having received one. It is small, wrapped in cotton paper, tied with a real silk ribbon. He sits her down in her bedroom and puts the box on her dressing table.
'Open it,' he says. 'Today is a special day.'
But she doesn't want to open it. The wrapping is so beautiful and the suspense so exquisite. She looks at Tanen, but his expression is, as always, impossible to read. He simply stares at her until her fingers reach for the bow.
'Is it my birthday?' she asks.
'No. You do not have a birthday.'
Inside, her heart is swelling. Is this how it feels to be cared for? She remembers her parents, but she's been warned many times never to think of them, so she puts them out of her mind. She pulls delicately on the bow, and it comes undone with a soft slipping noise, barely audible.
The paper is smooth, its folds perfectly straight. Once the ribbon comes off, the paper unfolds itself and lies flat on the table, revealing a silver box.
'Open it,' says Tanen. With trembling hands, she does.
Inside is a tiny figure of a swan, made of tin, painted blue. There's an even smaller tin key. She picks up the swan, holding it gingerly in both hands, turning it over.
'Oh, it's lovely,' she whispers. Should she give him a kiss on the cheek? In books, when a father brings a daughter a lovely gift, she kisses his cheek. But Tanen is not her father and has told her so many times.
There's an opening in the swan's back. Tanen points to it. 'Put the key in there and turn it. Hold the wings down while you do so.'
The key fits perfectly in the swan's back and she turns it, the wrong way at first, then properly. As it goes around it clicks, the way the clock in the hall does when the maid turns it. She is not allowed to wind the clock, and she has always wondered how the clicking must feel. It's even better than she imagined; the mechanism inside the swan offers the perfect amount of resistance to her touch.
'Don't overwind it,' scolds Tanen. 'You'll break it.' She stops, nearly letting go.
'Now place it on the table and watch.'
When she lets go, the swan begins to flutter its wings. It bounces on the table, once, twice. Then it takes flight, shaky at first, then more certain, turning in wide, lazy circles near the ceiling.
Sela laughs and claps her hands. She watches, rapt, as the swan dips and sways and finally comes to rest on the dressing table, just where it started. Its wings flutter a few times more and then stop.
'May I do it again?' she says, reaching for the key.
Tanen places his hand on hers. His touch is cool, his skin dry. He takes the swan and drops it on the floor, crushing it under his boot. He points. 'Pick up the pieces,' he says.
Sela wants to cry, but knows that if she does then one of the crones will punish her. So she kneels and picks up the swan's remains: impossibly small gears and springs and a spiral of metal that burns to the touch.
She places the pieces gently on the table before her. She should have known. She should never have let herself believe that there would be kindness. Only Oca was kind, and then only when no one else was around.
'Some people,' says Tanen, 'are like this swan. They are not real. Not elves, but machines. Carefully crafted, they appear to be just like us. They speak and cry and bleed, and their insides are not gears and springs but flesh and bone, ingeniously created by our enemies.'
'How will I know which is which?' asks Sela, breathless.
'I will tell you. I will point them out to you.'
'And then what?' Do not cry. Do not cry.
'And then you will stop them, just as I have stopped your swan. The swan feels nothing. It is nothing. It is only a clever machine.'
'Some people are clever machines,' says Sela.
'Yes,' says Tanen. 'And nothing more.'
'You said today was a special day,' say Sela, remembering.
'Yes, indeed I did. The crones tell me that today is very important.'
The crones have told her about this. They have told her that it is the beginning of a great change, that she will have to be ready. They feel her fore head several times a day. They place strange instruments on her belly and back and listen intently to them. This morning, she remembers, one of them lifted her head and said, 'It's time.'
'Stand up and come with me,' says Tanen. 'I want to have the crones examine you again.'
