“They weren’t?”
“Oh no. It was forbidden. Where we come from . . . well, we are not supposed to be with human men. Men like your father.”
“What do you mean, human men?”
And just then, they stepped into a clearing. One second the world was dark and hushed, the next the moon was bright overhead, its light pouring down on them.
“Oh!” Ava gasped. “I’ve never been here before.”
“We’ve wandered a bit from the main path,” Helen said, turning to her. She was smiling, her face radiant and her jewel eyes sparkling. Just the way Ava imagined her mother would look.
The air was warm, with a slight breeze pushing through, and everything smelled of grass and earth. Ava stepped into the clearing. In the moonlight, the grass was like a secret pool of water, shimmering and moving. Ava half expected to slip under.
“Is this where you’re taking me?” Ava asked, seeing that Helen herself had stopped and seemed to be waiting for something.
“Yes,” Helen said, reaching out and grabbing Ava’s hand, as if she’d read her mind earlier.
Helen’s skin was smooth and cool. Ava clasped her hand back.
She thought, then, about her father, sitting along the side of the creek right now. How close was he? Ava had lost all sense of direction. But she stared up at the moon and imagined him out in this same strange darkness, hearing the same hush of the forest at night, waiting for the dazzled fish to surface from the creek, staring up at the same moon and looking for her mother the way she was right now, the way she always did when the moon appeared bright and full over the earth. Ava thought, for the first time, that it might be nice to join her father sometime, even if it made absolutely no sense to catch the same fish over and over and throw them back in.
Suddenly a bird swooped in from overhead and landed in the clearing.
A swan.
Ava pointed, almost crying out. “That swan!” she said, turning to Helen, whom, to Ava’s surprise, didn’t seem at all taken aback. “I think I saw it before.”
And then another swan swooped down, and another and another, and Ava realized they all looked the same. They kept arriving from the air, and then they emerged from the forest, too, like white shadows, until the clearing was filled with them, appearing from every direction, from the woods and the air.
Ava’s heart hammered in her chest. Part of her wanted to run; the other part wanted to stay and see everything, no matter what happened.
She didn’t understand how Helen could be so calm. Helen just stood watching them, as if she’d been expecting this to happen, as if she saw something this miraculous happen every day.
The swans were strangely still, the mass of their white feathers gleaming like ice, like freshly fallen snow, over the clearing.
“They have all come,” Helen said finally, “to meet you.”
“What do you mean?” Ava asked.
“Watch.”
And just as she said the word, something happened. The birds . . . transformed. In a movement so quick and surprising Ava could barely register it, the birds had arms and hands and their feathers became feathered robes and suddenly the clearing was filled with beautiful women, each of them holding a feathered robe in her hand.
Ava gasped.
“I have . . . ” She pointed, unable to finish her thought.
They were all holding feathered robes, like the one Ava had, shoved under the bed.
And they were naked, their hair streaming down and covering their breasts, their legs pressed together. All pale and blond in the moonlight. Beautiful, smiling, watching her with jewel eyes.
Ava could feel her eyes filling with tears. Was one of them her mother? She had never, in her life, seen anything more astonishing or beautiful than this. And she felt herself fill with light. It was the only way to explain it: the happiness that comes from feeling, even if you don’t know why or how, that you’ve come home. But she was far from home, wasn’t she? She had never seen this clearing before and yet she knew these woods, knew every bit of them.
She turned, once again, to Helen.
“We are swan maidens,” Helen said, before Ava could ask. “We change in the full moon.”
“Swan maidens,” Ava repeated. It seemed to her, all of a sudden, the most wonderful thing to be.
“When your mother met your father, it was during a full moon. We were swimming. We loved to swim in the creek in our human forms.”
“She was . . . she is a swan maiden?”
“Yes, she is one of us,” Helen answered. “She stayed here for a time, but then she had to return to us. She was never meant to live in your world. But she not only lived in your world, she had a child in it. And so you, Ava, you are like us.”
“Is that why . . . ”
“Yes,” Helen whispered, and there were tears sparkling in her eyes, too.
“I have a robe.”
“Yes, a feathered robe. Yours will let you transform, too. Put it on, and you will become a swan. Take it off, and you are human again.”
Ava felt herself staggering under this new information. Her head couldn’t even really contain it. Could it be true? Anything could be true right now, here, in this moonlit clearing, after what she’d just seen.
One of the maidens stepped forward and approached Ava. “Welcome,” she said, in a strange, singsong voice. “We have been waiting for this day. I am Lara.”
“Thank you,” Ava said. “I'm Ava.”
“We know.”
It hit her then, what they were saying. That she, Ava Lewis, was a part of this. This magical, wonderful world around her, where swans turned into women, under the full moon. She felt she would burst with the fullness of it. Even if it was a dream, it was the best dream she’d ever had, one she hoped she’d have again and again.
She laughed, then, with delight.
“I wish I had my robe here with me now!” She eyed Lara’s robe, and Lara laughed, too.
“We can only transform using our own robes,” Lara said. “You should have had her bring hers, Helen.”
