The Bride, the Swan and the Wolf

The drumbeat travelled through the house like a second heart—steady, insistent—folding itself into laughter, clinking china, and the crackle of oil in the kitchen. Voices floated up the staircase in overlapping layers: a joke half-heard, an aunt’s advice, someone calling for more sugar. The hallway below was crowded with shoes and relatives; even the air seemed full.

She sat before the dressing table, a small island of stillness in the centre of it all. Three women moved around her with practised hands—pinning the veil, adjusting the bodice of her gown, dusting shimmer along her cheekbones. The mirror offered back an image that looked almost like a stranger: a woman in her thirties, wrapped in white and silver, her hair swept into a careful arrangement of curls and pins.

The dress was beautiful. So was she, she supposed. But what the mirror really showed was the invisible weight around her shoulders—the expectation that she would be good, steady, appropriate. That she would walk into the life prepared for her without stumbling.

She had not been forced into this. She reminded herself of that often.

Her future husband was a good man—measured, considerate, respectful when he spoke to her father, patient when he spoke to her. He liked plans. He made lists. He had a way of speaking about mortgages and quiet holidays that sounded almost soothing. After the disarray and losses of her twenties, that steadiness had felt like a harbour.

“Stability,” her father had said, half-pleading, half-hopeful. “It is a gift, if you let yourself accept it.”

And she had accepted it. Freely.

“Smile,” one of the women teased, nudging her shoulder. “You look as if you’re about to take an exam, not walk down an aisle.”

A real laugh slipped out, brief but genuine. “It’s the mascara,” she replied. “My eyelashes feel like they’re lifting weights.”

Laughter circled her, easy and affectionate. Someone took a quick photo over her shoulder. Another woman adjusted the veil again, even though it did not need adjusting. Her future husband stood in the doorway for a moment, talking quietly with her brother. He looked up, caught her eye, and gave a small, nervous smile that made him look younger. She smiled back, and for a second everything felt simple.

But as more relatives drifted in and out, the room seemed to tighten. The sound began to press against her skin. The drumbeat from downstairs seeped into her bones until her own pulse seemed to echo it.

“Could I have a minute?” she asked softly. “Just a glass of water.”

There was a murmur of agreement, a flurry of rearranging. Brides were allowed these small disappearances; everyone assumed tears were involved, whether they were or not.

She slipped out of the room and moved down the corridor, her skirt whispering across the floor. Instead of heading towards the kitchen, she turned towards the far end of the hall, where a familiar door waited with its old, slightly crooked frame.

Her childhood bedroom.

The door creaked the way it always had. The air inside was cooler, quieter, as if the house’s noise thinned at the threshold.

The room had changed less than any other space in the house. The wallpaper, slightly faded now, still carried the same delicate pattern of vines. The bedspread sagged in the same places, worn by years and elbows and open books. Shelves along the wall were crowded with paperbacks and school trophies. A small lamp pooled amber light near the pillow.

Her father had left the room almost untouched after she moved out for university. Whenever she’d suggested repainting it, he had shaken his head.

“Some rooms should stay the way they were,” he’d said. “They remind us who we were trying to become.”

At the time, she had rolled her eyes. Now, standing in her wedding gown in that preserved space, she understood him a little more.

She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the old mattress dip under her weight. For the first time that day, her shoulders fell from their careful posture. The quiet wrapped itself around her like another kind of fabric.

On the nightstand lay a few forgotten things: a dried bookmark feather, a chipped mug, a stack of notebooks. Her hand went to the drawer almost without her deciding.

Inside, beneath scattered hairpins and an old exam ticket, lay a sheet of thick paper, slightly curled at the corners.

The portrait.

She had drawn it at eighteen, in an art class she had chosen only because the schedule fit. The assignment had been simple: draw a protagonist. Some students sketched themselves, others famous heroes or imagined lovers.

She had drawn a stranger.

A man, older than she was by at least fifteen years. Pale eyes. An angular jaw marked by lines that suggested a life of decisions rather than ease. Dark hair, already graying at the temples. His expression was not romantic, not inviting; his mouth held a steady, thoughtful reserve, as if words were currency and he spent them carefully.

Around him, she had drawn faint spirals and shapes—suggestions of constellations, maps, diagrams that could have been stars or cities or ideas. The whole composition suggested that he was less a person and more a centre of gravity.

Her teacher had looked at the drawing for a long moment and then said, “This doesn’t look like a hero. It looks like a force.”

She had laughed, embarrassed by the intensity of the comment, and tucked the sketch away. It did not resemble anyone she knew in real life. Certainly not the boys around her. Definitely not the man she was about to marry.

