Her mother! How terrible it must have been for her, to leave her husband and her child. And yet, she’d given up flight and her own beautiful world to be with them in the first place.
It was all so unfair!
And underneath it all, a thought niggled at Ava, a fear that started as a thin sliver and began to grow.
What if she, too, had to leave one day? Would she? Would she grow sick one day if she spent too much time in one world and not the other?
She remembered what Helen had said: “You can be one of them, and you can be one of us, too. Very few have the freedom to straddle two worlds. One day you will choose, but that is not for a long time yet.” Is that what she had meant? And her grandmother, what had she said? That her father was terrified that Ava would leave him one day, too?
Ava’s house appeared below her. She dropped down to the edge of the woods behind it and reached back to pull off the robe, which came off in her hand.
If her mother’s natural form was a swan, and staying in her human form for so long had made her sick . . . could that happen to Ava one day, too?
Carrying her feathered robe, she stepped into the backyard.
“Ava?”
The voice startled her, seemed to come out of the night air.
She froze.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark, her heart pounding. Had someone seen her transform?
She stood for a moment, listening, but the voice was silent.
Maybe she’d imagined it?
The robe in her arms was white and glittering. In a quick movement, she flung it behind her, back into the woods.
She took a deep breath and stepped forward. “Hello?” she whispered.
“What are you doing out here?” the voice said.
It was Jeff. Standing under the tree by her window, his cell phone in his hands. He looked up at the sky, and then back down at her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The night was still, and the air warm, smelling of flowers and grass. Fireflies blinked in the air. In the distance, very faintly, someone was playing piano.
Ava stared at Jeff, unable to move. His face was half illuminated, half in the dark, but she saw his look of confusion.
What had he seen? She had been too distracted, too comfortable. And he had been standing right there, just steps away from where she was transforming! She had no idea if he could have seen her, from where he was standing.
He just stood staring at her, his face unreadable in the dark.
“I thought I saw . . .”
“Jeff!” she said, forcing herself to break into a big smile. Whatever he had seen, or hadn’t seen, maybe she could trick him into thinking he hadn’t seen anything at all.
She ran up to him and threw her arms around him. “Jeff! What are you doing here?” she said, pulling back and grinning up at him. She resisted the urge to look back and check to see that her robe was still there. “I’m so excited to see you!”
“You are?” His face broke into a shy smile, and she was pretty sure he was blushing.
“Yes! It is such a night for an adventure, isn’t it? I was just taking a walk in the woods!”
She knew she was being a total dork, but she could be embarrassed about that later. Right now she just had to convince him that everything was normal.
“You were? By yourself, at night?”
“Of course!” she said, even though in truth she would never in a million years walk through the woods by herself at night. For one, they were chock-full of bugs. And now that she knew how weird everything was . . . for all she knew there could be werewolves back there, too.
His face shifted and he actually seemed impressed with her totally fictional adventurousness. “Cool,” he said. “It was just strange, this big swan came flying down and a minute later you walked out! For a minute I thought you were carrying it.”
“HAHAHA!” she laughed. “Carrying a swan . . .?”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He was smiling, too, joking with her, but she got the impression he was suspicious and waiting to see what she would say.
She laughed again, even harder. “HAHAHAHAHAHA! I know! That thing almost knocked me over!!!!”
He laughed, too, and it seemed like he meant it, but of course she couldn’t be sure.
“Swans are so impolite!” she continued. “HAHAHAH-HAHAA!”
She was acting like a crazy person, she realized, and suddenly stopped laughing. She cleared her throat. “So how are you?” she asked, widening her eyes, trying to give him an innocent this-is-all-totally-completely-and-utterly-normal look.
“Umm, good,” he said, and she didn’t know if she was imagining it or not, but he was looking at her very strangely. Of course, she was acting totally weird. But it seemed like he was looking at her in a I-just-saw-you-transform-from-a-swan-into-a-human-girl type way. “I came by earlier but you weren’t here, so I was just stopping by on my way home.”
“Oh!” She had forgotten how late it was. Which made it all the weirder for her to have supposedly been roaming around in the woods. “Did you go to the creek?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The mayflies are gone now but it’s so beautiful this time of year, in the summer, especially when the moon is waxing. I was hoping you’d come with me.”
Impulsively she grabbed his hand. What kind of boy talked about waxing moons? “That would have been nice,” she said. “It's such a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
And to her relief, he laced his fingers through hers. “Yeah,” he said, smiling down at her.
She tried to enjoy the moment, but her heart was racing. It was making her crazy, thinking of her feathered robe, just tossed on the dirt.
She let out a huge fake yawn. “I’m so tired!” she said.
“Me too,” he said, releasing her hand.
He had been about to kiss her, she realized, with a sinking heart. But if she didn’t get her robe back, who knows what would happen? Surely she couldn’t just grow another one anytime she wanted.
“So I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” he said.
