There was a Queen, and her name was Adela.

She was a still and soft-spoken woman, not beautiful or particularly lively, but her King still treated her gently. At night he would summon her to his chamber, and he would bring her treats or small gifts: a fragrant dried flower from a distant land, a confectionary from the kitchen that they could share. And he would kiss her and touch her gently. And then he would fuck her.

Every night he did this. Because the King longed and fretted for an heir, for someone to steward and rule the Kingdom after he was gone.

This went on for many nights.

Adela would go to his bed, receive his kisses and kiss him back (as was fair), be touched—on the breast, on the back, the nape of her neck—and wait until it was over. And sometimes they would talk, and the King would tell her stories, and she would laugh. And perhaps the King would have ordered them some honey-soaked cake, or a glass of wine if the night was warm and clear, and they would sit outside and watch the stars. The Queen was content.

And night after night she did not conceive.

So the King became worried. He called for his physician, and remedies were prescribed. Bowing and stretching, exercises of running and jumping to grow and loosen the womb (which surely was at fault). Poultices were applied, and tinctures. Herbs were steeped in teas and pounded into pastes, to be rubbed at certain times of day and night.

And every night, Adela was brought to the King's chambers.

And every night, nothing.

The Queen was not loved in the courts, but she was not despised. Many called her plain, but none called her ugly. She did not offend, and so the gossip and scheming of the court flowed around her like water, and her place was secure, because she did what was expected of her.

And the Queen was dutiful. She presented herself faithfully each night, and when the King mounted her she complied, for she knew her role and was determined to do well what was asked of her. Night after night.

But some nights she would leave the King sleeping, and climb up the many, many steps to a small window in the highest tower. And she would look out, over the dark and velvet blackness of the sleeping kingdom, and above her (if she was lucky) the moon, cold and silver. And then she would hear, out in the distance, the breathless, feral howling of the wind. And for a moment—just for a moment—she would imagine leaping from the window, and lighting upon the air.

And then she would close the shutters and bolt them very tightly. And return to the King's bed.

In time, news reached the palace that a traveling Wise Woman had been seen in the Kingdom.

She was very, very old, and walked with a stick in each hand—but still she walked, and walked far. She was one of the kind who wanders, and she had seen many lands, and knew many, many things. Now she peddled her wisdom in the kingdom, teaching and healing and offering advice and cures. And in return she received shelter and food and clothing.

This was a small kingdom, splayed on steep hills between two rivers, with shallow, rocky soil—good for little other than raising grapes and grazing goats, and the Wise Woman's knowledge was sorely needed. She cured rot at the roots of vines, induced geese to lay again, healed sores and lesions and toothaches. She taught goatherds how to multiply their flocks and ensure their does gave strong kids. She met with many people, and she taught them many things.

The court fizzed with gossip and rumors: of her powers and soothsayings, of the strange beliefs she brought from abroad and the notions she peddled about how men (and especially women) might behave and carry on. It all sizzled with scandal.

And when the King heard of her arrival he was moved to suspicion and fear. This woman, roving through his kingdom and throwing about this knowledge that came from who knew where. She had not even asked his leave to speak with his subjects. He would have gotten rid of her quietly, but for the threat of an uproar.

But when the Queen heard of her, she felt something twist, and a need awoke inside her that she had not felt before. She resolved to meet with this traveling Wise Woman.

So, one night when the King fell asleep, Queen Adela rose from his bed and dressed herself in the dark, and she snuck from the castle and stole away. And in the cool of the night, her heart beating (she rarely left the castle), she came to a farm on the crest of a steep hill, where one of her handmaids had told her the Wise Woman was staying—teaching the tenants to enrich the loose and sandy soil.

A lantern was lit in the window of the barn.

So Adela came up to the doors and knocked, and the Wise Woman answered.

She was a small woman, and not so old as Adela had expected—or perhaps she was. Her hair was long and unbound, shining silver in the lantern light. And when she—the Wise Woman—asked to hear the Queen's trouble, Adela found herself speaking for far longer than she'd expected to, and saying more than she'd intended.

But eventually, she reached the end of her words, and when she was finished the Wise Woman was silent for a long time.

And then the Wise Woman began to ask questions.

She asked about Adela's bleedings, how old she had been when they began, how frequent they were now, and what they felt like.

She asked about the position of the stars at Adela's birth, which planets had been shining, if the moon had been full.

She asked which foods Adela preferred, which fabrics she liked most to touch, what she first noticed when she looked at a woman, what gave her the most pleasure when she was bedded by the King, if anything.

