Chapter XX.
>From the date of the expedition with Taee which I have just
narrated, the child paid me frequent visits. He had taken a
liking to me, which I cordially returned. Indeed, as he was
not yet twelve years old, and had not commenced the course of
scientific studies with which childhood closes in that country,
my intellect was less inferior to his than to that of the elder
members of his race, especially of the Gy-ei, and most
especially of the accomplished Zee. The children of the
Vril-ya, having upon their minds the weight of so many active
duties and grave responsibilities, are not generally mirthful;
but Taee, with all his wisdom, had much of the playful
good-humour one often finds the characteristic of elderly men
of genius. He felt that sort of pleasure in my society which a
boy of a similar age in the upper world has in the company of a
pet dog or monkey. It amused him to try and teach me the ways
of his people, as it amuses a nephew of mine to make his poodle
walk on his hind legs or jump through a hoop. I willingly lent
myself to such experiments, but I never achieved the success of
the poodle. I was very much interested at first in the attempt
to ply the wings which the youngest of the Vril-ya use as
nimbly and easily as ours do their legs and arms; but my
efforts were attended with contusions serious enough to make me
abandon them in despair.
These wings, as I before said, are very large, reaching to the
knee, and in repose thrown back so as to form a very graceful
mantle. They are composed from the feathers of a gigantic bird
that abounds in the rocky heights of the country- the colour
mostly white, but sometimes with reddish streaks. They are
fastened round the shoulders with light but strong springs of
steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through loops for
that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout central membrane.
As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath the vest or
103tunic becomes, by mechanical contrivance inflated with air,
increased or diminished at will by the movement of the arms,
and serving to buoy the whole form as on bladders. The wings
and the balloon-like apparatus are highly charged with vril;
and when the body is thus wafted upward, it seems to become
singularly lightened of its weight. I found it easy enough to
soar from the ground; indeed, when the wings were spread it was
scarcely possible not to soar, but then came the difficulty and
the danger. I utterly failed in the power to use and direct
the pinions, though I am considered among my own race unusually
alert and ready in bodily exercises, and am a very practiced
swimmer. I could only make the most confused and blundering
efforts at flight. I was the servant of the wings; the wings
were not my servants- they were beyond my control; and when by
a violent strain of muscle, and, I must fairly own, in that
abnormal strength which is given by excessive fright, I curbed
their gyrations and brought them near to the body, it seemed as
if I lost the sustaining power stored in them and the
connecting bladders, as when the air is let out of a balloon,
and found myself precipitated again to the earth; saved,
indeed, by some spasmodic flutterings, from being dashed to
pieces, but not saved from the bruises and the stun of a heavy
fall. I would, however, have persevered in my attempts, but
for the advice or the commands of the scientific Zee, who had
benevolently accompanied my flutterings, and, indeed, on the
last occasion, flying just under me, received my form as it
fell on her own expanded wings, and preserved me from breaking
my head on the roof of the pyramid from which we had ascended.
"I see," she said, "that your trials are in vain, not from the
fault of the wings and their appurtenances, nor from any
imperfectness and malformation of your own corpuscular system,
but from irremediable, because organic, defect in your power of
volition. Learn that the connection between the will and the
agencies of that fluid which has been subjected to the control
104of the Vril-ya was never established by the first discoverers,
never achieved by a single generation; it has gone on
increasing, like other properties of race, in proportion as it
has been uniformly transmitted from parent to child, so that,
at last, it has become an instinct; and an infant An of our
race wills to fly as intuitively and unconsciously as he wills
to walk. He thus plies his invented or artificial wings with
as much safety as a bird plies those with which it is born. I
did not think sufficiently of this when I allowed you to try an
experiment which allured me, for I have longed to have in you a
companion. I shall abandon the experiment now. Your life is
becoming dear to me." Herewith the Gy's voice and face
softened, and I felt more seriously alarmed than I had been in
my previous flights.
Now that I am on the subject of wings, I ought not to omit
mention of a custom among the Gy-ei which seems to me very
pretty and tender in the sentiment it implies. A Gy wears
wings habitually when yet a virgin- she joins the Ana in their
aerial sports- she adventures alone and afar into the wilder
regions of the sunless world: in the boldness and height of her
soarings, not less than in the grace of her movements, she
excels the opposite sex. But, from the day of her marriage she
wears wings no more, she suspends them with her own willing
hand over the nuptial couch, never to be resumed unless the
marriage tie be severed by divorce or death.
Now when Zee's voice and eyes thus softened- and at that
softening I prophetically recoiled and shuddered- Taee, who had
accompanied us in our flights, but who, child-like, had been
much more amused with my awkwardness, than sympathising in my
fears or aware of my danger, hovered over us, poised amidst
spread wings, and hearing the endearing words of the young Gy,
laughed aloud. Said he, "If the Tish cannot learn the use of
wings, you may still be his companion, Zee, for you can suspend
your own."
