The Swan Keeper: In Flight

Up a trail in Montana’s Mission Mountains

When the fall air came in crisp and fresh, the bare-bone leaves sang to Lilly. She tilted her ear to the wind and listened. Aspen leaves floated down to the forest floor, reminding her that life is precious, it comes, and it goes, reminding her of that cool Montana night when she climbed a game trail toward Eagle Pass and ran away from her father’s killer.

Moisture from the night’s rain salted the air and mixed with the sweat on her twelve-year-old forehead. Wild air tumbled around in her lungs as she moved up the trail, away from the wetlands. She was transforming, her supple neck stretching, her body both round and smooth. She followed the game trail through dried beargrass, up the mountainside. Wind whistled through the rocks and hoot owls called across the gully. The damp smell of cedar receded where dark larch and fir trees hovered. Gurgling sounds of creek water reached across the forest and encouraged her.

Run. Run. Fly.

Bushes scratched Lilly’s ankles and grabbed her trouser legs. Night flies swarmed down from the larch branches and buzzed around her head. The ground, muddy from the fall rains, squished up over the edge of her shoes and down under the arches of her feet.

She charged forward, bone light and frail, her chest beating hard where her heart should have been. A partial moon peeked between the clouds, over the mountain, and opened its brilliant mouth to the trail where she saw the white carcass of a dead swan. It must have flown too low, hitting a tree, or was perhaps carried up here by a bear. Suddenly she was eleven again and in a marsh of radiant white trumpeter swans. The gunshots rang out and, one by one, the birds fell, standing or in flight, turning the swamp a bright mix of crimson and pink.

A phantom swan swept in beside Lilly, pulling her back to the mountain, and moving her swiftly up the mountainside. The dense timber thinned and lightened, the moon passed west, and the sun came up over the eastern ridge. A feather fell into her hand, a quill for words written on the sky. She put it safely in the pocket of her trousers, next to the photo of her father with his fists clenched at his sides. The phantom swan flapped her wings and pulled Lilly into them, the down soft and warm, the last vestiges of night cool to the touch.

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