Just the One Swan, Actually: Chapter 1

Some people need a nice cup of coffee to wake them up in the morning. Others take a nice jog around the calm, quiet ranch grounds, when the fresh morning air clears your lungs of that stale sleep breath. For Tiffany, that lovely waking call was the sound of some rich fart outside her window yelling that she was going to sue the ranch.

So, like any drama-mongering teenager, she slid the window up and popped her head out to catch all the juicy details.

“My swan’s escaped and your ranch is responsible!” the old nag was whinging. “If she’s not returned by this time tomorrow, Daius-help-me I am going to bring the full force of the law down on this hovel.”

“Well that’s a five-dollar word right there, ma’am,” Drakyn was saying. “But don’t you worry, we’ll bring your bird back, snugger than a bug in a rug.”

This seemed to appease the lady, and she quieted down, only muttering under her breath, “Honestly, what do I pay you for…”

“Well ma’am, accordin’ to our records, you’re about two months late on your last payment.”

“I expect my beautiful swan back here by sunset!” she declared, storming off back to her rich-people stryx-drawn buggy.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Drakyn spat in the dirt and sighed to herself. “Honestly, the nerve of these city-folk.”

“What’s this swan she’s going on about?” Tiffany shouted out the window.

“To be real honest with ya, Tiff, I haven’t the foggiest. Maybe you could go saddle up Aster and help me out?”

*

One saddled-up Aster later, Tiffany was off and soaring off over the buildings, sweeping her gaze over the grounds for any sign of white feathers.

“Hi!” she called to that weird lady with the black cloak who was always talking to birds. “Seen a swan around?”

“No,” JacDaw called back. “I’ll give a caw-- I mean call, if I do.”

Weird turn of phrase, but everyone had their quirks. The pair moved on to a wider circle over the plains around the ranch. An unfamiliar harpia, one of the many temp stryx that all the rich city folk liked to lodge in the country, levelled out alongside them.

‘Whatcha lookin’ for?’ she asked.

“Just some rich windbag’s pet swan. Seen any around?”

‘No, not I. But I have seen all manner of waterfowl congregating on the northern lake, including swans.’

“Okay, thanks.”

‘Fare thee well, friend.’

The stryx circled back around to the barns, leaving Tiffany and Aster to their work.

The lake she’d mentioned was an iconic landmark here in Hibernia Acres. Tiffany liked to go there on her lunch breaks to unwind, or spend entire evenings here during the weekends, when Asa taught her to skip stones, or Finn was in town with tales about all the cool things she wasn’t allowed to do. Good times, but with the sun almost gone under the trees, she didn’t have much time to reminisce.

“Ducks, ducks, ducks,” Tiffany muttered, as Aster swept low and quiet over the water. A few birds took off with clattering wings at their approach, but others just paddled away, their little webbed feet swirling up eddies under the surface. “Ooooh, goose.”

The goose hissed at them, baring his creepy, toothed beak and tongue. But no swans, unfortunately.

“We’re soooo dead,” she said, and Aster chirruped her sympathies. “We have like, what, half an hour until she comes back?”

Maybe she should’ve roped in that other harpia to help. But if they went back to the barns now, there’d be no time left to sweep the lake before...

“Hey-o!”

A familiar black-clad figure waved at them from the nearby bank. In the light of the setting sun, her weird cloak almost seemed to shimmer with blue and green tints. Tiffany hadn’t even seen her come in. JacDaw did that a lot, and no one on the ranch seemed to know how.

“Any luck catching them swans, then?” she asked, as Aster glided in for a landing.

“It’s just the one swan, actually. Hey, don’t you talk to birds? Think you could help us?”

“Oh, is that all I am to you? The local bird expert? Tucked away in the background until some contrived plot point calls for my expertise?”

“Uhhhh….”

“Just kidding. Yeah, I’ll help.”

“Oh, thank Daius.”

Tiffany reached out her hand, but JacDaw hopped up into the saddle behind her with an agility some might consider supernatural.

“Okay, Ast, I think that goose looks mighty suspect. Let’s see what he knows.”

Aster took a running start and leapt out across the water. The ducks scattered again, the goose held his ground, but this time, JacDaw dug her feet into Aster’s belly and slid down the side of the saddle, until she was virtually perpendicular to the floating bird.

“Oi, you seen any white hoity-toities around?”

The goose honked back, but with feeling this time.

“Cheers, guv.”

Using what appeared to be extraordinary core muscle strength, she reached for Aster’s saddle horn and hauled herself back upright.

“They respond best if you use this specific accent,” she explained, as if that was the most mystifying part of that whole exchange. “Anyway, he sez-- blah, says-- he saw a swan over by the east rushes.”

“Rushes it is!”

Keenly aware that the sun was almost completely down, Aster high-tailed it for the shore. She used her tail to sweep aside the plants as she went, while her two riders skimmed the grey and green for any signs of white and orange. And then, at long last, there she was, the hissing white hoity-toity herself.

“Hooray! We’re not dead!”

“Assuming you can catch her, of course.”

“Uhhh… what?”

“Did you know a single beat of a swan’s wings can break a man’s arm? It’s true, she just told me so.”

“Oh boy…”

*

The old beldame was back again, and for some reason, she was taking serious offence to the hissing, flailing waterbird that Tiffany handed to her.

“This is not my beautiful swan! This is not my beautiful stryx! That’s it, I’m suing the lot of you.”

Tiffany blinked. “Wait. Hold on. Did you just say ‘stryx’?”

“Of course I did, you brat. I asked you for Swan, and you give me this ugly hissing rat--”

“Wow,” JacDaw said, as the swan honked at them. “She did NOT like being called a rat. I’d repeat what she just called you all, but, uhhhh, I do want to keep my job here.”

“Why, I oughta...”

Tiffany stepped between them. “Okay. Alright, I think I get it now. Stay right there, ma’am. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She and Aster took off for the barn, and returned a few moments later with the stryx from earlier in tow. For some reason, Tiffany hadn’t found it at least slightly pertinent that her plumage looked exactly like a swan’s.

“Is… is this your ‘swan’?”

“That’s it! That’s my Swan! You found her!”

Swan let out a cheerful whoop. She even sounded exactly like a swan. Human and stryx embraced in joy, though from Tiffany’s side, it looked a lot more like one old lady disappearing into a pile of fluff.

“I mean, in hindsight, that was actually really obvious.”