“I did not want to terrify the girl,” Helen said. And then, to Ava: “Lara was with me and your mother that day, long ago.”
“Is my mother here, too? Can I see her?”
Helen and Lara exchanged a look. “No,” Helen said. “In time you will see her again. But she wanted us to come to you, to explain to you what has been happening to your body. We haven’t . . . well it has happened only very rarely, a swan maiden mating with a human, and so we were not certain, but it has been told to us that you would experience a change around your thirteenth birthday. And so we have been watching you. She, too, has watched you.”
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
Ava thought of the moon, the woman sitting in it. On the night of the full moon, her grandmother had said, you can see her, sometimes.
“We knew how frightening it would be for you,” Lara said. “Your mother has been sick with worry, thinking of you. I hope you feel safe now, though. We are your family. All of us.”
Ava looked out at the lot of them. All the beautiful maidens, many of them facing the moon now, their faces tilted up, pressing their feet into the earth, lifting up their arms to the breeze.
Helen lifted her own silvery arms into the breeze. “It is a treat for us,” she said. “Being in this form. But you, my dear, you have much more human in you than we do. And yet you are still swan. We don’t know exactly what to expect from you, but you will be capable of great things.”
“When you return home,” Lara said. “Use the robe. Transform. Feel what it is to be the other part of you. The world will become entirely different, when you are in your other form. But that is the world, too, and that is you. Part of who you are.”
“So I just . . . put the robe on? It just came off of me tonight.” She shuddered, thinking of it. “It pulled off of me.”
“You shed it. Like a caterpillar growing a cocoon and then sloughing it off. You??
?re lucky. There’s a story of a girl many hundreds of years ago who spent years growing her robe and was only able to transform as an old woman. The moment she put her robe on and transformed, she was so happy, felt so complete, she died right then and there.”
“So they won’t grow back on me? Now that they have come off? I will be normal now?”
“Yes,” Helen whispered. “You will seem normal, anyway, but you have a great power. 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.”
The moon, the forest, the women in the clearing, some of them swans again now, Helen and her jewel eyes and talk about other worlds—it was all too much. Ava stood transfixed, dazzled like the fish in the creek. No wonder her father was able to catch them, again and again. The word came to her: moonstruck. Like that movie with Cher. She and those poor trout were all moonstruck.
Helen tilted her head and smiled. “I will take you home now, dear girl. You have a lot to absorb from tonight.”
Ava nodded. She was so sleepy, suddenly. She tried to keep her eyes open, to take it all in, in case she was dreaming.
“But when will I see you again?” she asked, her voice slurring a little now, she was so tired.
“The next full moon,” Helen answered.
And then, before her eyes, Helen slipped on a robe—one of the others had been holding it—and as she did, her whole body bent down, turned into an S, and then she was on the ground, her great white wings stretched out on other side, her glittering blue eyes staring up at Ava.
Lara smiled, gesturing. “Go ahead, sit on her back.”
Ava looked at her, and then at Helen. “It won’t . . . hurt her?”
Lara laughed. “No. Go ahead.”
Ava walked over, tentatively, and stretched one leg over the swan’s back. And then she sat down, pressing her legs on either side of the bird’s thick, soft body. Lara smiled and slipped on her own robe, and then she, too, transformed, her body slipping down, her neck stretching out, feathers sprouting all over until she was white as glittering snow.
Ava blinked, smiling at the clearing filled with swans that now, one by one, began launching themselves into the sky.
“Swan Maiden,” Ava thought.
And then, under her, Helen’s body clenched and her wings rose into the air and suddenly the grass was far below them, the moon seemed so close, and they were rising together over the trees.
Ava’s hair flew out behind her. The air streamed against her skin. She held on to Helen’s neck, and didn’t know whether to look up at the moon and stars or down below at the treetops, the curving, gleaming creek, the twinkling lights of the houses, and, farther away, much farther, the town, as she and the swan swam through the sky.
CHAPTER SIX
“Ava!”
The banging seeped into her sleep. Over and over and over.
“Ava!!”
She bolted awake.
Sun streamed into the room. She looked at the clock. It was 8 a.m.
“Ava, you’re going to be late for school!”
Her head ached. She felt as if she could sleep for hours more.
“Avaaaaaa!”
“Yes, I’m coming,” she grumbled. “I’m getting up.”
“Since when did you start locking your door? And leaving the gourmet dinners I leave for you in the microwave to rot?”
Since I started growing feathers, she thought, automatically reaching up to feel her upper arms. To her surprise, her arms were smooth. Perfect. Smoother than they’d ever been before.
And then she remembered the clearing and the swans, the beautiful woman, Helen, who'd shown up at the door, who'd taken her flying over the forest . . .
And the spaghetti bolognese. Had she really forgotten to eat her father’s famous spaghetti?
Either it was all true, or she’d had one very, very strange dream while, apparently, letting her father’s spaghetti rot. Which was really almost the strangest part.
She shook her head, pushing the covers off of her, and looked around the room.
Everything seemed normal. Her window slightly open, the smell of summer blowing in from outside. Flowers and warmth and freshly cut grass. She could hear the sprinkler going off in the backyard. A lawnmower in the distance.
