Page 5 of How To Survive This Fairytale

You stare at the swan.The swan stares at you.After a moment, it sinks its orange bill into its snow-white breast, preening.You keep staring.You’ve only ever seen swans skate the surface of a placid lake, and always in pairs.This one is alone.And this isn’t a lake.This is just a creek.

Something about this seems…

You want to saywrong, butstrangeis the better word.Wrongimplies fear, and you’re not afraid of this swan.Youtrustthis swan, immediately, implicitly, though you have no reason to do so.You know this swan isn’t what it seems.The way it looked at you—you can’t explain how you know, you justknow.

And you can’t trust things that aren’t what they seem.

Only yesterday, you escaped from a flesh-eating witch who at first seemed like nothing more than a kind old woman.The part of you that’s curious and the part of you that wants to live go to war, and the latter wins.The latterwill alwayswin.

You begin to follow the creek downstream.As soon as you turn your back, the swan honks at you.A heartbroken, desperate honk—not a honk at all, in fact, but a cry—that makes you look over your shoulder.

A girl in rags scoops the swan into her arms.The swan writhes so powerfully it escapes her grasp.That’s when the girl notices you.She’s at least your age, maybe a little older, with grimy hair and an even grimier apron.She asks you something with her hands, but you shake your head.You don’t know what her signing means.

She reverts to basic gestures.You draw closer when she beckons, and follow her and her swan upstream, hopeful she’s leading you to her village, hopeful that everything you’ve wanted will be waiting for you there.

The swan waddles apace, like a trained pet.You’ve heard stories of ducklings that imprint on the first person they see when they hatch.You ask if the swan is a pet, and she slams a hand over her mouth.Her shoulders quake with silent, restrained laughter.The swan shakes its head as if it understands you.Maybe itdoesunderstand.You try asking the swan the same question, if the girl’s face was the first thing it saw in this world, and it honks at you so aggressively the girl begins laughing silently again.

Strange.Strange is the word for this, notwrong.It’s all very strange, but you find yourself smiling.

After yesterday, you weren’t quite sure you’d ever smile again.

* * *

The raggedy girl and her swan bring you home.There’s no village.

No family.

No hero brave enough to return to the witch’s house and do whatever heroes do at witches’ houses.But thereissomeone welcoming you to share her hovel.It’s shoddily made, with a roof that leaks when it rains and a dirt floor that’ll turn to mud, but there’s a hearth and a space for you to sleep.There’s a bright, clear lake where the swan has joined five others.There are wild fruit trees scattered about, heavy with a promise they’ll deliver in a few weeks’ time.

Most importantly, there’s company that wants you there.The girl smiles like sunlight when you sit at her table and she claps her hands together.That’s when you see it—her hands.Each finger covered in blisters, each knuckle red with pinprick scabs, every inch of skin pockmarked with scars.Your gaze doesn’t leave her hands as she retrieves a stale loaf of bread, a half-empty jar of jam, and a knife.

“What happened?”you ask.“Has someone hurt you?”

You couldn’t save Gretel.You could barely save yourself.But if this girl, who has welcomed you, has known some kind of pain, you want to help her.You want to try, at least.

She looks at her hands.She reaches for parchment and ink and a quill.

“I have no letters,” you say.“It won’t help.”

For a moment, she pauses.Her cheek caves where she’s biting it.Then she sets the parchment down on the table anyway and begins to draw.

Six crowned boys, and one crowned girl.

A witch.

Arrows indicating the witch turned the boys into swans.

The girl, crying.

The girl, collecting thorns.

The girl, beside six shirts sewn from those thorns.

The girl, beside six harvests—six years to complete those shirts.

The girl, putting the shirts on the swans.

The swans, boys again.