The Beastly Bride

THIMBLERIGGERY AND FLEDGLINGS Steve Berman

Bernhard von Rothbart scratched at a sore on his chin with a snow-white feather, then hurled it as a dart at the chart hanging above the bookshelves. The quill’s sharp end stabbed through the buried feet of the dunghill cock, Gallus gallus faeces, drawn with a scarab clutched in its beak.

“A noble bird,” von Rothbart muttered as he bit clean his fingernails, “begins base and eats noble things.”

He expected his daughter to look up from a book and answer, “Yes, Papa,” but there was only silence. Above him, in the massive wrought iron cage, the wappentier shifted its dark wings. One beak yawned while the other preened. A musky odor drifted down.

Why wasn’t Odile studying the remarkable lineage of doves?

Von Rothbart climbed down the stairs. Peered into room after room of the tower. A sullen chanticleer pecked near the coatrack. Von Rothbart paused a moment to recall whether the red-combed bird had been the gardener who had abandoned his sprouts or the glazier who’d installed murky glass.

He hoped to find her in the kitchen and guilty only of brushing crumbs from the pages of his priceless books. But he saw only the new cook, who shied away. Von Rothbart reached above a simmering cauldron to run his fingers along the hot stones until they came back charred black.

Out the main doors, the sorcerer looked out at the wide and tranquil moat encircling his home, and at the swans drifting over its surface. He knew them to be the most indolent of birds. So much so they barely left the water.

He brushed his fingers together. Ash fell to the earth, and the feathers of one gliding swan turned soot-dark and its beak shone like blood.

“Odile,” he called. “Come here!”

The black swan swam to shore and slowly waddled over to stand before von Rothbart. Her neck, as sinuous as any serpent’s, bent low until she touched her head to his boots.

Odile felt more defeated than annoyed at being discovered. Despite the principle that, while also a swan, she should be able to tell one of the bevy from the other, Odile had been floating much of the afternoon without finding Elster. Or if she had, the maiden — Odile refused to think of them as pens, despite Papa insisting that was the proper terminology — had remained mute.

“What toad would want this swan’s flesh?” her papa muttered. “I want to look upon the face of my daughter.”

In her head, she spoke a phrase of rara linguathat shed the albumen granting her form. The transformation left her weak and famished; while she had seen her papa as a pother owl devour a hare in one swallow, Odile as a swan could not stomach moat grass and cloying water roots. No longer the tips of great wings, her fingers dug at the moss between flagstones.

“There’s my plain girl.” Smiling, he gently lifted her by the arms. “So plain, so sweet.” He stroked her cheek with a thumb.

She could hear the love in his voice, but his familiar cooing over her rough-as-vinegar face and gangly limbs still hurt. A tear escaped along the edge of her nose.

“Why you persist in playing amongst the bevy. ” He stroked her cheek with a thumb. “Come inside.” He guided her toward the door. “There won’t only be lessons today. I’ll bring a Vorspiel of songbirds to the window to make you smile.”

Odile nodded and walked with him back into the tower. But she would rather Papa teach her more of rara lingua. Ever since her sixteenth birthday, he had grown reluctant to share invocations. At first, Odile thought she had done something wrong and was being punished, but she now suspected that Papa felt magic, like color, belonged to males. The books he let her read dealt with nesting rather than sorcery.

From his stories, Odile knew he had been only a few years older than sixteen when he left his village, adopted a more impressive name, and traveled the world. He had stepped where the ancient augers had read entrails. He had spoken with a cartouche of ibises along the Nile and fended off the copper claws of the gagana on a lost island in the Caspian Sea.

But he never would reveal the true mark of a great sorcerer: how he captured the wappentier. His secrets both annoyed Odile and made her proud.

As the sole surviving offspring of the fabled ziz of the Hebrews, the wappentier is the rarest of raptors. Having never known another of its ilk, the wappentier cannot speak out of loneliness and rarely preens its dark feathers. Some say the beast’s wings can stretch from one horizon to the other, but then it could not find room in the sky to fly. Instead, this lusus naturae perches atop desolate crags and ruins.

The Rashi claimed that the wappentier possesses the attributes of both the male and female. It has the desire to nest and yet the urge to kill. As soon as gore is taken to its gullet, the wappentier lays an egg that will never hatch. Instead, these rudiments are prized by theurgists for their arcane properties. Once cracked, the egg, its gilded shell inscribed with the Tetragrammaton, reveals not a yolk but a quintessence of mutable form, reflected in the disparate nature of the beast. A man may change his physique. A woman may change her fate. But buried, the eggs become foul and blacken like abandoned iron.

