The king had eleven sons and one daughter. The royal children lived well and carefree, until the stepmother appeared, who gave Eliza to be raised in the village, and turned the brothers into swans - they flew away. Beauty Eliza every day prettier, but all the time she remembered the brothers. When she returned to the castle, her stepmother decided to make her ugly with the help of three toads, but they swam across the water with red poppies, barely touched an innocent girl. Then the witch-stepmother disfigured her stepdaughter with mud; even the king-father did not recognize his own daughter and drove her out.
The girl spent the night in the forest, in a dream she saw herself and the brothers in the old days, and in the morning she washed herself in a pond and again became a beauty. The next day, the old woman she met gave a handful of berries and pointed to the river, where she saw eleven swans in golden crowns. Eliza went to the river delta - at sunset there swans flew in, which turned into her brothers. In the morning they flew away, and a day later, in a basket of willow bark, they took Eliza with them. After spending the night on a small ledge, in the morning the swans flew again. All day, Eliza admired the cloudy castle of Fata Morgana, and spent the night in a cave overgrown with green plants. She dreamed that the castle fairy, looking like an old woman from the forest, talked about how to save the brothers: you need to pick up the nettles at the cave or in the cemetery and weave eleven shirts for the brothers, but do not say a word, otherwise the brothers will die.
Returning in the morning and noticing the sister’s dumbness, the brothers first mistook this for another stepmother’s witchcraft, but then they all understood. As soon as Eliza took on the second shirt, she was found by the king, who was hunting in those parts. He took the forest beauty as his wife and took him to his castle, and even transferred her nettles to a special room. But the archbishop whispered to the king that his wife was a sorceress, and one night he saw the queen picking up nettles in a cemetery. All this archbishop reported to the king; he was convinced with his own eyes that this was true. When Eliza once again went to the cemetery, she was caught hot; the people sentenced the "witch" to be burned at the stake.
In captivity, the girl weaved the last shirt. The brothers came to the king, trying to intercede for their sister, but did not have time - at dawn they again turned into swans. In the morning, while the old nag drove Eliza to the fire, the crowd wanted to rip off their shirts, but the brothers flew in. The executioner already grabbed the girl's hand, but she managed to throw shirts on the brothers, which means she was able to say: “I am innocent!” - and fainted. The brothers told everything, and the logs for the fire turned into a bush of scarlet roses with the only white rose that the king laid on Eliza’s chest, and she woke up, and “there was peace and happiness in her heart”.
