Free The Next Full Moon by Carolyn Turgeon

haven’t . . . well it has happened only very rarely,a swan maiden mating with a human, and so we were not certain, but it has been told to us that you would experience a change around your thirteenth birthday. And so we have been watching you. She, too, has watched you.”
    â€œMy mother?”
    â€œYes.”
    Ava thought of the moon, the woman sitting in it. On the night of the full moon , her grandmother had said, you can see her, sometimes .
    â€œWe knew how frightening it would be for you,” Lara said. “Your mother has been sick with worry, thinking of you. I hope you feel safe now, though. We are your family. All of us.”
    Ava looked out at the lot of them. All the beautiful maidens, many of them facing the moon now, their faces tilted up, pressing their feet into the earth, lifting up their arms to the breeze.
    Helen lifted her own silvery arms into the breeze. “It is a treat for us,” she said. “Being in this form. But you, my dear, you have much more human in you than we do. And yet you are still swan. We don’t know exactly what to expect from you, but you will be capable of great things.”
    â€œWhen you return home,” Lara said. “Use the robe. Transform. Feel what it is to be the other part of you. The world will become entirely different, when you are in your other form. But that is the world, too, and that is you. Partof who you are.”
    â€œSo I just . . . put the robe on? It just came off of me tonight.” She shuddered, thinking of it. “It pulled off of me.”
    â€œYou shed it. Like a caterpillar growing a cocoon and then sloughing it off. You’re lucky. There’s a story of a girl many hundreds of years ago who spent years growing her robe and was only able to transform as an old woman. The moment she put her robe on and transformed, she was so happy, felt so complete, she died right then and there.”
    â€œSo they won’t grow back on me? Now that they have come off? I will be normal now?”
    â€œYes,” Helen whispered. “You will seem normal, anyway, but you have a great power. You can be one of them, and you can be one of us, too. Very few have the freedom to straddle two worlds. One day you will choose, but that is not for a long time yet.”
    The moon, the forest, the women in the clearing, some of them swans again now, Helen and her jewel eyes and talk about other worlds—it was all too much. Ava stood transfixed, dazzled like the fish in the creek. No wonder her father was able to catch them, again and again. The word came to her: moonstruck. Like that movie with Cher. She and those poor trout were all moonstruck.
    Helen tilted her head and smiled. “I will take you home now, dear girl. You have a lot to absorb from tonight.”
    Ava nodded. She was so sleepy, suddenly. She tried to keep her eyes open, to take it all in, in case she was dreaming.
    â€œBut when will I see you again?” she asked, her voice slurring a little now, she was so tired.
    â€œThe next full moon,” Helen answered.
    And then, before her eyes, Helen slipped on a robe—one of the others had been holding it—and as she did, her whole body bent down, turned into an S , and then she was on the ground, her great white wings stretched out on other side, her glittering blue eyes staring up at Ava.
    Lara smiled, gesturing. “Go ahead, sit on her back.”
    Ava looked at her, and then at Helen. “It won’t . . . hurt her?”
    Lara laughed. “No. Go ahead.”
    Ava walked over, tentatively, and stretched one leg over the swan’s back. And then she sat down, pressing her legs on either side of the bird’s thick, soft body. Lara smiled and slipped on her own robe, and then she, too, transformed, her body slipping down, her neck stretching out, feathers sprouting all over until she was white as glittering snow.
    Ava blinked, smiling at the clearing filled with swans that now,