Ivra paused and the silence came back. Eric looked up at her.
"Are you cold?" he asked.
"No, no." But she began to jump up and down and knock her heels together to get warm. Eric still struggled with his lacings. Ivra stopped jumping and went down on her knees in the snow to straighten them out for him. Eric's fingers were awkward with knots, and besides, now, they were numb with the cold. But Ivra had everything right in a minute. She crossed the strings over his instep and tied them snugly above his ankle almost before he could think. Then they ran on. In starlit spaces Eric caught glimpses of hurrying figures, so swift and light he could not tell whether they walked or flew. Their cloaks sparkled white in starlight until he was not sure but they might be starbeams, and not Forest People at all.
One suddenly started up just at his elbow, and was away like the wind. Ivra began to run and to call after it. "Wild Star! Silly Wild Star! It's only I, Ivra, and my playmate. Wait for us!"
Eric followed her, running as fast as he could, but the snow held him back, and all the trees in the forest seemed to gather to stand in his way. Ivra came back to him, laughing. "They are so afraid of you! No one will come near us until the Tree Man is there to protect him."
Soon they came to a big beech-tree standing in an open space with smaller beeches making a circle around it. The starlight showed, strangely, a narrow door in the trunk. Ivra pushed it open and Eric followed in after her, wondering at going into a tree.
They were on a flight of stairs lighted by starlight from a window somewhere high up. At the head of the flight they came to a door, and through the crack beneath it streamed a warmer light than starlight. Ivra opened that door gayly, and through it with her, Eric went to his first party.
It was the jolliest room in all the world. The firelight and candlelight did not reach so far as the walls, but left them in soft darkness. So Eric had the feeling that the room was really much too large to be inside of a tree. But in spite of its bigness, it was very cozy. The fireplace was in the middle of the floor, just a great hollowed boulder, heaped with crackling twigs.
The candles, red, green, yellow, brown and orange, stood circlewise on a table by which the Tree Man sat, carving a doll out of a stick. A workbasket on the table was overflowing with bright threads and pieces of queer cloth.
Eric saw these things because just for a minute he was too shy to look at the people in the room. Almost at once he had to look at the Tree Man, however, for he came and shook him by the shoulders. Eric had been shaken by the shoulders before, so he shrank away. But this was very different from Mrs. Freg's shakings. The Tree Man was chuckling, not scolding, and the dark eyes that Eric looked up above the long white beard to find were friendly and wise.