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 tunic
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 of 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.”