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The city glittered beneath him.
The morning had been unseasonably warm, with a smothering blanket of thick grey cloud hanging so low in the sky that the Prince had been almost tempted to reach out a window and try to grab it in handfuls. Even the immaculate interior of the palace had suffered under the sodden atmosphere, a mingled stench of wet dog, wet clothes and wet wood spitting and smoking in the fireplaces solemnly overpowering the best efforts of beeswax polish and lemon bleach. The sky had cleared in the afternoon, however, and by evening the half thawed slush on the streets and rooftops had hardened, glossing over into a fairytale landscape of sugar frosting and white diamond, that twinkled and winked at him under the light of a fat moon.
‘Someone’s going to die tonight’ the Prince thought, perched gargoyle like on the Palace roof. Below him hurried slithering specks of people; party-goers in fur coats like dabs of cotton wool, harried Christmas shoppers made humpy by heavy parcels and the occasional unlucky commuter skidding homewards in slippery soled office shoes. Even as he watched a car, bright red and no bigger than a toy, lost control going down the subtle slope of the main street and crunched with an inaudible gentleness into the boot of the van in front.
It was stupid, really, to hold a ball at all in this weather but there had been a ball at the palace every Christmas Eve since it had been built and if a world war hadn’t been enough to stop it, it was too much to hope that a little ice would. No, he would go to his mother’s awful party and dance with just enough awful people that he couldn’t be accused of moping - but not so many that they would call him a sybarite - and all the while his thoughts would be borne aloft on the night wind, flying with a white, wild bird.
The park would have been beautiful tonight.
A loud thump on the roof behind him jerked him out of his thoughts. Jerked him out also from his little hollow on the ice and sent him sliding, slow but unstoppable down the roof. Habit strangled the startled yell in his throat into a polite squeak; his slippered feet kicked uselessly for purchase.
He was actually going to slide over the lip of the roof. He was going to die. Why couldn't he have put his boots on, or tied the cord of his dressing gown to the chimney, or anything sensible like that? Pure, boneheaded stupidity was all it was, no excusing it with some subtle, unspoken longing for the peace of death, not since the ecstasy of meeting his Swan and of dancing together under a frosted blue sky amongst the black trunked trees, whose bare branches strained upwards as if trying to pierce the stars. Not since the promise, written in lake water and signed with a parting embrace, that he would be permitted to return and dance that dance anew. Well, now it was never going to happen again. Nothing would ever happen to him again.
Would the Swan miss him? Would his mother? Would anybody?
Something grabbed him. Something which held him firmly with strong arms and soft wings both. It spoke no word of greeting, or introduction, but the Prince knew it was the Swan from the touch alone. No one else ever touched him like this. A beak, or perhaps a soft mouth, was pressed lovingly against his cheek in a not quite kiss.
The Prince kissed him back, a privilege of his humanity. The Swan steadied them both with a few beats of his powerful wings, his bare feet gripped the snow far more easily than the smooth soles of the Prince’s slippers, though the Prince worried he must be horribly cold. He tried to pull his jacket around them both but it was stiff and tightly tailored, so he settled for putting his arms around him instead and comforted himself with the thought that however cold the night was, it would be nothing compared to the black waters the Swan must have left for him.
They settled back down on the roof, in the sparse shelter of a false chimney.
“You’ve come here before, haven’t you?” The Prince said. It felt very natural to talk to the Swan, though of course he couldn't answer. “I thought you were a dream.”
The Swan nuzzled him gently in reply, or maybe just in a spontaneous surge of affection. The Prince ran a white gloved hand over his hip, feeling the ridge where smooth skin turned to sprouting feathers.
“Have you a name?”
The Swan cocked his head in confusion and the Prince felt instantly ridiculous. What a stupid question, even if he could have spoken. Names were a human thing, might as well ask him if he’d gone to a good school, or for his salary. But it was so hard to remember that he was a wild animal sometimes, like now, when he sat so close the Prince could feel the warmth of his breath, letting the Prince rest his cheek against a powerful white shoulder.
