“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.