ALOIS, LADYBIRD AND POET
The sun was risen high above the tops of the beech-trees when Maya awoke in her woodland retreat. In the first moments, the moonlight, the chirping of the cricket, the midsummer night meadow, the lovely sprite, the boy and the girl in the arbor, all seemed the perishing fancies of a delicious dream. Yet here it was almost midday; and she remembered slipping back into her chamber in the chill of dawn. So it had all been real, she had spent the night with the flower-sprite and had seen the two human beings, with their arms round each other, in the arbor of woodbine and jasmine.
The sun outside was glowing hot on the leaves, a warm wind was stirring, and Maya heard the mixed chorus of thousands of insects. Ah, what these knew, and what she knew! So proud was she of the great thing that had happened to her that she couldn’t get out to the others fast enough; she thought they must read it in her very looks.
But in the sunlight everything was the same as ever. Nothing was changed; nothing recalled the blue moonlit night. The insects came, said how-do-you-do, and left; yonder, the meadow was a scene of bustling activity; the insects, birds and butterflies hopped, flew and flitted in the hot flickering air around the tall, gay midsummer flowers.
Sadness fell upon Maya. There was no one in the world to share her joys and sorrows. She couldn’t make up her mind to fly over and join the others in the meadow. No, she would go to the woods. The woods were serious and solemn. They suited her mood.
How many mysteries and marvels lie hidden in the dim depths of the woods, no one suspects who hurries unobservant along the beaten tracks. You must bend aside the branches of the underbrush, or lean down and peep between the blackberry briars through the tall grasses and across the thick moss. Under the shaded leaves of the plants, in holes in the ground and tree-trunks, in the decaying bark of stumps, in the curl and twist of the roots that coil on the ground like serpents, there is an active, multiform life by day and by night, full of joys and dangers, struggles and sorrows and pleasures.
Maya divined only a little of this as she flew low between the dark-brown trunks under the leafy roof of green. She followed a narrow trail in the grass, which made a clear path through thicket and clearing. Now and then the sun seemed to disappear behind clouds, so deep was the shade under the high foliage and in the close shrubbery; but soon she was flying again through a bright shimmer of gold and green above the broad-leaved miniature forests of bracken and blackberry.
After a long stretch the woods opened their columned and over-arched portals; before Maya’s eyes lay a wide field of grain in the golden sunshine. Butterfly-weed flamed on the grassy borders. She alighted on the branch of a birch-tree at the edge of the field and gazed upon the sea of gold that spread out endlessly in the tranquillity of the placid day. It rippled softly under the shy summer breeze, which blew gently so as not to disturb the peace of the lovely world.
Under the birch-tree a few small brown butterflies, using the butterfly-weed for corners, were playing puss-in-the-corner, a favorite game with butterfly-children. Maya watched them a while.
“It must be lots of fun,” she thought, “and the children in the hive might be taught to play it, too. The cells would do for corners.—But Cassandra, I suppose, wouldn’t permit it. She’s so strict.”