know it is too cold for swans. There is a swan in the pond. No matter.

 

I tell Bonny of the swan and her plight. Bonny suggests we take the swan home with us. This is not a good idea because my father shouldn’t like a swan in the house and I tell Bonny so. We speak of houses, Bonny and I, then of the reeds and shelter.

 

Together Bonny and I use sticks to direct the swan to the reedy bank. As she floats, the bird loses some lace and hair along the way, but I am careful and it cannot be helped. Bonny would help too, but she cannot touch things anymore and I wore my warm goulashes. I wade ankle deep into the water, for the mud beneath is solid and I don’t sink. The swan is cold (Father spoke truly; cold is not for swans), stiff, and heavier out of the water than in it. But I manage to settle her in the midst of the reeds. Using strings from the tassels on my coat, I make a tent over her head.

 

Bonny warns that my father seeks me. I bid my swan fair-well and good-bye. I return late, and he chides me. My coat is muddy, and the red tassel’s missing and I am wet, wet, wet and shall catch my death, God rest my mother.