52 Project #35: The Swan Wife (Patreon)

Surely you have once heard a story almost, but not entirely, like this one, about a man and a swan, though in this story, there is also a woman and a cat.

In a fishing village there lived a brother and sister, in the same home. Neither of them were married, so in matters of their household arrangements – though in no other regard – they lived as a husband and wife would. The sister cooked and cleaned and spun and mended, and the brother made a living as a fisherman, bringing home a catch every day to sell or to eat.

One might think such an arrangement would come about because a brother and sister loved each other too much to make a household with another, or some such, but the reality was very different. The father had actually made a will, and his wife their mother had signed it as well, that when they died and their son inherited their home, he was not permitted to put his sister out of the house until she had a husband. The brother treated his sister cruelly, hoping to drive her to leave their home herself, but there was nowhere else she could go, so she stayed.

Neither of them could find anyone to marry. People in the village talked about them and the strangeness of their arrangement. Women shunned the brother, wondering how it would be possible to live as a wife to a man whose sister already played that role. Men shunned the sister, thinking perhaps her relationship with her brother was less chaste than it was… and in truth the sister didn’t try very hard to convince any man otherwise. So they continued to live together, though they no longer liked each other. While the brother never struck the sister, his stream of insults and demands only let up when he was sleeping or fishing.

The sister had a little cat, a pretty little tabby queen, who was clever at catching mice and rats, and the little cat produced litters of kittens from time to time, as queen cats do. When the brother was displeased with the sister, he would threaten the cat and her kittens. The sister had to behave toward her brother as if she were a servant, to keep her little cat and her cat’s kittens safe. So she endured the insults, and the demands, cruel and unreasonable as they were.

One day, the brother was out fishing on the lake, with his boat in the reeds and lily pads, hidden away. He did this because the fish had learned to fear the shadow of a boat, but where there were so many plants disrupting the light that hit the water, the fish could not tell the difference, and had no fear. It also hid him away, and occasionally, that enabled him to spy on young women as they came to the lake to bathe.

He saw six beautiful swans gliding past. As he watched, they glided into another patch of reeds and lilies, hidden from the rest of the shore by a large rock jutting from the ground, and a tree… but from where he was, he could see them clearly. And so he saw each of them remove her feathers, and drape them as a cloak on the large rock. Underneath the cloaks, they proved to be beautiful maidens. Each was tall and strong, with skin that rarely saw sunlight, as white as a swan’s feathers, and dark hair like the dark patch of feathers around a swan’s beak.

As the fisherman watched, he saw one of them climb the tree, and toss down bundles to her sisters. Another climbed to the top of the rock, and handed the six swan-feather cloaks up to the one in the tree, who hid them away among the branches. Each of the swan-women dressed in women’s clothing, and they went around the tree and headed off on the path to town.

Quickly, the fisherman poled his boat over to that shore. He had watched carefully where each woman placed her cloak, and then had watched as the one on the rock and the one in the tree worked to stash away the cloaks, so he knew which cloak belonged to the youngest-looking of the sisters. All of the swan-women were tall and strong, but one was shorter than the others, more delicate of face and more slender of build. She was the only of the swan-women who was shorter than he was, and he thought her to be the most beautiful of them.

The fisherman climbed the tree, with difficulty, because he was not as strong and flexible and hale as the swan-woman who’d done it earlier, and he took the cloak of the youngest of the swan-sisters. He carried it away in his boat, to the secret hut where he hid the treasures he didn’t want his sister to know he had – money he had earned that he’d never told her of, things he had purchased for himself and himself alone that he didn’t wish to share, things he had stolen from their joint inheritance and then claimed he didn’t know the whereabouts of. And in that secret hut, he laid the swan cloak in a chest, and then placed his mother’s heirloom quilt, which had been intended for his sister, on top of the cloak. And then he returned to his spot on the lake, to fish and to wait.

Six fair young women returned by the path, laughing and chattering amongst themselves, and one of them climbed into the tree as the others disrobed. The one in the tree tossed down five cloaks, but then said, “Slow Paddle’s cloak isn’t here!”

“What happened to it?” the youngest-looking woman, barely more than a girl, called up. “Didn’t you put it in the tree for safekeeping?”

