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The years are long, but not so long that she would forget how long she's been at the lake. Even so, she still flinches when he comes to her and touches her wing. Magic flows through her body until each speck of it has been transformed, and then she looks at him.
Today is an autumn night like the one he forever changed her. Odette doesn't know if it's the same date, but close to it.
He's always a little quieter around this time.
Today is no exception. He touches her wing, and then he pulls his hand away before their skins ever touch. He sits down against that knobbly, twisted trunk of a tree while she still gets used to this shape.
Eventually, Odette looks at him again. His eyes are distant.
"What are you thinking of?" she asks. He looks up, still half distracted.
"A spell," he murmurs.
In some other life, Odette would not ask about it, but she is lonely. Her beloved lake is empty now that the last living villager has been buried in the forest. The houses are old and in disrepair. They are all alone in that world, so far away from other people.
But she is alone. She misses others, and he is there, her only constant throughout all these years.
"What kind of a spell?" she asks even though she is afraid of his answer.
Von Rothbart's eyes glide over the still surface of the lake. He seems hesitant to speak, but he is often like that when it comes to magic. It's never been an easy topic for them.
"There is a story," he tells her. "A witch curses her stepsons to become swans, and they tell their sister how to break the curse. She swears a vow of silence of one year for each brother and weaves shirts out of nettles that turn them back into humans."
Odette looks at him and tries not to hope.
"That's what everyone agrees upon," he murmurs as he studies the surface of the lake. "Pain and sacrifice are strong conduits for magic. It could work."
Her hands shake. Her human hands shake, and finally, von Rothbart looks at her.
"I could make it work," he says softly.
Odette turns her face away. She takes a few steps towards the water, just enough that the waves lap at her bare feet. He remains in his nestled nook, staring at her back as it shivers with the power of each breath.
"You wouldn't be able to say anything for a year," she says. Even her voice shakes. He shifts and gets up and stands beside her. There is no touch, just his dark eyes studying her pale face.
"A year and a day," he says quietly. "That's more powerful than just a year."
Her stomach is wallowing. This feels like an impossible choice, a trick he is so cruelly making her participate in, a mockery of destiny. How could she decide whether she wants to be even lonelier for a year just for a chance of becoming a human again?
"I wouldn't be able to say or write anything," he says, "but I could still spend time with you."
Their eyes meet finally.
"Would the spell unravel if you tried to talk with me in any way?" she asks in a low voice. She understands magic enough to have a sense of how such a spell might work, and he nods in confirmation. Odette swallows thickly. He takes her hands.
"But with that coat, you could be a human again," he murmurs.
Odette stares at him, and then she nods.
He cannot start working on the shirt immediately. The next day, first snow comes. The shores of the lake are frost over. There are no nettles for him to pick, but he still cuts down some reeds and starts practicing on those.
Odette doesn't stray far from him. She watches as his fingers work out the best methods of turning plants into something more workable, something that is slightly like thread.
When night falls, he doesn't have much to show for all the hard work he has put in, but Odette knows to be patient.
There is the winter ahead of them, and her human fingers still remember how to weave. His eyes follow how her fingers twist and turn, and his hands are clumsy as he tries to copy the movement. But as the nights pass, he gets better. His fingers find a rhythm that is a pale imitation of the swiftness of her fingers.
It is a strange winter they live through. It somehow seems longer than any winter Odette has lived through either as a human or a swan, but at the same time, it passes quickly. Eventually, his fingers get too stiff in the cold to continue out on the shores of the lake. Eventually, she steps inside and keeps him company as he works.
Suddenly, spring is there. Snow melts into little thin streams that run wild and free. Flowers bloom, grass grows to cover the mud that snow has melted into, and they return to the shores of the lake.
When the first nettles are ready, he seems hesitant.
"Do you know what you're doing?" she asks. He sighs.
"In theory," he answers, "but practice is quite different. I've never woven a coat before."
Odette knows that much. She has been the one to teach him, the one to work on the process with him. She has shown him how to spin, how to weave, how to sew.
They have their plan. Everything is ready.
He picks up the scythe and cuts down the first nettles and picks them up with bare hands.
Von Rothbart is quiet. He does not hiss as the nettles sting his skin. He does not cry out as he picks out the leaves and starts working the stems into thread. No, he does it all in silence, but the pain in his eyes is real.
Odette sits with him until the morning, and before dawn comes, she spreads oils and ointments to his reddened hands. His breath hitches even though she tries to not hurt him.
She doesn't know what she murmurs to him, but he still soaks up the words before he goes inside and falls into his bed, dead to the world.
Odette waits for the dawn alone.
