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The wild swans came down from the north in early autumn, the whistling of their wings echoing across the lake in the growing twilight. Fakir stood on the dock with his neck craned and admired their fluid grace. In the water beside him, Ahiru watched too with her usual anatid inscrutability. Still, he couldn't help wondering if she wished she might follow them--if this little lake and his company weren't enough for her compared to the wide world beyond.
"There's no need to be jealous," Fakir told her when the flock had passed--just in case. "You're worth twenty of them and more. There will never be anyone like you in the world. Now, come on, let's go in to dinner."
Ahiru perked up, clucking in anticipation, and the two of them returned to shore, the tension safely defused for the moment.
When the lake froze over, Fakir broke the ice so Ahiru could swim and kept a shallow pool by the fire inside his house where she could paddle indoors during the worst of the winter storms. She foraged for herself during the warmer months, dabbling in the water and nibbling on the grassy lawns, but now she feasted on dry oats and seeds, peas, and cracked corn, plus some chopped cabbage now and then for variety.
On the coldest days, Ahiru lay sleepily in her nest of blankets, unwilling to expose her bare feet to the cold and Fakir chuckled quietly to himself and let her be. Would that he, too, could stay curled up in bed all day--but someone had to haul the wood and build the fire or else they'd freeze to death, not to mention all the other chores of daily life. During those long winter evenings, he wrote his stories and read them and others to her--though he skipped the tale of the ugly duckling who wished to be a swan in case it hit a little too close to home.
In the spring, the swans returned by the same route, and once again, Fakir and Ahiru watched them pass over the lake. This time, a pair of swans broke off and circled once, twice, three times, as if considering landing on the water, only to break off when they caught sight of Fakir glowering at them from the far shore.
There was no way to tell if Ahiru wished they would stay, but Fakir was secretly relieved. Even if Ahiru wanted to be friends with them (and she wanted to be friends with everyone, regardless of species, logistics, or common sense), he was afraid the larger birds might bully her, as swans so often did. He wasn't a knight anymore, but took his promise to protect Ahiru seriously, and would battle a whole army of swans for her if necessary. But swans were fearsome opponents, and Ahiru hated fighting, so it was just as well it hadn't come to blows.
In early summer, Ahiru's feathers gradually began falling out, leaving a trail of shed plumage everywhere she went. The larger flight feathers lay in disorganized piles where they had fallen, but the tiny down feathers tended to drift with the wind like bright yellow dandelion fluff. She was even more rumpled and disheveled than usual, but if her appearance bothered her, she didn't show it--though she did spend more time preening, as if to compensate.
The first time Fakir had witnessed a molt, he'd been terrified something was wrong, but no, it was normal for waterfowl to replace their feathers each year. He swept up the mess as best he could, saving the best flight feathers for quill pens and the down to stuff a mattress, and kept a discreet eye on Ahiru, since she was unable to fly and thus more vulnerable to mishap and predators.
So he noticed when the tips of the incoming pin feathers--red at first, filled with blood as they emerged from the skin--lightened from pink to pure, angelic white--and stayed white, no matter what happened. He noticed as her neck gradually lengthened, and her bill turned orange. One month after the molt began, it was like an entirely different creature stood before him.
That was when he realized that he--well, everyone, really--had gotten it all wrong: Ahiru wasn't a duck, after all. Somehow, impossibly, she was a swan and always had been.
"Idiot," Fakir said in exasperation once the initial shock had worn off. "How could you not know something like this?"
The swan craned her neck at him and gurgled what might have been an apology. Fakir sighed, and stroked her head.
"Don't worry, it's not your fault," he said. He didn't know anything about Ahiru's life prior to her tumultuous arrival at Gold Crown Academy as a human girl, but he could imagine it well enough. "No one told you who you were, and you were all by yourself. There's no way you could have known."
There was no response from Ahiru, not that he expected any.
"Fine," he said aloud, for his benefit as much as hers. "But I'm not changing your name, just because you're a swan now. You'll always be Ahiru to me."
A swan named Duck was utterly ridiculous, of course, and yet somehow completely fitting. This was Ahiru, after all, who had always attracted these kinds of absurdities in the past, so why on earth would they stop now?
The swan cooed as if in agreement and nuzzled against him, head curled companionably against Fakir's knee. She was quite pretty like this, he had to admit--a far cry from the duck he'd thought he'd known.He didn't understand quite how it had happened--he would have sworn up and down she was a duck and had always been one--but there was no arguing with the evidence.
Besides, there was precedent for this kind of thing. After all, there was the story about an ugly duckling who grew up to be a swan... which it raised some troubling questions about what might happen next. The two of them might be done with stories, with reality merging and blending into fantasy... but were the stories done with them?