Now, in her wedding gown, she studied the drawing again. The older she had become, the more the portrait unsettled her—partly because it felt like some future she had never lived, partly because it reminded her of a version of herself who had been less cautious.

He looked like a wolf disguised as a man—quiet, alert, impossible to push around. Not a predator in the cheap sense, but something self-possessed, belonging to no one.

By contrast, she saw herself as she appeared today: a swan on the surface of a calm lake, composed and graceful, all the frantic motion hidden beneath the water.

He belonged to a different landscape. In her mind, he walked through winter cities, midnight stations, libraries that stayed open too late. He was built from solitude and chosen beliefs, not inherited certainties.

He was everything she had trained herself not to want.

Yet she had chosen her path. She believed in the life waiting downstairs: in companionship, shared bills, manageable joys. She did not regret it.

Still, as she held the portrait, something fluttered under her ribs, like a bird realizing there was sky it would never touch.

She lay back on the bed and placed the sketch gently against her chest. The ceiling fan traced slow circles above her. The drumbeat from downstairs softened but did not disappear; it became a muffled pulse, like a heartbeat heard through a wall.

Her eyelids felt heavy beneath mascara and the weight of the day. She listened to the rhythm—steady, then slower, then strangely deep, as if it were coming from further away.

The ceiling seemed to blur at the edges.

The line between the room and somewhere else thinned.

She was standing.

Not in the bedroom.

Cold air brushed her cheeks, carrying the scent of salt and something older than the house. Moonlight poured over everything, turning the world into silver and shadow.

Beneath her bare feet, wet sand. The hem of her gown clung to her ankles, dark with seawater. Behind her, the sea hissed and sighed; ahead of her, in the distance, rose the jagged outline of a ruined stone stairway, half-swallowed by the cliff.

A violin note drifted across the water—low, sustained, almost like a voice calling from very far away.

She turned towards the sound.

He sat on the worn stone steps, surrounded by a loose circle of candles whose flames wavered in the salty wind. He looked exactly as she had drawn him years ago, except that he was now in color: a mustard-colored sweater pushed up at the sleeves, worn trousers, boots darkened by spray. His hair was swept back from his face, streaks of gray brighter in the moonlight.

He played without looking at her, his attention turned halfway towards the horizon, as if the sea were answering his music.

The melody tugged at her ribcage. Her feet moved of their own accord, the sand sinking under each step. The water crept higher: ankles, calves, knees. Her skirt grew heavier, pulling at her hips, but she kept moving.

She began to turn, slowly at first, then more freely—arms lifting, body circling in a movement that belonged to no dance she had ever been taught. It felt as if the music had reached inside her and found a shape that had always been waiting.

The rhythm from the house, the violin, and the crash of the waves braided together into one enormous heartbeat.

He watched her now.

His gaze was not greedy. It was precise, attentive, as if he were reading a text in a language only he and she could understand.

The wolf had seen the swan.

The water reached her thighs. Her dress dragged and wrapped around her legs. Still, she turned.

Then the music climbed suddenly, struck a bright, clean note—and stopped.

The silence that followed felt loud.

She looked back at the steps.

He was gone.

The candles had gone out. The stones were bare.

A shiver moved up her spine. Thunder muttered somewhere beyond the line of the sea.

When she turned again, he was there, standing in the water only an arm’s length away. The sea reached his waist. His sweater was soaked, clinging to his frame; his face was closer now, and the lines of age and solitude were impossible to miss.

She saw, very clearly, the distance between their lives: her careful family, her chosen marriage; his decades of travel and self-directed choices. Two different stories that should never have touched.

The tide pressed her skirt against her legs, cold and insistent. Her breath became shallow.

He lifted his hand slowly, as if approaching something sacred, and placed his fingers lightly at her waist where the fabric clung to her. The contact was surprisingly gentle, almost questioning.

Color dissolved.

The heavy gown seemed to bleed into the sea—white, then grey, then nothing. In its place a simple dress remained, thin and light, clinging to her skin. Her jewelry felt suddenly out of place, like relics from another person’s life.

Wind rose around them. Her hair whipped across her face. The moon burned brighter.

He slid one hand to the small of her back, the other closing around her fingers.

She did not pull away.

They began to move together.

It was not quite a waltz, not quite any dance she knew. It felt older, like something written for people who meet only once, in the wrong world but at the exact right moment. Each step was measured; each pause held just long enough to be almost unbearable.

Water splashed around their knees. The sea mirrored their motion, their shadows turning and folding just beneath the surface.

For a time—she could not say how long—there was no house, no fiancé, no watching relatives. There was only the pressure of his hand at her back, the sound of their breathing, and the impossible brightness of the moon.

They spun.

Suddenly the resistance under her feet vanished.

