I made no entry last night. The angel was talking to me, and when that
was finished I drowsed off immediately on a cot which I have moved into
the kitchen to be near them.
I had never been strongly impressed by the evidence for extrasensory
perception. It is fortunate that my mind was able to accept the
novelty, since to the angel it is clearly a matter of course. Her
tiny mouth is most expressive, but moves only for that reason and for
eating--not for speech. Probably she could speak to her own kind if
she wished, but I dare say the sound would be above the range of my
hearing as well as my understanding.
Last night after I brought the cot in and was about to finish my
puttering bachelor supper, she climbed to the edge of the box and
pointed, first at herself and then at the top of the kitchen table.
Afraid to let my vast hand take hold of her, I held it out flat and she
sat in my palm. Camilla was inclined to fuss, but the angel looked over
her shoulder and Camilla subsided, watchful but no longer alarmed.
The table-top is porcelain, and the angel shivered. I folded a towel
and spread a silk handkerchief on top of that; the angel sat on this
arrangement with apparent comfort, near my face. I was not even
bewildered, without realizing why. That doesn't seem possible, does it?
But there was a good reason.
She reached me first with visual imagery. How can I make it plain that
this had nothing in common with my sleeping dreams? There was no weight
of symbolism from my littered past, no discoverable connection with
any of yesterday's commonplaces, indeed no actual involvement of my
personality at all. I saw. I was moving vision, though without eyes or
other flesh. And while my mind saw, it also knew where my flesh was,
seated at the kitchen table. If anyone had entered the kitchen, if
there had been a noise of alarm out in the henhouse, I should have
known it.
* * * * *
There was a valley such as I have not seen, and never will, on Earth. I
have seen many beautiful places on this planet--some of them were even
tranquil. Once I took a slow steamer to New Zealand and had the Pacific
as a play-thing for many days. I can hardly say how I knew this was not
Earth. The grass of the valley was a familiar green. A river below me
was a blue and silver thread under sunlight. There were trees much like
pine and maple, and maybe that is what they were. But it was not Earth.
I was aware of mountains heaped to strange heights on either side of
the valley--snow, rose, amber, gold. The amber tint was unlike any
mountain color I have noticed in this world at mid-day.
Or I may have known it was not Earth, simply because her mind--dwelling
within some unimaginable brain smaller than the tip of my little
finger--told me so.
I watched two inhabitants of that world come flying, to rest in the
field of sunny grass where my bodiless vision had brought me. Adult
forms, such as my angel would surely be when she had her growth, except
that both of these were male and one of them was dark-skinned. The
latter was also old, with a thousand-wrinkled face, knowing and full of
tranquillity; the other was flushed and lively with youth. Both were
beautiful. The down of the brown-skinned old one was reddish-tawny;
the other's was ivory with hints of orange. Their wings were true
membranes, with more variety of subtle iridescence than I have seen
even in the wings of a dragonfly; I could not say that any color was
dominant, for each motion brought a ripple of change.
These two sat at their ease on the grass. I realized that they were
talking to each other, though their lips did not move in speech more
than once or twice. They would nod, smile, now and then illustrate
something with twinkling hands.
A huge rabbit lolloped past them. I knew--thanks to my own angel's
efforts, I supposed--that this animal was of the same size as our
common wild ones. Later a blue-green snake three times the size of
the angels came flowing through the grass. The old one reached out to
stroke its head carelessly, and I think he did it without interrupting
whatever he was saying.
Another creature came in leisured leaps. He was monstrous, yet I felt
no alarm in the angels or myself. Imagine a being built somewhat like
a kangaroo up to the head, about eight feet tall, and katydid-green.
Really the thick balancing tail and enormous legs were the only
kangaroolike features about him. The body above the massive thighs
was not dwarfed, but thick and square. The arms and hands were quite
humanoid, and the head was round, manlike except for its face--there
was only a single nostril and his mouth was set in the vertical. The
eyes were large and mild.