And Adela struggled to answer. It had been some time since someone had asked her such questions, some time since she had asked herself. Her bleedings began later than the other girls', and it had been a thing for which she'd felt shame. The moon had been a crescent when she'd been born, but very bright, wondrously so. Her favorite food was fresh apples, although honeycakes were also fine. (The question about women she left unanswered).

When she spoke the Wise Woman listened, carefully, and then she was silent again, as she thought.

And as she thought she ran her fingers through her hair. And Adela could not help but watch: the passage of those hands through those long fine strands, those threads of silver gleaming in the lantern light. She wondered what it would feel like, those fingers in her own hair.

"I can help you," the Wise Woman said finally. "But you do not know the cost."

"I will pay it," the Queen said. "Just tell me what it is."

"I do not know the cost, either."

And Adela felt the prickle—as if someone knelt and hissed at her ear: the warning, that this was not the way prudent women picked their way through the world.

But the Wise Woman was watching her with cool, patient eyes.

And there was a something else. A starving feeling, buried deep within her. Something gasping for air.

"I will pay it," Adela said.

So the Wise Woman rose and searched inside a bundle that she kept. And she brought forth a silver charm.

It was hung on a gleaming thread, as fine as one of the Wise Woman's own hairs, cast as if a drop of silver had been poured into water, and froze as it splashed and reformed. Turned this way it looked like one thing, turned that way it was another, and in the lantern light Adela could not make out its shape.

The Wise Woman gave it to the Queen.

There were instructions for its use: She must take the charm, and with it reach inside herself, and twist.

"This will bring out the child," the Wise Woman said.

It was an odd way to say her womb would be repaired, but Adela took the charm, and was relieved. For now, at last, she could perform her duty, and give birth to the King's heir. There was a strange moment—a queasy sinking, like she had just realized she was falling. But it was nothing, a moment of nerves, and she braced herself for the brightness of her new future.

The Wise Woman was watching her, and Adela realized she was indeed old, she was very old. There was something of a sadness in her eyes. And yet—something of a hope.

Adela was suddenly afraid.

She stole back to the castle, to the King's bed.

When Adela woke in the morning, word came that the Wise Woman had left her husband's kingdom. There was a day of feasting at the court, with jokes and songs about batty old nags who turned into goats or got stuck in chimneys. The King was greatly relieved.

But the Queen did not know how she felt. There was something inside her that ached.

And that night when she lifted the charm, she faltered. So she took it and wrapped it in an old shawl, and hid the bundle in the back of a cupboard in her room, in the deep reaches of it, where no one would find it.

And for a year she left it in the dark.

She went to the King every night, and the physician continued to treat her.

And now there were exercises for the King as well. Running and leaping, to invigorate and multiply the sperm (likely not at fault, but still, to better overcome the ramparts of a closed and over-defensive womb). A potion made of powdered horn and ram's blood. Some herbs.

And for the Queen: purging draughts and bloodletting, many tests and examinations. Probing and searching with hair-like needles and fine-bladed knives. Cutting, just a little way down, so that the physician could see what was happening under the cover of the skin. He learned many things from this.

Every night, the King would try and plant his seed. And sometimes, on dark and solitary nights when he had finished, he would brush her hair.

And Adela would close her eyes, and she would feel the fingers running through the strands, the gentle tug and stroke of the brush, hear him humming (lightly, quietly), and her shoulders would droop and she would drift to sleep.

The Queen was barren.

The court whispered of it, delighted burbles of gossip and hoarse caws of condemnation. A Queen was for bearing sons. What kind of Queen was barren? A bumbling one? A wicked one? A worthless one.

But the King spoke not one word of it, merely huddled with his physician, their heads bowed over some ancient text or fresh new parchment from abroad. And they did not look at her, either in kindness or in blame.

And Adela wondered, like a lick of venom, if perhaps it were the King who was to blame. But even at her guiltiest she knew it was not so. She could feel it in herself: as hard and full of promise as a seed, a toxic plant desperate to sprout, the jagged edges of some brokenness that did not befall good women. The fault was with her. She knew it.

And not a day went by that she didn't remember the charm. Locked away in her cupboard, in the dark. She thought often of the Wise Woman, of her silver hair, and her hands combing through it.

One night, after the King had finished with her and fallen asleep beside her, a fretful feeling woke in her. An urge, a curiosity too strong to be ignored any longer. The moon was full (it seemed auspicious) and Queen Adela opened the cupboard and took out the charm.

And still slick with that from the King, she slid the charm inside herself, and with one, painful twist (or was it pain?) it was done, and she felt something in her turn and settle, something she knew had been inside her all along. There had been an awakening, something inside her stirred by the Wise Woman and her charm.