A wild animal, the Prince reminded himself sternly, with beak and wings and feathers and a brain the size of a walnut. He turned his head a little to feel the soft, cold skin of the Swan’s shoulder against his lips. The Swan sighed, and his breath lifted them both.
There was a thonk from the room below them, as of someone walking very confidently face first into a door. The Prince had never been permitted anything so pedestrian as a lock, but he had a sturdily bound French dictionary that, opened at the midway point was the perfect width for jamming beneath the door, allowing it to briefly function as one.
It must have been the Secretary, anyone else would have at least knocked. He’d be furious. Had probably been furious even before he faceplanted into a sheet of solid oak, because the Prince was running late and had sent his valet away.
Their, strange, stolen moment was over.
The Prince lowered himself carefully back through the window. The Swan crouched on the edge, uncertain, the moon a halo behind him. How hot and bright the room was compared with the night outside and how strong smelling. The Swan balked, distressed.
The Prince stretched up, all his weight on his toes and on the crown embossed headboard, trying to caress him.
“Come with me,” he begged, petting the white feathers of his legs and the tops of his feet, icily cold from the snow. He would have liked to kiss him, The Swan looked soft, like he’d allow it, but the Prince couldn’t quite reach.
“My clothes would fit you. I have a lot of clothes, you could pick out any that you liked.”
The Swan bent lower, so the Prince’s reaching fingertips could brush over his face and lips, but he made no move to come inside.
It was unfair to ask such a thing of him, really. To take this wild, free creature and strap him up in a suit, to make him submit to being combed and polished by quick, cold, professional hands, before thrusting him out into a room of grabbing, staring people. People who would want him to stand straight and drink wine and expect him to make small talk from his songless throat. The Prince could hardly bear it himself, man though he was and born to it besides.
“Please”, he begged anyway. Maybe this selfishness was why people found it so difficult to love him.
The dictionary began to give way with a sad scrunching of torn paper. In a panic the Prince slammed the window shut, causing a startled flutter of wings on the other side and tugged his uniform into some kind of order. The seat of his trousers were damp from sitting in the snow; he could only hope his jacket hid it.
The Private Secretary squeezed in as he was pulling on his boots, his face a mask of polite fury. He picked up the ruined dictionary between a fastidious finger and thumb and looked around, trying to see what the Prince had been hiding. The Prince smiled blandly back but could not help his eyes darting to the window and the Secretary, quick as a striking snake, followed his gaze.
There was nothing there. The Swan had vanished.
* * *
The Palace was bonkers. She was glad she’d come, even with all the recent unpleasantness and even if her poached invite had said, with ominous italic font, that the dress code of all black was to be ‘strictly enforced’.
Every tree in the park had been wound with lights, every doorway boasted a wreath dripping with gilt edged silk ribbons and she’d seen at least six Christmas trees of varying sizes and opulence, the meanest of which would not have disgraced a mansion. Most delightful of all there was a man, wonderfully handsome and in the sharpest of suits whose sole joy in life appeared to be following after her with a tray of little cakes and persuading her to eat them. Not to disappoint him, she’d taken two.
The ballroom was almost unrecognisable, its architectural splendours buried under several inches of holly and tinkling glass icicles; a tree, tall enough for it’s gold star to graze the distant ceiling sheltered a generous flock of presents in the very centre of the room. The air was fragrant with the piney scent of it and with the multitude of clashing perfumes from the sweating guests.
With all of that going on, it took her several minutes to find the Prince. He was standing against the wall, sullenly apart from the gay crowds, in an alcove that would have shrouded him in shadow had it not been so festooned in twinkly little lights that he instead gloomed in his own personal Christmas Grotto. His eyes kept darting about, from the window to the balcony, and back again.
“Looking for someone?” She asked.
