The sun was gone. The clouds were of fire. The sky in the east was deep blue. A row of willows grew on the bank. Their tiny silvery leaves stood motionless in the still air, looking like pale green lace against the dark background.
Hark! What was that? A breath flew over the surface of the pool—like a faint gust of wind making a little groove in the water. It came from the sand-hills, from the cloud-cavern. When Johannes looked round he saw a large blue dragon-fly sitting on the edge of the boat. He had never seen one so large. It settled there, but its wings quivered in a large circle; it seemed to Johannes that the tips of them made a ring of light.
'It must be a glow-worm dragon-fly,' thought he, 'and they are very seldom seen.'
But the circle grew wider and wider, and the wings fluttered so fast that Johannes saw them only as a mist. And by degrees he saw out of the mist two dark eyes gleaming, and a slender, shining figure in a pale blue dress sat in the place where the dragon-fly had been. Its fair hair was crowned with a garland of white convolvulus, and on its shoulders were gauzy insect-wings glittering like a soap-bubble, with a thousand colours.
A shiver of delight tingled through Johannes. Here was a miracle!
'Will you be my friend?' he whispered.
It was an odd way of addressing a stranger, but this was not a common case. And he had a feeling as though he had always known this strange sky-blue creature.
'Yes, Johannes!' he heard, and the voice sounded like the rustling of the sedges in the evening breeze, or the whisper of rain on the leaves in the wood.
'What is your name?' asked Johannes.
'I was born in the bell of a bindweed flower. Call me Windekind.'[1] And Windekind laughed and looked so kindly into Johannes' eyes that he felt strangely happy.