When Elster was nine, her grandmother brought her to the fairgrounds. The little girl clutched a ten-pfennig piece tight in her palm. A gift from her papa, a sour-smelling man who brewed gose beer all day long. “To buy candy. Or a flower,” said her grandmother.

The mayhem called to Elster, who tugged at her grandmother’s grip, wanting to fly free. She broke loose and ran into the midst of the first crowd she came upon. Pushing her way to the center, she found there a gaunt man dressed in shades of red. He moved tarnished thimbles about a table covered in a faded swatch of silk.

The man’s hands, with thick yellowed warts at every bend and crease, moved with a nimble grace. He lifted up one thimble to reveal a florin. A flip and a swirl and the thimble at his right offered a corroded haller. The coins were presented long enough to draw sighs and gasps from the crowd before disappearing under tin shells.

“I can taste that ten-bit you’re palming,” said the gaunt man. Thick lips hid his teeth. How Elster heard him over the shouts of the crowd—“Die linke Hand”—she could not guess. “Wager for a new life? Iron to gold?” His right hand tipped over a thimble to show a shining mark, a bit of minted sunlight stamped with a young woman’s face. Little Elster stood on her toes, nearly tipping over the table, to see the coin’s features. Not her mother or her grandmother. Not anyone she knew yet. But the coin itself was the most beautiful of sights; the gold glittered and promised her anything. Everything. Her mouth watered, and she wanted the odd man’s coin so badly that spittle leaked past her lips.

When she let go of the table, the iron ten-pfennig piece rolled from her sweaty fingers. The gaunt man captured it with a dropped thimble.

“Now which one, magpie? You want the shiny one, true? Left or right or middle or none at all?”

Elster watched his hands. She could not be sure and so closed her eyes and reached out. She clamped her hand over the gaunt man’s grip. His skin felt slick and hard like polished horn. “This one,” she said. When she looked, his palm held an empty thimble.

“Maybe later you’ll find the prize.” When he smiled she saw that his front teeth were metal: the left a dull iron, the right gleamed gold.

A strong arm pulled her away from the table. “Stupid child.” Her grandmother cuffed her face. “From now on, a thimble will be your keep.”

Down in the cellar, the stones seeped with moisture. Odile sneezed from the stink of mold. She could see how her papa trembled at the chill.

The floor was fresh-turned earth. Crates filled niches in the walls. In the tower’s other cage, a weeping man sat on a stool. The king’s livery, stained, bunched about his shoulders.

“The prince’s latest messenger.” Papa gestured at a bejeweled necklace glittering at the man’s feet. “Bearing a bribe to end the engagement.”

Papa followed this with a grunt as he stooped down and began digging in the dirt with his fingers. Odile helped him brush away what covered a dull, gray egg. “Papa, he’s innocent.”

He gently pulled the egg loose of the earth. “Dear, there’s a tradition of blame. Sophocles wrote that ‘No man loves the messenger of ill.’ ”

He took a pin from his cloak and punched a hole into the ends of the egg while intoning rara lingua. Then he approached the captive man, who collapsed, shaking, to his knees. Papa blew into one hole, and a vapor reeking of sulfur drifted out to surround the messenger. Screams turned into the frantic call of a songbird.

“We’ll send him back to the prince in a gilded cage with a message. ‘We delightedly accept your offer of an engagement ball.’ Perhaps I should have turned him into a parrot, and he could have spoken that.”

“Papa,” Odile chided.

“I’ll return his form after the wedding. I promise.” He carried the egg to one shelf and pulled out the crate of curse eggs nestled in soil. “What king more wisely cares for his subjects?”

The prince would rather muck out every filthy stall in every stable of the kingdom than announce his engagement to the sorcerer’s daughter at the ball. His father must have schemed his downfall; why else condemn him to marry a harpy?

“Father, be reasonable. Why not the Duke of Bremen’s daughter?” The prince glanced up at the fake sky the guilds-men were painting on the ballroom’s ceiling. A cloud appeared with a brushstroke.

“The one so lovely that her parents keep her in a cloister?” asked the king. “Boy, your wife should be faithful only to you. Should she look higher to God, she’ll never pay you any respect.”