And above her, without needing to look, she knew the moon shone bright.

For many days the Queen was not sure what she had done. There was no change, though she checked her body every day. She was not sure what she was searching for. There was a vague feeling of guilt, and it haunted her. She wondered if she knew what she had done.

And then she missed her bleeding.

And then the next one too.

And some wild feeling stole up the Queen's throat and burned in the blood in her arms, like horses galloping, like wind screaming at the edge of an open window.

Adela knew that she was pregnant.

There was no change in her body—no swelling of her waist, no beating of tiny fists against the inside walls of herself—even as the months marched on she stayed flat-stomached and small-breasted. She did the exercises the physician prescribed. She drank his potions, let her husband the King bed her every night. There was no evidence the King or his physician had noticed a change in her body, of the life that grew inside her. So she kept a silent watch, waiting and afraid, over her unchanging body and her missed bleedings.

She began to have dreams (she never dreamed before), dreams so vivid that she began to wonder when she was awake and when she slept. Dreams of silver shapes, twisting and changing, and of the Wise Woman's sure, inviting hands. When she awoke there was a strange feeling beating in her stomach, a twisting feeling, of hunger and heat, an ache of need at the roots of her hair.

She slept less and less as the nights went on.

One night, lying awake beside the sleeping King, (and the moon was full again, a curious twist of fate), the Queen was struck by a great pain within herself, a sudden stab of agony, and the pangs of labor came upon her.

The Queen rushed to her room and locked the door and threw the drapes across the window, because she knew she was having her child.

And Adela could summon no one, so in the dark, in the night, gasping and hidden away, she heaved and struggled and groaned.

And the Queen gave birth to a silver fish.

It swam in the air, eyes like marbles, the gills pulsing. It was weak and feeble—and very, very small.

And the Queen gasped and stared, was shocked and horrified, but the fish wobbled up toward her (clumsy, like a colt taking its first steps), and it swam into her hand. It was just the size of her thumb, silver and shining, even in the dark. It was so small.

And the Queen knew it was her child.

With a gasp and a sound like she was being strangled, she grabbed it, she clenched, hardened her heart to the squirming, then the frantic thrashing, the pain that she could feel in her own hand, in the body that squirmed within her fist, that she crushed—

She couldn't do it.

The fish wriggled weakly, flopped in her hand, but she got up, took thick reeds and rushes from the straw that carpeted the floor, and fashioned a cage. She knitted the fish up in this cage (still so small, and hovering in the air) and she pushed it deep into the shadows at the back of her cupboard, and locked the doors.

She followed the orders of the physician. She went to the King when she was summoned. She acted as though nothing had changed.

The Queen told no one about the fish.

She thought now of what the Wise Woman had said, of the hidden cost that she had agreed to pay, and she cursed herself bitterly. But what was done had been done. The charm had already been turned.

Her shame never left her, though it grew muffled and quiet, and her thoughts were always on the fish. She wished it had never been born. And that she had not been the one to give birth to it.

But sometimes, late at night, when the palace was still, and the King snored beside her, Adela would steal out of his bed, and she would go to her room (guiltily, quietly), and unlock the cupboard.

And the fish was still there.

She would take it water, and bits of bread, and, slowly, the fish grew.

It lengthened, and its luster deepened, its sides gleaming and flashing like a mirror as it swam in the air, in the tiny confines of its cage. And Adela could see her own face in its sides, bending and rippling in the silver and the scales. A warped reflection, a twist and a shine to her that she had never seen and yet—her own face. And she could not look away.

But then her guilt and her horror would overcome her—her unnatural child floating in the air—and she would shut the cupboard and turn the key, and again she would lock it away, deep in the cupboard where it could not be seen.

Another year passed, and still the King had no heir. But something in him had changed, for he no longer brushed Adela's hair. He would bring her gifts, yes, and sweets, and always (always) he would touch her, always he would struggle to produce the child he craved—but he no longer touched her hair.

And Adela wondered, with a cold, numb thrill, if he had found her secret.

One still, quiet night the Queen was restless again, and when she opened the cupboard the cage was in splinters on the floor. The fish had grown too large and broken it, like hatching from an egg.

And the Queen was seized with fear, but the fish swam out to her (huge now, monstrous?) and it spoke to her. It said,

"I have become too large to be a fish."

And Adela found herself nodding. It was like she was choking again.

"I will be a serpent."

And the fish stretched, and grew and lengthened, until it was tumbling down in coils through the air, and it was a snake, elegant and shining. The snake, too, was upon the air.

Adela was filled with wonder, and she felt again that wild feeling, like she had taken a sudden gasp after holding her breath.

