We sat in silence, she enjoying the beauty around us, while I tried to make sense of it all. Across the turf from us a group of children was tumbling playfully upon a long suffering herby, clearly one not only domesticated but a pet. The children’s backs were deformed (to my alien eye) by crumpled growths, clearly wing buds. The herby looked at me as if for delivery from his small torments and a flock of dilwildi settled down in the park, capturing the attention of the alien children.

My companion apparently felt that I had had enough time to adjust to my surroundings, for she wiped the fruit juices on her bare thighs and reached out to touch my forehead.

“I am Aeolios.”

The sound was in my head and I answered aloud in my own language, “I am Jean Dubois.”

“Welcome to our land, Jeandubois.”

“Where – or when – am I?”

She paused, considering. “You are on an island, the same island to which you sail. Your second query has no meaning to me.” 

Ignoring her odd, tenseless grammar, I tried again. “When I arrived on the island, your city was not here. I went to sleep in a ruined building and when I woke the building was not a ruin, nor was the city. I surmise that I have been transported to some past time.”

She broke contact and screwed her face in thought.

Clearly baffled, she raised her hands to her own head and seemed to be in communication with some other person or thing. For long minutes she remained thus, then she opened her eyes and extended her hands to me again. “You refer to the theory of chronology, wherein time is seen as a linear process. That theory has no validity. Could you rephrase your question?”

“Of course it has validity. What was here yesterday is gone today and what is here today is gone tomorrow. Men grow, mature, and die, leaving behind descendants. Nothing is more basic in the world.”

She broke contact again, her face a mask of horror and pity. Immediately she raised her hands to her forehead and once more went into her trance.

She remained thus for so long that I gave up on her and wandered around the park. The children had gone but the herby remained. As an experiment I approached him and he turned to meet my hand, though clearly disappointed that I had not brought him some tidbit in exchange for his attentions. I touched him hesitantly, but he took no notice. I stroked his neck in amazement. We have no pets on Harmony, having nothing to feed them. I had never touched a living animal before, save the dilwildi who seemed more than animals. I was struck most by the herby’s indifference to my attentions. He paid me no more mind than he had the playful children.

A winged male wandered into the park with a female and they settled beneath a tree, eating the fruit that hung down, then entangled in love making. I turned away, but my scruples were entirely my own. They were aware of me – they had made hand motions toward me that seemed greetings when they entered the park – but they were apparently without notions of modesty or privacy.

Aeolios emerged from her trance and crossed the park to me. There was a mixture of contrition and pity on her face as she touched my forehead. more tomorrow

She beckoned me to rise and I did so, following her outside. The city spread out before me, an aching mass of color. The piers I had so laboriously climbed were now at the water’s edge. Tied up to them were ships of all sizes and descriptions, others lying at anchor in the bay beyond, under which lay, or would lie, the jungle I had trod.

She turned to me and extended her hand, fingertips touching my forehead. “Welcome,” was the sound that echoed in my head with suggestions of a lark-bright voice. “We are pleased that you come.” Then she withdrew her fingers and spoke, watching my face intently as she did. I heard in my ears the lark voice that had been in my mind, but her words were a meaningless trilling – pleasant but unenlightening. She cocked her head.

Another of her race joined us, floating in on wings of fiery color. He landed lightly beside her, his wings making soft thunder in the morning air. He, too, was beautiful; like her he wore only a loin strap of chain, but supporting a lingam. His body was hairless and the hair on his head was white and tangled, but gave no impression of age. His eyes were varicolored, changing as he turned to speak to her. His voice too was lark-like and incomprehensible, but there was no trace of femininity about him. Fine muscles moved beneath his skin as he shifted his weight. They conversed in their own language for several minutes without attempting to translate for me, then he left, flexing his legs to bound into the air, spreading his moth-wings and catching the rising sun on the iridescent fur that covered them; he was gone with a muted rush.

Across the city I could see many like him fluttering here and there, making the morning bright with the colors of their wings. No two were alike and each was an intricate working of several colors, not all of which would have been considered appropriate by a terrestrial artist; yet here they were. I realized that I was looking at the original pattern from which the rugs on which I had lain were taken.

