"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.