“Ava,” her dad called from outside her door, “please do not turn into a sullen teenager on me. Your old dad may not be able to take it.”
“Dad, I’m getting ready!”
She leapt up and stared at herself in the mirror. She was normal, perfect. In fact she had never been so happy to see her normal self. So what if her stomach pooched and her upper arms could have been skinnier? So what if she couldn’t get a tan? She was completely feather free! Everything had been a dream, hadn’t it?
A pang of sadness moved through her, a hollowness in her heart and gut, as she remembered the magical woman telling her that her mother was alive, a swan maiden, and that she would be able to see her. Imagine! Her mother with her long moon hair, transforming into a swan. She and her sisters swimming in the creek. Her mother never having really died, just having flown away. It was all so beautiful, but none of it had been real. Had it?
And then suddenly she remembered something else. Under the bed.
Her heart racing, she bent down, lifted the comforter . . . and there it was. The feathered robe. Ava reached in and pulled it out and spread it over the bed.
The feathers sparkled in the sunlight. Seemed to breathe in and out, as if they were alive. She ran her palms over the robe and the feathers seemed to move into her hands, like before.
She lifted the robe up to her neck, turned and faced the mirror.
Outside, her father banged on the door.
“I don’t hear a shower running, kiddo, and it’s 8:15!”
“I’m showering right NOW,” she said, sighing, shoving the feathered robe into her backpack and stumbling into the bathroom.
Sadly, exploring her magical new swan maiden robe would have to wait.
School always got in the way of things that were important.
Morgan was waiting on the front steps of the school when Ava’s father, who was in an unnaturally good mood for some reason, dropped her off.
“No hoodie?” she cried out as Ava approached.
Ava swung her hips from side to side, in an exaggeratedly sexy walk. An Ava Gardner walk. For once in her life she didn’t care who was watching. She could just be herself. Let them all laugh if they didn’t like it! AVA LEWIS, she imagined, in sparkling lights.
“I am much too fashionable for a hoodie,” she said, stretching out her bare arms and flipping her hair. Not only was she not wearing a hoodie, she was wearing a pretty sleeveless blouse and a short skirt rather than her usual jeans and T-shirt.
“Oh my god,” Morgan said. “You’re... They’re gone.”
“You look great, Ava,” George Kutz said as she walked by.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ava saw Jeff Jackson standing with a group of his friends. She turned and waved, smiling brightly at him.
For some reason, she didn’t feel nervous the way she usually did. She didn’t feel nervous at all.
“Ava!” he called out, and he rushed up to her, leaving his friends gaping at them both. Jennifer was there, Ava could not help but note with an unusual feeling of satisfaction. Standing, as usual, with her hands on her hips and that mean-girl look on her face. Ava raised her hand and waved.
“Hey, Jennifer!” she called, smiling as Jennifer lost her cool and looked away awkwardly, not knowing how to respond.
Ava glanced up at Morgan and winked. Her friend raised her eyebrows and both thumbs.
“Dork,” Ava mouthed.
She turned to Jeff, who was just walking up to her. “How have you been, Ava?” he asked. He stood towering over her, his head bent down, his blue eyes seeming to crackle like a turning kaleidoscope.
“I was sick for a few days,” s
he said. “I’m sorry if I was kind of a freak at the lake. I didn’t know I was sick, but I’m better now.”
“You seem better,” he said. “You look really pretty.” A slight blush spread over his cheeks.
Jeff Jackson—blushing! And calling her pretty! This was definitely the best day of her life, ever.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling the blush creep into her own cheeks as well. Why couldn’t she be the cool one, just this once?! “How are you?”
“Good,” he said. “Will you be at the lake again next weekend, you think?”
“I think so,” she said. “I mean, it’s summer now. I love it there.”
“Me, too.” He paused. “Maybe we could get a lemonade again, walk around some.”
“Ride the carousel,” she said, smiling.
“Yeah. Okay well. So we’ll talk more then.”
“Sure. That would be great.”
He looked down, and then up again. “Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
She watched him walk off, back to his friends. A second later, Morgan was beside her, staring at her with huge green eyes. “Ava Lewis,” she said. “You NEED to start returning my text messages.”
“Did you see that?”
“Like, the whole school saw that,” Morgan said. “What did he say?”
“Oh, just that we’ll get some more lemonade at the lake next weekend. You know, hang out.” She grinned. “Me and Jeff Jackson!”
“He so likes you.”
Smiling, Ava looked over again, saw Jennifer and her friends looking her up and down over their shoulders as they headed into school.
They were just trying to intimidate her. What did she care? Her mother was alive. And her mother was a swan maiden.
“I’ve got something amazing to show you,” Ava said, turning to her friend.
“I just saw something amazing, Ava. You and Jeff Jackson! Do you realize what this means? It gives hope to all of us. Anything is possible!”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You know what I mean. You’re not one of the zombies, and the most popular guy in school is totally into you. It gives us all hope. If you can get Jeff, maybe one day I can get Josh Kirschner.”