Free Swan Sister by Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling

children walked down out of the hills, then, and into the world.
    As they were leaving Cane County, an old woman called out to them from the porch of her house. “Where are you children going?”
    Sally was in front of the little group. “Out into theworld to find our fortune, ma’am. I’m looking for somebody who’s never seen a rooster so they’ll trade me a great treasure for this one.”
    The old woman shook her head. “You’ll have to get a long way from here before you find anybody that’s never seen a rooster!” she said.
    And the old woman was right. The children wandered a great distance, and everywhere they went they found roosters.
    They took a little boat to a hot country covered with jungles. The trees were filled with wild roosters. They were loud and colorful, with a dozen shades of green and red in their wings, and tails as long as a peacock’s, but they were roosters still, and no one in that country would give Sally treasure for her father’s gift.
    But a man who lived there took pity on them. “Sally, Sally,” he said. “Do you know what a rooster is for?”
    Sally didn’t understand his question, but the man wore a friendly smile so she asked him to please explain.
    “No one in my country needs your rooster because roosters are for dividing time. And we know how to divide our time here. In the morning, when those wild roosters in the jungle are crying at the sun, we’ve already risen from our mats and gone to our labors. Some of us fish for a little while in the sea, and some of us gather fruits in the jungles. Some of us go out with our spears and hunt the fierce bears so that we have meat for our feasts. And after a while, when we have enough, we come back to our village and share what we have. We take longnaps in the afternoons. At night we light fires and play music and dance. So do you know who to look for now, Sally?”
    Sally took her brother and sister and went to find people who did not know how to divide their time.
    After a while the children found a great building that was as polished as a mirror. It was made of metal and glass and was sealed off from the sky. The children found their way inside it to a great room divided into much smaller rooms by strange cardboard walls.
    There were dozens of people there, rushing around Sally and her rooster while Toby and Molly huddled together next to a plastic tree. The people were frantic and hurried, typing on keyboards and phones, rifling through papers and printouts, paging with pagers and meeting in meetings. They flowed around Sally and her rooster like a stream flows around a limestone boulder.
    Sally whispered to her rooster and set him on the gray carpet. He filled his chest with air and let out a loud COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!
    And the people stopped. They all turned to stare and didn’t even notice that their beepers were beeping and their faxes were faxing. A dark-haired woman who might have been beautiful if she hadn’t looked so tired and worried leaned forward and said, “Little girl, why have you brought that bird into our office?”
    Sally said, “To trade him for a great treasure.”
    The people all laughed, and some of them started shuffling away, blinking in the bright white electric light.But the dark-haired woman said, “Why would we need a rooster, little girl?”
    Sally said, “To show you how to divide your time.”
    The lady said, “But we know how to do that. See here? My watch shows me the time in Tokyo and Tripoli. My calendar has my days sliced into hours and my hours sliced into minutes. Our big white board has our meetings written out weeks in advance!” All the people nodded because what the lady said was true. They all had watches and calendars as advanced as the dark-haired woman’s.
    “I don’t know what time it is in Tripoli, it’s true,” said Sally. “And this rooster has never been to Tokyo. But listen here. At every sunrise, he lets out a cry. If you’re sleeping, when you hear him you know