‘Very well; only shut your eyes and hold your
breath.’
I obeyed, and at once felt that I was falling like
a stone flung from the hand ... the air whistled in
my ears. When I could think again, we were floating
smoothly once more just above the earth, so that we
caught our feet in the tops of the tall grass.
‘Put me on my feet,’ I began. ’What
pleasure is there in flying? I’m not a
bird.’
‘I thought you would like it. We have no
other pastime.’
‘You? Then what are you?’
There was no answer.
‘You don’t dare to tell me that?’
The plaintive sound which had awakened me the first
night quivered in my ears. Meanwhile we were
still, scarcely perceptibly, moving in the damp night
air.
‘Let me go!’ I said. My companion
moved slowly away, and I found myself on my feet.
She stopped before me and again folded her hands.
I grew more composed and looked into her face; as
before it expressed submissive sadness.
‘Where are we?’ I asked. I did not
recognise the country about me.
‘Far from your home, but you can be there in
an instant.’
‘How can that be done? by trusting myself to
you again?’
’I have done you no harm and will do you none.
Let us fly till dawn, that is all. I can bear
you away wherever you fancy—to the ends
of the earth. Give yourself up to me! Say
only: “Take me!"’
‘Well ... take me!’
She again pressed close to me, again my feet left
the earth—and we were flying.
‘Which way?’ she asked me.
‘Straight on, keep straight on.’
‘But here is a forest.’
‘Lift us over the forest, only slower.’
We darted upwards like a wild snipe flying up into
a birch-tree, and again flew on in a straight line.
Instead of grass, we caught glimpses of tree-tops
just under our feet. It was strange to see the
forest from above, its bristling back lighted up by
the moon. It looked like some huge slumbering
wild beast, and accompanied us with a vast unceasing
murmur, like some inarticulate roar. In one place
we crossed a small glade; intensely black was the
jagged streak of shadow along one side of it.
Now and then there was the plaintive cry of a hare
below us; above us the owl hooted, plaintively too;
there was a scent in the air of mushrooms, buds, and
dawn-flowers; the moon fairly flooded everything on
all sides with its cold, hard light; the Pleiades
gleamed just over our heads. And now the forest
was left behind; a streak of fog stretched out across
the open country; it was the river. We flew along
one of its banks, above the bushes, still and weighed
down with moisture. The river’s waters at
one moment glimmered with a flash of blue, at another
flowed on in darkness, as it were, in wrath.
Here and there a delicate mist moved strangely over
the water, and the water-lilies’ cups shone
