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"Only we three, in all this world, speak English. I know it because " I interrupted her. "Suppose I tell him our whole story, Miela? Then " "That's certainly what I want to hear," said Mercer emphatically. "And especially why it is that I'm not supposed to want to get back to where I belong."
"Tell him, Miela, I think we can rid the Light Country of Tao's emissaries send them back without causing any disturbances among the people. Ask him if that would not be a good thing." The king nodded gravely as this was translated. "He asks you how?" Miela said next.
And I realized, too, for the first time, how that condition Miela so deplored on Mercury had come to pass. I could understand now very easily how it was that married women were deprived by their husbands of these wings which they themselves were denied by the Creator. Hardly more than ten minutes had passed before I saw the two girls again flying toward me.
We had two platforms, protected by the fabric, and with a sort of canopy around the sides underneath, over which the girls grasping the handles could fly. Mercer and Anina rode on one platform, and Miela and I on the other. All of us were dressed in the black garments.
She was beside me in an instant, wide-eyed with fear, which even then I could see was fear only for me. I struggled to my feet. My head was roaring. All the blood in my body seemed rushing to my face. After a moment I felt better. Miela pulled me to a seat. "I did not think, Alan. The pressure of the air is different here from your world. It was so wrong of me, for I knew.
The king abruptly ceased his shouting and left the balcony. As he passed me and I glanced into his frightened face I felt a sudden sense of pity for this gentle, kindly old man, so well-meaning, but so utterly ineffective as a ruler. I was about to pull Miela back into the room when a girl flew up to the balcony railing. As she balanced herself upon it I saw it was Anina.
They were dressed in the characteristic costume I have described, with only a slight divergence of color or ornamentation. They were of only two types jet black tresses, black eyes, and red-feathered wings like Miela; or the less vivid, more ethereal Anina blue-eyed, golden-haired, with wing feathers of light blue. When they had all arrived we went into the garden behind the house.
There came now faintly to my ears from outside the castle sounds of a gathering crowd murmurs and vague muffled shouts. The cries grew louder. A rain of missiles struck the castle; a stone came through a near-by window, falling almost at my feet. All at once I remembered the lurking figures we had seen among the palms in the garden. "Miela!" I cried. "Hear that, outside! A crowd is gathering.
We were in the storm perhaps an hour altogether. Then we passed up and beyond it; and emerged again into that gray vacancy, with a waste of storm-lashed water far beneath us. The Twilight Country shore was still below the horizon, and it was a considerable time before we sighted it. Miela and I sat quiet, wrapped in a blanket, which, wet as it was, offered some protection against the biting wind.
"You can't see it now, Anina. It's too close to the sun." Again she sighed. "I'm sorry for that. It would seem closer, perhaps, if we could see it." "You're not sorry you came, Anina? You don't want to go back now?" "Not now, Ollie." She smiled into his earnest, pleading eyes. "For those I love are here as well as there. I have Miela and Alan and " "And?" Mercer leaned forward eagerly.
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