This was a man. Like the girl, he wore thin, tight leather and a dagger at his belt. His hair was red, and so were his silky wings, but his face was duskily tanned and Kern caught the flash of sidelong, light eyes as the man approached them. He saw, too, in another moment, that the newcomer was a hunchback. Between the shining reddish wings the man’s back was slightly crooked, so that he looked up at them with his head awry. He had a young face, with beautiful clear planes, beneath the darkness of his tan.
“Gerd—” the girl called, and then hesitated. He flashed the light eyes at her, and Kern decided it was probably his name.
The pale gaze moved back to Kern, and watched him searchingly as the hunchback fought the wind to the shelter of their tree. The man was wary, ready for distrust before he so much as saw Kern’s face. It was odd, in a way.
They talked, the girl excitedly in her contralto voice, guttural words tumbling over each other. Gerd’s answers were brief, in an unexpectedly deep tone. Presently he unsheathed his dagger and with it gestured toward Kern and the valley below them.
Kern bristled a little. There was no need for threats. If these people were still in a state of undevelopment where knives were their customary weapon, he was far beyond them in some ways at least. It was not a pleasant introduction to this world, where he felt himself already native, to have those first directions pointed out with a bare blade.
The girl, seeing his scowl, laughed gently and came forward to take his arm. She gestured Gerd away with her other hand, and he smiled grimly and stood back. The girl fluttered her wings a little and made a swooping gesture of her hand to indicate flight. She pointed to the valley. Then she stepped away to the brow of the hill, unfolded her wings, tested the dying wind with them, and leaned forward with sublime confidence into the void.
The updraft caught her beneath the pinions and bore her aloft on a beautiful sweep, her pale hair blowing like a banner. In midair she twisted to beckon, and Kern laughed in sheer delight and ran to follow her, spreading his dark wings so that at the fourth stride, with a leap, suddenly he was airborne. It was a glorious feeling to fly without shame or need of concealment. He scarcely heard the beat of wings behind him as the hunchback took to the air in their wake. The joy of flying in company was great enough just now to shut out all other thoughts from Kern’s mind.
They swept high along the slow-running river of wind over a winding valley. Kern, watching for the companions with whom he had entered this wonderful world, saw no motion at all among the trees they soared over. He caught sight presently of a cluster of roofs far ahead, at the top of the valley, built around a stream that wound to and fro among the houses, and was filled with excited speculation as they neared the village.
My people, he thought. My own people. What kind of a town will it be, and what sort of culture? How fast can I learn the language? There’s so much to find out.
The thought broke in his mind. For something—he had no name for it—was stirring very strangely through his body.
For an instant the whole airy world went blind around him. It was as if a new pair of lungs had opened up within him and he had drawn a deep, full breath of such air as no human ever tasted before. It was as if new eyes had opened in his head and he had looked on a new dimension with multiple sight. It was like neither of these, nor was it like anything a man ever experienced before. New, new, inexpressibly new!
And it was gone.
In flight Kern staggered a little, his wings forgetting to beat the sustaining air. The thing had come and gone so quickly, and yet it was not a wholly unfamiliar thing, after all. Once before something like it had happened. Something, different, but at the time heart-breakingly new. It was when he first felt the wings thrust out upon his shoulders. When he first felt the change within himself that cut him off from mankind.
“Am I changing again?” he asked himself fiercely. “Isn’t the mutation over yet? I won’t change! I belong here now—I won’t let anything spoil that!”
The feeling was gone. He could not remember even now what it had been actually like. He would not change! He would fight change while breath remained in him. Whatever strange new mutation struggled now for being in his mysterious flesh he would strangle before he let it come between him and these people with wings.
It had gone, now. He would forget it. It should be as if it had never happened.
III
Gathering Danger
Sunlight winked from the diamond-paned windows of the village. They circled above the rooftops and came in against the wind for a landing on the high, flat roof of the central building, its open square paved with tiles painted in bright, crude pictures of flying men and women.
From above Kern could see the cobbled streets winding narrowly past overhanging eaves, little stone bridges arching the stream that gushed rapidly down through the village. Flowers were bright in narrow, ordered bands around the houses. There were steep streets that rose in steps around the curves of the hill upon which the town was based.
The roofs were steeply pitched, arguing a heavy snowfall in winter, but each of them had a landing area on the highest part of the house, usually facing a low door let into a gable. And Kern’s last doubt departed. This