“I did! An animal must have taken it!”

“Well, what am I to do?” Slow Paddle cried out. “I can’t return home without it!”

“You’ll have to search for it,” one of the others said, the one that appeared to be the eldest.

“I’m going to have to search for it? It was Swift Wings who put it in the tree! She must not have secured it properly! She should help me!”

Swift Wings had climbed down out of the tree and was disrobing, as the other swan women were putting on their feathered cloaks and turning into swans. “It’ll be dark soon. Who can find anything that way? We can help you tomorrow.”

“Well, what am I to do tonight?”

Two of the sisters, who were now swans, honked at her. Swift Wings, the only other swan-woman who was still in her woman-form, shrugged. “I don’t know. What do humans do at night? Find someplace to sleep, and come back to the bank in the morning, and look for your cloak then.” She shrugged her cloak on. “Maybe go back to the pub, get some meat and some ale, and honk honk”. Now she was a swan. She honked a few more times, the “unh-UNH” double call of a swan, before swimming away.

The brother poled his boat to shore. “Young lady. I hear you’re having difficulty finding a missing cloak?” He smirked at her.

“Yes! Oh, have you seen it? It’s a cloak of swan feathers!”

“Seen it? My lady, I have it, in my possession.” His grin grew bigger.

The girl did not seem to realize her situation. “You do? Oh, wonderful! Please, give it to me!”

“No.” Now his grin nearly split his face.

The swan-girl’s own face fell. “No?... but why not?”

“Because I will have you for a wife, and you will cook and clean for me and bear my children, and in four-and-twenty years I will give you back the cloak and let you return to your sisters.”

“What? No! I won’t do that, why would I marry you?You’re not even a swan!”

“Right now, neither are you,” the fisherman said.

“Give me my cloak!”

The girl lunged at the man, and she was large, and strong, but he was larger and stronger. Had he been beset by all six of the swan-women, or perhaps even just two of them, the outcome would have been different, but as it was, he was more adept with fighting in a human body, and bigger, and so he pinned her without great difficulty. “I will not give you your cloak unless you marry me,” he said.

“I don’t want to marry you.”

“Then I’ll leave here, and destroy the cloak.”

“No! You can’t do that!”

“Then marry me,” he said.

“I’ll follow you! I’ll find where you put my cloak—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” he said. “You’re alone, my dear girl. Your sisters have left you. If you were to follow me, to try to find the cloak, without agreeing to be my wife, I would beat you and leave you bloody on the road. The only way you will ever see your cloak again is if you agree to be my wife.”

Defeated, the swan girl finally agreed to marry the fisherman. He forced a kiss on her when finally she said yes, and then helped her to her feet and led her to his home.

“Sister!” he called. “This woman is my betrothed, and tomorrow I will take her to the church and marry her!”

“A woman was finally willing to have you? What a wonderful day,” the fisherman’s sister said sarcastically. “Let me see her… oh, she’s very beautiful, brother. Far more beautiful than you could have won fairly.”

“Shut up,” the fisherman snapped. “Your cat is about this house someplace, I’m sure.”

“Chasing mice that eat our grain, and earning her keep,” the sister snapped, but she said nothing more about her brother’s new bride. Instead, she made up a bed for the beautiful young woman, and shared with her some of the porridge of the night’s dinner.

***

After the fisherman and the swan-woman were wed, the fisherman’s cruelty to his sister grew even greater.

Nothing she cooked was good enough for his new bride. The thread she spun was too rough. The cottage wasn’t clean enough. When she objected, he threatened her cat again.

But he didn’t seem to treat his bride well, either. When she spoke out of turn, he glared at her, and said, “Remember what I’ve promised,” and she fell quiet. And at night, the fisherman’s sister could hear the young woman sobbing.

She knew nothing of the work of women, it seemed. She didn’t know how to cook, or how to spin, or how to clean. She could count money, and do figures with it, but that seemed to be all. The fisherman’s sister tried to teach her, but the fisherman’s wife sighed, and paid little attention, and said things such as “You’re so much better than me, how would I ever begin to compete?”, which seemed to the sister to be a polite way of saying “You do it.”

