A Captive of Wing and Feather Read online

  A Captive of Wing and Feather

  A Retelling of Swan Lake

  Melanie Cellier

  Beyond the Four Kingdoms Book 5

  A CAPTIVE OF WING AND FEATHER – A RETELLING OF SWAN LAKE

  Copyright © 2019 by Melanie Cellier

  Beyond the Four Kingdoms Book 5

  First edition published in 2019 (v1.0)

  by Luminant Publications

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, stored in, or introduced into a database or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN 978-1-925898-13-2

  Luminant Publications

  PO Box 203

  Glen Osmond, South Australia 5064

  [email protected]

  http://www.melaniecellier.com

  Cover Design by Karri Klawiter

  Editing by Mary Novak

  For Priya,

  faithful friend and reader from the start

  Contents

  Map

  I. The Lake

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  II. The Keep

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  III. The Promise

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  Map

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Melanie Cellier

  Part I

  The Lake

  Prologue

  I stumbled, my feet tripping over dead branches and leaf litter. My heart pounded harder than my steps, although no one was chasing me.

  A sweet, clear taste lingered in my mouth, but it elicited only dread. The lake had been beautiful, and the swans floating on it even more so, but I never wanted to see any of it again. I never wanted to see that man again or hear him spout such madness. I refused to believe his talk of enchantments.

  I should never have followed the sound of my name. I should have listened to the townsfolk and stayed away from the forest. It had been foolishness to try to prove I wasn’t afraid of it—even while nameless dread circled in my stomach.

  I burst out of the trees and onto the edge of town. Just as my feet touched the road, I faltered, a burning, stinging sensation washing over my body. My hands pressed against my exposed skin, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had come.

  A flash of white overhead made me flinch. Had that been a swan? I shook my head and kept my eyes resolutely down. It didn’t matter what it had been. I was returning to the haven, and I would never enter the forest again.

  Chapter 1

  Two Years Later

  An air of excitement hung over the town. A newcomer might not have noticed it, but I could feel it like a palpable presence around me. I’d spent enough time in Brylee over the past five years to recognize its moods. I glanced longingly at the various small knots of townsfolk talking on street corners and scattered around the market square, but there was no point stopping and trying to talk to any of them.

  Instead I moved faster, hurrying for the sprawling lodge house on the edge of town. My path took me past the bakery where I would usually receive a greeting or at least a wave. But on this occasion the young baker, Ash, seemed just as distracted as everyone else. He was deep in conversation with two older women who showed no inclination to leave, despite the fresh loaves already poking from their baskets.

  As I passed by, I caught a snatch of their conversation.

  “But what purpose could he have?” The woman sounded worried.

  “Perhaps we’re suspected of some sort of wrongdoing—treason even!” The second woman sounded even more concerned.

  Ash—who was usually fairly sensible—made no effort to gainsay this outrageous statement.

  “If you ask me, the best thing we can do is nothing,” he said. “If he wishes to pretend that his visit is nothing out of the ordinary, then we must do the same. Perhaps he’ll…”

  He trailed off, as if even he didn’t know what he hoped would happen, but both women nodded their agreement. I realized my steps had almost completely stilled and, shaking my head, I picked up my pace. If I wanted answers, my best hope was Cora. I wouldn’t get anything from this group.

  The dilapidated building—once an inn but now known to most of us as the haven—came into view, and my speed increased again. A brisk spring breeze nearly blew back my hood, and I grabbed at it just in time. I had an odd reputation around town, and with everyone so stirred up, I didn’t want to invite trouble.

  I pushed open the main door without knocking and looked around for Cora, the haven’s keeper. Instead a four-year-old girl came barreling into view, an excited grin on her face.

  “Lady!” She raced toward me. “Lady, Lady, Lady!”

  I hoisted her up onto my hip and paused for a moment to give her a cuddle. Unlike the townsfolk, Juniper didn’t care that I had no voice. I wanted to savor these moments while I still could—she would be too big for it soon. Already she seemed less and less of a baby, all long legs and waving arms.

  “I made muffins. All by myself. And you can have one. And I got a new tooth. Right at the back. See.”

  She opened her jaws wide and tipped her head back to an angle that completely obscured her mouth. I suppressed a smile and adopted an astonished and impressed expression.

  She paused for only a moment before snapping her teeth closed and continuing to prattle on, unbothered by my silence. When she began to squirm, I let her slip back down to the ground. She took my hand and tugged me down the long hallway into the large kitchen at the back of the lodge.