They were no longer standing on the sea; they hovered just above it, supported by nothing she could name. Her dress billowed around her legs. His hand remained at her waist. The world below them turned slowly, water and light and shadow sliding past.

Her chest ached with the wonder of it and with the quiet knowledge that this could not last.

He looked at her then, fully, as if he were memorizing her face, committing her to some internal archive he trusted more than the world.

Then he was gone.

No sound. No flash. One moment he was there; the next, there was only empty air.

She dropped.

Cold slammed into her body. Sea closed over her head, crushing breath from her lungs. For one terrible second she could not tell which way was up. Her dress—now heavy again—wrapped around her legs. Jewelry bit into her skin.

She kicked.

Her lungs burned. Sand scraped her knees as the tide dragged her sideways and back. Her fingers struck something solid—rock, then packed shore. She pushed.

She broke the surface with a ragged gasp that seemed to tear her chest open. She crawled until the water touched only her ankles and then collapsed onto the wet sand.

The moon hung smaller overhead, as if it had withdrawn.

She rolled onto her back and stared up, chest heaving, eyes stinging. Tears blurred her vision and mixed with seawater on her cheeks. Her hair clung in dark ropes to her skin; her makeup had smeared into dark shadows beneath her eyes.

She looked, she thought dimly, like a bride who had survived a shipwreck.

“Where are you?” she whispered, though she knew he had never really been here in a way the waking world would recognize.

Only the waves replied.

A sound tore out of her then—a scream that belonged not only to the dream, or to him, but to every careful choice she had made against some quieter, wilder part of herself. It ripped something open and emptied it.

When it faded, she was left with nothing but her breathing: messy, honest, alive.

A new thud threaded through that breath. Not the sea, not the violin

A knocking.

Her eyes opened.

The sand was gone. The sea withdrew into silence. She was lying on her childhood bed, the fan buzzing above, the air still and familiar.

The portrait rested against her chest, edges slightly bent where her fingers gripped it.

Her gown was dry. Her hair was still pinned. The room was precisely as it had been.

A real knock sounded at the door.

“Are you ready?” came her father’s voice from the hallway. It was careful and hopeful and a little fragile.

Her heart pounded against her ribs with the same ache she had felt in the water. She pressed her hand lightly to the spot, half expecting bruises. There were none—only memory.

She looked down at the sketch. The man on the page stared back with the same steady, aware gaze. The spirals behind him still swirled, mere pencil marks, yet full of suggestion.

“You,” she whispered, not as accusation or invitation, but as acknowledgement.

She slid the drawing back into the drawer and closed it gently.

Then she stood, smoothed the skirts of her gown, adjusted her veil with careful fingers, and faced the mirror. Her reflection looked flawless again, every line and curl in place. Nothing about her exterior hinted at shipwrecks or impossible dances.

She opened the bedroom door.

Her father stood there in his best suit, eyes bright. Pride and worry tangled together on his face. He offered his arm.

“Ready?” he asked again.

She took his arm. Her smile was small but steady.

“Yes,” she said. And she meant it. She was ready for the life she had chosen, with all its routines and quiet comforts.

They walked together down the hall into the waiting crowd—into light and photographs, vows and carefully spoken promises. Her new husband’s hands trembled slightly as he placed the ring on her finger. She felt tenderness for him then, real and uncomplicated.

Later, as the car pulled away from the house and the celebration receded behind them, she glanced out at the night sky. The moon was ordinary now, a pale coin in the distance.

Inside her chest, something else glowed—a small, secret bruise of memory, pulsing softly.

Epilogue

That night, in their new home, the silence felt almost weightless. Her husband slept beside her, his breathing even and gentle. He was, as everyone had said, a safe place.

She lay on her back, staring at the dim outline of the ceiling. The events of the day drifted past—congratulations, photographs, speeches. But beneath them, like a low tide, the memory of the shore moved with its own rhythm.

Her hand slid slowly to her waist, to the place where, in the dream, unfamiliar fingers had brushed away embroidered fabric and left something else behind—not ownership, but recognition.

Warmth spread beneath her palm, not for the stranger from the sketch, but for herself—for the part of her that had finally admitted it wanted more than obedience, even if life would not grant it.

Her eyes closed. The sensation was not sharp or secretive; it was quiet, like a truth settling into place.

A sound rose in her—not a cry, not a sob, not even a sigh, but something low and almost voiceless, a small growl of acceptance that only she could hear.

She did not move. She did not need to.

In the world’s eyes she would be, from tomorrow onward, a thoughtful wife in a sensible marriage.

Inside, a swan and a wolf rested in the same body at last—one gliding through the day, the other keeping watch in the dark.

She let herself drift toward sleep, carrying both.