But then her ears flinched at a sound and she snatched the snake from the air, and rushing forward she threw it in the cupboard, slammed the door and locked it shut.

And—heart pounding, chest heaving, there was something wet on her cheeks—she moved to return to the King.

But there was a whisper from the cupboard:

"I will not stay. I cannot."

And the Queen knew it was true.

The next night, after it was very, very late and she was certain everyone was asleep, she went back to her room and opened the cupboard. And the snake was not there.

Panic filled her throat and she tore through her wardrobe, her chests, her bedding, everywhere the snake could hide, so that she could catch it again and tie it up, tie it down, fasten it to the earth in some way so that it could not slip free and escape the cupboard again.

Then the snake floated down from the ceiling, and the Queen moved to seize it, but the snake was not the fish, and it flashed from her grasp.

Adela watched it upon the air. She knew she would never be able to lock it in the cupboard again. And she found that perhaps she did not want to.

So she coaxed the snake down from the rafters, and she taught it to hide.

She herded it into dark passages that were abandoned or rarely used, bullied it into squirming beneath the rushes that carpeted the floor, where the silver flash of it would be concealed. In the night it might lurk and creep—do god knows what—but all the day it was concealed. Not a glimmer of it could be seen.

So the snake was hidden. And in a way (she told herself) was that not the same as being locked away? It was her shame, it fled her grasp—but it heeded her instruction, and remained her secret.

But she could not stop the thought, like the first whisper of blood from a scab picked too often and too quick—what if it chose its own path, and slipped free into the day?

The Queen's back tightened now (always) with the feeling of something coming up behind her, stalking her like prey. She could not keep from her mind the image of the snake darting free in the daylight, flashing like a sword, suddenly revealed before the servants and the gossiping, saw-tongued courtiers. Her eyes began to trick her. Every glancing light or fleeting shadow set her heart racing, every whisper of wind or sliding sound raised prickles at the back of her neck that ached like needles.

She wished—bitterly, with all of her strength—that one day she would turn, and it would all have been a dream; her freakish child and her monstrous shame evaporating all at once, like a thin sheen of water under a heavy, glaring sun.

And yet, sometimes at night (and soon, every night) she got up from her place beside the sleeping King, untangled herself without waking him, her mind carefully blank, studiously unthinking—but her heart beating, her hands shaking as if she were overcome with hunger—and went to find the snake.

She would come across it nestled in some deep crack in the wall, or it would float down to her from the rafters in the stable, slyly unwind itself from the shadows beneath the throne. And she would leave, and it would follow her on the air.

Not a word was spoken between them. It made little sense for them to speak to each other. She anticipated every curve of its body as if it were the motion of her own hands. To speak to it would be as if she talked to herself. Instead, they wandered.

Through tapestry hushed halls and echoing, abandoned ballrooms, through dark cellars filled with jars that gleamed softly in the night. And even once to that high tower, with its locking window, where she used to look out over the sleeping kingdom.

And in the cool quiet of the night, with the snake a gleaming ribbon by her side, Adela felt something lift inside of her. For a moment, her fear faded. She forgot the court, she forgot the King, her own royal title, that beating feeling of wind rattling at the window. It was just her, alone in the night, and at peace.

And the snake grew.

One night the King awoke and realized his Queen was not by his side.

He stole from his bed and through the dark halls, through empty rooms and across dim balconies, and in the shadowy passages beneath the castle he found her and demanded to know what she was doing.

She had been wandering. She opened her mouth to lie, to excuse herself, but the truth fell out of her instead, and in a rush she told him everything. She told him of the snake, of her child, of the Wise Woman (but not her hands or her silver hair, those words clung tightly to the inside of her mouth)—and she told him of the birth of the silver fish.

And the King was sickened, moved to horror.

And then to rage.

He grabbed the Queen and threw her in her room, and against the sound of her pounding and screaming he locked the door, went to his armory and fetched the ax he used for killing boar. Then he went to hunt the snake.

All through the palace he searched, his jaw set, his hands so tight they shook, his mind shuddering with the thought of it wriggling out from her, licking up her side, nestling in her hair. He would crush its head, he would smash its ribs, he would hack it to pieces.

But though he hunted all night, Adela had taught the snake well, and it hid from him. He could not find it.

But the court had seen him searching, and they heard of the Queen, locked in her room, and rumors started to spread. Of an adulterous queen, of a queen gone mad, of a blasphemous queen cursed by a vengeful god.

And quieter: stirrings of a silver thing that had been seen at night, an abomination, a horror, the spawn of a fouled womb.