He startled, even though her earring were golden bells and her approach had been about as subtle as a sleigh ride.
He tore his gaze reluctantly from the balcony, looking more through her than at her. She wanted to tell him she’d given the money back, but the indifference of his gaze made her worry he wouldn’t care that she had.
“Bit different from a regular do, isn’t it?” She trilled, elbowing him sharply, hoping to jab a little life into him. “Is that a champagne fountain, or has someone taken a piss in the regular fountain?”
“Champagne” He answered wearily, refusing to acknowledge either the joke or the elbow. “And no, it isn’t different. It’s been exactly like this ever since I was born and it’ll be exactly like this till I die. I wish I could go and live in the lake.”
He looked back out the window and scowled. He’d never used to be this hard to talk to.
“Well it's different for me, anyway. We just had eggnog when I was a kid” she tried, valiantly ignoring the comment about the lake. “Not a fountain of it either, we had these cutesy red cups that we kept in the pantry the rest of the year.”
The man with the cakes appeared at her elbow again, doing his best to look completely deaf and she took another one just to have something to do with her hands.
“How interesting,” The Prince said, with mechanical politeness, looking fixedly out the window. “And then what happened?”
“We’d play games, I guess. You know, charades and monopoly, things like that." It was astonishing how difficult it was to have a conversation with someone who didn’t once look you in the eye. The tips of her French manicured nails dug into the frosting of her cake, sending shining sugar balls skittering over the polished floor.
“And we were allowed to eat an orange in bed if we promised not to get up before 6am, but I’d always creep out of bed at midnight anyway to try and talk to the cat.”
That finally got his attention.
“Talk to the what?” he asked, incredulously. Now he was staring at her too much. In desperation she took a second cake and stood with one in each hand.
“You know, to see if it could.” Now he, the Would Be Lake Dweller and Window Goggler, was looking at her as if she was the crazy one. She stuffed the first cake, considerably the worse for wear into her mouth and downed it in one painful swallow.
“It’s just a myth you know? Like the flying reindeer? At midnight, on Christmas Eve, all the animals learn how to talk. My mum said they praise the Christ child but I had a book of Christmas stories and in that they foretell deaths. Creepy stuff for a kid's book when you think about it.”
He looked so feverishly interested that she scrabbled about for more, wiping her sticky hand absent-mindedly down her dress. “There’s a Christmas carol about it, I think.”
“And what did it say?”
“The carol?”
“Fuck the carol. The cat. What did the cat say?”
She stared at him, he was horribly, fervently serious. She felt sick. There was frosting smeared on her dress. She’d just wanted him to have a little fun.
“It didn’t say anything,” she stammered, “It’s just a story. Animals can't talk, that’s…” she stopped herself before she said something rude “...that’s not something that can really happen.”
“Oh.” The Prince lost interest in her entirely, which was probably for the best because she could see the Private Whatever, looming by the buffet and fizzing with rage at the possibility they might do something publicly intimate. Fat fucking chance.
A flourish of trumpets made them both jump, even the cake man jolted his tray a little, tipping a tiny, rum soaked Bundt to its doom. Reflexively she snatched it out the air and now she had two god damn cakes again. She sneaked a glance at the Prince to see if he’d noticed. He hadn’t. He was gazing, enraptured, at a man walking along the parapet of the balcony.
The trumpets hadn’t been for him but he moved as if they had been, swaggering into the room in clinging leather trousers, his gaze, arrogant and assured, passing over each guest in turn. A whip – of all things! - trailed loosely from his fingers. For one glorious moment his gaze came scorching over her and she forgot the frosting on her dress, her two fists of cake and the fact that wearing leather trousers to a ball was a fucking tacky thing to do and simpered back at him, a full body simper that twisted her at the waist.
Then his eyes passed on. She straightened, embarrassed and took a sickening bite of cake. She looked anxiously at the Prince. If he’d seen the simper she was honest to god going to drown herself in the champagne fountain.
