If it had been a man maybe it wouldn't have felt so wrong, so dirty. I feel shame. If it had been a man I wouldn't feel so corrupted. I feel dead. If it had been a man my children would have been normal. I feel fear. How am I to raise half-swan, half-humans? Or will they be all swan? How will my husband, how will the king, raise swans? How will it look for the King and Queen to be raising feathered, beaked children?
The swan was white, such a pure and beautiful white. In my dreams it's black as hell. Sometimes red, but never white, never pure. It violated me and then just swam away indifferently, reveling in its bloodied plumage. My husband put out an edict promising death to all swans. It's ridiculous to blame all swans, but when I see a beak or a wing all I can thing of is the enormous bird on me, wings squeezing me and beak digging into me.
The seasons have passed, Winter, Spring and Summer, but I still feel stuck in that frigid time. I still cannot eat a bird, cannot see a bird, cannot bear the feathered dress I once adored.
And now this. The eggs. Two enormous and round eggs. Cracking.
-O-
The eggs are cracking. The eggs that came out of my wife. I still remember the day she came stumbling back into the palace: feathers in her hair, dress torn and muddied, tears on her face, a
cut on her shoulder, and a cut across her heart. She is my Queen. I am the King- the King and a mere bird dared to harm what was mine. She isn't the woman I married any longer. How can she be though when I am no longer the man she married? I don't even feel worthy of the title man. My dear wife in pain and I cuckolded. I'm sure she thinks I'm just humoring her wishes by slaughtering the swans of the nation, by ordering the kitchens not to serve her any fowl. But oh, the birds are foul. She won't touch birds, but I will. I've eaten almost nothing but, they need to be destroyed, consumed. I feel weak.
How can I raise feathered children? What am I to do about the monstrosities that are going to emerge from these eggs? We shall have to kill them. The people of the kingdom can never know my shame. Children of the Queen, my beloved wife, and destined for death. The eggs are shattering. The mongrels will spend more time entering the world than they'll spend in it. No one can know. The shame would be unbearable.
-O-
He's waiting with me. Sitting stiffly in his straight backed chair, but his hands betray him. They're shuddering and he's caressing the dagger strapped to his thigh. Can I let him kill them? Will I even have a say in the matter? The mere thought of the bird still makes me shudder. I close my eyes in fear when I think on it, but those are still my children. His, the terrible bird's as well, but mine. The children will be innocent, plumage unstained. The stain on my memory cannot be lifted though. Nor can the stain on my heart. Maybe their plumage will be stained, a remnant of the horror.
The plumage is not stained. There is no plumage. How is it that the product of my…union… with the creature could be human? Two of the children are even…beautiful. Two
boys, two girls- not a feather in sight. Two children with mine own features and those of my husband. Two more with an unnatural radiance.
Tyndareus had sprung to his feet when the shells fell way, but now he is on the floor, kneeling. Crying.
"A god!" he cried.
-O-
My children! Two are in my own image, holding true to my dark hair and eyes of obsidian. Yet two are glowing with a supernatural beauty. It was no mere avian that took my wife, that stole her from me and took my manhood from me- it was a god. It wasn't enough for him to be all powerful? He had to force himself onto Leda? I cannot kill these children, these…demi-gods. All my life I've been good to the Gods. I've sacrificed to them, I've praised them, followed their edicts. And now my household has been simultaneously blessed and cursed by one of them. I would be ruined if I killed them, cursed forever by the gods.
Leda, she's scooped them up into her arms. She's cradling them and holding them to her breast. They aren't mine, the ones she's feeding, the ones taking from her. If whichever God took her is watching, it's only right that she feed them first, that she favor them. But my own wife is letting my children lie there among the shattered egg. It's more than I can bear. And now I'm holding them, clutching them to my chest, trying to take them into me and make them mine. The taint of the egg needs to be erased.
-O-
He's scooped up his own, they're being fed by the tears trickling down his face. Salt for them and milk for the product of the feathered monstrosity that can no more be a monstrosity.
What must the god have been thinking when he saw the slaughtered swans? The pain I suffered. He must have been angered. I cannot allow that upon this household. These children are mine. Mine to raise, Mine to love, Mine to mold. Dear God, let that be enough.
-O-
Dear God, she's theirs now. I don't think she's even seen what's mine, what's hers, what's ours. She's lost to them. I've lost her to them. My children have lost her to them.