“Can’t wait!” she said brightly, like a huge dork, wanting to kick herself as he walked away.
Once he was out of sight, she raced back to the woods.
But the robe wasn’t there.
Ava stared open-mouthed at the spot where she was sure she had tossed the robe. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes or so, could it have? She’d just reached back and tossed it, so Jeff wouldn’t see. How could she have explained a huge glittering white-feathered robe practically breathing in her arms, as if she were holding a small animal? Would he have believed that she spent her night swan hunting and had nabbed one?
She stepped into the woods and tried to retrace her earlier movements, but after a few minutes stopped and turned back. She’d only been right at the edge of the woods, practically in the backyard.
Panic flowed through her.
Suddenly she felt ashamed and terrible, pretending like she was normal to Jeff and tossing her robe onto the ground as if it were a wrapper from McDonald’s.
Not that she actually ever littered, she thought, choking back a sob.
And then, just as tears began streaming down her face, and a sense of loss overtook her, along with the sureness that she would never again fly and never know what the world of the swan maidens, and her mother, was really like, just as her heart was breaking into pieces, she saw something white and glowing on the ground, a few yards away.
It hadn’t just been there a minute ago, had it?
She raced over, threw herself onto the ground, and gathered it up in her arms. The feathers seemed to move into her, like a cat.
She was so relieved! Though she was sure she hadn’t thrown the robe that far and that it hadn’t been there a minute ago . . . but still. She had it back.
Suddenly there was a movement, a flash of white in the periphery. When she turned there was nothing there. She took a few steps in, stopped and lis
tened, but whatever it was, if it had been anything at all, was gone.
Heading farther into the woods, she saw, on the ground, one gleaming white feather.
She waited another several minutes, listening to the rustling of leaves, the faint gurgling of the creek, and then, smiling to herself, she turned to go inside.
That night she dreamt about swans, but they weren’t standing in the forest or swimming in the creek. They weren’t flying above her as she lay in the backyard, or gathering outside her window.
Instead, in this dream, they were in another place, one she’d never before seen. There were fountains and waterfalls that sprayed mist into the air. The ground was soft with feathers, which sparkled underneath her bare feet.
Above her, sitting on a giant silver throne, was a beautiful lady with giant wings, looking down at her.
Ava reached for her, tried to step toward her, but her feet seemed to sink into the feathers and suddenly a thousand swans seemed to rise into the air in front of her, all at once.
At school the next morning, Morgan was waiting for her by her locker, even though Ava arrived halfway through the first period. She’d been sleeping so deeply she’d slept right through her alarm, which had gone off so long her father eventually had to come and shake her awake. Which had made him deeply cranky.
“Hey!” Morgan called.
“Hey. You’re missing homeroom.”
“Um, duh. So are you. What’s wrong?” Morgan had her hands on her hips in her annoying Morgan fashion.
“What do you mean what’s wrong?” Ava said, opening her locker.
Morgan rolled her eyes. “What do you mean what do I mean? Look at you! You totally look like you’re gonna jump off a bridge.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I’m fine, I just barely slept.”
“Why not?” Morgan demanded with her hands on her hips.
She was so bossy! Ava made a mental note to herself to make more friends.
“I put on the robe last night and flew, like, all over town, and I had these weird dreams after.”
“You flew? Over the whole town? I didn’t know that swans could fly like that!”
“Well, I can.”
“That’s like the coolest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“I know,” she said. “And also. When I got home, Jeff was there. I think he might have . . . seen something.” She felt sick as she remembered.
“He saw you . . . what, flying?”
“I flew home, and I was thinking about all this stuff and so I guess I wasn’t really paying attention, and I transformed, in the back of the yard, almost in the woods. And he was there, Morgan, waiting for me, like he did before. I don’t know what he saw, but he seemed really confused and suspicious, and I was definitely acting weird.”
“Oh, well,” Morgan said, waving her hand. “That’s just normal, for you.”
“Very funny.”
Morgan batted her lashes. “So what happened?”
“Nothing, really. But Morgan, he had to have seen some-thing, and if he didn’t put it together last night, he will. He probably did when he got home. And if he did . . . I mean, what boy wants to date a swan?”
“Ummm, your dad?”
Ava shook her head. “My dad’s different.”
“So’s Jeff,” Morgan said softly.
“There’s more to it, though. My grandmother told me all these things, like about my mom . . . and I don’t know . . . I’m afraid I might be like my mom, I mean, more than I am now, even. Like maybe what happened to her will happen to me. You know?”
“Well, I don’t know about that stuff, but being like your mom wouldn’t be so bad anyway. Right now, though, you’re a normal—well, semi-normal, let’s be honest—girl, so you should quit worrying so much and just have fun being Jeff Jackson’s girlfriend. Everyone’s talking about the two of you. Wherever I go I hear people talking about you two.”
“You do?”
