But when the
winter came and the ice was all around, and the wind from the north
blew the snow against them, so that it froze among their feathers and
they could scarcely move, they were so stiff and so cold--then they
remembered how happy they had been in their father's castle. They
could not sing now--not even sad songs. They only longed to have their
human shape again and to be back in their old home.
"But after many, many years more had passed they ceased to wish for
home. They had been swans so long now that it did not seem to them
that they had ever been anything else. When the winter came again and
again and again, and the days of chilling storm and the nights of
freezing darkness were upon them, the poor brothers longed for nothing
but the end of it all. The thought of the old castle hall, with its
bright fires and its feasts and its music of minstrels and its dances
and its games, was only another pain to them, and they wished only to
die and to leave their sorrows.
"Then they crowded close together, to be as warm as they could, and
Fair-shoulder tried to spread her wings over her brothers, to keep the
storm from them.
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