Chapter 11: Odette Alone

Baron Von Rothbart's lake. June.

Odette made a vow to herself that first bitter night on the lake. She would not allow herself to become human again until she could fly. Had she known then how long it would take—how many days and nights she would spend bobbing on the water or crouched in the forest just watching other birds take off, how often she would pay in scrapes, bruises or torn feathers as she fell through the branches—she might never have made that vow.

It didn't help that by the end of the first week, she was horribly malnourished. Despite having seen swans all over her kingdom, she'd never paid close attention to what they ate. She spent most of the first few days scavenging for food, learning by trial and error which plants were palatable. On the fourth day, desperate for anything with protein, she briefly considered eating a caterpillar. She'd nearly closed her beak around it when she had the chilling thought, What if that bug was a person once too?

That was also the day she discovered the alligators. An entire swarm of them had congregated in a small inlet on the far side of the lake, hidden by cypress and willow trees. The sight of them made her heart stop dead. Alligators were ambush predators. They could break her neck with a jaw snap or drag her beneath the surface and drown her. She was not willing to bet her life that the alligators knew Rothbart wanted her alive.

For the next few minutes she was so intent on scrambling to shore, she didn't stop to wonder why so many alligators had gathered in such a small spot. Only after she had hidden herself among the reeds several feet from the lake did she notice the glowing amber rift deeper within the inlet. The alligators were guarding a portal.

The portal shimmered like an angry orange gash, knifing from ten feet in the air down to the water's surface. Odette had no way of knowing where it led. But it was obviously somewhere Rothbart did not want her to discover. That alone, even without the insufferable monotony of her new life, made her determined to find a way through.

She remained in the reeds long past sundown, watching the alligators weave back and forth in the water. She counted twenty in total. But after several hours of observing them, she noticed something else odd. Most of the alligators had curiously repetitive movements. When she worked up the courage to toss pebbles in their direction, they didn't react, even when the stones landed right on their faces. Eighteen of them were illusions, she realized. She didn't need to get past twenty alligators. She only needed to get past two.

In the heat of the following afternoon, while the two real alligators dozed, Odette threaded her way through the eighteen false ones. She floated through the orange portal and found herself…

…on another lake. A lake surrounded by white trees and white grass. The entire landscape was so immaculate, it was painful to look at. Only a ruined black fortress and a sickly green mist on the lake's far side broke the pallor.

This was Nefynmor—the cursed island her father had ordered evacuated a year ago. The island where Rothbart had launched his first assault on her kingdom eighteen years earlier. She was back in Cymdros, but she was no closer to home than she'd been before.

Why would Rothbart create a portal back here? she thought. Her best guess was that he needed something from his old keep—or that he planned to use Nefynmor as a base to strengthen his grip on the rest of her kingdom. She had to admit, it wasn't a bad plan now that the island was deserted. No one would notice he'd broken the laws of his banishment.

A flash of orange light shimmered on the water to her left. At first, she thought it was the reflection of the portal she'd just come through. But when she looked up, she saw something she did not expect—a second orange portal hovering in the air. Unlike the first portal, this one seemed almost alive. It pulsed like a heart with no body. As she stared at it, she felt her own heart matching its rhythm, beat for beat. She could feel the eldritch magic coursing through her feathers.

The warlock started the game. He tore a curtain he did not understand. That was what the voices had told her earlier. Odette knew, with a chilling certainty, that if she went through this portal she would find the other twelve swans. And she might see what no one in her kingdom ever had—the true faces of the Veiled Kings. This was the curtain Rothbart had to tear, to gain full access to the Forbidden Arts that the Veiled Kings guarded. The portal was a good twenty feet above her. She couldn't hope to reach it. The ground had never felt like such a prison.

"Cachez! Cachez! Mademoiselle, cachez!"

Odette looked around frantically, but she saw no one. On the edge of the mists, she thought she could make out a frog hopping on the shoreline. But a split second later, something else caught her eye—a dark bird soaring out of the castle toward the portal. A black swan.

Odette ducked underwater on pure reflex. She tried to swim toward the portal back to her own lake, but when she finally surfaced for air she realized she'd veered wide. The black swan was nowhere in sight. Perhaps it had plunged into the mist. But whatever the strange voice was, it had broken the eerie pull the second portal had on her mind.

Leave! Now! Before the real alligators wake up! she thought. For two minutes that felt like thirty, she made her way through the first portal and out of the alligator-infested inlet. The open lake had never been such a welcome sight.


In the end, learning to fly took almost a month. The moon had been full when she arrived at Rothbart's lake. It had shrunk to a waning half-moon by the time she learned to glide from an elevated outcrop on a gust of wind. But taking off from the ground, unaided, took nearly twice as long.

She stumbled on the missing piece almost by dumb luck. Aggravated with her dirty, disheveled and itchy feathers after weeks on the lake, Odette threw herself into a furious preening one sweltering afternoon. When she was done, her wings felt smoother and lighter than they ever had. She didn't achieve total liftoff when she ran across the lake a few minutes later, but she could feel the air pushing beneath her outstretched wings, attempting to buoy them up.