Each night, his hands get a little redder and a little more hurt. Eventually, they get so bad that they even start to bleed. On that night, Odette takes his hands into her lap and slowly rubs the ointment into them. He is breathing hard and his face is twisted by pain, but she holds his hands and then, she kisses his cracked skin.
"Thank you," she murmurs. "Thank you for doing this for me."
His chest is rising with quick breaths as she looks up into his eyes. Odette studies his eyes with care. They are dark and guarded, but there is also fondness in them.
She's never thought of kissing von Rothbart, never thought of what it might feel like, but she wonders about it. His eyes have always followed her every move. They've seen all of her, memories all her movements, learned all her features. All these years, his eyes have followed her, and now they are soft for her, so fond, so full of longing.
She leans in and kisses him.
His lips are lax in shock, and then he moves. His hands rise and try to hold onto her, and then he breathes out in pain. Odette is quick to let go of the kiss, quick to take hold of his hands again, quick to rub more ointment into them. She's shivering. She's shivering, and he is so close, still staring at her face, frozen in her touch.
Slowly, the rushing in her veins calms down and her hands can focus on their task. He remains still, guided by her gestures and movements. She wraps gauze around his fingers and soaks it in even more ointment, and then, she can no longer pretend. Odette must look away for a moment before she is brave enough to meet his eyes, but doing that is surprisingly easy.
He has a small smile on his face. Slowly, as if afraid of spooking her, he presses his forehead against hers.
For a moment, they breathe the same air. For a moment, they just are.
He weaves until autumn is close to its end, while the leaves turn yellow, orange, and red, and then, he sews while winter storms rage outside. Odette watches his hands as they shape a coat for her. It all comes together one stitch at a time until there comes a day when it is done.
He sets the coat down on the newly revealed ground between them two and stares at it for a long time.
"Nothing more to do than for you to put it on," he says and groans. His voice is rough, nowhere near the smoothness she is used to hearing. She comes to him and touches his arm in worry. He gives her a small smile.
They end up sitting on the terrace. He is sipping on hot honey milk she made for him, and she listens to all the things he hasn't been able to say through these long months. His words are halting and come tumbling like new-born deer at spring.
Curled up in her new coat, she listens to his words and leans on his shoulder, and his words halt for a long moment.
That night, Odette falls asleep leaning against his shoulder just steps away from the door to his house. Her small body curls up inside the coat he wove for her, and she wakes up late in the afternoon, still a human, still curled up against his sleeping form.
She looks at his relaxed face and wonders what he's dreaming about.
Life is even stranger after the coat is finished. Odette thought things may go back to how they were before, but times have changed and the world with it. There is no longer a home to return to, a family she loved so dearly, a village she grew up in. There are villages further away, and she sometimes goes to visit them, walks all that way with her human legs.
But people stare at her, and she's still afraid of them, and so, she stays by the shores of the lake.
Some days, it's all too much to take, and she lets the coat slide off her arms before diving into the embrace of water, her pure white body taking to it like they had never parted.
She always feels slightly misshapen no matter how she is. As a human, her feet are clumsy, her hands unused to work. But even as a swan, she feels strange, as if her body was not right, as if the form she knew had changed in some way she didn't know how to fix.
She wanders and relearns the world, but with every step she takes, she feels stranger and stranger.
But even though her world is now so much bigger, his world seems to be shrinking until it has narrowed down to his study. Odette knows his house now, knows it like she knows the forest, but his study is strange even to her. She doesn't know how to make sense of those squiggly lines on the white pages nor does she understand why his interest is captivated by them. But not understanding it does not mean she doesn't understand him.
She sits onto the table next to his thick tomes and forces him to look at her finally.
"What's so interesting in your books?" Odette asks. He leans back on his chair and looks at her and the coat.
His fingers touch it slowly.
"Does it feel strange?" he asks. "The coat?"
Odette frowns and studies it in the light of a single candle. His library is dark. They are in that sphere of light, joined by its warmth and flickering.
His hands, the hands that are nowadays always covered by gloves, worn and tortured by weaving this coat for her, hold it like it's poisonous.
The coat makes her skin itch, but it is a small price to pay for her freedom.
"No stranger than any other magic," she says. He sighs.
It's a curious kind of silent he becomes after those words. His eyes are closed, and it is a strange sight. Always before they have been open for her. Never has he looked this torn.
"Wolfgang?" she asks. He takes in a shuddering breath.
"I know how you could freely choose your form."
His words hang heavy between them. She looks at him at a complete loss.
"We've both known it for a while, haven't we?" she asks. He shakes his head.
"No, not that," he says. "Another way."
