Image: Unsplash.
This short piece of fiction is the winner of the 2024 KYD School Writing Prize—read the judges’ report from Danielle Binks and Suzy Garcia.
My neck carves into the air with the edge and precision of a blade, a cleaving arc that defies any possible natural formation. Each feather on my outstretched wings is a delicate curl, rippling and translucent, and my head is bowed in a deep nod. I am a grand spectacle, luxurious and piercingly cold, mounted in the centre of the room to enchant all. The ice swan, a sculpture ordered specifically for the wedding. I was born from chisels and sweat, hours of labour, crystalline as glass. Cars are filling the street, champagne is being poured and a tentative drop of water is suspended from the point of my beak. My future is nowhere near as bright as the polished curve of my breast. I am melting.
They pour through the door in a pastel, perfumed cloud, darting between each other and kissing cheeks. Their smiles are glossy, like the satin of the bridesmaid’s dresses, and stiletto-clicking ricochets throughout the high-ceilinged hall, with its polished floorboards and large windows overlooking the vineyard. Everyone moves carefully, with an air of renewed grace appropriate for such opulence. Several guests make their way towards me, murmuring approvingly and speculating over my price. I glimmer proudly and watch how their hands are pressed tightly to their sides, restraining their desire to reach for my body with outstretched fingers.
My future is nowhere near as bright as the polished curve of my breast.
As the room fills with billowing skirts and broad-shouldered tuxedos, I observe the scuffed shoes of the catering staff darting between the crowds, clad in black. Sweat is visible on their foreheads as they balance platters of the finest Arctic salmon canapes and liquid-gold champagne from Ardennes. A man and woman, arm in arm, cross the path of a waiter carrying a careful arrangement of oysters and the pair barely look at her. Their eyes are on me, wide and reverent, and I can feel the moisture bleeding across my wings as the warm afternoon sun weeps across the room. The couple shake their heads at me in a final gesture of awe and join the guests seated for the ceremony. I wonder if the oysters taste like the sea.
I hear several women complaining with their heads pressed so close you cannot tell one lustrous head of hair from another. They are frustrated about the choice of flowers and the long drive to the venue and everything they murmur sounds cataclysmic, but I am melting, and the tulips have proud and beautiful heads. We watch the bride descend towards the altar in a gown of flourishing white tulle that kisses the floor. She and I are both the objects of such momentary allure and if I were not an ice sculpture sold for weddings and other events, I would’ve cried at the sight of her. The bride and groom gaze at each other like he is a lighthouse and she is a straying ship, and when she reaches the altar I listen for the sound of the anchor dropping.
Their words echo throughout the hall, floating through the air and caressing the guests tenderly as the pair perform a declaration of undying love. You are my forever, they say, and if I had the real fluffy down of a swan, it would bristle as I consider eternity. Perhaps if I had the webbed feet and tangerine beak and black pearl eyes, I would paddle elegantly into my own forever. But I can only see the golden sky mirrored on my watery surface. I will treasure my final hours like the lovers will treasure each other because I, too, am betrothed—to the thaw and the drips cascading quietly down my neck.
The bride and groom gaze at each other like he is a lighthouse and she is a straying ship.
The ceremony ends in tearful embraces, and I watch two young girls chase each other gleefully, hairpins and shoes abandoned. They begin to circle me, looking through my vacant body to see each other, cackling at the distorted image. Their cheeks are ruddy, their eyes are luminous and their peals of laughter sound like fruit ripening. I imagine beating my wings and shaking the frost out of my feathers, flying carelessly behind them.
‘So tell us, Lucille. How much did that ice swan really cost?’ The bridesmaids, giddy, surround the bride, gushing over the ceremony.
‘Not nearly as much as those hors d’oeuvres, I bet! That caviar was divine.’
‘Or how about your shoes! I see those diamond clasps.’
They are hypnotised by the shine of things. Were the silk gowns simply purchased for today? Procured for a single ceremony, then left to dwindle and deteriorate in the dark corners of a closet? I wonder, if they were frozen, would they still long for such opulence or would they be wholly besotted with the fortune of existence? As guests mill around the room, straying towards me, I look at them with my blue ice eyes and try to make them see beyond the shiny surface of the ceremony. But I am glistening and it mesmerises them, and it’s no use.
Through the polished glass of the windows, the sun is plunging, the shadows of the trees lap across the grass in elongated silhouettes and guests rock gently in each other’s arms. Platters of macarons and lemon tartlets are ferried out and eagerly accepted. The careful definition of my plumage is blurring and the crowd’s gaze begins to extend beyond the softening arc of my wings, which no longer offer an icy sparkle.
I wonder, if they were frozen, would they still long for such opulence?
Forlorn eyes rest upon the wilting bouquets and what remains of a triple-tiered sponge cake. Buses arrive to transport guests to the reception, the night’s grandeur and early dusk stars welcoming them. Garbage bags are stretched at the seams with the wedding’s excess, a surfeit of delicacies transformed into worthless waste. Inside lie dainty appetisers that outnumbered the guests, indistinguishable in a soiled heap, barely resembling their former culinary glory. What was once a wedding has become a memorial, the hazy day of extravagance fading into the dusty dark evening, and I watch the attendees file down the driveway and into the night.
Tomorrow is not filled with the finite wealth displayed today, it has no soft satin dresses and no lavish desserts on platters. Tomorrow is a wish, I think as I feel myself sinking, my body submitting to watery erosion. Although I am quickly becoming neither ice nor swan, I can still make out the moon burgeoning on the horizon and a flock of wild geese crossing the sky like stars. How lucky I am.