He hadn’t, his eyes had never left the Stranger and they were full of light.
“He came,” he whispered, “he came.”
* * *
The Prince had never been permitted a lock on his door but there was one now. He’d heard the drilling of them installing it before the drugs had dragged him down into a soft, feathery blackness that crammed into his mouth and eyes and ears and took all his senses from him. They hadn’t bothered to bolt the window though, they probably didn’t even know it could open.
The Swan had been waiting for him of course, out in the aching frozen night where he belonged; a slightly different Swan to the one he had slammed the window on earlier. This swan was clawed bloody, exhausted and frightened and he flinched a little when the Prince flung himself into his arms. They clung together and panted in mutual distress.
Noises came through the closed window from the room below, scratchings and the rhythmic thumps of a dozen bare feet.
“I should have known he wasn’t you,” The Prince moaned into the Swan’s white breast; the cuts there felt hot and strange against his cheek. “He was nothing like you, except that he was beautiful, and proud.”
The Swan bore his limp, sobbing weight stoically, though his thighs trembled with the strain of it and he had to shift awkwardly, seeking better purchase on the slanting tiles. Eventually the Prince recovered himself enough to sit upright and he stroked the shivering feathers with a hand that shook just as much.
Something thumped against the window, making it rattle in its frame.
Through it, they could see the bedroom floor foaming with white, feathery shapes, a restless sea of black striped faces and hissing mouths, snarled open in readiness. One of them, taller than the rest by a handspan, pressed its shoulder to the glass till the pane creaked, spiderwebbing into a multitude of tiny cracks.
The Swan flared open his wings and hissed back, ready to fight. The Prince grabbed him swiftly round the waist. It seemed such a dreadful thing to do, impious almost, to hold him like this against his will, a travesty of how they had held each other in the park. The Swan didn’t appreciate it much either, twisting in his grip. He was by far the stronger of them; the Prince had read somewhere that swans could break a man’s arm with a blow of their wing. He clung on anyway.
“Please,” He begged, “Don’t fight them, they’ll kill you.”
The Swan hissed again, wings crooked back with indignation and threat and the Prince tried a different tactic, shifting his hold and kissing the bared teeth.
“Don’t leave me.” One hand was twisted deep into soft feathers, the fingernails of the other were pressed so deep into the flesh of the Swan’s waist it must have caused him pain; The Prince had made his voice so much weaker than his grip.
“Please.”
The Swan sagged, breath leaving him in a soundless huff of defeat. Held like this he was for the moment a tamed, frightened thing. The Prince wondered if he could love anything without killing it a little.
They stared at each other miserably. ‘What do we do then?’ The Swan seemed to be asking. The Prince had nothing for him. People had been telling him what to do his whole life and even love couldn’t make him more than he had been, at least, not so quickly.
One of the window panes shattered; a sound like falling icicles. A white hand came through it, feeling about for them. The hissing rose and there was a clack, clack, clack of snapping, impatient teeth.
And then there was another sound, clear, golden and civilised, jarring in the wild, silvery night. Church bells, calling the midnight mass. Could it be so early? It seemed a lifetime, since he was last on the roof. If only he could go back to that moment. How monstrous he’d become in that sparse handful of hours. He smoothed the feathers he’d crumpled apologetically.
The window groaned ominously, wooden struts splintering as the first of the swans forced its head and sinewy shoulders through the shattered place. The raw edges of glass dug into its ashy flesh but it did not bleed and no pain showed on its intent, raptor's face. Once through it paused, resting its pale arms comfortably in the snow. Like all the swans it was very beautiful in the moonlight.
The Prince withdrew a step, taking the Swan with him. He sensed the yawning drop at their backs. The ground, under it’s thin coverlet of snow, would be as hard as iron.
But the swan made no attempt to follow them further. Its mouth opened and shut twice, goldfish like and it grunted a little to itself, testing. When it spoke its voice was raspy and conversational.
