The next sound that filled her ears was not the voice of her father heartily greeting her brothers. Instead an it was an awful commotion that caused a cold chill to run along her petite spine.
Rising from the stool, she pressed her back on the cold stone, and edged along the wall. Unseen, she hoped, she peered out the window just in time to see what appeared to be six white swans fly off into the distance. It was not her beloved father coming to collect his children, but an intruder dressed in a long red dress, and accompanied by her father’s entourage.
Her father’s new wife was there to destroy them!
Her brothers prepared her for this moment, but never did she think for even an instant their warnings would ever come to fruition.
She clearly recalled their words:
Run down the back stairs of the house, into the forest, and hide in the hollowed out oak tree until all is quiet.
Like a streak of white light, she descended the back stairs, and rushed barefoot into the forest, until she come upon the gnarly old oak tree, now dead and hollow. Once safely inside, she drew her knees to her chest, and dropped her head.
For hours she strained to hear any sound above the cacophony of bird songs all around her, and the scurrying forest creatures outside the tree. The sounds were so loud and so close; she feared the forest creatures might soon attack her. Silent tears of sorrow fell from her eyes, onto her pale cheeks, as she considered the fate of her brothers.
Her father couldn’t have possibly revealed their whereabouts to his evil witch of a wife without being under her spell.
Could he?
He would have had to be tortured, possibly even murdered, to betray his children. The thought that her father was most likely dead, doubled her sorrow. Yet she remembered to remain completely silent in her safe haven.
When night cloaked her hiding place in blackness, she fell into an unsettled sleep, and awakened sometime many hours later, to the light creeping into the opening of the hollowed out tree.
A sense of intense sadness enveloped her as the events of the previous day rushed upon her. Perhaps things were not as dire as they seemed, she prayed, and crawled on hands and knees from the tree.
As she stood, she straightened her spine, inch by painful inch, and flexed each stiff limb one by one and slowly she recovered from her painful position of contortion she endured for so many hours.
Rushing back to the stone house, the mossy ground was spongy and fragrant beneath her bare feet. Above her, the sunlight was obstructed by the canopy of lush forest greens and browns. If things were different, she would have loved to explore this new fairy tale world.
When she reached the stone house, she walked on tip-toes to avoid detection in case the evil witch or her entourage lay in wait for her return.
The hair on her forearms stood as erect as miniature soldiers at attention. But all was eerily quiet. She entered through the back door, and scanned her surroundings.
Nothing, no one; she was totally alone. It was a feeling she never experienced in her lifetime. The house looked as lonely and foreboding as when her father left her and her brothers to fend for themselves. At the base of the stairs she stood, too frightened to ascend. Perhaps someone was hiding there, waiting for her return. No, she wouldn’t go up the stairs. Instead, she went to the kitchen and nibbled on the remnants of a stale cake to sate her hunger, and drank a long, cool glass of water.
She exited through the front door, and simply stared at her surroundings. All that remained from the previous day’s altercation was a trail of white swan feathers that led into the forest. At once, she knew she must find her brothers. They’d obviously been kidnapped. They would never have left her behind.
Following the trail of feathers for hours, she found herself hopelessly lost within the deep, dank forest. Exhausted, she stopped and picked a handful of berries, popped them one by one into her mouth, and drank rain water collected on the leaves.
As night fell once again, she happened upon an abandoned shack, tacked together from mismatched tree branches, and sealed with mud. The door was open, and she crept inside. A row of six beds sat in a line in the one room shack. She did not dare to get into any of the beds, but crawled beneath one. She curled up, and used her arm to rest her head upon, intending only to rest for a few minutes. But her eyelids grew heavy, and sleep overtook her.
She awoke sometime later; perhaps many hours later, to the rustling of flapping wings. Hidden beneath the bed, she peered out to a wondrous sight.
One by one, six grotesquely mutated swans entered the shack. Each was the size and proportion of a waif-like man, but hunched, with gangly legs. Instead of arms they had the mighty wings of a swan, and the feathers that go with them. A long bill protruded from their faces which were harrowing shades of green, ranging from pale to dark. Their eyes were completely black and dead and their hair hung long and sleek. It was truly a horrifying sight before her eyes.
And then to Princess’s amazement, the swan creatures shed their skins and feathers, and to fascinated eyes, her brothers appeared one by one.
Happiness rose within her, and she scrambled from beneath the bed, and began to embrace her brothers, and danced with them across the floor.
Her eldest brother, Xavier, stopped her, and held her face
