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.