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eBook Category: Fantasy Gardner Dozois's Year's Best SF Honorable Mention
eBook Description: The story of a loyal sister forced to remain mute for seven years in order to save her swan brothers from an evil enchantment--while she knits each of them coarse wool shirts--has been found in many folk traditions. Sometimes there are seven brothers, sometimes six, sometimes twelve. Sometimes there is a king who loves her and marries her despite her strange inability to speak. But in all cases the woman has to suffer in silence up until the last moment, and her courage and loyalty are sorely tested. This is another retelling of the legend, darker and more erotic, and with a fantastic twist.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: On Spec v13 #2 No. 45, ed. Diane L. Walton, 2001
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2002

55 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [23 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [30 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [9 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [48 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [9 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [61 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [80 KB] , hiebook (KML) [52 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [111 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [8 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [10 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [85 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [16 KB]
Words: 3015
Reading time: 8-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Starting things off with a bang is Vera Nazarian's captivating "Swans." There is no real conventional plot to this enigmatic story, adapted from a Russian fairy tale, of a woman who knits while bound to a pyre for not crying out when her babies were stolen at birth. Mute as a result of a vow taken seven years before, she waits for seven brothers (that she never had) to save her, and listens for the sound of swans' wings. No summary of events can do this extraordinary story justice. The pleasure rather is the tautness of the writing and the dream-like, surreal quality of the woman's predicament. In a few pages, Nazarian manages to describe, in beautiful language, the torment and suffering of her protagonist, and render themes like loyalty and purity in a truly evocative manner."--Erol Engin, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

"This nicely told story is a re-telling/rehashing/re-conceptualisation of a Russian folk tale about a mute sister and swan brothers. As I say, nicely told, over six digest pages, but not much more can be written by way of a review!"--Mark Watson

I continue to knit even now, as they stir up the flames below me.

They hadn't bothered to tie my hands, out of pity maybe. Or maybe, this freedom is his final love gift to me.

My fingers move rapidly, a storm. They work the needles, pulling rough strands of colorless wool into loops and stitches, starting the last sleeve of the seventh shirt. Meanwhile, my mind wanders, lulled into a moment of peace, of times blurring.

I blink. And I wake from a recurring daydream of a deep velvet black sky, with sprinkles of sugar which are pinpoints of light, pale saffron and green.

The wonder of it stands to engulf me. In spirit I sail the boat of gossamer that is my body--their bodies, all. I inhabit them. This is the flesh of a swan, covered in pearl-white down, but turned to huelessness by the night. Above, below me, beating wings, none of them my own. On one level I feel nothing, hear a vacuum of silence, while on another level I hear the crackling of the rising flames.

I stand, tied at the waist with loose bonds which connect me to the stake and yet allow me to move my hands and work violently. My fingers express what I myself cannot speak; they tear at the wool, and weep and rage as they pull upon the string and form the loops. The fingers wail in silent agony of twisting contorting fury at the helplessness.

I am mute.

If I speak a word, if I laugh, or make a sound, it will all be for nothing. All of these damned seven years, for nothing....

That had been the hardest, keeping the silence. My vocal cords have atrophied, and I swallow, feeling the flaccidity at the back of my throat. I swallow the air of twilight, the smoke rising from the crackling fire below, and the hollow silence.

Keeping silence became difficult only on the fifth year. That was when he found me. Before that I had lived alone, surrounded by the seething forest. My little hut had nothing in it but piles of wool, and everywhere, swan feathers. The wool was spun together with my hair, a perfect uninterrupted strand. Endlessly I had to start over, every time my hair woven into the string broke. For, that continuity was a part of the bargain.

Or was it? I no longer remember if my own hair had been part of that promise I made, a requirement for the bonds of enchantment to fall. But I was obsessively compulsive....

On that fifth year, it had been hard not to make a sound when he took me with him out of the forest--while I trembled in terror and held on to the bundle of completed and unfinished shirts which he allowed me to take with us--and brought me out into the alien city where he was lord. There, among strangers, he placed me in a building of marble and glass and filigree, and had me dressed in heavy brocade, velvet and silk.

I became his mute queen.

And then, one night, silence became hardest when he came to me and held me to his body with a sweetness that melted my limbs, and gently stroked me, enveloping me with warm lassitude. At some point, while the night breeze poured garden fragrance upon us from the balcony, his gentle touch became one of strength. The world narrowed in around us. Strength was pressing down, stifling me with pleasure, molding me into pliant shapelessness; force was in the fabric of the world, pouring into my flesh. And then he moved within me, delving into places I never knew I had. As he moved, the rhythm eventually did something to me, which nearly caused me to cry out. Only, I did not; I bit his shoulder instead, like a little snarling bitch. He would laugh later, calling me his wild little one, his beloved she-beast from the forest.

He still has that wound on his shoulder, from my teeth. It is a wound-mark of my love and silence. He will have it tomorrow when I am no longer there. A mark to remember me by.

My fingers flying, I knit the last shirt, and wait for my brothers, listen for the distant sound of beating wings. They will come, I dare to know, in this twilight, and the rising crackle of flames of the pyre below me....

They will come.