“Nor I,” replied Clara. “I’m not sure that I could go to it now. Could you, Julia?”
“Oh, yes,” Julia answered eagerly, “I’ve—.” She stopped abruptly. “But now I want to talk to you, and I want you to listen carefully. I am going to tell you why I think we should learn to walk. It is, in brief, for Angela’s sake and for the sake of every girl-child that is born on this island. For a long time, you will think that I am talking about other things. But you must be patient. I have seen this situation coming ever since Angela’s wings began to grow. I could not hurry it—but I knew it must come. Many nights I have lain awake, planning what I should say to you when the time came. The time has come—and I am going to say it. It is a long, long speech that I shall deliver; and I am going to speak very plainly. But you must not get angry—for you know how much I love you and how much I love your children.
“I’m going back to our young girlhood, to the time when our people were debating the Great Flight. We thought that we were different from them all, we five, that we were more original and able and courageous. And we were different. For when our people decided to go south to the Snowlands, the courage of rebellion grew in us and we deserted in the night. Do you remember the wonderful sense of freedom that came to us, and how the further north we flew, the stronger it became? When we found these islands, it seemed to us that they must have been created especially for us. Here, we said, we would live always, free from earth-ties—five incorruptible air-women.
“Then the men came. I won’t go into all that. We’ve gone over it hundreds and hundreds of times, just as we did this afternoon, playing the most pathetic game we know—the do-you-remember game. But after they came, we found that we were not free from earth-ties. For the Great Doom overtook us and we fell in love. Then came the capture. And we lost our wings.”
She paused a moment.
“Do you remember that awful day at the Clubhouse, how Chiquita, comforted us? I—I failed you then; I fainted; I felt myself to blame for your betrayal. But Chiquita kept saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. They won’t hurt us. We are precious to them. They would rather die than lose us. They need us more than we need them. They are bound to us by a chain that they cannot break.’ And for a long time that seemed true. What we had to learn was that we needed them just as much as they needed us, that we were bound to them by a chain that we could not break.
“I often think”—Julia’s voice had become dreamy—“now when it is so different, of those first few months after the capture. How kind they were to us, how gentle, how considerate, how delicate, how chivalrous! Do you remember that they treated us as if we were children, how, for a long time, they pretended to believe in fairies? Do you remember the long fairy-hunts in the moonlit jungle, the long mermaid-hunts in the moonlit ocean? Do you remember the fairy-tales by the fire? It seemed to me then that life was one long fairy-tale. And how quickly we learned their language! Has it ever occurred to you that no one of them has ever bothered to learn ours—none except Frank, and he only because he was mentally curious? Then came the long wooing. How we argued the marriage question—discussed and debated—each knowing that the Great Doom was on her and could not be gain-said.
“Then came the betrothal, the marriages, and suddenly all that wonderful starlight and firelight life ended. For a while, the men seemed to drift away from each other. For a while, we—the ‘devoted five,’ as our people called us—seemed to drift away from each other. It was as though they took back something they had freely given each other to give to us. It was as though we took back something we had freely given each other to give to them.
“Then, just as suddenly, they began to drift away from us and back to each other. Some of the high, worshiping quality in their attitude toward us disappeared. It was as though we had become less beautiful, less interesting, less desirable—as if possession had killed some precious, perishable quality.”
“What that quality is I do not know. We are not dumb like stones or plants, we women. We are not dull like birds or beasts. We do not fade in a day like flowers. We do not stop like music. We do not go out like light. What it was that went, or when or how, I do not know. But it was something that thrilled and enchanted them. It went—and it went forever.”