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Updated: May 21, 2025
They climbed up onto the window sill, Ivra still holding the bird. "One, two, three," she whispered, and they jumped. Out and down they went like two shooting stars and plunked through the snowcrust. They were up in a second. Their wrists and elbows were a little bruised and cut, but they were not really hurt at all.
"I'd follow the wind," cried Ivra, lifting her serious face and rising to her tiptoes, one arm outstretched, as though she were going to follow the wind right then and there. It was at that minute they noticed the door had blown open, and that a little boy was standing in it, looking at them. But they neither stared nor exclaimed.
Helma stood watching until their little forms had flickered out of sight among tree-shadows. Then she sped down the starlit avenue towards the open fields and the town. Ivra and Eric ran until the stars were almost lost to them under the snow roof of the forest. Once Eric stopped to tie his sandal-string which had loosened and was bothering him. Then the stillness of the world startled him.
Then began a game of water tag. Eric, because he was not such a good swimmer as the others, was It most of the time. But Ivra had to take a few turns as well. It was impossible to catch the other two. They moved in the water as reflected light moves along a wall, not really swimming at all, but flashing from spot to spot.
When the strange, great animals that by-and-by appeared on the Earth and have since gone from it first came into the stories, and then, later, the floods and glaciers, and at last the first man, any child might have listened with delight and wonder. Ivra had listened so ever since she was a tiny girl, old enough to understand at all.
It was bright starlight, and far away down an avenue of trees, Eric saw shining open fields, and beyond them the lights of the town. There Helma said good-by. Eric looking up at her in the starlight saw her hair like pale firelight under her dark hood and her eyes so calm and friendly. He clung to her hand for a minute. "Have a good time," she told them. Ivra leapt away and Eric after her.
And everyone of them beat him to the goal and touched it first. "Now there's only Wild Star," Ivra cried. "You must catch him, Eric, or else you'll have to be 'It' again!" Wild Star was outside, up in the top of the tree in the starlight. Eric discovered him by seeing one of the tips of his purple wings which was caught in a crack of the sky door.
Nora had come with the milk, left it, eaten the rest of the porridge, and gone away again without waiting for a word with any one. The children wished she had stayed. They needed some one to talk with about their mother. Of course they knew she would come back, all in her good time. Ivra made Eric understand that. But the room seemed even emptier without her than it had in the morning.
Helma answered in a low even voice, that showed well enough how sure she was of the truth of what she was saying "No, they are realer than you. Ivra is realer than all the people in that mansion put together, cousins, uncles, aunts, guests, servants and all. She is my little fairy daughter." "No," said the young man.
Before Ivra cut the cake the others blew out the candles, one after another, and made her a wish in turn for every candle. The Tree Girl wished her a bright new year, the Bird Fairies that her mother would soon return, the Wind Creatures that she would keep her gay heart forever, the Forest Children that she would become the most famous story teller in the Forest World.
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