“Then that countess from Schaumberg—”

The king sighed. “Son, there are many fine lands with many fine daughters, but none of them have magic.”

“Parlor tricks!”

“Being turned into a turkey is not a trick. Besides, von Rothbart is the most learned man I have ever met. If his daughter has half the mind, half the talent. ”

“Speaking dead languages and reciting dusty verse won’t keep a kingdom.”

The king laughed. “Don’t tell that to Cardinal Passerine.”

In the silence, Odile looked up from yellowed pages that told how a pelican’s brood are stillborn until the mother pecks its chest and resurrects them with her own blood. Odile had no memory of her own mother. Papa would never answer any question she asked about her.

She pinched the flame out in the sconce’s candle and opened the shutters. The outside night had so many intriguing sounds. Even if she only listened to the breeze it would be enough to entice her from her room.

She went to her dresser, opened the last drawer, and found underneath old mohair sweaters the last of the golden wappentier eggs she had taken. She could break it now, turn herself into a night bird and fly free. The thought tempted her as she stared at her own weak reflection on the shell. She polished it for a moment against her dressing gown.

But the need to see Elster’s face overpowered her.

So, as she had done so many nights, Odile gathered and tied bedsheets and old clothes together as a makeshift rope to climb down the outer walls of her papa’s tower.

As she descended, guided only by moonlight, something large flew near her head. Odile became still, with the egg safe in a makeshift sling around her chest, her toes squeezing past crumbling mortar. A fledermaus? Her papa called them vermin; he hunted them as the pother owl. If he should spot her. But no, she did not hear his voice demand she return to her room. Perhaps it was the wappentier. Still clinging to the wall, she waited for the world to end, as her papa had said would happen if the great bird ever escaped from its cage. But her heartbeat slowly calmed and she became embarrassed by all her fears. The elder von Rothbart would have fallen asleep at his desk, cheek smearing ink on the page. The sad wappentier would be huddled behind strong bars. Perhaps it also dreamed of freedom.

Once on the ground, Odile walked toward the moat. Sleeping swans rested on the bank, their long necks twisted back and their bills tucked into pristine feathers.

She held up the wappentier egg. Words of rara linguaaltered her fingernail, making it sharp as a knife. She punctured the two holes, and as she blew into the first, her thoughts were full of incantations and her love’s name. She had trouble holding the words in her head; as if alive and caged, they wanted release on the tongue. Maybe Papa could not stop from turning men into birds, though Odile suspected he truly enjoyed doing so.

She never tired of watching the albumen sputter out of the shell and drift over the quiet swans like marsh fire before falling like gold rain onto one in their midst.

Elster stretched pale limbs. Odile thought the maid looked like some unearthly flower slipping through the damp bank, unfurling slender arms and long blonde hair. Then she stumbled until Odile took her by the hand and offered calm words while the shock of the transformation diminished.

They fled into the woods. Elster laughed to run again. She stopped to reach for fallen leaves, touch bark, then pull at a loose thread of Odile’s dressing gown and smile.

Elster had been brought to the tower to fashion Odile a dress for court. Odile could remember that first afternoon, when she had been standing on a chair while the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen stretched and knelt below her, measuring. Odile had never felt so awkward, sure that she’d topple at any moment, yet so ethereal, confident that had she slipped, she would glide to the floor.

Papa instructed Elster that Odile’s gown was to be fashioned from sticks and string, like a proper bird’s nest. But, alone together, Elster showed Odile bolts of silk and linen, guiding her hand along the cloth to feel its softness. She would reveal strands of chocolate-colored ribbon and thread them through Odile’s hair while whispering how pretty she could be. Her lips had lightly brushed Odile’s ears.

When Papa barged into Odile’s room and found the rushes and leaves abandoned at their feet and a luxurious gown in Elster’s lap, he dragged Elster down to the cellar. A tearful Odile followed, but she could not find the voice to beg him not to use a rotten wappentier egg.

In the woods, they stopped, breathless, against a tree trunk. “I brought you a present,” Odile said.

“A coach that will carry us far away from your father?”

Odile shook her head. She unlaced the high top of her dressing gown and allowed the neckline to slip down inches. She wore the prince’s bribe but now lifted it off her neck. The thick gold links, the amethysts like frozen drops of wine, seemed to catch the moon’s fancy as much as their own.

