V
At first I felt giddy, and instinctively I closed my eyes.... A minute later I opened them again. We were floating as before; but the forest was now nowhere to be seen. Under us stretched a plain, spotted here and there with dark patches. With horror I felt that we had risen to a fearful height.
‘I am lost; I am in the power of Satan,’ flashed through me like lightning. Till that instant the idea of a temptation of the evil one, of the possibility of perdition, had never entered my head. We still whirled on, and seemed to be mounting higher and higher.
‘Where will you take me?’ I moaned at last.
‘Where you like,’ my companion answered. She clung close to me; her face was almost resting upon my face. But I was scarcely conscious of her touch.
‘Let me sink down to the earth, I am giddy at this height.’
‘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.