The snow there was just right, melted by the sun to a perfect consistency for packing. And everywhere that the white ball had traveled, the earth was left bare in wet, brown, leaf-mold patches.
“Hello,” Ariel called, going down toward them. Their recognition was instantaneous. “It’s the green feather!” Persis exclaimed, running to meet her. But Nicky stayed where he was and merely said, when she came to him, “Hello. We thought you’d come, soon.”
Ariel dug a toe of her rubber into the leaf mold and stirred it up. The pungent scent of earth assailed her. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh!” And then, meeting Nicky’s glad-grave eyes, exclaimed, “That’s Summer! Or Spring? Anyway, I smell violets. Big purple ones, long green-stemmed violets. Little pearly white ones too. And yellow ones.”
“Yes,” Persis agreed, jumping around her. “In the spring there are bushels and tons and quarts of violets right here. A whole valley of ’em. Mother leaves it wild. She didn’t plant ’em. They came. But you can’t smell them yet. Even the leaves aren’t through yet.”
“But I do smell them. Anyway, I feel them coming. Let’s dance. Come, let’s dance to meet them.” Ariel’s happiness was overflowing, bubbling up before these children. All the morning, since waking and discovering that happiness had come to her in sleep, she had held it still, within herself. But now this unexpected meeting with the children, and more particularly Nicky’s glad-grave eyes, had broken down her reserve. She was at one with the children, as spontaneous as they in what she said and did. “Come, dance,” she laughed, wrinkling her eyes like a merry little girl, eyes very narrow, very green in the sunlight, and snatched at their hands.
But they were new at this game. They did not dance as easily as they laughed or sang to express their happiness. And their clumsy overshoes dragged over the ground. Ariel let them go. Stood for a minute, let down by them.
“You dance!” Persis cried. “Dance like your feather danced in the wind on deck. Be a feather. Nicky says you and the feather are really twins, only the feather has been magic’d.”
“No,” Nicky denied calmly, and still grave. “I said she had been magic’d into a human. She and the fairy feather were twins before the magicking. You are mixed up, Persis.”
“Oh, no,” Ariel assured them quickly. “I’m a real girl. I haven’t been magic’d from something else. Truly. But I’ll dance.”
She slipped out of her coat, tossed it behind her into the snowy woods whence she had appeared to the children. It lay in a heap there on the wet snow, hardly distinguishable from snow in its own whiteness. But a touch of the scarlet lining—it might have been crushed red winterberries, though—gave it away. She threw her green hat down somewhere else. Kicked her rubbers off anywhere. And began to dance.