“This must be worth a fortune.” Elster stroked the necklace Odile draped over her long, smooth neck.

“Perhaps. Come morning, I would like to know which swan is you by this.”

Elster took a step away from Odile. Then another, until the tree was between them. “Another day trapped. And another. And when you marry the prince, what of me? No one will come for me then.”

“Papa says he will release all of you. Besides, I don’t want to marry the prince.”

“No. I see every morning as a swan. You can’t — won’t — refuse your father.”

Odile sighed. Lately, she found herself daydreaming that Papa had found her as a chick, fallen from the nest, and turned her into a child. “I’ve never seen the prince,” Odile said as she began climbing the tree.

“He’ll be handsome. An expensive uniform with shining medals and epaulets. That will make him handsome.”

“I heard his father and mother are siblings. He probably has six fingers on a hand.” Odile reached down from the fat branch she sat upon to pull Elster up beside her.

“Better to hold you with.”

“The ball is tomorrow night.”

“What did he do with the gown I made you?”

“He made me burn it.”

Elster frowned. “Pity. It would have been lovely.” She sighed. “If I could come along to the ball with you—” Elster threaded her fingers through Odile’s hair, sweeping a twig from the ends. “Wouldn’t you rather I be there than your father?”

Odile leaned close to Elster and marveled at how soft her skin felt. Her pale cheeks. Her arms, her thighs. Odile wanted music then, for them to dance together dangerously on the branches. Balls and courts and gowns seemed destined for other girls.

On the night of the ball, von Rothbart surprised Odile with a coach and driver. “I returned some lost sons and daughters we had around the tower for the reward.” He patted the rose-wood sides of the coach. “I imagine you’ll be traveling to and from the palace in the days to come. A princess shouldn’t be flying.”

Odile opened the door and looked inside. The seats were plush and satin.

“You wear the same expression as the last man I put in the cellar cage.” He kissed her cheek. “Would a life of means and comfort be so horrible?”

The words in her head failed Odile. They wouldn’t arrange themselves in an explanation, in the right order to convey to Papa her worries about leaving the tower, her disgust at having to marry a man she didn’t know and could never care for. Instead she pressed herself against him. The bound twigs at her bosom stabbed her chest. The only thing that kept her from crying was the golden egg she secreted in the nest gown she wore.

When the coach reached the woods, Odile shouted for the driver to stop. He looked nervous when she opened the door and stepped out onto the road.

“Fräulein, your father insisted you arrive tonight. He said I’d be eatin’ worms for the rest of my days.”

“A moment.” She had difficulty running, because of the rigid gown. She knew her knees would be scratched raw by the time she reached the swans. Odile guided a transformed Elster to the road. The sight of the magnificent coach roused her from the change’s fugue.

“Finally I ride with style.” Elster waited for the driver to help her climb the small steps into the coach. “But I have no dress to wear tonight.”

Odile sat down beside her and stroked the curtains and the cushions. “There is fabric wasted here to make ten gowns.”

When Odile transformed her fingernails to sharp points to rip free satin and gauze, she noticed Elster inch away. The magic frightened her. Odile offered a smile and her hand to use as needles. Elster took hold of her wrist with an almost cautious touch.

The bodice took shape in Elster’s lap. “We could stay on the road. Not even go to the ball. You could turn the driver into a red-breasted robin and we could go wherever we want.”

“I’ve never been this far away from home.” Odile wondered why she hadn’t considered such an escape. But all her thoughts had been filled with the dreaded ball, as if she had no choice but to accept the prince’s hand. She glanced out the tiny window at the world rushing past. But Papa would be waiting for her tonight. There would be studies tomorrow and feeding the wappentier, and she couldn’t abandon Papa.

It was a relief that she had no black egg with her, that she had no means to turn a man into fowl. She had never done so, could not imagine the need. So she shook her head.

Elster frowned. “Always your father’s girl.” She reached down and bit free the thread linking Odile’s fingers and her gown. “Remember that I offered you a choice.”

The palace ballroom had been transformed into an enchanting wood. The rugs from distant Persia had been rolled up to allow space for hundreds of fallen leaves fashioned from silk. The noble attendees slipped on the leaves often. A white-bearded ambassador from Lombardy fell and broke his hip; when carried off he claimed it was no accident but an atto di guerra.

