The Nodding Swan

The story of The Nodding Swan

A swan asleep on water has no beginning and no end. She does not tuck her head under a wing — she folds the whole neck back along her own body, and the wing closes over the last of it, and what is left is one unbroken curve. No head. No bill. No eyes. Just a shape. She is the only one in the cast whose sleeping form has no face at all, which is why she works at any size, and why a two-year-old can draw her. She is white. Classic, cream-white, the swan a child already has in their head, and that carries a rule with it: a white swan at night is the brightest thing in the picture, and the brightest thing in the picture is supposed to be Tardy. So she is never in a night frame with him at full value. She is further back, or in shade, or asleep with the neck already folded so the whole of her reads as one soft dim shape rather than a bright one. That is not a restriction placed on her. It is only what her name already says. She is asleep, and asleep is dim. The nod is the method and there is nothing else to it. One slow nod, the head going down and back along the spine until the wing closes over it, and then it stays. She is named after the last thing she does before she stops, which is why nodding turned out to be the right word for somebody this still — and the grown-up in the room hears nodding off at the same time, without anybody pointing at it. It happens once per film and it never comes back out. And then she drifts, asleep, very slowly across the picture, and there are always two of her: one on the water and one underneath it. If the reflection ever breaks, the Hush has failed at its job and the picture is wrong.

Friends

• The Lady of the LakeThe other one on the lake, equally still, and neither has ever noticed the other.

• Swan NoirThe other swan on the same water, and the only one of the two who is not the colour a child expects.