She studies his closed off face, and then she takes his hands. He doesn't fight back as she slowly peels off his gloves and reveals his scarred hands. He doesn't do anything as she gently runs her fingers along the worst scars, but he does shiver as she presses her lips against his fingers.
"There is a price to pay, isn't there?" she asks. She has seen his hands, knows that the grooves in them will never heal back into smooth skin, no matter how much magic he pours into it. The spell he wove required a sacrifice. There is always a price to be paid.
He nods.
"It will hurt," he tells her, "It will hurt worse than anything you've ever felt before."
She still holds his hands, still studies them, still keeps them in her grasp and him near to her. He is shaking. He doesn't want to do it, she realises, he doesn't want to hurt her.
She still accepts it.
He plucks the feathers from her wings one at a time, and it hurts. Each feather feels worse than the one before it. They leave behind holes that bleed red onto his clothes, onto his body, onto the floor of his house.
Each feather that disappears leaves behind human skin. The more he removes, the stranger she becomes, lost between her two forms, aching and hurting.
He plucks her bare and murmurs broken apologies with each feather that lands on the floor and gets dyed red with her blood. His hands shake and he apologizes so many times.
He doesn't stop, not even when her head is a human girl's head and the soft gasps in her throat sound like actual crying.
"Don't," she begs him. "Don't stop."
He bites his teeth together and continues torturing her like that.
The final feather is plucked out of her skin. Her eyes close in relief and in pain. She lies in his lap, heaving, breathing hard, lost to the world. His hands, the hands that caused so much pain just moments earlier, rub at her back. He is shivering. He is apologizing.
He is there, and she grasps onto him.
She is left in a body that feels more solid than ever before. He holds her until she stops crying, and then he takes off his own coat and wraps her in it. There's work to be done. He still must sew each feather onto the coat. He must combine the spells that will tie the curse into the coat and not her body.
"Is this how you gained your magic?" she asks, still dizzy and nauseous from pain. He is quiet for a long time.
"Magic was always in my blood," he says. "I didn't have to work like this to control it."
But her magic wasn't always there, she thinks as he finishes attaching the final feathers to her old new coat. Her empty eyes stare at it.
"Be careful with it, Odette," he warns her as he lays it across her lap. "Whoever has it can control you from now on."
There is worry in his eyes. Odette nods her head.
"I'm tired," she murmurs, her eyes already trying to close.
"Then sleep," Wolfgang says. "I will guard you."
With him, she dares to sleep. With him, she isn't afraid.
They talk by the lake. They always end up by the lake even though now it doesn't define her anymore. There they are, the girl who returned home too late to get a chance to say goodbye to her family, and the man who is letting her go.
He is remarkably quiet as they stare at the water.
"Will you come back?" he asks, a frown marring his face. Odette glances at the familiar man she has known for what feels like all her life, and she fidgets in her new coat that is strange yet like a home at the same time. The freedom to choose her form is still new and exciting. She wonders how long it will feel like a gift instead of a new kind of curse.
"Perhaps one day," she says. The world is big. He has told her as much. He knows how much there is that she hasn't seen, how much there is to experience, how much she has missed, stuck on the shores of this lake. He knows there is a world outside this forest for her to explore.
He knows she may never come back.
He knows he would deserve it.
"Where will you start?" he asks. She looks at his gloved hands. They are folded neatly in front of him as if he wasn't agitated, but she knows him better than that.
"I don't know yet," Odette admits.
There are many questions that will forever remain unanswered. Odette only knows there is the great unknown, not what secrets lie within it.
His eyes seem paler in the moonlight.
"You'll love the mountains and the sea," he says, his eyes already distant as if he had said his goodbyes.
Odette looks at him, and then she wraps her arms tightly around him. For a moment, he remains stiff, but then he embraces her and presses his face into her hair. She feels the way he nuzzles it, feels the way his lungs expand as they breathe in her scent, the way his arms tighten just a little.
There is nothing he can say. That is why he raises his gloved hands and holds her face between them, and then he kisses her. Odette closes her eyes and kisses him back. Her arms still hold onto him.
It is the third kiss they've ever shared, and they both seem afraid that it will be the last kiss they'll ever share.
"Be careful," he asks in a whisper against her lips.
"I will be, Wolfgang," she whispers back.
He remains standing at the shores of the lake as she transforms into a swan and spreads her wings in the moonlight and takes to the wide, open sky.
The world is even bigger than she thought, and she travels far and wide. Her wings and feet take her to cities where people speak in strange tongues, and she searches them for the mysteries he has told her about.