Trees, fashioned by carpenters and blacksmiths, spread along the walls. The head cook had sculpted dough songbirds and encrusted them with dyed sugars and marzipan beaks.

The orchestra was instructed not to play any tune not found in nature. This left them perplexed and often silent.

“Fraulein Odile von Rothbart and her guest Fräulein Elster Schwanensee.” The herald standing on the landing had an oiled, thick mustache.

Odile cringed beneath the layers of twigs and string that covered her torso and trailed off to sweep the floor. How they all stared at her. She wanted to squeeze Elster’s hand for strength but found nothing in her grasp; she paused halfway down the staircase, perplexed by her empty hand. She turned back to the crowd of courtiers but saw no sign of her swan maid.

The courtiers flocked around her. They chattered, so many voices that she had trouble understanding anything they said.

“That frock is so. unusual.” The elderly man who spoke wore a cardinal’s red robes. “How very bold to be so. indigenous.”

A sharp-nosed matron held a silken pomander beneath her nostrils. “I hope that is imported mud binding those sticks,” she muttered.

Elster picked up a crystal glass of chilled Silvaner from a servant’s platter. She held the dry wine long in her mouth, wanting to remember its taste when she had to plunge a beak into moat water.

“Fräulein von Rothbart. Our fathers would have us dance.”

Elster turned around. She had been right about the uniform. Her heart ached to touch the dark-blue-like-evening wool, the gilded buttons, the medals at the chest, and the thick gold braid on the shoulders. A uniform like that would only be at home in a wardrobe filled with fur-lined coats, jodhpurs for riding with leather boots, silken smoking jackets that smelled of Turkish tobacco. The man who owned such clothes would only be satisfied if his darling matched him in taste.

She lowered her gaze with much flutter and curtsied low.

“I am pleased you wore my gift.” The prince had trimmed fingernails that looked so pink as to possibly be polished. He lifted up one section of the necklace she wore. The tip of his pinky slid into the crease between her breasts. “How else would I know you?”

She offered a promissory smile.

He led her near where the musicians sought to emulate the chirp of crickets at dusk. “So, I must remember to commend your father on his most successful enchantment.”

“Your Imperial and Royal Highness is too kind.”

Three other couples, lavish in expensive fabric and pearls and silver, joined them in a quadrille. As the pairs moved, their feet kicked up plumes of silk leaves. Despite the gold she wore around her neck, Elster felt as if she were a tarnished coin thimblerigged along the dance floor.

“I have an admission to make,” she whispered in the prince’s ear when next she passed him. “I’m not the sorcerer’s daughter.”

The prince took hold of her arm, not in a rough grasp, but as if afraid she would vanish. “If this is a trick—”

“Once I shared your life of comfort. Sheets as soft as a sigh. Banquet halls filled with drink and laughter. Never the need for a seamstress, as I never wore a dress twice.

“My parents were vassals in Saxony. Long dead now.” She slipped free of his hold and went to the nearest window. She waited for his footsteps, waited to feel him press against her. “Am I looking east? To a lost home?”

She turned around. Her eyes lingered a moment on the plum-colored ribbon sewn to one medal on his chest. “So many years ago — I have lost count — a demonic bird flew into my bedchamber.”

“Von Rothbart.”

Elster nodded at his disgust. “He stole me away, back to his lonely tower. Every morning I wake to find myself trapped as a swan. Every night he demands I become his bride. I have always refused.”

“I have never stood before such virtue.” The prince began to tear as he stepped back and then fell to one knee. “Though I can see why even the Devil would promise himself to you.”

His eyes looked too shiny, as if he might start crying or raving like a madman. Elster had seen the same sheen in Odile’s eyes. Elster squeezed the prince’s hand but looked over her shoulder at where she had parted with the sorcerer’s daughter. The art of turning someone into a bird would never dress her in cashmere or damask. Feathers were only so soft and comforting.

When Odile was a young girl, her father told her terrible tales every Abend vor Allerheiligen. One had been about an insane cook who had trapped over twenty blackbirds and half-cooked them as part of a pie. All for the delight of a royal court. Odile had nightmares about being trapped with screeching chicks, all cramped in the dark, the stink of dough, the rising heat. She would not eat any pastry for years.

Watching Elster dance with the prince filled Odile with pain. She didn’t know whether such hurt needed tears or screams to be freed. She approached them. The pair stopped turning.

