Angel Island

And, "No!" Honey always answered. "Trust that Dogan to take care of

himself. You can't kill him."

Pete worked gradually across the island to the other side. There the

beach was slashed by many black, saw-toothed reefs. The sea leaped up

upon them on one side and the trees bore down upon them on the other.

The air was filled with tumult, the hollow roar of the waves, the

strident hum of the pines. For the first day, Pete entertained himself

with exploration, clambering from one reef to another, pausing only to

look listlessly off at the horizon, climbing a pine here and there,

swinging on a bough while he stared absently back over the island. But

although his look fixed on the restless peacock glitter of the sea, or

the moveless green cushions that the massed trees made, it was evident

that it took no account of them; they served only the more closely to

set his mental gaze on its half-seen vision.

The second morning, he arose, bathed, breakfasted, lay for an hour in

the sun; then drew pencil and paper from his pack. He wrote furiously.

If he looked up at all, it was only to gaze the more fixedly inwards.

But mainly his head hung over his work.

In the midst of one of these periods of absorption, a flower fell out of

the air on his paper. It was a brilliant, orange-colored tropical bloom,

so big and so freshly plucked that it dashed his verse with dew. For an

instant he stared stupidly at it. Then he looked up.

Just above him, not very high, her green-and-gold wings spread broad

like a butterfly's, floated Clara. Her body was sheathed in green vines,

delicately shining. Her hair was wreathed in fluttering yellow

orchid-like flowers, her arms and legs wound with them. She was flying

lower than usual. And, under her wreath of flowers, her eyes looked

straight into his.

Pete stared at her stupidly as he had stared at the flower. Then he

frowned. Deliberately he dropped his eyes. Deliberately he went on

writing.

Whir-r-r-r-r! Pete looked up again. Clara was beating back over the

island, a tempest of green-and-gold.

Again, he concentrated on his work.

Pete wrote all the rest of the day and by firelight far into the night.

He wrote all the next morning. In the middle of the afternoon, a

seashell struck his paper, glanced off.

It was Clara again.

This time, apparently, she had come from the ocean. Sea-kelp, still

glistening with brine, encased her close as with armor. A little pointed

cap of kelp covered her tawny hair as with a helmet. That gave her a

piquant quality of boyishness. She was flying lower than he had ever

seen her, and as Pete's eyelids came up she dropped nearer, threw

herself into one of her sinuous poses, arms and legs outstretched close,

hands and feet cupped, wrists, ankles, hips, shoulders all moving. She

looked straight down into Pete's eyes; and this time she smiled.