The redhaired woman stopped, and pleaded with the traveller not to choose that particular spot by the lake for their picnic.

"Why not?" he asked.

"It's because of those four swans who are swimming close to the shore,"
she replied.
"Last night's mention of a swan in your story brought back some very disturbing memories to me.

Many years ago, longer than current clocks or time-measuring mechanisms can count,
there was a very happy family who lived near a lake just like this one.
A father,mother,son and daughter.
The mother then gave birth to twin boys but the poor lady died in childbirth.

Her husband was bereft and distracted with grief, and had to ask the woman's sister to take care of the children.
She was not,however, of the same gentle temperament as her late sister, and there was something rather mysterious about her demeanour.
It was as if she cast a spell on the father, who was captivated by her beauty,
and he asked her to marry him.

One day she brought the four children down to the lake on a sunny day.
They splished and they splashed, they laughed and they teased one another.
They ran in and out of the water, the three little boys with an abandon that showed their enjoyment.
Their older sister, whose hair was a rich auburn, joined in with them but there was a certain caution in her movements.
She kept darting glances back at the woman who was seated on a grassy bank above the lake.

Suddenly the woman approached the children and said:
"Come ashore, little ones, I have something to tell you!"

The children, who thought they might be about to get some delicious treat in a picnic,
eagerly ran ashore.

"What have you got for us?" they asked excitedly.

"Turn around and face the water, and then I will show you," she replied.

The children turned around, but the auburn haired girl glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder, and saw her aunt, now her stepmother, intoning the following words from a book:

"Begone, wretched children! You are to be turned into swans,
and I am banishing you to spend three hundred years on this lake,
another three hundred years on the strait that separates our coastline from the country to the east, and a final three hundred years on the ocean to the west.

At the end of that time when you hear the sound of a bell you will regain human form".

With that, she turned away from them.
The children felt the swan plumage growing through their skin,
the swan wings sprouting where their arms had been.
But the auburn haired daughter had some magic of her own left,
even though it was very weak at this stage.

She cast a powerful glance at the stepmother and said:
"Because you have cast such an evil spell on us, from which there is no immediate escape, I am now using what little power I have left to freeze you in this spot for the same amount of time....

The traveller looked at the redhaired woman and said:
"That is a frightening tale, indeed, but that is all it is surely. Merely a tale.
Now let's put our picnic basket down here on the ground and enjoy this fine food and wine we have here."

"Oh no," she replied,"we cannot stay here.
This is the lake where fact and fancy meet".

Just then the four swans stretched their long necks, ruffled their plumage and started to swim ashore towards the two picnickers....