“Your warning in the coach? Is this your choice?” asked Odile.

Elster nodded, though her hands released the prince’s neck.

The rara linguato tear the swan maid’s humanity from her slipped between Odile’s lips with one long gasp. Her face felt feverish and damp. Perhaps tears. She called for Papa to take the swan by the legs into the kitchen and return carrying a bulging strudel for the prince.

As a long-eared pother owl, von Rothbart had hoped to intimidate the nobles with a bloodcurdling shriek as he flew in through a window. An impressive father earned respect, he knew. But with the cacophony in the ballroom — courtiers screaming, guards shouting, the orchestra attempting something cheerful — only three fainted.

Von Rothbart roosted on the high-backed chair at the lead table. He shrugged off the mantle of feathers and seated himself with his legs on the tablecloth and his boots in a dish of poached boar.

“I suppose the venery for your lot would be an inbred of royals.”

No one listened.

He considered standing atop the table, but his knees ached after every transformation. As did his back. Instead, he pushed his way through the crowd at the far end, where most of the commotion seemed centered.

He did not expect to find a tearful Odile surrounded by a ring of lowered muskets. One guard trembled so. The prince shouted at her. The king pulled at his son’s arm.

Von Rothbart raised his arms. The faux trees shook with a sudden wind that topped glasses, felled wigs, and swept the tiles free of silk leaves. “Stop,” he shouted. “Stop and hear me!”

All eyes turned to him. He tasted fear as all the muskets pointed at him.

“You there, I command you to return Elster to me.” The prince’s face had become ruddy with ire, his mouth flecked with spittle.

“Who?”

“No lies, Sorcerer. Choose your words carefully.”

The king stepped between them. He looked old. As old as von Rothbart felt. “Let us have civil words.”

“Papa—” cried Odile.

“If you have hurt my daughter in any way—”

A cardinal standing nearby smoothed out his sanguine robes. “Your daughter bewitched an innocent tonight.”

“She flew away from me,” said the prince. “My sweet Elster is out there. At night. All alone.”

Von Rothbart looked around him. He could not remember ever being so surrounded by men and women, and their expressions of disgust, fear, and hatred left him weak. Weak as an old fool, one who thought he could ingratiate his dear child into their ranks like a cuckoo did with its egg.

Only magpies would care for such shiny trappings, and they were sorrowful birds who envied human speech.

He took a deep breath and held it a moment as the magic began. His lungs hurt as the storm swirled within his body. He winced as a rib cracked. He lost two teeth as the gusts escaped his mouth. The clouds painted on the ceiling became dark and thick and spat lightning and rain down upon the people.

Odile stretched and caught the wind von Rothbart sent her as the crowd fled. He took her out of the palace and into the sky. It pained him to speak, so all he asked her was if she was hurt. The tears that froze on her cheeks answered Yes, Papa.

“Von Rothbart!”

Odile looked out the window. She had expected the prince. Maybe he’d be waving a sword or a blunderbuss and be standing before a thousand men. But not the king standing by the doors and a regal carriage drawn by snorting stallions. He looked dapper in a wool suit, and she preferred his round fur hat to a crown.

“Von Rothbart, please, I seek an audience with you.” Odile ran down the staircase and then opened the doors. The king plucked the hat from his head and stepped inside. “Fräulein von Rothbart.”

“Your Majesty.” She remembered to curtsy.

“Your father—”

“Papa is ill. Ever since. well, that night, he’s taken to bed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Your departure was marvelous. The court has been talking of nothing else for days.” The king chuckled. “I’d rather be left alone.”

She led him to the rarely used sitting room. The dusty upholstery embarrassed her.

“It’s quiet here. Except the birds, of course.” The king winced. “My apologies.”

“Your son—”

“Half-mad they say. Those who have seen him. He’s roaming the countryside, hoping to find her. A swan by day and the fairest maiden by night.” He tugged at his hat, pulling it out of shape. “Only, she’s not turning back to a maiden again, is she?”

Odile sat down in her father’s chair. She shook her head.

“Unless, child, your father. or you would consent to removing the curse.”

“Why should I do that, Your Majesty?”

The king leaned forward. “When I was courting the queen, her father, a powerful duke, sent me two packages. In one was an ancient sword, the iron blade dark and scarred. An heirloom of the duke’s family that went back generations, used in countless campaigns — every one a victory.” The king made a fist. “When I grasped the hilt, leather salted by sweat, I felt I could lead an army.”