And the Queen's secret began to float to the surface.

Adela cowered behind the locked door, a scream half-strangled in her throat, her hands tugging rough at the roots of her hair. She swore she could hear the courtiers, the sticky-sweet gloating as they pawed over her shame, the purring of their pleased disgust.

And meanwhile the King hunted—for her disgrace, for her child—hunted with murder in his hand and a face that was blank of any feeling at all.

The Queen knew that this was as it should be, how it was always going to be. Though she had taught the snake to hide, to be cunning, though she had tended and cared for it as a fish, she had always known. It would be right for the snake to die.

But still some part of her (some small part, some quiet voice) cried out at the thought, and she could not (would not?) make herself betray the snake, and tell the King of its strategies or hiding places. She could not do what was demanded, she could not do what was right.

And the King could not find the snake.

Every night he hunted it, in the quiet and the dark, and it became his obsession. And then one night he found it, trapped in a cramped cellar. But the snake was quick, and in a rush of silver it was gone, and escaped him. The King could not kill the snake.

So he beat the Queen instead.

And Adela looked up at him, her lips swollen. There was blood on her face. And the King was ashamed, horrified. But he said nothing, just clenched his bruised fists, took his ax and left.

Then, from the rafters the snake uncoiled itself, and it came to the Queen. And it licked her cuts clean, pressed the cool of its scales to the bruises on her face and arms, and it did not leave her.

Adela watched it as it tended to her.

For a moment (just a moment) she knew: she could seize it now and it could not flee, she could catch it, snatch a knife, an ax, and leave it thrashing, headless, gone forever, her shame absolved.

But her stomach heaved. And when the snake looked at her she saw her own eyes, watching her gently from another's face. She saw the flash of the snake's curving body, like ripples on the water. It had been beautiful this whole time, ever since it had just been a fish, barely the size of her thumb. Ever since it had just been a question, growing inside of her, and hers alone.

She did not want the snake to die.

So she said to the snake,

"If you cannot hide, you should fly."

So the snake became a swan.

It coiled upon itself and it shook out giant, spreading wings. It lunged and its elegant body became a silver neck, and it leapt, flying into the air.

The window sprang open and the wind surged outside. Fresh air flooded the room. Adela was overcome, her face stung with tears. She could hear herself weeping.

The swan inclined its head.

"You also."

So Adela rose, and stepped up into the air.

And the wildness was in her again, the galloping of horses, the rush of a thousand wings, the stampede of everything that was in her beating down the gates. And she looked up to the swan. "Come," she said. And she sprang through the open window, and stepped out into the sky.

And the swan flew out with her and they ran, around the castle, over the grounds, up dizzying heights and above the trees, up to the highest tower.

They ran upon the air.

The palace rose in an uproar, the news surging through it in a sudden flood, the news of the Queen, running upon the air, with a shining, silver swan.

And the story reached the King, and he was intoxicated with rage and the panic of loss, so he seized his ax and followed her, scrambling to the highest tower, out onto the roof.

And the Queen saw him, and fear struck her, but still the swan stayed with her, out in the open for all to see, and she did not move from its side.

The King saw that she was out of his reach, and remembered all the nights they'd spent together, the times he'd brushed her hair and kissed her, and all the nights she'd failed to give him an heir and had only ever kissed him back. And panic took him, hunger swallowed him, and crying out he pulled back his arm and flung his ax, to kill her, to destroy her and the swan.

But the Queen was too high, and the ax missed, and fell uselessly into the river below.

And the King howled at the Queen. "Come back to me! Come back to the ground and I will love you! Come back, you will be lost, you will blow away! Come back to me and give me an heir!"

And the Queen was stricken by his words. The air was coursing around her, the wind plucked at her sleeves and ran thundering through her hair, and she knew—the moment he spoke something twitched in her belly and she knew—she could bear and carry his child. His heir.

But the wind swept around her, and the swan was by her side, and she knew that she had already born a child of her own. She hung in the air, unmoved. Her shame was somewhere behind her.

"Where will you go?" the Swan asked her.

"Higher," she said, "and farther."

So Adela rose and flew, higher and higher, soaring, higher than the tower, higher than all the hills, higher than the birds had ever flown, higher and higher, into the rushing wind and the billowing mountains of clouds, until she was gone.

And far below, from the solid ground, the court watched. And some of them spat, and most of them left the black mystery of the night to go back into the warm glow of the castle.

But some of them stayed, watching the empty sky, and felt their lips seal tight, their palms go sweaty. And they heard a sound like beating wings, like pounding on a door, like the wind howling at a window.

The sound of something fighting to be free.