CHAPTER V.
WHAT ASTER WAS.
FOR several days the two, Eva and Aster, wandered through the forest with no object in view, and returned every evening to rest upon the soft, mossy bed which now covered the place where the golden fountain had once played. The scarlet berries of the vine surrounding it gave them food. The young moon, floating in the sky, gave them light; for while she shone, it was their day; when, suddenly as she arose, she would drop from the centre of the sky, then came their night; and the hours of her absence were spent in sleep.
So, at stated intervals, the moon sprang suddenly from the earth, shone there, replacing the faint earth-light which, during her absence, had guided Eva, and which still shone when she was not to be seen; then, after her hours were over, she as suddenly descended; and her rising and her setting were alike accompanied by the same weird music which had heralded her first coming, though its notes were fainter than those which had hailed the rising of the young new moon.
But every time that the moon returned it seemed to Eva that she grew brighter and larger, and that she shed more light upon the earth. And as the light grew brighter, pale white flowers began here and there to bloom, flowers which drooped and closed their petals as soon as the moon fell from the sky; flowers which, as Eva thought, murmured a low song as she passed them, yet a song whose words she never could distinguish. And at last she noticed that, as the silver crescent of the moon broadened, the slight form of Aster seemed to grow and to expand; so that he was no longer the tiny doll-like figure which she had taken from the fountain’s crest, but more like a boy of four years old.
Yet this change, although it was singular, was only a source of pleasure to the child. It gave her a companion, not merely a plaything, for until now she had looked upon Aster in that light,—something which, though it could talk, walk, sleep, and eat, was only a new toy, to be taken care of and prized as such. She never had looked upon Aster otherwise.
At last, when the moon had reached her first quarter, and the two, enjoying her pure light, sat on their mossy bed, Eva asked the boy the same question she had asked him the day her first kiss had awakened him:
“Tell me who you are.”
“I am Aster.”