One day as the fisherman was out at his work, the new wife walked to the lake, moping all the way. From the house, the sister could see her outline sitting on the rock, head hung low. “Why must she mope so?” she said to herself.

Her little cat answered her. “Because she is a swan. Your brother stole her feathered cloak, and threatened to destroy it if she would not marry him.”

The sister stared at the cat. “How long have you been able to talk?” she asked, bewildered.

The cat washed her paw. “How long have you?”

“My whole life! Humans begin to talk when we’re infants! But you’re a cat!”

“I am glad you noticed I am a cat,” the cat said. “You are my beloved friend, and I’d hate to think you were too stupid to realize that I am a cat.”

“But how can you talk?”

“How can a girl become a swan by putting on a cloak?” the cat said rhetorically. “The world is larger and stranger than you know, dear friend.”

The sister sat down at the table, staring at the cat. “All right. But then why have you chosen to speak to me now?”

“Because I am afraid,” the cat said. “Now that he has a wife, your brother has no use for you. The law says he must give you shelter so long as you are not married, for that was your father’s wish. But if he were to lie about you—accuse you of being unchaste, or calling you a witch, or some other terrible lie—he could have you locked away in prison, or stoned to death, or hung, and then he would never have to worry about you learning how he has stolen from you. You are my dear friend who’s protected me and my kittens from that man. I must protect you in turn.”

“Wait, my brother has stolen from me?”

“Oh, he has blackmailed a swan into becoming his wife and he may betray you with lies to be jailed or executed, and it’s the stealingthat bothers you?”

“What has he stolen?” the sister demanded.

“Many things. How should I know exactly? I’m a cat, these human possessions are of no import to me. There was a nice blanket once; I remember it was on your bed when I was a kitten, but I saw him carry it away while you were at the market, once, and never did it return.”

“My mother’s quilt. He said he thought that had been stolen while we were both away from the house. He accused me of leaving it out to dry where some ne’er-do-well could take it. I never did any such thing!”

“Of course you didn’t. A liar and criminal will always accuse you of the crimes they themselves have committed.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“I don’t,” the cat said, “because my territory is small. There is a fierce queen-cat who patrols her territory all around mine, and she has tomcat sons who serve her, and chase away cats like me, for I am a very little cat. But if you bring me a fish from your brother’s catch, and a bowl of cream, I will have the strength to outrun her and her sons, and I will follow your brother and see if I can find where he has hidden the things he stole.”

“Why do the tomcats chase you away? You’re a beautiful little queen-cat; don’t they want to take you as mate?”

“Only when I’m in heat,” the cat said, her tail swishing. “And when I’m in heat, I don’t think about such things as the antics of human men. I am sorry for my coarseness, but if you are not a tomcat with a fine strong body and the stamina to mate until I’m satisfied, then when I’m in heat I’m really unconcerned with you.”

“That’s rude,” the sister said, “although I suppose it is true, given how I’ve seen you behave.” She sighed. “Well. It’s dangerous to steal a fish from my brother’s catch. If he learns I’ve taken one for you, he will probably try to beat you, perhaps even kill you. And I can’t steal enough cream for a whole bowl without him catching me.”

“Why not ask his bride to catch the fish for you, then?” the cat said. “She is a swan. She must know how to catch fish.”

The sister was unsure that her brother’s bride knew much of anything. All she ever did was mope about, stare out the window, or go down to the lake, where she moped and stared. Perhaps the little cat was right, and her brother’s wife was a swan; it would explain how she managed to be so useless.

She went out to the lake to speak to her brother’s wife. “You should come back to the house,” she said.

The wife sighed. “Do you have more things you want me to learn?”

“We have something important to talk about,” the sister said.

When they were in the house, where the fisherman out on the lake in his boat couldn’t overhear, the sister said, “I know what you are.”

“So does your brother,” the wife said, rolling her eyes. “It’s hardly a great secret, if you were planning to blackmail me with it.”

“I’m not my brother,” the sister said. “He treats you terribly. If you had your cloak, you would be able to fly away from here, wouldn’t you?”

“Do you know where my cloak is?!” the wife demanded urgently.

“No, but I have a friend who says she can help me find it. All I need is a fish and some cream, and I can borrow cream from the neighbor. You’re a swan, do you know how to fish?”

