Title: Seventh Child
Fandom: Grimm's Fairy Tales
Length: 123
Rating: G
Content notes: canon-typical suffering
Author note: my take on The Six Swans; also a fill for the Seven square on my bingo card
Summary: She hears the beating of wings




Seventh Child

she hears the beating of wings
at sunset; her six brothers
fly home in the form of swans

their enchantment suspended
for a scant fifteen minutes
they teach her how to break it:

six years of silence, weaving
shirts of nettles, hands blistered,
her children stolen, her mouth

smeared with blood by the old queen
while she slept, blamed for their deaths,
unable to clear her name

the shirts finished, all but one,
six years of silence ending
at sunset: the sound of wings

as she stands tied to the stake
her brothers fly to her side
she throws the shirts over them

what everyone remembers
her youngest brother’s one wing
where the last sleeve was missing

her story is named for them