A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a swan who was afraid of heights. When the other cygnets in her nest had spread their wings to fly, she had shaken her feet, one at a time, and set off walking. She walked over hills and across fields, through the rain and in the sunshine, and then, just when she thought she couldn't walk any more, she came to a pond.

The pond was full of small, noisy creatures. They looked rather like ducklings, but if she tilted her head and squinted, then....

"What funny-looking little swans," said the swan. "I think I will live here with them until they grow up and we can take walks together."

So the swan took up residence in the pond, and she lived there for many months. She tried to teach the little birds to trumpet, but they insisted on quacking. She tried to teach them how to stretch their necks far into the water below, but they preferred flipping their feet in the air. As they grew older and their feathers came in, she tried to clean them so that they were as snowy white as she was, but they remained persistently brown.

Alas, all too soon the swan had to admit that her charges were, in fact, ducks--that they had been ducks all along and that they would be ducks forever. She had to admit that they were very bad at being swans, but very good at being ducks.

One day, the ducks spread their wings and flew away. The swan got out of the pond and looked around, trying to choose a direction in which to begin walking. She turned back to the pond's glassy surface and stretched out her wings, slowly and not without some pain due to the lack of use. She was surprised to see how big they were.

Silently, she stared at the reflection of her wings in the water, wondering if it was too late to learn how to fly....