“Not without a beak!” the swan-woman exclaimed. “You humans and your hands, your fingers are clever little things but a fish slips right through them! Your brother is a fisherman, you should be able to get a fish without my help.”

“If he catches me taking a fish, he might try to kill my cat.”

The swan-woman tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Kill your cat?”

“He threatens you that you will never have your cloak again. He threatens me that he will kill my little cat. If he beats us, we can go to the magistrate and demand he be thrown in jail, but if he kills a cat or destroys a cloak, that’s not a crime anyone will take seriously.”

“Well, your laws say that what a man owns, his wife owns also. I will just take a fish from his catch for your friend. And another one for myself. He doesn’t let me eat nearly as much of the fish as he should.”

And so when the fisherman returned to the dock, his wife was there waiting for him, near the carts the fishmongers would use to carry his catch out to the market. Before he could hand the catch over to the fishmongers, his wife grabbed two large fish out of the catch.

“What are you doing?” he shouted.

“What’s mine is yours and yours is mine, isn’t that the rule of marriage?” she said. “I’m craving fish. I will take these two.”

“I won’t allow you to just take any fish you like!” he yelled after her, but she was already walking away.

Other fishermen joked with him. “She’s a feisty one you’ve caught!”

“Let her have the fish, man, she’ll reward you well enough at night!”

“Never argue with your wife. That’s the lesson I’ve learned after thirty years of marriage.”

“Cravings might mean pregnancy! If she wants raw fish, could be she’s got your son in her belly!”

The fisherman scowled, but did nothing further to try to stop his wife from walking away with her fish.

The swan-woman returned to the house with one fish, having eaten the other raw. “Here is the fish for your friend,” she said, and gave it to the sister.

Then the sister went to her neighbor, and traded some precious honeycomb that she’d bought with the funds from her brother’s fish sales for a bit of cream. Her brother kept track of the cream, because it was a treat for cats and he resented anything his sister gave to her cat, but cats do not like honey, so he paid little attention to that.

Out behind the trees around the house, in the small garden the sister kept so she would have something to trade for material to spin and sewing needles, the sister put down the cream and the fish for the little cat. The cat rested beside the bowl and the fish all night, occasionally nibbling or lapping, until in the early morning, before the sun had risen, the fisherman prepared to leave. Then the cat ate all of the fish she had remaining and drank all of the rest of the cream.

She followed after the fisherman, padding silently as cats do. When he turned for any reason, she hid in the shadows. But as she drew close to the lake, she was best by her rival’s two tomcat-sons. They were large, black cats, one with a white bib and one with a white spot in the middle of his tail.

“You are in our mother’s territory,” they said. “Leave, before we tear your ears off!”

The little cat huffed. “You had no problem with my visiting your mother’s territory when you wanted to mate with me,” she said. “And you, Spot-on-tail! I bore you four fine kittens! You should let me pass!”

The tomcat with the white spot on his tail raised it with irritation. “I’m a tomcat. I have no concern for the kittens I father; I’ve been with a dozen queen-cats and had a dozen litters of kittens carrying my bloodline. You aren’t special.”

“I am special,” the queen-cat said. “Because I have a friend I hold dear, who I am fighting for, and when I fight for my friend I can be as ferocious as any dog.”

The tomcats laughed at her, but they didn’t laugh long. With the strength and speed that the fish and the cream gave her, the little cat leapt onto White-bib and tore at his ear, snarling in fury. White-bib hissed and yowled and tried to dislodge her, but the little cat had hooked her claws into his skin and he could not remove her without drawing his own blood. He tried to twist his head to bite her, but that resulted in his ear being torn.

“Say you will give me free passage into your mother’s territory. Say it, or I will rip both your ears off!”

“All right! All right! You can have free passage into our mother’s territory!”

She jumped off, only to be beset by Spot-on-tail. “I promised you nothing!” he said. “You may have bested my brother, but you won’t defeat me!”

The little cat raced halfway up a nearby tree – and then, as Spot-on-tail sat at the base yowling at her, she leapt down from the tree, directly onto him, and bit and scratched him all about his tail. When he twisted his head to try to bite at her, she kicked him in the face with her clawed hind leg. Soon she had extracted from him a promise that he would give her passage as well.

