"Put me on my feet," I began. "What pleasure is there in flying? I"m not a bird."
"I thought you would like it. We have no other pastime."
"You? Then what are you?"
There was no answer.
"You don"t dare to tell me that?"
The plaintive sound which had awakened me the first night quivered in my ears. Meanwhile we were still, scarcely perceptibly, moving in the damp night air.
"Let me go!" I said. My companion moved slowly away, and I found myself on my feet. She stopped before me and again folded her hands. I grew more composed and looked into her face; as before it expressed submissive sadness.
"Where are we?" I asked. I did not recognise the country about me.
"Far from your home, but you can be there in an instant."
"How can that be done? by trusting myself to you again?"
"I have done you no harm and will do you none. Let us fly till dawn, that is all. I can bear you away wherever you fancy--to the ends of the earth.
Give yourself up to me! Say only: "Take me!""
"Well ... take me!"
She again pressed close to me, again my feet left the earth--and we were flying.
VI
"Which way?" she asked me.
"Straight on, keep straight on."
"But here is a forest."
"Lift us over the forest, only slower."
We darted upwards like a wild snipe flying up into a birch-tree, and again flew on in a straight line. Instead of gra.s.s, we caught glimpses of tree-tops just under our feet. It was strange to see the forest from above, its bristling back lighted up by the moon. It looked like some huge slumbering wild beast, and accompanied us with a vast unceasing murmur, like some inarticulate roar. In one place we crossed a small glade; intensely black was the jagged streak of shadow along one side of it. Now and then there was the plaintive cry of a hare below us; above us the owl hooted, plaintively too; there was a scent in the air of mushrooms, buds, and dawn-flowers; the moon fairly flooded everything on all sides with its cold, hard light; the Pleiades gleamed just over our heads. And now the forest was left behind; a streak of fog stretched out across the open country; it was the river. We flew along one of its banks, above the bushes, still and weighed down with moisture. The river"s waters at one moment glimmered with a flash of blue, at another flowed on in darkness, as it were, in wrath. Here and there a delicate mist moved strangely over the water, and the water-lilies" cups shone white in maiden pomp with every petal open to its full, as though they knew their safety out of reach.
I longed to pick one of them, and behold, I found myself at once on the river"s surface.... The damp air struck me an angry blow in the face, just as I broke the thick stalk of a great flower. We began to fly across from bank to bank, like the water-fowl we were continually waking up and chasing before us. More than once we chanced to swoop down on a family of wild ducks, settled in a circle on an open spot among the reeds, but they did not stir; at most one of them would thrust out its neck from under its wing, stare at us, and anxiously poke its beak away again in its fluffy feathers, and another faintly quacked, while its body twitched a little all over. We startled one heron; it flew up out of a willow bush, brandishing its legs and fluttering its wings with clumsy eagerness: it struck me as remarkably like a German. There was not the splash of a fish to be heard, they too were asleep. I began to get used to the sensation of flying, and even to find a pleasure in it; any one will understand me, who has experienced flying in dreams. I proceeded to scrutinise with close attention the strange being, by whose good offices such unlikely adventures had befallen me.
VII
She was a woman with a small un-Russian face. Greyish-white, half-transparent, with scarcely marked shades, she reminded one of the alabaster figures on a vase lighted up within, and again her face seemed familiar to me.
"Can I speak with you?" I asked.
"Speak."
"I see a ring on your finger; you have lived then on the earth, you have been married?"
I waited ... There was no answer.
"What is your name, or, at least, what was it?"
"Call me Alice."
"Alice! That"s an English name! Are you an Englishwoman? Did you know me in former days?"
"No."
"Why is it then you have come to me?"
"I love you."
"And are you content?"
"Yes; we float, we whirl together in the fresh air."
"Alice!" I said all at once, "you are perhaps a sinful, condemned soul?"
My companion"s head bent towards me. "I don"t understand you," she murmured.
"I adjure you in G.o.d"s name...." I was beginning.
"What are you saying?" she put in in perplexity. "I don"t understand."
I fancied that the arm that lay like a chilly girdle about my waist softly trembled....
"Don"t be afraid," said Alice, "don"t be afraid, my dear one!" Her face turned and moved towards my face.... I felt on my lips a strange sensation, like the faintest p.r.i.c.k of a soft and delicate sting.... Leeches might p.r.i.c.k so in mild and drowsy mood.
VIII
I glanced downwards. We had now risen again to a considerable height. We were flying over some provincial town I did not know, situated on the side of a wide slope. Churches rose up high among the dark ma.s.s of wooden roofs and orchards; a long bridge stood out black at the bend of a river; everything was hushed, buried in slumber. The very crosses and cupolas seemed to gleam with a silent brilliance; silently stood the tall posts of the wells beside the round tops of the willows; silently the straight whitish road darted arrow-like into one end of the town, and silently it ran out again at the opposite end on to the dark waste of monotonous fields.
"What town is this?" I asked.
"X...."
"X ... in Y ... province?"
"Yes."
"I"m a long distance indeed from home!"
"Distance is not for us."