“You haven’t noticed?” Morgan rolled her eyes. “You’re hopeless. You haven’t noticed that everyone says hi to you and me now, too? Jennifer Halverson actually came up to me in gym class and complimented my sneakers.”
“Those ugly things?”
“Yes! You see how extreme the situation is.”
The bell rang then, signaling the end of first period.
“So stop being so weird. If Jeff saw anything, he’ll get over it.”
“That’s easy for you to say! How do you know he won’t find out and tell the whole school?”
“Well, look who it is,” Morgan said, staring past Ava to someone down the hall, which was quickly filling up with students. “I guess he can tell us himself.”
Ava moaned.
“Hey, Jeff!” Morgan shouted.
“Hey,” his deep voice answered, right behind Ava.
She turned around, wincing.
But there he was looking normal and handsome and like the most popular boy in school.
“Hey,” she said, relaxing into a smile.
He leaned in, his blue eyes crackling in that weird, cool way. “How are you?”
“Tired,” she said. “But happy.”
“Me too. So do you want to go downtown with me after school?” he asked. “Maybe get some sno cones?”
“That would be great,” she said, relief spreading through her whole body as Morgan made a gagging motion behind Jeff’s perfect, golden blond head.
“Great,” he said. “See you, Morgan!”
And then Ava turned to look at her friend’s smug, but still sweet, face. “See?” Morgan said. “You have to stop being such a worrywart. He loooooves you.”
Ava rolled her eyes and laughed.
Still, over the next few days, as she and her friends took their last tests and as school officially ended and the summer officially began, she couldn’t stop thinking about Jeff Jackson’s face in the moonlight, her robe glittering in the grass, and the beautiful lady sitting on that silver throne, just out of reach . . .
Who knew what the future would hold?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sometimes it seems like a big day will never come. You wait and wait and count down the days, but time just slows down like sap dripping out of a tree, and you think you might go crazy watching that drip. . . drip. . . drip that stretches into eternity.
That is how Ava felt, at least, in the days leading up to her thirteenth birthday, even though school was out and it was summer in the middle of Pennsylvania, which is so beautiful with all those rolling hills and plunging ridges and bright green everywhere, on all sides of you, and all those pretty lakes laced with flowers and trees where your friends can hang out on sun-drenched afternoons as old-time carousels spin around and around like something inside a music box. Places like that are magical, whether or not the daughters of swan maidens come out to play. There were swans, though, all around, as Ava laid out at the lake or spent afternoons riding bikes or just hanging out in the backyard playing cards and listening to music with Jeff and Morgan (and Monique). They seemed to be everywhere these days, flying overhead or appearing for a moment in the periphery before disappearing again. As if they, too, were waiting and waiting for a day that might never come.
But the day did come, the way all such days eventually do, and Ava Lewis turned thirteen just as the moon grew as full and round and sparkling as a new coin.
That afternoon the heat let up a bit, and the whole valley seemed to let out a sigh of relief. Morgan came over right after lunch to help with the decorations, which she and Ava had bought on Ava’s father’s charge card, which he’d handed over to the girls the week before with a heavy, dramatic sigh.
Which seemed to run in the family.
Ava let one out now as she tried for the third time to tack up a glittery banner over the sliding doors. She and Morgan had taken pains to make everything as sparkling as possible. They even had cans of glitter to spray onto their skin and hair—and on Monique, who was later caught admiring herself in the glass door—and Ava had a new
red dress with a dazzling sequined belt and a line of sequins around the hem. Jeff had offered to help, too, but Ava had told him absolutely not. She wanted him to come right at six p.m. like everyone else was going to, all dressed up and ready to celebrate in a house that had been magically transformed with paper and glitter and backyard tents filled with accordion-playing musicians.
If there was one thing Ava had learned about of late, it was magical transformations.
The house smelled amazing. Ava’s dad was busy in the kitchen, cooking up a storm. The refrigerator was full, too, with Morgan’s mother’s concoctions that she’d sent over with Morgan in plastic bins. She herself would arrive at 5:30 to set up the cotton candy machine, which was her special gift for the event. “Everyone likes cotton candy,” she’d said. “It puts everyone in a good mood.”
The girls had certainly not argued.
And then, just after five, everything was ready. The house was lovely, inside and out. The backyard was full of picnic tables with umbrellas over them, and then tents for the food and the musicians. There was enough space for dancing, or just horsing around—Ava had invited all the boys in her grade, half of whom were incapable of acting like anything but hyped-up monkeys in a social setting—and for the cotton candy machine. And there were fairylights strewn over everything, along the sides of the house and stretching from umbrella to umbrella, that would light up as soon as it grew dark. Ava’s father had even brought out some old tiki torches he’d stored in the basement that were now stuck in a few spots around the yard.
Ava and Morgan got ready together, sitting side by side, and took turns spraying each other with glitter and seeing if they could possibly look any cuter than they did.
Which, they both agreed, they couldn’t possibly.