She sees wide, sprawling cities that hide within them so many fates and endless deserts that spread before her like eternity. She sees oceans and seas where the water is so different from the water of her lake, and she enters jungles that she almost loses herself in.
Odette learns magic. She learns to read, then to write. She learns so many things, and slowly, she learns she misses home.
She comes back to the forest not too long after she left. For such creatures that have already lived so long, years seem short in comparison.
She returns to her native land, to her native tongue, to the familiar lands that so remind her of her first home, of her family, of him. The world may be a more familiar here, but it still isn't the same world she used to know. Houses and people appear to be like they were when she was just a girl. It's all the same.
It's not the same.
The people stare at Odette's face, her legs, her hands. They stare at her wild hair, her strange dress, her magical coat. They whisper behind her back. The rumours that follow her wherever she goes are difficult to digest.
They call her a witch, a stranger, a wicked woman. They look at her with distrusting eyes and watch her every move as if there was something dangerous in her. It doesn't matter whether she's out in the marketplace, having a meal at a tavern, or even picking flowers that grow so thickly on the sides of roads. It doesn't matter whether she smiles or frowns. They still fear her, and that is why she eventually heads back to the lake.
If the world outside is different, back home everything is the same. The moment she steps under the canopy that makes up her forest, the trees bow their respect for her. Silence settles back in her soul and she takes in a breath of air that feels right. There is no need to pretend she hasn't been changed in irrevocable ways.
Odette takes a few moments just letting the forest air wash over her, but she knows what she must do. Her steps are as light as air as they trace the familiar overgrown path towards her lake.
She returns home. She returns to him, but he isn't there to greet her, not like she thought he'd be. For a moment Odette stands there, staring blankly at his house and his garden. Everything seems –
Everything seems wrong. The garden is overgrown. His carefully tended flowers have withered under wild raspberries and mint. Vine has dug into the façade of his house and covered some of the tall windows.
The house is dark and desolate, and her heart aches.
Odette's feet pound against the ground as she runs to the house, and she wishes, hopes, needs him to still be there, aches for his presence at the shores of her lake.
The doors aren't locked, not for her. They open with a loud creak. Odette stares into the darkness, letting her eyes slowly adjust to it. There is no movement in the still air, just a thick smell of dust and half-forgotten memories.
Her footsteps echo in the hallway. Each time her feet hit the thick carpet, a cloud of dust rises into air until white covers her as if she were a ghost.
Faint light comes from the library. She enters the room and stops at her tracks.
Wolfgang's let candlewax melt into the spines of his precious tomes and pool onto the floors. A single wick burns close to a sea of melted wax and paints his face in flickering yellow light.
He looks exhausted, and he stares blindly at the book in front of him for many long moments. Odette looks at his faded coat, the unravelling stitches, at his bandaged yet uncovered hands.
His gloves are gone, but why would he need gloves in a house that daylight doesn't grace?
Finally, he looks up at her.
"Odette?" he whispers. His smooth voice is like a croak. For a moment Odette wonders if he's said a single word since the day she left.
She stands there staring at him even when he gets up onto shaking legs and walks slowly closer to her. His raised hand trembles violently as it stretches towards Odette. His fingers wrap around the hem of her skirt and squeeze it with a death-grip.
"Odette," he gasps and falls to his knees, burying his face in her skirts.
Odette goes down to him, meeting him on his knees. His arms search for her form and find it with a joy that rivals bliss. Their bodies wrap around one another, and now, he buries his face against her neck. He cries against her skin and his tears wash away the dust that has painted her pale and ghostly. Gently, she lets him weep until there are no more tears left in him.
"I'm here now," she whispers. "I'm here."
He gasps for air and struggles to grasp at her arms, pulling her even closer until his heart is pounding against her ribcage.
"Don't go," he begs. "Please."
She looks at his eyes, his dark eyes that are filled with tears. He looks desperate and like he hasn't breathed for all those years she's been gone. His exhausted, scarred, bandaged hands hold onto her as if she was life itself. His back shivers with each breath that he takes. The longer he waits for an answer, the more desperate he becomes.
"Come on," she murmurs as she pulls him up. "You're exhausted. Come, Wolfgang, you need rest."
He nods. He's too tired to argue.
There are no candles in the bedroom. She fumbles her way across the room and pulls the curtains wide open. Moonlight streams in with a pale beam that paints deep shadows into the grooves on the floor. He shivers and blinks as if in pain. How long has passed with only a single lit candle in all that darkness? How long has he been hiding from the world and the memory of her at the lake?
She pushes him onto the bed and wraps him in blankets. His fearful eyes search for her as she moves about in the room. They only find a morsel of peace as she settles onto the bed, lying close to his fragile body.
