Happy new year! Goodness, the year has only just started and I already feel exhausted. Between holiday prep, holiday parties, and getting back to work I just want to wrap myself up in a blanket and take a long winters nap. I can already see the finish line for the week in sight.
This story first came to me last year as I was working my way through a cold and re-reading a collection of Grimm’s fairy tales. It’s been a bit of a work in progress, as when I first wrote it I still had the cold and it flipped a lot between past and present tense. I practically re-wrote it two different ways trying to sort the story tense out, and I’m still not 100% sure I’ve caught all the tense changes.
Between work, the holidays and my own poor planning I’ve been strapped for time, so I hope the silly doodle I’ve done for the artwork on this story can bring you a smile.
Down For the Count
Eliza feels as if every bit of her insides have been scraped out and replaced with warm goo. The chill of the room nearly has her burrowing back under the covers for a few more minutes but eventually the morning light and the sound of her brother’s honking draws her out of sleep. She stares blankly at the rough walls of her room before the fog in her head clears enough for her to remember her dream – and her task.
Without a second’s thought she tosses off her blanket. Her brothers must have draped it over her the night before after they had carried her to bed. She forces stiff limbs to carry her to the main room where the beaten nettles have been carefully set aside by her brothers. Her joints ache like an old woman’s might and she sniffles, her nose stuffy and congested. At the sight of how high the sun is in the sky she blinks back tears at the thought of all the time she has lost.
Her brothers had confronted her the night before, worried over how flushed she had gotten in the week after they had crossed the ocean to their new home. They’d argued that breaking their curse would mean nothing if she worked herself to death in the process. She hadn’t answered, only refused to stop spinning the nettles into thread. In frustration her elder brother, Michael, had picked her up and carried her to bed.
If she had been allowed to speak she would have argued they didn’t have time – she could admit that she wouldn’t have made a good argument with how congested she was, but she would have tried.
Instead she had found herself ferried to the main bedroom and Peter, Luke, and Augustin had clambered into the largest bed with her. They had sandwiched her between them and not let her up until she had fallen asleep. It hadn’t taken long after she had worked with no rest for five days before a fever set in.
Her fever had broken in the night at least. She had no doubt her brothers had all stayed up to care for her, had spent the precious hours they were able to take human form to make sure she was treated and looked after. From the look of the room and the pot of soup boiling over the fire they had also spent their time to cleaning and making her food. One benefit of having eleven siblings was there was always a pair of hands available to do something.
Shaking her head, Eliza taps at her cheeks to keep her drifting thoughts on the task at hand; getting back to work. She returns to the stool she has been using, checking over the pile of un-spun nettles to make sure all was in order. Her brothers knew everything she was doing was to lift their curse and had been careful to make sure not a single nettle had been lost, everything exactly as she had left it. She let out a silent breath in relief.
She picks up the distaff and the thread she has already spun and begins to spin the nettles into thread with only the occasional pause to dab at her stuffy nose. One thing could be said for being ill, every other part of her felt so miserable that she almost didn’t notice the sting of her blistering fingers.
A particularly loud honk startles Eliza out of the meditative daze she has fallen into and she checks the thread to make sure she has not made any mistake in her momentary loss of concentration. Certain all is well, she glances up as one of her brothers waddles into the main room. He was on the smaller side with neat feathers and no slight wheeze at the end of his honk, this was Theodore.
Theo whoops in disapproval as he waddles over to her, peering at her with with first one black eye and then the other. A second swan waddles in a moment later, slimmer and slightly taller than all the others with a nervous air. Clarence. Seeing her at the stool Clarence slumps, then waddles over to Theo, nudging him. Theo starts whooping back at him, the two getting into some form of conversation that involves a good deal of wing beating and one or two bites. Eliza tries to continue spinning but can’t help the way her eyes tear up as the noise starts to aggravate her headache and her aching hands struggle to keep the distaff steady in the wind the two swans kick up.
The argument ends when the largest of her brothers, Edgar, stomps into the room and out-whoops both of them, making Theodore and Clarence settle down and look apologetic. She tries to smile back at them but it makes her tears spill over, leaving them both looking even guiltier.
Edgar bullies Theo and Clarence away with a flick of his wings and comes over to lean gently against her side. His warm feathery weight is a comfort. Despite the urgency, Eliza stops in her spinning to lean back into him, just for a moment. Her eyes slip closed to bask in the warmth of having her brothers by her side. She had missed them, the ten years she had lived deep in the wood in the woodcutters cottage. She would not trade anything in the world for this moment here in her brothers home, even with her blistering fingers, stuffy head and aching joints. Eliza forces herself to straighten up and opens her eyes only to blink as Clarance and Theo carefully waddle over to her, balancing a tray with a mug of tea between them. At Edgars nudging she accepts the mug, the tea lukewarm and clearly over-steeped but she drinks it with a smile anyway.
Even as swans her brother care for her, and it warms her to her very core.
She finishes her mug of tea and carefully sets it at her feet, picking up her distaff with renewed determination. She bends her head to continue her spinning as Edgar ushers her brothers out, leaving her to her work.
She will finish her spinning, make her brothers coats, and break her stepmother’s curse.
