She was once a swan, beautiful and wild. Her feathers were as snow and her eyes as opal. Every morning as she glided along the lake people came to admire her. See the swan, they would sigh, on her bed of turquoise silk.

It was an unusually cold summer when misfortune befell the swan. She ran afoul of a witch in the black woods next to the lake. The witch, in her fury, turned the swan’s snowy feathers to ash and her eyes to hard steel.

Heartbroken, the swan returned to those same turquoise waters in which she had always swum.

But the people were aghast. It is not the swan, they cried, but an imposter! And they chased her from the lake. She hid in the dark waters of the woods, afraid to return.

The people mourned their swan. She is dead,...

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