“And sometimes how we used to drop like stones until we almost touched the water,” Lulu said, a sparkle in her cooing, friendly little voice. “And the races! Oh, what fun! I can feel the rush of the air now.”
“Over the water.” Peachy flung her long, slim arms upward and a delicious smile sent the tragedy scurrying from her sunlit face. “Do you remember how wonderful it was at sunset? The sky heaving over us, shot with gold and touched with crimson. The sea pulsing under us lined with crimson and splashed with gold. And then the sunset ahead—that gold and crimson hole in the sky. We used to think we could fly through it some day and come out on another world. And sometimes we could not tell where sea and sky joined. How we flew—on and on—farther each time—on and on—and on. The risks we took! Sometimes I used to wonder if we’d ever have the strength to get home. Yet I hated to turn back. I hated to turn away from the light. I never could fly towards the east at sunset, nor towards the west at sunrise. It hurt! I used to think, when my time came to die, that I would fly out to sea—on and on till I dropped.”
“I loved it most at noon,” Chiquita said, “when the air was soft. It smelled sweet; a mixture of earth and sea. I used to drift and float on great seas of heat until I almost slept. That was wonderful; it was like swimming in a perfumed air or flying in a fragrant sea.”
“Oh, but the storms, Julia!” Lulu exclaimed. A wild look flared in her face, wiped oft entirely its superficial look of domesticity. “Do you remember the heavy, night-black cloud, the thunder that crashed through our very bodies, the lightning that nearly blinded us, and the rain that beat us almost to pieces?”
“Oh, Lulu!” Julia said; “I had forgotten that. You were wonderful in a storm, How you used to shout and sing and leap through the air like a wild thing! I used to love to watch you, and yet I was always afraid that you would hurt yourself.”
“I loved the moonlight most. I do now.” The petulance went out of Clara’s eyes; dreams came into its place. “The cool softness of the air, the brilliant sparkle of the stars! And then the magic of the moonlight! Young child-moon, half-grown girl-moon, voluptuous woman-moon, sallow, old-hag-moon, it was alike to me. Pete says I’m ‘fey’ in the moonlight. He, says I’m Irish then.”
“I loved the sunrise,” said Julia. “I used to steal out, when you girls were still sleeping, to fly by dawn. I’d go up, up, up. At first, it was like a huge dewdrop—that morning world—then, colder and colder—it was like a melted iceberg. But I never minded that cold and I loved the clearness. It exhilarated me. I used to run races with the birds. I was not happy until I had beaten the highest-flying of them all. Oh, it was so fresh and clean then. The world seemed new-made every morning. I used to feel that I’d caught the moment when yesterday became to-day. Then I’d sink back through layer on layer of sunlight and warm, perfume-laden, dew-damp breeze, down, down until I fell into my bed again. And all the time the world grew warmer and warmer. And I loved almost as well that instant of twilight when the world begins to fade. I used to feel that I’d caught the moment when to-day had become to-morrow. I’d fly as high as I could go then, too. Then I’d sink back through layer on layer of deepening dusk, while one by one the stars would flash out at me—down, down, down until my feet touched the water. And all the time the air grew cooler and cooler.”
“My wings! My wings!” Peachy did not shriek these words with maniacal despair. She did not whisper them with dreary resignation. She breathed them with the rapture of one who looks through a narrow, dark tunnel to measureless reaches of sun-tinted cloud and sea.
“Do you remember the first time we ever saw them?” Lulu asked after a long time. This was obviously a deliberate harking back to lighter things. A gleam of reminiscence, both mischievous and tender, fired her slanting eyes.
The others smiled, too. Even Peachy’s face relaxed from the look of tension that had come into it. “I often think that was the happiest time,” she sighed, “those weeks before they knew we were here. At least, they knew and they didn’t know. Ralph said that they all suspected that something curious was going on—but that they were so afraid that the others would joke about it, that no one of them would mention what was happening to him. Do you remember what fun it was coming to the camp when they were asleep? Do you remember how we used to study their faces to find out what kind of people they were?”