"I don't know exactly." You can get fond of a hen, especially a
cantankerous and homely old one whose personality has a lot in common
with your own.
"She was old. She wanted a flock of chicks, and I couldn't stay with
her. So I--" something obscure here; probably my mind was trying too
hard to grasp it--"so I saved her life." I could make nothing else out
of it. She said "saved."
Camilla's death looked natural, except that I should have expected the
death contractions to muss the straw and that hadn't happened. Maybe
the angel had arranged the old lady's body for decorum, though I don't
see how her muscular strength would have been equal to it, Camilla
weighed at least seven pounds.
As I was burying her at the edge of the garden and the angel was
humming over my head, I recalled a thing which, when it happened, I had
dismissed as a dream. Merely a moonlight image of the angel standing in
the nest box with her hands on Camilla's head, then pressing her mouth
gently on Camilla's throat, just before the hen's head sank down out of
my line of vision. Probably I actually awoke and saw it happen. I am
somehow unconcerned--even, as I think more about it, pleased.
After the burial the angel's hands said: "Sit on the grass and we'll
talk. Question me; I'll tell you what I can. My father asks you to
write it down."
So that is what we have been doing for the last four days. I have been
going to school, a slow but willing pupil. Rather than enter anything
in this journal, for in the evenings I was exhausted, I made notes as
best I could. The angel has gone now to see her father and will not
return until morning. I shall try to make a readable version of my
notes.
Since she had invited questions, I began with something which had been
bothering me, as a would-be naturalist, exceedingly. I couldn't see how
creatures no larger than the adults I had observed could lay eggs, as
large as Camilla's. Nor could I understand why, if they were hatched
in an almost adult condition and able to eat a varied diet, she had
any use for that ridiculous, lovely and apparently functional pair of
breasts.
* * * * *
When the angel grasped my difficulty, she exploded with laughter--her
kind, which buzzed her all over the garden and caused her to fluff my
hair on the wing and pinch my earlobe. She lit on a rhubarb leaf and
gave a delectably naughty representation of herself as a hen laying an
egg, including the cackle. She got me to bumbling helplessly--my kind
of laughter--and it was some time before we could quiet down. Then she
did her best to explain.
They are true mammals, and the young--not more than two or at most
three in a lifetime averaging two hundred and fifty years--are
delivered in very much the human way. The baby is nursed, human
fashion, until his brain begins to respond a little to their unspoken
language. That takes three to four weeks. Then he is placed in an
altogether different medium.
She could not describe that clearly, because there was very little
in my educational storehouse to help me grasp it. It is some gaseous
medium which arrests bodily growth for an almost indefinite period,
while mental growth continues. It took them, she says, about seven
thousand years to perfect this technique after they first hit on the
idea; they are never in a hurry.
The infant remains under this delicate and precise control for anywhere
from fifteen to thirty years, the period depending not only on his
mental vigor, but also on the type of lifework he tentatively elects
as soon as his brain is knowing enough to make a choice. During this
period his mind is guided with patience by teachers who--
* * * * *
It seems those teachers know their business. This was peculiarly
difficult for me to assimilate, although the facts came through clearly
enough. In their world, the profession of teacher is more highly
honored than any other--can such a thing be possible?--and so difficult
to enter that only the strongest minds dare to attempt it.