Angel Island, Inez Haynes Gillmore [the two towers ebook txt] 📗

>everything out of the chest and put my wings in it. Folded carefully,

they just fitted. I used to brood over them every night before I went to

bed. Oh, they were wonderful in the dark - as if the chest were full of

white fire. Many times I’ve waked up in the middle of the night and gone

to look at them. I don’t know why, but I had to do it. After a while, it

hurt me so much that I made up my mind to lock the chest forever; for I

always wept. I could not help it.”

 

Julia wept now. The tears poured down her cheeks. But she went on.

 

“After yesterday’s talk, I thought this situation over for a long time.

Then I went to the chest, took out my wings, brought them downstairs and

- and - and - .”

 

“What?” somebody whispered.

 

“Burned them!” Julia’s deep voice swelled on the word “burned” as though

she still felt the scorching agony of that moment.

 

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

 

Julia asked their question for them. “Do you want to know why I did it?”

And without waiting, she answered, “Because I wanted to mark in some way

the end of my desire to fly. We must stop wanting to fly, we women. We

must stop wasting our energy brooding over what’s past. We must stop it

at once. Not only that but - for Angela’s sake and for the sake of all

girl-children who will be born on this island - we must learn to walk.”

 

“Learn to walk!” Peachy repeated. “Julia, have you gone mad? We have

always held out against this degradation. We must continue to do so.”

Again came that proud lift of her shoulders, the vibrant stir of

wing-stumps. That would lower us to a level with men.”

 

“But are we lowering ourselves?” Julia asked. Are they really on a lower

level? Isn’t the earth as good as the air?”

 

“It’s better, Julia,” Lulu said unexpectedly. “The earth’s a fine place.

It’s warm and homelike. Things grow there. There’s nothing in the air.”

 

“There are the stars,” murmured Peachy.

 

“Yes,” said Julia with a soft tenderness, “but we never reached them.”

 

“The air-life may not have been better or finer,” Peachy continued,

“but, somehow, it seemed clearer and purer. The earth’s such a cluttered

place. It’s so full of things. You can hardly see it for the stuff

that’s on it. From above it seems beautiful, but near - .”

 

“Yet, it is on the earth that we must live - and that Angela must live,”

Julia interpolated gently.

 

“But what is the use of our learning to walk?” Peachy demanded.

 

“To teach Angela how to walk and all the other girl-children that are

coming to us.”

 

“But I am afraid,” Peachy said anxiously, that if Angela learned to

walk, she would forget how to fly.”

 

“On the contrary,” Julia declared, “she would fly better for knowing how

to walk, and walk better for knowing how to fly.”

 

“I don’t see it,” interposed Clara emphatically. “I don’t see what we

get out of walking or what Angela will get out of it. Suppose we learned

to walk? The men would stop helping us along. We’d lose the appeal of

helplessness.”

 

“But what is there about what you call ‘the appeal of helplessness’ that

makes it worth keeping?” Julia asked, smiling affectionately into

Clara’s eyes. “Why shouldn’t we lose it?”

 

“Why, because,” Clara exclaimed indignantly, “because - because - why,

because,” she ended lamely. Then, with one of her unexpected bursts of

mental candor, “I’m sure I don’t know why,” she admitted, “except that

we have always appealed to them for that reason. Then again,” she took

up her argument from another angle, “if we learn to walk, they won’t

wait on us any more. They may even stop giving us things. As it is now,

they’re really very generous to us.”

 

The others smiled with varying degrees of furtiveness. Pete, as they all

knew, could always placate an incensed Clara by offering her some loot

of the homeward way: a bunch of flowers, a handful of nuts, beautifully

colored pebbles, shells with the iridescence still wet on them. She soon

tired of these toys, but she liked the excitement of the surprise.

 

“Generous to us!” Chiquita burst out - and this was as unexpected as

Lulu’s face-about. “Well, when you come to that, they’re never generous

to us. They make us pay for all they give us. They seem generous - but

they aren’t really - any more than we are.”

 

“They are far from generous,” said Peachy. “They are ungenerous. They’re

tyrants. They’re despots. See how they took advantage of our innocence

and ignorance of earth-conditions.”

 

“I protest.” A note that they had never heard from Julia made steel of

the thrilling melody of her voice. “You must know that is not true!” she

said in an accusing voice. “Be fair to them! Tell the truth to

yourselves! If they took advantage of our innocence and ignorance, it

was we who tempted them to it in the first place. As for our innocence

and ignorance - you speak as, if they were beautiful or desirable. We

were innocent and ignorant of earth-conditions because we were too proud

to learn about them, because we always assumed that we lowered ourselves

by knowing anything about them. Our mistake was that we learned to fly

before we learned to walk.”

 

“But, Julia, what are we going to do about Angela?” Peachy asked

impatiently.

 

“I’m coming to that presently,” Julia answered. “But before - I want to

ask you a question. Do you remember the big cave in the northern reef -

the one we used to hide in?”

 

“Oh, I remember,” Lulu said, “perfectly.”

 

“Did you ever tell Honey about it?” Julia turned to her directly.

 

“No. Why, we promised never to tell, didn’t we? In case we ever needed a

place of refuge - .”

 

“Have any of you ever told about it?” Julia turned to the others. “Think

carefully! This is important.”

 

“I never have told,” Peachy said wearily. “But about Angela - .”

 

“Have you, Chiquita?” Julia interrupted with a strange insistence.

 

“I have never thought of it from that day to this,” Chiquita answered.

 

“Nor I,” replied Clara. “I’m not sure that I could go to it now. Could

you, Julia?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Julia answered eagerly, “I’ve - .” She stopped abruptly. “But

now I want to talk to you, and I want you to listen carefully. I am

going to tell you why I think we should learn to walk. It is, in brief,

for Angela’s sake and for the sake of every girl-child that is born on

this island. For a long time, you will think that I am talking about

other things. But you must be patient. I have seen this situation coming

ever since Angela’s wings began to grow. I could not hurry it - but I

knew it must come. Many nights I have lain awake, planning what I should

say to you when the time came. The time has come - and I am going to say

it. It is a long, long speech that I shall deliver; and I am going to

speak very plainly. But you must not get angry - for you know how much I

love you and how much I love your children.

 

“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.

 

“Then came the betrothal, the marriages, and suddenly all that wonderful

starlight and firelight life ended. For a while, the men seemed to drift

away from each other. For a while, we - the ‘devoted five,’ as our

people called us - seemed to drift away from each other. It was as

though they took back something they had freely given each other to give

to us. It was as though we took back something we had freely given each

other to give to them.

 

“Then, just as suddenly, they began to drift away from us and back to

each other. Some of the high, worshiping quality in their attitude

toward us disappeared. It was as though we had become less beautiful,

less interesting, less desirable - as if possession had killed some

precious, perishable quality.”

 

“What that quality is I do not know. We are not dumb like stones or

plants, we women. We are not dull like birds or beasts. We do not fade

in a day like flowers. We do not stop like music. We do not go out like

light. What it was that went, or when or how, I do not know. But it was

something that thrilled and enchanted them. It went - and it went

forever.”

 

“It was as though we were toys - new toys - with a secret spring. And if

one found and pressed that spring, something unexpected and something