The Six Swans - 1. Una and Her Brothers

Once there was a king of a small, bright, new country on the edge of a large, dark, old forest, and in the forest lived a witch. King Edwin was the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the first king of that country. The witch was the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the last reigning queen of that country, from whom that first king had taken the kingdom, whether by force, or by stratagem, or by right of succession, none could now remember. The witch knew only that although royal blood flowed in her veins, the crown which might have adorned her brow rested on the head of a stranger.

King Edwin was a young widower with seven children: six boys and, youngest, a girl, Una. The queen on her deathbed had told her daughter the great secret of the king and what must be done about it: however good and wise a king he was, and however kind a father, he lay under the same curse that had afflicted every king of that country. Once a month, at the full moon, from midnight until dawn, he changed into a powerful, unreasoning beast intent only on killing.

The king himself remembered nothing of these episodes. His wife had persuaded him to spend the night of each full moon locked in the dungeon, as a gesture, she said, that he would condemn no prisoner to a fate he could not endure himself. Una kept the king to this practice. She kept his condition secret, so that the feeling of the people would not turn against him, and she and her brothers hid the scars they bore from occasional encounters with their father in his mad state.

King Edwin’s compliance with this plan grew more grudging each year. Also, as time passed, his strength grew, so that his attempts in beastly form to escape the prison were coming closer to success. Una and her brothers feared that the present arrangement would not confine him much longer. The girl went to seek the help of the witch in the forest.

When Una found her, the witch was chanting a spell over amulets and charms in a small box. "Why are you talking to those things like that?" the girl asked.

"Words are power," the witch replied.

"Stone and iron will not hold my father much longer, and it will take more than words to outdo iron," the girl said.

"Don't be too sure," the witch countered. "Words create thoughts, and thoughts are a prison more inescapable than the deepest dungeon." The girl shuddered as she listened. "So you want something that will hold your father. Maybe I can give you something, maybe not. The day is coming when you and your brothers must be prepared to fly--" she paused and looked closely at the girl, "--from danger."

"Help me," the girl asked. "Tell me what I must do to save my brothers. I don't know whom else I can ask."

"I will help you, don't worry," the old woman said. Vaguely she repeated, "You must be prepared--" then said decisively, "Charms. One for each. Each on a chain. Little swan charms on chains. One for each boy and one for the girl. Here, take them. When danger is upon you, and there is no other escape, slip the chains over your heads and around your necks. Not until then." She pushed seven tiny ivory swans, each on a fine gold chain, into Una's hand.

"What shall I pay you?" the girl asked.

"Pay? Pay? Oh, you shall pay," the witch said, and began to laugh, and would not stop, so that the girl ran all the way back to the castle.

At the very next full moon, Una persuaded her reluctant father to lock himself up, then gathered her brothers and showed them the charms.

"It's a trick," one said. "The witch just wants us to think the charms will do something. We'll put them on when there's no escape, they won't do anything, and Father will kill us all when the madness is on him."

"It could be a worse trick," another said. "The charms could turn us all into beasts like him, and we'll all kill each other."

"If you had better ideas about what to do, you might have said something earlier," the girl retorted.

At that moment they heard the crash of rock and the splintering of wood, and knew that the king, in the form of a beast, had escaped his confinement. His roars came closer, and then they heard him sniffing directly outside their door.

"Put on the charms," Una cried, passing them out to her brothers. "There are only six! Where is the last one?"

The beast threw his weight against the door, and the hinges bent.

One brother said to his sister, "We will lift you into the rafters, and if Father breaks in, we will use the charms, and you will be safe out of reach." As soon as Una was seated overhead, the beast crashed against the door again. This time the door burst into splinters. As their father thundered in, the brothers slipped the chains around their necks and instantly changed into six white swans. In a great rush of wings, they escaped over the head of the beast and out the open doorway.

At dawn Una climbed down and searched until she found her father, exhausted, at the end of a trail of destruction through the country. She had him taken to his chambers to rest, and went out to search for her brothers. Deep into the woods she wandered, and at sunset on the third day came to a small house by a lake. She heard beating wings overhead. Six swans circled over her, then alighted around her, and became her brothers in form again.

"You are safe!" she cried to them.

"We will be human for only a quarter of an hour," one said. "Then we will be swans again until tomorrow evening. So we will be every day, human for only a quarter of an hour, until the spell of the charms is broken, for we cannot take them off." And he showed that the charm was no longer on a chain, but had changed to an ivory-colored image in his skin, as if tattooed.

Another brother said, "You must go ask the witch how to reverse the spell.”