But, on the contrary, the sky reflects everything
beneath it, as if it were built of water like ours. Of course, from
its concavity there is some distortion of the reflected objects; yet
wondrous combinations of form are often to be seen in the overhanging
depth. And then it is not shaped so much like a round dome as the sky of
the earth, but, more of an egg-shape, rises to a great towering height
in the middle, appearing far more lofty than the other. When the stars
come out at night, it shows a mighty cupola, "fretted with golden
fires," wherein there is room for all tempests to rush and rave.
One evening in early summer, I stood with a group of men and women on a
steep rock that overhung the sea. They were all questioning me about my
world and the ways thereof. In making reply to one of their questions,
I was compelled to say that children are not born in the Earth as with
them. Upon this I was assailed with a whole battery of inquiries, which
at first I tried to avoid; but, at last, I was compelled, in the vaguest
manner I could invent, to make some approach to the subject in question.
Immediately a dim notion of what I meant, seemed to dawn in the minds
of most of the women. Some of them folded their great wings all around
them, as they generally do when in the least offended, and stood erect
and motionless.
One spread out her rosy pinions, and flashed from the
promontory into the gulf at its foot. A great light shone in the eyes of
one maiden, who turned and walked slowly away, with her purple and white
wings half dispread behind her. She was found, the next morning, dead
beneath a withered tree on a bare hill-side, some miles inland. They
buried her where she lay, as is their custom; for, before they die,
they instinctively search for a spot like the place of their birth, and
having found one that satisfies them, they lie down, fold their wings
around them, if they be women, or cross their arms over their breasts,
if they are men, just as if they were going to sleep; and so sleep
indeed. The sign or cause of coming death is an indescribable longing
for something, they know not what, which seizes them, and drives them
into solitude, consuming them within, till the body fails. When a youth
and a maiden look too deep into each other's eyes, this longing seizes
and possesses them; but instead of drawing nearer to each other, they
wander away, each alone, into solitary places, and die of their desire.
But it seems to me, that thereafter they are born babes upon our earth:
where, if, when grown, they find each other, it goes well with them;
if not, it will seem to go ill. But of this I know nothing. When I told
them that the women on the Earth had not wings like them, but arms, they
stared, and said how bold and masculine they must look; not knowing that
their wings, glorious as they are, are but undeveloped arms.