...Well, because wicked witches are awful like that, of course.
[SHE SAYS, WITH THE AUTHORITY OF SOMEONE WHO HAS DEALT WITH ONE. If by "dealt with" you mean "shot one dead in her sleep with an arrow to the heart", which in this case we do.]
But in any case, it turned out that only the brothers had come out to greet their father and the ball of yarn, and...well, perhaps the witch miscounted, or the servants had told her wrong, or...I'm not quite sure, really, but the fact of the matter was, the witch went away having changed the six brothers into swans, and was terribly pleased with herself. But the little princess, their youngest sibling and only sister, hadn't come running out with the rest of them at all, and so she'd seen the whole thing from the window of her bedroom in the castle, and she was terribly afraid.
But there really wasn't time to be afraid, of course, because the brothers now being swans, they started to fly away! And since she couldn't bear to stay in the castle all alone, and fearing that if she let them get away she might never see them again, she grabbed a cloak and raced out after them and followed them into the woods.
...Er, that is, a different set of woods than the one the witches first lived in, thankfully.
audio ]
[SHE SAYS, WITH THE AUTHORITY OF SOMEONE WHO HAS DEALT WITH ONE. If by "dealt with" you mean "shot one dead in her sleep with an arrow to the heart", which in this case we do.]
But in any case, it turned out that only the brothers had come out to greet their father and the ball of yarn, and...well, perhaps the witch miscounted, or the servants had told her wrong, or...I'm not quite sure, really, but the fact of the matter was, the witch went away having changed the six brothers into swans, and was terribly pleased with herself. But the little princess, their youngest sibling and only sister, hadn't come running out with the rest of them at all, and so she'd seen the whole thing from the window of her bedroom in the castle, and she was terribly afraid.
But there really wasn't time to be afraid, of course, because the brothers now being swans, they started to fly away! And since she couldn't bear to stay in the castle all alone, and fearing that if she let them get away she might never see them again, she grabbed a cloak and raced out after them and followed them into the woods.
...Er, that is, a different set of woods than the one the witches first lived in, thankfully.