Her fingers weave into his hair and brush his locks open. He shivers as his eyes start to droop.
"I'm here," she murmurs. "I'm here."
His bruising grasp around her wrist wouldn't even let her leave.
He wakes up to sun shining on his face. It is a strange kind of warmth, a pleasure he has not felt for such a long time.
The curtains are pulled back completely, but his searching eyes do not find what he longs for. For a moment he wonders if he dreamt her again. He thinks he felt her fingers in his hair, thinks he embraced her, but what are dreams if not real in the moment?
He gets up, already resigned to another horrible feeling of loss gnawing at his chest, but then he stops suddenly.
The doors to his wardrobe are open.
Wolfgang tries to think back to how or why he would've opened the doors, but no such memory exists. There is no reason anything should have changed. His cautious eyes rake over the room. Two patterns of footsteps on the dusty floor. The mirror that was covered with a sheet that now reflects his worn face. The uncovered windows. The books, previously strewn on the floor, now resting neatly in a pile.
He rushes over to the wardrobe. Wolfgang's fingers tremble as he touches her soft feathers yet again. Her coat hangs next to his clothes innocently. In its wake, one of his own coats has disappeared.
Wolfgang rushes out of the room but stops dead in the hallway. Light shines in. Dust no longer hangs heavy in the air, but a breeze carries with it a smell of summer he had tried his best to forget about.
His house is like before when she was still with him at the lake.
As if in a dream, he walks along the corridor and stares at the rooms revealed by opened doors. He hasn't seen his house like this in a long time, not since –
Not since –
The doors to the study are closed. It takes him a long time to overcome his fears and push them open.
Change is present even there, though not as visibly as elsewhere. Slowly, he lets his eyes take in the space until his gaze is stolen by the figure sleeping in front of the fireplace.
He kneels next to her and just looks at the pale shoulders that rise with each breath taken, the delicate hands that once nursed his, the face that has haunted his dreams ever since he first saw it.
He doesn't touch her. He doesn't wake her up. He just drinks in the sight of her and tries not to think about what might happen in the future.
Her feet are bare but without the usual signs of having been barefoot for long. Her toes curl together. There are no blemishes on her skin even though the hem of her dress is just as torn as he is used to. Her hair still hasn't been tamed into a respectable updo for a girl of her age.
She's curled underneath his coat. He sits there, leaning his back on the fireplace, and has a moment to just think about it all.
Did he really believe she would come back? No, not truly. He thought she'd be happy elsewhere, would have a life outside of this forest, find someone who loved her unselfishly and made her happy. But here she is again, back in his house, back where it all began.
He wonders if she's realised that the world does not have anyone else for her. There is no one else who could ever understand her like he does. He's not vain. He had to accept it himself, had to accept it when he realised what his magic had caused.
She's become immortal, just like he has. Immortal creatures have no one else for companionship than one another.
There is and never will be anyone else.
He's still there when she wakes up. Her toes stretch a little and she shifts underneath his coat. His heart thumps painfully when he sees that. She nuzzles into his coat as he would nuzzle into her, but still she doesn't open her eyes.
"How long have you been sitting there?" she asks in a tired murmur. He hesitates before he gives her an answer.
"A while now."
She looks reluctant to wake up, but eventually she pulls herself up and blinks her eyes blearily. Her neck cracks painfully. She lets out a small sigh and crawls to him, curling up against his body.
She still fits there. She'll always fit there.
He presses his face into her hair and tries not to cry.
"Are you going to stay?"
He has to force the words out of his mouth. There is a bitter taste in their wake. Wolfgang takes in a shuddering breath and prepares for the worst, but that doesn't happen. Instead, Odette presses her head against his chest. It's like she was hiding from the sun. His hands curl around her. He wants to hold her there eternally, but she has tasted freedom now. She will not stay if she doesn't want to stay.
He needs her to stay.
"There is no one else for me out there, is there?" she asks. He nearly bursts into tears when he hears that sorrow in her voice.
"There isn't," he forces out.
She is quiet for a long moment after that. He waits anxiously for her words, her decision. She could still leave him. Even loneliness could be tolerable after all the ways he has hurt her.
He won't last for long if she leaves again.
"You wouldn't be happy without me, wouldn't you?" she asks. There is something distant in her voice. His arms hold her a little more snugly than before. The tears are flowing. He has lost the fight against them.
"You could still find happiness on your own," he tries to say even though it hurts.
Finally, she meets his eyes and forces him to look at her properly. Her small hands wipe away the tears. He studies her face for a sign of her decision.
She looks at him, and then she curls against him again.
He tries his hardest to believe she'll stay with him.