“And the second package?” Odile asked.

“That one contained a pillow.”

“A pillow?”

The king nodded. “Covered with gold brocade and stuffed with goose down.” The king laughed. “The messenger delivered as well a note that said I was to bring one, only one, of the packages with me to dinner at the ducal estate.”

“A test.”

“That is what my father said. My tutors had been soldiers, not statesmen. The sword meant strength, courage, to my father. What a king should, no, must possess to keep his lands and people safe. To him the choice was clear.”

Odile smiled. Did all fathers enjoy telling stories of their youth?

“I thought to myself, if the answer was so clear, then why the test? What had the duke meant by the pillow? Something soft and light, something womanly. ”

The notion of a woman being pigeonholed so irritated Odile. Was she any less a woman because she lacked the apparent grace of girls like Elster? She looked down at the breeches she liked to wear, comfortable not only because of the fit but also because they had once been worn by her father. Her hands were not smooth but spotted with ink and rubbed with dirt from where she had begun to dig Papa’s grave. Their escape had been too taxing. She worried over each breath he struggled to take.

“. meant to rest upon, to lie your head when sleeping. Perhaps choosing the pillow would show my devotion to his daughter, that I would be a loving husband before a valiant king—”

“Does he love her?” Odile asked.

The king stammered, as if unwilling to tear himself from the story.

“Your son. Does he love her?”

“What else would drive a man of privilege to the woods? He’s forsaken crown for thorn. Besides, a lost princess? Every peasant within miles has been bringing fowl to the palace hoping for a reward.”

“A princess.” Odile felt a bitter smile curl the edges of her mouth. Would his Royal Highness be roaming the land if he knew his true love was a seamstress? But then Odile remembered Elster’s touch, the softness of her lips, her skin.

Perhaps Elster had been meant to be born a princess. She had read in Papa’s books of birds that raid neighboring nests, roll out the eggs and lay their own. Perhaps that happened to girls as well. The poor parent never recognized the greedy chick for what it truly was. The prince might never as well.

If her own, unwanted destiny of doting bride had been usurped, then couldn’t she choose her future? Why not take the one denied to her?

“The rings on your fingers.”

“Worth a small fortune.” He removed thick bands set with rubies and pearls. “A bride price then? I could also introduce you to one of the many eligible members of my court.”

Odile took the rings, heavy and warm. “These will do,” she said and told the king to follow her.

By candlelight, she took him down to the dank cellar. He seemed a bit unnerved by the empty cage. She pulled out a tray of blackened eggs. Then another. “She’s here. They’re all here. Take them.”

The king lifted one egg. He looked it over then shook it by his ear.

“Look through the holes.” She held the candle flame high.

The king peered through one end. “My Lord,” he sputtered. The egg tumbled from his grasp and struck the floor, where it shattered like ancient pottery.

“There — There’s a tiny man sleeping inside.”

“I know.” She brushed aside the shards with her bare foot. A sharp edge cut her sole and left a bloody streak on the stones.

“Don’t worry, you freed him.”

She left him the light. “Find the princess’s egg. Break all of them, if you want. There might be other princesses among them.” She started up the staircase.

“She stepped on his toes a great deal.”

“What was that?”

The king ran his hands over the curse eggs. “When I watched them dance, I noticed how often she stepped on my son’s toes. One would think her parents were quite remiss in not teaching her the proper steps.” He looked up at her with a sad smile. “One would think.”

Odile climbed to the top of the tower to her papa’s laboratory. Inside its cage, the wappentier screeched from both heads when she entered. Since their return, she had neglected it; Papa had been the only one who dared feed the beast.

Its last golden egg rested on a taxonomy book. She held it in her hands a moment before moving to the shutters and pushing them open. She felt the strong breeze. Wearing another shape, she could ride the air far. Perhaps all the way to the mountains. Or the sea.

The wanderlust, so new and strong, left her trembling. Abandoning a life could be cruel.

Still clutching the egg to her chest, she went down to her papa’s bedroom. He had trouble opening his eyes when she touched his forehead. He tried to speak but lacked the strength.