And so the little cat continued on to the lake. The fisherman was already out on the lake with his boat, but the cat had spied on him before and knew the trick he liked, so she went up into a tree near where he liked to hide in the reeds.

When he poled his boat over there to rest in the shade and catch frogs in traps, she called out to him. “Fisherman! Fisherman, beware! Be wary!”

“What? Who is speaking to me?”

“I am the spirit of this lake,” the cat said, “and you are my beloved friend! I give you fish and frogs and ducks to sell at market, and I gave to you a wife. But your wife has sisters, and they threaten your happiness!”

“I took my wife for myself! No one helped me!”

“Oh, no? Who do you think grew a perfect spot for you to rest and hide, where you could see the swan women but they could not see you?”

The fisherman acknowledged that indeed, the lake had done that. “But what are you warning me of?”

“Your wife’s sisters are even now searching for their sister’s cloak! You must go back to the place you have hidden her cloak, before they find it, and make sure it is securely locked and sealed!”

“But it is definitely securely locked and sealed. I know, I sealed it myself.”

“But you must check to be sure! Otherwise your wife’s sisters may take back her cloak and bring it to her, and you will lose her!”

Swearing, the fisherman tied up his boat on the shore and got out, wading a short distance through the muck from the boat to the bank of the lake. He began running to his secret hiding place, and the little cat followed silently. She did not make the mistake of running to catch up with him, else he might hear her coming; instead she followed the muddy tracks his boots made in the dirt and grass as he ran.

When he reached his hiding place, he unlocked it with his key, which lived on his belt at all times. “Oh! Very good; no one has touched the secret chest where my wife’s feathered cloak is hidden!” he exclaimed. “No one has disturbed my sister’s fine quilt, lying on top of the cloak and keeping it from anyone’s eyes! The chest is still locked, and so was the door to my little shed!” He locked the shed back up. “There! No swan will get through this door; only someone with the key or with a stout axe could get through this strong wooden door, and swans cannot carry keys or axes!”

He returned to the lake, feeling safe. The little cat headed back for her house, following an old path she remembered from kittenhood, before her rival queen-cat had taken the territory around her home.

In the house, she told her friend, the fisherman’s sister, of what she had seen and heard. “I can guide you to that shed by the light of the moon, tonight,” she said.

“Should we try to steal my brother’s key?” the sister asked, worriedly. “Even in his cups, he is always careful to guard his keys. He even sleeps with them.”

The swan-woman waved a hand dismissively. “All we need is his axe. I have the strength to swing it if you do not.” She turned to the cat. “I am surprised. I thought you cats were selfish and fickle. Why are you helping me?”

“I’m not,” the cat said. “I don’t care about you, but I care about my dear friend. You think cats are selfish, but that is only because we only take on obligations out of love, not gratitude. Feed me every day but treat me cruelly, and I owe you nothing, and will do nothing for you. Feed me every day but never pet me, and chase me from your bed at night, and I owe you nothing and will do nothing for you. But feed me every day, and protect me and my kittens from harm, and let me sleep on your bed, and pet me, and brush burrs out of my coat when I’ve walked in sharp places, and then you will earn my love… and for who I love, I will do anything.”

“Then why do you care?” the swan woman said. “Why set your friend the cat to finding my cloak for me?”

The sister could have said, Because my brother has been stealing from me, and in the place he hides your cloak, he has also hid much of my inheritance. She could have said, Because my cat friend fears that now that my brother has you, as soon as you have learned to cook and clean, he will find a way to dispose of me. Instead she found herself saying, “Because you are too beautiful to be trapped in this life, with this man. You have done nothing to earn the cruel fate of being bound to him.”

“And you have?” the swan-woman asked.

The sister bowed her head. “No, but nonetheless, it is my fate. He is my brother, and my parents bound us to share our inheritance. I do not have a feathered cloak, to change into a swan and fly away. Humans must live with other humans; we cannot forage for all our food as wild animals like swans can.”

“Is he the only human who you can live with, then?”

“If I were to marry, I could leave this place and live with my husband.”

“Why don’t you, then?” asked the swan-woman.