But despite Fakir's fears, life went on as normal. All summer long, Ahiru was the undisputed queen of the pond, gliding across the water with newfound grace while he sat on the dock and pretended to fish, grateful for any excuse to enjoy her company. Gradually, the days shortened, the heat ebbed and the trees began to change color, the leaves drifting down into the water just as Ahiru's feathers had done earlier in the year, and Fakir dared to hope that all was well.
And then one day, he heard the whistle of wingbeats and there was the flock of swans overhead, migrating south for the winter again. Once again, Ahiru stared up at the sky and watched them pass--and once again, he had no idea what she was thinking.
This was part of the story, too, he remembered with mounting horror. The ugly duckling caught sight of the flying swans and yearned to join them--but now Ahiru was a swan herself; if she wanted to join them now, they would not stop her.
Is this life really enough for you? Fakir thought. Do you want a family, a mate--all those things you can never have with me? Do you want to be a wild bird, fully and freely, and not just toddle after me forever?
He came out of his reverie to notice Ahiru eyeing him speculatively.
"If you want to go, then go," he said aloud, more harshly than he meant to. "I'm not stopping you."
She cocked her head, hesitated--
"Go!"
And to Fakir's dismay, she obeyed him, kicking her feet and flapping her white wings over the surface of the water until she was airborne. She circled overhead once, twice, three times as if daring him to change his mind--and then she broke off and vanished over the southern horizon after the flock.
Fakir put his head in his hands and fought back the tears that threatened to spill out uncontrollably. You did the right thing, he tried to assure himself. She'll be better off with her own kind. Happier, even.
I won't miss her.
It was a lie and he knew it.
***
He wrote poems that winter--terrible maudlin rhymes he burned immediately afterward to prevent anyone from stumbling across them. He lurked in the library, studiously avoiding Autor, and ran his fingers over the engraved color plates listing the different kinds of waterfowl and their habits so evocative of one bird in particular. Life went on in the human world around him, a hustle and bustle so very different from the rhythm of the swans, and he couldn't help wondering what Ahiru was up to at any given moment.
It wasn't Ahiru's fault that she'd changed or gone away--nor Fakir's, for that matter. They'd both acted according to their natures, and there was no shame in that. If he'd asked her to stay, she would have stayed--and for the rest of his life, he would have to live with the knowledge that he was holding her back, and he would never have been able to bear it.
That was why he refused to write a story about her coming back, no matter how he feared for her safety and well-being. She'd chosen to live a swan's life in peace and he would respect that, even if the world was a dangerous place for a wild bird, especially one as good-hearted and peaceable and (okay, admit it) lacking in common sense as Ahiru.
Even so, he couldn't shake the impression that for one shining moment, he'd touched something unbearably precious, only to throw it away on account of his own pride and stubbornness. It was just as well he was no longer a knight--this was the sort of betrayal and abandonment that knights in stories were always skewering themselves on their own swords for.
He wrote more poetry instead. It did not help.
***
As spring drew near, Fakir spent more and more time by the lake, though he knew the odds of being able to spot a single swan out of the crowd were slim to none. Even so, when he heard the first whistling wingbeats overhead, he glanced up eagerly, daring to hope.
One swan--one single, solitary swan--paused in mid-stroke and peeled off from the group. But instead of shying away from Fakir, she flew towards him, landing in the water at his feet with a triumphant splash that soaked him to skin--and then, before he could react, she had hopped up onto the dock, pausing for a moment to shake herself triumphantly before waddling towards him.
On his knees, reaching out, grabbing and hugging her close--and miracle of miracles, she let him, where any self-respecting wild swan would have mauled him. He buried his face in her feathers, inhaling the strange musky scent of her, grateful beyond words for a second chance after he'd once again made a complete idiot of himself.
This wasn't part of any story Fakir had ever read, but that was all right--it was so bizarre and illogical, he could trust that it was truly her decision, not some story working through her.
But it made sense, in a peculiar sort of way. She was the only being he'd ever met more stubborn than he was, after all. And she'd never, ever given up on Fakir, even when he himself had.
"Idiot," he whispered, not knowing whether he meant her or himself. And then, to Ahiru--just to be sure--"Are you sure about this?"
Swans couldn't exactly roll their eyes at him, but from the way Ahiru gently bit at his wrist, she did not appreciate his doubts.
Maybe she was here to stay forever and ever, or maybe she'd go away in the fall and be a normal swan for again; there was no way to know what the future might bring. The only thing that mattered was that she was here now, and he'd cherish their time together for as long as it lasted.
"Well," he said through chattering teeth as his body reacted unfavorably to his current soggy state and demanded that he do something about it. "Welcome home. I missed you."