He’d never taught Odile about death or grieving, other than to mention the pelican hen shedding blood to revive her children. Odile hoped her devotion would mend him. She devised rara lingua with a certainty that surprised her. As she envisioned the illustrated vellum of her lessons, her jaw began to ache. Her mouth tasted like the salt spray of the ocean. She looked down at her arms. Where the albumen dripped, white feathers grew.

She called out, the sound hoarse and new and strange, but so fitting coming from the heavy body she wore. As a pelican, she squatted beside Papa’s pillow. Her long beak, so heavy and ungainly as she moved her head, rose high. She plunged it down into her own breast, once, twice, until blood began to spill. Drops fell onto Papa’s pale lips. As she hopped about the bed, it spattered onto his bared chest.

She forced her eyes to remain open despite the pain, so she could be assured that the color did return to his face, see the rise and fall of each breath grow higher, stronger.

He raised his hand to her chest, but she nudged his fingers away. Her wound had already begun to close on its own.

When she returned to human form, she touched above her breasts and felt the thick line of a scar. No, she decided it must be a badge, a medal like the prince had worn. She wanted it seen.

“Lear would be envious,” Papa said in a voice weak but audible, “to have such a pelican daughter.”

She laughed and cried a bit as well. She could not voice how his praise made her feel. So after she helped him sit up in bed, she went to his cluttered wardrobe. “I have to leave.” She pushed aside garments until she found a curious outfit, a jacket and breeches, all in shades of red.

“Tell me where you’re going.”

“Tomorrow’s lessons are on the road. I’ll learn to talk with ibises and challenge monsters.”

“Yes, daughter.” Papa smiled. “But help me upstairs before you go.”

In the tower library, Papa instructed Odile on how to work the heavy mechanism that lowered the wappentier’s cage for feeding or recovering the eggs. The wappentier shuddered, and its musty smell filled the room.

“When the time comes, search the highest peaks.” Papa unlocked the latch with a white quill and swung the door open. The hinges screeched. Or maybe the wappentier cried out.

Her heart trembled inside her ribs, and she pulled at her father even as he stepped back.

The wappentier stretched its wings a moment before taking flight. It flew past them — its plumage, which she had always imagined would feel harsh and rough, was gentle like a whisper. The tower shook. Stones fell from the window’s sides and ledge as it broke through the wall.

Odile thought she heard screams below. Horses and men.

Her father hugged her then. He felt frail, as if his bones might be hollow, but he held tight a moment. She could not find the words to assure him that she’d return.

Outside the tower, she found the king’s carriage wallowed in the moat. The horses still lived, though they struggled to pull the carriage free. After years of a diet of game meat, the wappentier might have more hungered for rarer fare. There was no sign of a driver.

She waded into the water, empty of any swans, she noticed. The carriage door hung ajar. Inside was empty. As she led the horses to land, Odile looked up in the sky and did not see the wappentier. It must no longer be starved. She hoped the king was still down in the cellar smashing eggs.

She looked back at the tower and thought she saw for a moment her father staring down from the ruined window. She told herself there might be another day for books and fathers. Perhaps even swans. Then she stepped up to the driver’s seat and took hold of the reins and chose to take the road.

STEVE BERMAN has gone on several nocturnal owl-watches. He falls asleep before he catches even a glimpse of his favorite bird. His novel, Vintage, was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award. He has edited the anthologies Magic in the Mirror-stone, So Fey, and Wilde Stories. He roosts in southern New Jersey.

His Web site is www.steveberman.com.

Blame the ballet. I had been asked to review a performance of Giselle by the Pennsylvania Ballet. My mother had always wanted to see a live ballet, and so she accompanied me to the old Merriam Theater. We both thought the experience was magical. There were moments when the ballerinas achieved a step that looked as if they floated across the stage. I knew I wanted to write something based on the experience.

Conveniently, I had been researching Swan Lake when Ellen and Terri sent me the invitation to submit to this anthology. Sadly, there’s no pointe work in “Thimbleriggery and Fledglings.” Maybe another day, another tale. But the role of Odile, the infamous Black Swan of the ballet, needed to be revisited. I wondered why she went along with her father’s schemes. Not every girl wants a prince or even a crown.

I owe another maternal figure for holding my hand through the writing. Ann Zeddies proved she’s a remarkable reader, the best of friends for any writer. Odile’s story might have been far more tragic if not for Ann’s insight. A debt of thanks to Kelly Link, as well, for one night telling me the secret: sleight of hand is no different from sleight of word.