The sister had never said this to anyone, for fear of being judged. But she knew the swan-woman wouldn’t judge her. “When I think of lying in bed with a man, even one who is handsome and kind, the thought brings me to despair – more despair than living with a man who is cruel, but never touches me. I have never once wanted the touch of a man, ever.” She sighed. “But I fear for you! Swans mate for life, don’t they? Will you be cast aside, unable to take a male swan as your husband, because you have first been with my human brother?”

The swan-woman laughed. “Swans mate for life, when we chooseour mates. Your brother blackmailed me; he is no chosen mate of mine. As for a swan to mate with, I have never before danced in courtship for another swan, or been danced for, but when I do, it will be with a female swan, not a male one.”

“How can that be?” the sister asked. “You are a female swan, aren’t you?”

“I am a female swan, but sometimes a female swan wishes only to mate with another female swan, and sometimes the same is true for a female human, isn’t that true?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Is the thing that gives you despair to think of simply the touch of a man or the touch of any human?”

“What do you mean?”

And then the swan-woman bent down and kissed her husband’s sister on the lips, and it made the sister’s heart leap, the way her friends of girlhood told her it felt to kiss a boy they loved, the way no boy had made her feel in her life. But still she was confused, and when the swan-woman broke the kiss, she said again, “I don’t understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand. Either it makes you feel good to kiss me, or it doesn’t. Does it?”

“It – it does, but…”

“But nothing. Then you are a woman who loves women, and I am a pen who loves pens.”

“Pens?”

“That is the word for a female swan. A male is a cob. I have cobs for friends, but when any of them have tried to dance the mating dance with me, I swam away. I only want to dance with pens. The kiss, there, that is how humans dance the mating dance, right?”

“…yes… I think so…”

The cat cleared her throat. “The fisherman will be back soon. He probably should not see his sister and his wife kissing, don’t you agree?”

“Oh – yes! Yes, he definitely should not,” the sister said, stepping back in a flurry of embarrassment and, still, confusion. “I have to cook a meal, still, or he’ll be angry when he returns!”

“How will we make sure he sleeps, when we go to retrieve my cloak?” the swan-wife asked.

“When I give him his wine with his dinner, I won’t water it. He will sleep quicker and more deeply, that way.”

***

As the fisherman slept deeply that night, his sister, his wife and the little cat journeyed forward with the axe, through the darkness. There was a half moon, and it was clouded, so the sister had difficulty, but the cat and the swan-woman seemed to be able to see well enough.

The little cat had paid no attention to whether humans could make their way through the path she had found, so many times, the women needed to push their way through a bush or make their way around a bramble, where the cat could just go under. They came to a fence and needed to go all the way around to find the path again, where the cat was waiting for them, having jumped the fence and run through the yard.

And then, a short distance from the fence, the little cat was attacked by a large tortoiseshell queen. The women heard nothing but spitting, hissing and yowling, but the little cat heard the queen say, “How dare you intrude in my territory? How dare you frighten my sons so they won’t defend my territory from you? I’ll kill you! I’ll tear your eyes out and your ears off!”

The little cat said, “Your sons need to leave your territory and go out into the world! Kittens aren’t supposed to live with their mothers forever! Let them have a life away from you!”

This was just bravado. The little cat was very scared, because she was only a little cat, and the tortoiseshell queen was large and strong. But the swan-woman, showing no fear of being bitten or scratched, waded into the cat-fight. She lifted the tortoiseshell, who yowled and tried to scratch her, but she held the tortoiseshell far from her body, walked to the fence, and dropped the angry cat on the other side. “Let’s go, little cat,” the swan-woman said. “That fence won’t keep her, but the humiliation might, at least for a bit.”

Finally they came to the shed. The little cat showed them the stout wooden door and the iron lock on it. But the sister gave the wife the axe she had carried, and the swan-wife was strong enough to make short work of the door.

Inside, the little cat showed them the chest, and the swan-wife chopped through that as well.

“My quilt!” the sister exclaimed, and took it from the chest. Beneath it was the swan cloak. The sister lifted the swan cloak and handed it to the swan-wife. “And this is yours.”

The swan-woman took it from her reverently. “My cloak,” she whispered.

