Angel Island

One day, late in the afternoon, Billy lay on his favorite spot on the

southern reef, dreaming. High up in the air, Julia flashed and gyrated,

revolved and spun. It seemed to Billy that he had never seen her go so

high. She looked like a silver feather. But as he looked, she went

higher and higher, so high that she disappeared vertically.

A strange sense of loneliness fell on Billy. This was the first time

since she had begun to come regularly to the island that she had cut

their tryst short. He waited. She did not appear. A minute went by.

Another and another and another. His sense of loneliness deepened to

uneasiness. Still there was no sign of Julia. Uneasiness became alarm.

Ah, there she was at last - a speck, a dot, a spot, a splotch. How she

was flying! How - .

Like a bullet the conviction struck him.

She was falling!

Memories of certain biplanic explorations surged into his mind. "She's

frozen," he thought to himself. "She can't move her wings!" Terror

paralyzed him; horror bound him. He stood still-numb, dumb, helpless.

Down she came like an arrow. Her wings kept straight above her head,

moveless, still. He could see her breast and shoulders heave and twist,

and contort in a fury of effort. Underneath her were the trees. He had a

sudden, lightning-swift vision of a falling aviator that he had once

seen. The horror of what was coming turned his blood to ice. But he

could not move; nor could he close his eyes.

"Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" he groaned. And, finally, "Oh, thank God!"

Julia's wings were moving. But apparently she still had little control

of them. They flapped frantically a half-minute; but they had arrested

her fall; they held her up. They continued to support her, although she

beat about in jagged circles. Alternately floating and fluttering, she

caught on an air-current, hurled herself on it, floated; then, as though

she were sliding through some gigantic pillar of quiet air, sank

earthwards. She seized the topmost bough of one of the high trees, threw

her arms across it and hung limp. She panted; it seemed as if her

breasts must burst. Her eyes closed; but the tears streamed from under

her eyelids.

Billy ran close. He made no attempt to climb the tree to which she

clung, so weakly accessible. But he called up to her broken words of

assurance, broken phrases of comfort that ended in a wild harangue of

love and entreaty.

After a while her breath came back. She pulled herself up on the bough

and sat huddled there, her eyelids down, her silvery fans drooping, the

great mass of her honey-colored hair drifting over the green branches,

her drapery of white lilies, slashed and hanging in tatters, the tears

still streaming. Except for its ghastly whiteness, her face showed no

change of expression. She did not sob or moan, she did not even speak;

she sat relaxed. The tears stopped flowing gradually. Her eyelids

lifted. Her eyes, stark and dark in her white face, gazed straight down

into Billy's eyes.