  Clearly Juniper didn’t know about whatever had the townsfolk so worked up—she would have blurted it out to me first thing if she did. I felt a surge of unease. The people of Brylee had a tendency to get worried about every tiny thing, but Cora and Wren were usually a little more sensible. If they felt the need to shield Juniper from what was happening, then perhaps it truly was a cause for concern.

  “Junie, there you are!” A young woman hurried into the room, her eyes fixed on her daughter. “I thought I told you to stay in the—” Her eyes fell on me. “Oh, Lady, you’ve arrived. That would explain it, then.”

  The disapproving look she had fixed on her daughter didn’t relent, but the girl let go of my hand and ran happily to her mother anyway. She rushed through an almost unintelligible sentence from which I caught the word muffin.

  Wren’s expression dissolved into a reluctant smile, and she nodded. Juniper ran off toward the far bench where I could see a cooling rack filled with muffins. Wren gave me an apologetic look.

  “I hope you’re hungry. She won’t relax until you’ve had one, I’m afraid. I needed an excus
e to be out of the classroom this morning, and Juniper has been begging me to do some baking with her.”

  I gave her an inquiring look.

  “Frank and Selena are nearly old enough for apprenticeships now, and they’re both outdoing each other trying to prove how reliable they are, so I’ve been wanting to give them a chance to take charge of the younger ones.” She chuckled. “Juniper was a little too eager to escape her schooling, but she’s still young. I wouldn’t even have started her at it yet if I wasn’t responsible for the older children as well.”

  I smiled to indicate my willingness to become a muffin taster and slipped onto one of the stools surrounding the enormous, worn wooden table that filled the middle of the kitchen. Wren and Juniper had been at the haven for more than three years now, and I knew that she took her role of teacher to the haven’s children seriously. Her attention for them hadn’t wavered, despite their numbers being low this year—Cora having found adoptive families for three of the younger ones only a few months ago, and two of the older ones having left for apprenticeships that she had secured.

  Normally at least some new children would have arrived to replace them, but we’d been seeing fewer and fewer people making their way to the haven from distant towns. Travel all across the kingdom had been dropping from all reports.

  I was glad Wren was getting a small break. And perhaps she could answer my question. Glancing toward Juniper, I confirmed she was still busy selecting the perfect muffin. When I looked back at Wren, it was with a raised eyebrow and an inquiring tilt of my head.

  When she didn’t immediately seem to understand, I jerked my head toward the front door and the rest of town. Adopting an exaggerated expression of concern, I mimed my best impression of the townsfolk I had passed.

  A woman several decades our senior, her hair in no-nonsense braids against her scalp, entered the room just in time to witness my performance. She snorted a laugh.

  “Are you sure you’re not a long-lost member of my family? You look exactly like my old Aunt Florinda. She wore an expression just like that every day of her life.”

  Wren chuckled. Only my brown hair, thick and wavy, looked anything like Cora’s—and since she always wore hers in braids, even that wasn’t much of a similarity. Certainly my pale skin and blue eyes looked nothing like the warm brown of hers.

  I smiled as well, but inside I hid a sigh. I knew every branch of my family tree, tracing back multiple generations—my father had insisted on it. There was no chance I had any relatives half as down-to-earth and kind as Cora. I would have to content myself with being adopted into the haven’s strange family in heart, if not in actuality.

  When Wren’s humor subsided, I made a series of hand gestures that produced a sigh from Cora, her face falling into more serious lines. Juniper trotted back toward us before she could reply, however, proudly bearing a muffin on a little plate which she placed before me.

  “What are you talking about?” She looked between us all.

  “Nothing that concerns you,” said Wren. “Lady has her muffin now, so why don’t you get back to your letters?” She sent a stern eye toward the abandoned slate on a small, child-sized table tucked into the corner of the room. I could just make out a single, misshaped S scratched across its surface.

  “But—” Juniper began to protest, only to cut herself off when she saw her mother’s unyielding expression.

  With a large, dramatic sigh, she hung her head and shuffled off toward the small table and chair. I bit my lip, trying to hold in a laugh.

  Wren rolled her eyes. “Anyone would think I was the cruelest of mothers.”

  Cora raised an eyebrow. “I can’t imagine where she gets the dramatics from.”

  Wren laughed, her eyes lingering on her daughter, but gradually the humor dropped from her face. “She does seem like Audrey, doesn’t she?”

  I abandoned my muffin to put a reassuring hand on her arm, despite the stab of pain in my midriff at the mention of Wren’s sister.