The sister looked all around the room. “So many of my mother’s things,” she said softly, but with great anger. “I would understand if he took these things to sell them – never forgive, but I would understand. But what did he gain by taking what should have been mine and hiding it away from me?”

“I don’t know,” the swan-woman said, leaving the small shed. “Some men are that way. Some women, too, I imagine. Swans aren’t like that. Though I know of a goose who steals things the way a crow does, because they’re shiny and pretty. Perhaps he hid them away because he wanted to give them to a wife, but he needed you gone first.”

“Or perhaps he’s just cruel,” the sister said bitterly.

“That seems likely.” The swan-wife dropped her dress to the ground, and began to put on the feather-cloak, but hesitated. She looked at the sister. “I wish…”

“What do you wish?”

“Never mind,” the swan-wife said. “Perhaps the next time I’m human, I’ll come to visit you. But that may not be for a long time.”

“I understand. Godspeed, my friend, and god be with you.”

The woman finished shrugging into her cloak, and she was a swan, long-necked and beautiful. She called out, a sound almost like a duck quacking, and then she took wing and was gone.

The sister watched as the swan flew away. Then she turned to the little cat. “He’ll be angry when he sees her gone. You should hide for a few days.”

“I understand,” the little cat said, and ran off, her tail waving high in the air. She stopped a short distance away, and turned back. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

***

When the fisherman returned, he stomped into the house, calling “Wife! Wife! Where are you?”

His sister was at the stove, kneading bread to bake with the stew she was making. She smiled maliciously at him. “Oh, she might be lying down to rest in my room.”

“In your room? Why wouldn’t she be in my room?” The fisherman went to his sister’s room, opened the door… and saw the quilt their mother had made for her. The one he had hidden away, and put his wife’s swan cloak under.

He ran back into the kitchen. “Where is my wife?” he demanded.

“She found an unusual feathered cloak in a shed, hidden in a chest,” the sister said. “And what do you know? All the things we’ve lost since mother and father died were there as well!” She finished kneading the dough and began shaping a loaf. “In any case, the strangest thing happened! She put on the cloak, and transformed into a swan, and then she flew away!”

The brother was enraged, but there was nothing he could do. His wife was gone, and the swan sisters had been careful about where they hid their cloaks now; he had thought perhaps he could steal another cloak, and sell it to another man in town who wasn’t married yet, but he hadn’t found where they were putting their cloaks now.

But if he couldn’t get his wife back, at least he could get rid of his sister.

***

In the town, he told the magistrate that his sister had turned his wife to a swan, and that she was a witch. She had a cat as a familiar, and uncanny powers to find things that had been hidden.

No one in the town truly knew the sister. She kept to herself. Her friends from girlhood had moved away, finding husbands and leaving the village to be with them, and all that the men and women of the town knew was that she rarely talked to anyone, and she lived alone with her brother. The idea that she might be a witch was very, very plausible.

And so the magistrates arrested her, and there was a very quick trial, in which fishermen who owed her brother favors lied and claimed they’d seen her turn herself into a bat, and they’d seen her turn her brother’s wife into a swan, and that she danced in dark revels with the devil at night. The sister tried to defend herself, but how do you defend yourself against utter absurdity that so many people believe without evidence?

Her little cat came back home, to find that she wasn’t there. The cat explored the town, carefully, because humans were always a potential danger if she didn’t know them… and she happened upon her friend, looking out the window of her jail cell.

“Little cat!” her friend called. “They’ve accused me of being a witch, and they’re going to burn me tomorrow!”

The cat stopped dead, tail switching. “I was afraid of this,” she said.

“I’m so sorry. You’ll have to find a new home; it won’t be safe at home, when I’m gone. My brother will kill you if he can catch you.”

“I won’t allow this to happen,” the cat said, and ran away.

The sister was relieved to hear that the cat would be safe. But the cat didn’t mean she would stay safe.

She ran out toward the lake. This time, the tortoiseshell queen and her two black tom sons waited for her between the village and the lake. “You don’t have your human to help you this time, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” the little cat said. “My human is in the jail, accused of witchcraft. Don’t you know what happens when humans think one of theirs is a witch?”

The cats looked at each other. The two toms were black cats. They knew well the danger when humans were swept up in fear of witches.

“What do you think you can do about that?” the tortoiseshell snarled.