“The gardener will see a strange sight this Christmas dawn.”
A flutter and a scuffle and a second swan was beside it in a shower of glass shards, this one heaved its whole upper body through the smashed window and made a wild lunge at them. The Swan sent it back, spitting blood.
“Broken branches, black on the white ground,” it hissed through split red lips at its companion, “and a broken man amongst them.”
“Must have jumped,” the first swan replied, almost sweetly, “Mad with guilt. Or just mad.”
They laughed together, a harsh rattling in their throats and the flock laughed with them, jostling for position beneath.
The Prince edged backwards until he felt space beneath his heels and the Swan had to flap his wings once or twice, for balance. All of his feathers were bristling with rage and terror and the Prince could feel his heartbeat thrumming under his hand. Drawn by the movement, the first swan’s eyes snapped back to him.
“Jump.” It said, flatly and insistently and a chorus of voices echoed it from the room below. Jump. Jump. Jump.
The Prince looked down. Immediately beneath him was an iron gutter, slimy with icicles, and after that a sheer drop of maybe forty feet, and then an apple tree, its brittle winter branches bound with lights that twinkled off the snow, making a second constellation of stars. It would probably feel like flying, until it didn’t and that part would be very quick, with the ground so far and hard. Minutes at most. Surely even he could be brave for a few minutes.
“You’ll leave him alone, won’t you?” he begged the swans. “He hasn’t done anything but love me.”
The swans returned his gaze, cold and mute. Maybe that magic time had passed, and they were animals once more. Maybe they just had nothing more to say.
Gently but determinedly, he pushed the Swan from him. But the Swan must not have understood what he was trying to do, he was just an animal after all, an animal which clung to him with a man’s frantic hands, making them teeter dangerously on the roof edge and with his beast’s strength he drew the Prince towards him, until his feathers enveloped him as if they were his own.
One by one the swans crept through the broken window until they held the pair in a hissing, wordless ring. Clearly they would not be above pushing.
“Let me go!” Fear was making him cruel, he shoved and struggled, he pictured them both spinning through the shivering air and the frantic thrashing of the Swan’s wings as he was dragged down, still stubbornly, stupidly clinging, until at last there came the awful, terminal crunch of hollow bones smacking against the frozen earth. Finally, in desperation, The Prince struck him, but his strength had given out by then and it did no more than grieve them both.
The swans were so close now he could feel the smoke of their breath, see their pupils gone pin-prick small with excitement. The Swan held him tighter, almost smothering him, his feathers were everywhere, pricking needle like into the Prince’s chest and making long snowdrift curls along his arms.
“Let me go,” The Prince tried to say again, but his voice was going and the attempt emerged as nothing more than a few puffs of steam from his stiffening lips. Voiceless, helpless and ashamed he met the Swan’s gaze, trying to make him understand and the Swan looked back at him with eyes that were wild and human at once.
“I love you” The Swan said. The words were felt rather than heard, his voice no more than a last echo of departed magic.
“Fly”
* * *
The Prince was gone, vanished. The most recognisable man in the country had somehow escaped through a barred door on the coldest night of the year and wearing nothing but a pair of silk pyjamas, slipped away barefooted into the darkness.
First the palace was searched, and then the grounds, then the city. Eventually, the lake was dragged.
The Queen stood on the bank, stony faced in a mink coat, as the nets were pulled in one by one.
When the last one came in empty she gave a single dry sob, crushing the others back into her mouth with gloved hands and turned to go back into the palace, leaving the men to clean up.
Her heels kept sticking in the mud at the lake’s edge, for the first time since infancy she was awkward and ungainly. The Secretary offered her a suited, embarrassed elbow to lean on, tactfully averting his eyes. The workers, taking the hint, kept their gaze on their nets.
So it was only two swans, nestled in the stiff reeds at the lake’s edge that saw her unsteady progress back into the castle, and they did not bother to look at her for long.