The experience left her both elated and dejected. She'd been sabotaging herself the entire time. All the practice, strength and technique didn't matter when her feathers had been holding her back. She'd wasted nearly four weeks because she'd never thought to preen.

But the result was worth it. Two nights later, when she finally gathered enough speed and lift to rise above the lake, the thrill nearly stopped her heart. She could see everything. This was her domain, her freedom, her power.

Odette did not return to the lake at all that night or the following day. During some of the more intoxicating moments, she wondered what would happen if she never returned at all.

When she did come back and at last let the full moon do its work, the transformation back into a human was jarring. Her legs gave out, unsteady after a month as a swan. She heard the warlock chuckle as she fell to her knees in an ungainly stumble. The water was only ankle deep, but the fall soaked her clothes up to her knees. She was still shaking as she stood. Dark rivulets of mud stained her white gown.

"You know, you don't have to wait for a full moon to become human. Any moon will do," Rothbart said. "Are you finally tiring of our little game?"

Laugh as much as you want tonight, warlock, Odette thought. Tomorrow I am going home.


Odette had never left Chamberg. She had learned that much from her exhilarating flight the day before. She was on the outskirts, though—deep in the north, in the Nurimveld Forest that the monarchs of Chamberg had so far left wild. It was a grim testament to the cleverness of her captors. If Rothbart had brought her to a lake on Cymdros, she could have flown with impunity. Swans were protected in Cymdros; in Chamberg they were hunted like prey.

The discovery opened a troubling possibility. For the past month, her main goal had been to return to Cymdros. To the winter palace and whatever remained of her father's Council. To learn what had happened since she had disappeared…and to warn them of what was coming. But she'd never imagined Chamberg was so near. Was it worth the risk, to attempt sending a message to Derek first? Would he want to help her, or was he still feeling bruised after their last meeting? And if he only helped her out of a cold sense of duty, would that make a difference?

I can't do this alone, Odette thought. But even as she thought the words, she knew they were not the full truth. I don't want to do this alone.

Tonight, back in her human body for the first time in weeks, she finally had the materials and the means to write a message. She considered it a small miracle that Rothbart had left her alone for a brief time while she was still human, though she wondered if he had his own ways of spying on her. She tried to dismiss the thought. If Rothbart could see her, there was nothing she could do about it.

Paper and ink were her most precious treasures now. She'd pilfered them here and there during her flight and stashed them in the hole of a tree nearly a dozen yards from the lake, hoping she would find an opportunity to use them. Suffering one last glance at the moon, she fingered the white quill she had ripped out of her wing.

Dear Derek,

If you are reading this, I am dancing on a pool of tears guarded by a king with seven heads.

Odette looked down at the paper in disbelief. Where had those words come from? She closed her eyes and tried to think of the simplest, most concise way to explain what had happened to her. I am Odette. I was transformed. A warlock named Rothbart is setting the Veiled Kings free. I am Odette. I was transformed. She began to write again.

Heal the broken doll. It will defend you from the mice inside your castle. You must let the dewdrops dance, but only after the flowers and before the sugar plums.

Her fingers felt compelled to complete the nonsensical sentences, even though they were not what she wanted to write. Was this part of her curse, that she was unable to talk about it to anyone? Slowly, deliberately, Odette set the pen down and forced herself to take a step back. There was a chance, a very small chance, that she simply couldn't write to Derek. Or perhaps she couldn't write to anyone individually. She would try one more experiment, and write something for anyone to see. She would write only her name.

She drew her name in the air several times before putting her pen to paper again.

Herr Drosselmeyer, the paper said when she was finished.

Odette crumpled the paper into a misshapen ball, the paper that had cost her so much time and effort to acquire just hours earlier. Still kneeling on the grass, she buried her face in her hands and let out a silent, wordless scream.

As she knelt there, her shoulders shaking, she wondered if the mocking eldritch whispers would return. A part of her wished they would. She hadn't heard their voices since her first lonely night on the lake, and now she felt even lonelier. But she heard nothing beyond the chirping of crickets and bullfrogs. If the Veiled Ones were laughing at her, they were doing it privately. Or perhaps her paltry efforts were beneath their notice.

This changes nothing. You were already planning to fly to Cymdos first, she thought to herself. But another thought countered the first almost immediately. This changes everything. What hope do you have, if you can't speak or write to anyone?

A king's first job is to listen, not speak, she remembered. Understand your people. Know their joys. Their fears. Their true capabilities. It was her father's voice in her mind now. This was dangerous territory, dancing on the edge of the grief she was trying so hard to stave off. But memory was her only guide now, and she knew there was wisdom in his words. Visiting her kingdom even as a swan would not be a wasted mission, if she could learn what was happening there.

She would return to her father's winter palace on Cymdros. She would fulfill her silent promise, slip through the hidden portal that led into Nefynmor and go home. But this time, she wouldn't need to wait for the alligators to fall asleep. She would fly above them.