“Follow me and watch,” the little tabby said.

With the other three cats following her, the little cat went to the lake, and climbed up on the rock. She called out. “Swan sisters! Swan sisters! Heed me!”

The swans on the lake came closer. “My friend, the fisherman’s sister, is accused of witchcraft, because she helped your youngest sister get free of her brother, who stole her cloak. Now they’ve accused her of turning your youngest sister into a swan, and they’ll burn her at the stake tomorrow!”

The swans honked frantically and angrily.  The little cat meowed. And then all the swans took to the air and flew away.

***

At dawn, the magistrates took the sister out to the center of the town, where a stake had been prepared, and began binding her to it.

And then six swans came down from the sky, and five set upon the magistrates, the executioner standing by with his torch, the brother waiting eagerly with the crowd of observers, and the rest of the crowd, honking and hissing, pecking and biting, flapping their wings and driving everyone away. The last swan landed with a cloak of feathers in her beak. She dropped it and bit away at the ropes holding the sister to the stake. As the sister pulled herself free, the swan partially removed her own feathered cloak, taking the form of a woman wearing a cloak half-on rather than a swan anymore.

She bent down to where she had dropped the feather cloak, and handed it to the sister. “This is for you, if you want it.”

“For me?” The sister took the cloak. “I thought you were magic. I thought you had to be born the way you are. Will this even work for me?”

“It will,” Slow Paddle, the fisherman’s wife, said. All around the two of them there were screams and shouts and bird cries, as Slow Paddle’s five sisters fought an entire crowd of humans, driving them from the town square. “I have been making it for you since you freed me. I don’t know if you want it; I don’t know if you would want to be a swan, with my sisters and me. But I know that I would love nothing more than for you to join us, if you would wish it so.”

The sister finally understood, and smiled. “Surely there are other pens you could court?”

“Surely there are… but I am already in love. If you turn me away, I will find an opportunity to love again, someday, but when swans love we are slow to turn our hearts in another direction.”

“I will be happy to join you,” the sister said, “but what will become of my little cat?”

“We live on the lake,” the swan-woman said, “but when it is freezing cold or the rains are fierce, we have a hut we fly to, and a fire we keep. Your cat can live there, and come out to the lake with us when we are swans, and you can catch fish for her with your beak.”

“Then I will do it. How do I use this?”

The swan-woman showed the sister how to put on the cloak… and kissed her quickly as she did, while they both still had lips and not beaks. And then they were both swans, and they spiraled up into the air, joined quickly by five more swans, who’d successfully driven most of the humans from the town square.

***

The little cat lived in the hut with the swan-women, hunting outdoors as she pleased. She attempted to fish in the lake, but after falling in twice and needing to be rescued by her swan friend, she was content to sit on the bank and watch the water. She had many more litters of kittens, and all grew to be as fierce in the hunt and as loving in their friendships as she was.

The town was gripped by the fear of witches for a while, and so many cats were forced to hide out in the wilderness. The queen tortoiseshell was forced to yield her territory, with so many other cats moving into it. Eventually, though, the fever passed, and cats could live with their favorite humans in safety again.

The brother was never again able to fish. When he would go out on his boat, seven swans would attack him, and he had no luck in fighting them off even when he used his pole for a weapon. All of his secret stash of funds and hidden objects disappeared the night his sister became a swan, so he had nothing left to fall back on. He eventually ended his days as a drunken beggar, living in the streets of the town, holding out his cup to anyone who would drop a coin in it. In the meantime, the swans’ hut was well-furnished, with a soft quilt and beautiful decorations, and when they flew to a town to become humans and spend some time eating, drinking and shopping as humans, the swan-women had plenty of money to buy what they wished.

Humans cannot tell the difference between pens and cobs at a distance, and Slow Paddle was larger than her new love, her ex-husband’s sister, so humans pointed the two of them out for years as an example of the true love of swans, without ever realizing they were both pens. They didn’t care. Swans have no concern with what humans think of who they love. They never raised a clutch of cygnets of their own together, but they were loving and caring aunts to the cygnets the other swan-women and their cob husbands had.

And so the cat and the swans lived, as close to happily ever after as anyone, swan, human, or cat, can ever achieve.