  “She’ll be back, when she’s ready,” Cora said in a calm tone.

  Audrey was sixteen—two years younger than me and seven years younger than Wren who often treated her like another daughter. She had told me once that older siblings couldn’t help taking on that role when they lost their parents too young.

  I had refrained from observing that not all older siblings reacted in such a manner. For five years I had refused to mention my home, my family, or even my kingdom—it was habit now as much as intention.

  Wren’s mothering had irritated Audrey at times, but I knew that underneath she loved it. And you only had to look at Juniper to see what a wonderful mother Wren made. But I knew she blamed herself for Audrey’s departure. They had fought the night before she left, and it ate her up inside that Audrey hadn’t been back even once for a visit in the six months since she went to work up at the local castle.

  I was the only one who knew there was more to the story, but I didn’t dare tell Wren.

  Cora met my eyes silently, and my hand dropped from Wren’s arm. I returned to my muffin, keeping my face hidden from my friend. Cora didn’t know the whole story either, but I knew she had at least some suspicions about the castle, and we had a tacit agreement not to mention anything about them to Wren. Wren thought Cora’s antipathy toward Lord Leander was solely because he didn’t send supplies to assist the residents of the haven as his father always used to do. Better that she believe her sister still angry with her than that she worry herself about something worse. Not when there was nothing she could do about it—except get into trouble herself.

  Once I had finished Junie’s treat, I flapped my hands to capture both of the other women’s attention and re-signed my question to Cora. Wren looked between us with a raised eyebrow. She had learned some of my more common hand signals, but only Cora fully understood the makeshift communication system she and I had cobbled together.

  “So you noticed the townsfolk are getting themselves all tied up in knots, I take it?” Cora’s voice held enough exasperation to allay the worst of my fears.

  “It is concerning, though.” Wren kept her voice low, casting a warning glance toward Juniper who had abandoned her slate and was crouched down on the floor of the kitchen, closely examining a small bug. “Why is he here, of all places? And why is he trying to hide who he is?”

  I gave them both a look of exasperation. They were as bad as Ash and his customers. I made an impatient gesture with my arms, and Wren gave me an apologetic look.

  “Oh, sorry, Lady. It seems we have a newcomer in town. He checked into one of the inns, instead of going up to the Keep, but of course the innkeeper’s wife recognized him. Apparently the innkeeper questioned him about it but was entrusted to keep the secret.”

  “Which naturally means the entire town now knows,” said Cora with a roll of her eyes.

  I gave them both a look of frustrated confusion. The loss of my voice was most infuriating at times like this. Who had arrived in Brylee? And what was he trying to keep hidden?

  “It turns out,” Wren said, realizing my exasperation, “that Brylee’s newest visitor is none other than—”

  A loud rapping on the door made her break off. Startled, we all exchanged glances. No one ever bothered to knock at the haven’s door. It was well known to be a refuge, open to all.

  “That can’t be…” Wren stared toward the hallway open-mouthed. “Surely that can’t be…”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out.” Cora marched toward the kitchen door.

  Juniper, usually boisterously friendly, seemed to have taken exception to the loud knock and had squeezed herself under her tiny table. Wren sighed and hurried over to extract her while I followed behind Cora.

  “Greetings,” a young, male voice called from the entryway. “Is anyone here?”

  I faltered slightly, and a crease appeared between Cora’s brows. What was a young man—a stranger, apparently—doing at the haven? This was a safe place, a refuge for women, children, a
nd the elderly—people who had nowhere else to go. The only young or middle-aged men who came here were townsfolk bringing supplies for the inhabitants. Ash, the baker, was a regular, bringing any unsold wares at the end of the day.

  Cora stepped into the entryway, a commanding presence.

  “I am the proprietress of this establishment. May I help you?”

  “I hope so,” he said. “I’m looking for someone, and I hear that many people find their way here.” The voice sounded friendly…and vaguely familiar.

  I stepped to the side to get a clearer view around Cora. A tall young man stood just inside the door, his stance confident but relaxed. He wore the simple but sturdy clothes of a woodsman, and he had a quiver and bow strapped to his back.

  I stared at his olive-toned skin, tracing the contours of his face with my eyes. His brown hair looked windswept, ruffled into small curls around his ears and the nape of his neck, and his brown eyes contained flecks of gold. Everything about him was brown and green—he looked like he belonged in the forest. If this was the newcomer, I could see how the townsfolk had immediately recognized him as out of place in the town.