Angel Island

"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.