Not all the flying shapes were humanoid. The air was filled with the soft cries of tiny furry things singing out their unending paean: “dilwildi, dilwildi.”

Was she the presence? The instant I asked myself the question, I knew that she was not.

She motioned for me to follow her and, taking pity on my wingless condition, led the way walking. Apparently this was the same city I had seen in ruin, nor was my memory in any way damaged. This was either an intricate dream (which I did not believe) or I had somehow been transported spiritually or bodily to the time when it had been in full flower. And flowering it was, with such a profusion of plant life as to make my jungle seem a desert by comparison. It was like a giant park, with every tree, and shrub and ground hugging turf designed to please human or quasi-human senses.

My winged companion led me to a park where we sat beneath a tree that seemed to have ancestored the lal, although its fruit was larger and seemed more succulent. We sat in silence, she enjoying the beauty around us, while I tried to make sense of it all. more tomorrow

The dilwildi led me by way of an ancient path to the foot of the piers. Here we were above the jungle in the tangle of waterless rock that formed the central majority of the island. It took me most of the afternoon to painfully make my way to the top of the pier. I had concluded that after spending the night there I would have to return to the jungle, for here there would be neither food nor water.

I stood on the mighty pier and looked inland at what had once been an island on a salty sea and saw in my mind’s eye trees, parks, and boulevards where now lay only waterless waste and ruins.

For there were ruins. Before me lay an entire city, stripped by the elements until only the stones remained. From the sea I could have looked at this mountainside and never guessed that the barren rocks I saw were the sole remnants of the handiwork of man.

Man – or something else.

I wandered the streets of the ruined city with my cadre of furred companions. The wind whistled in utter loneliness through the ruins that once had sheltered – what? Man? Some humanoid creature?

Or were the dilwildi the descendants of those who had built this city, generations removed from civilization and reverted to pre-cultural savagery?

Then I knew. The dilwildi were the pets of those who had built the city. For generations they had been bred for docility, for gentleness, and for the savoring of human (?) company. That they survived their masters in loneliness was perhaps the greatest tragedy wrought here.

How I knew this, I could not have said, but I had experienced too much to question such knowledge.

One building was somewhat better preserved than the others. The dilwildi led me to it but would not accompany me in. It was hardly ten meters across and circular, a ring of smooth metallic columns which had once supported the roof that now lay in ruin. I picked my way among the rubble toward the center of the circle and sat down, watching the sun set to the west. A great lethargy took me and I closed my eyes.

IV

She woke me to a golden dawn. The floor where I lay was carpeted with rugs woven in alien and intricate patterns but otherwise the building was bare of furnishings and open to the gentle breezes that rose from the sea bearing the scent of salt and fish.

She was a study in perfection, a dream made flesh.

Varicolored eyes, tumbled hair of a hue not auburn but red, deep, brazen, absolute red, skin of copper fading to cream beneath her breasts and beneath her arms where the sun could less readily go. She wore a chain girdle of silver supporting a golden ankh, otherwise she was naked.

Rising from her shoulder blades were wings like those of some gigantic butterfly. Not the feathery white wings of an angel, nor yet the leathery red wings of a demon. Spreading, rounded, varicolored wings.

*****

A great lethargy took me and I closed my eyes.
She woke me to a golden dawn. She was a study in perfection, a dream made flesh.

Cliche? I don’t think so. More like the avatar of every dream by every lonely and hungry young male. Some of us are lucky enough to find that “dream made flesh”. I was, but there were long years of waiting before that happened, and their memory was fresh when I wrote this.

Butterfly wings? Okay, that’s cliche. Sorry about that, but hell, it was my first novel.

Suddenly, I was scared.

I took out my flint and steel. I wanted no fire; I abhorred the very idea of fire. How could a man desire a fire in this sunny glade?

I struck flint to steel.

The presence was there, sitting unseen beside me in the grass, somewhat irritated but also greatly intrigued. I could feel its curiosity at my acts. Involuntarily, I turned my head but found nothing.

I lay back in the sun and slept.

I woke shortly to find that my kindling had burned down to ash. Why had I slept? Was it exhaustion or had I been ordered to sleep so that the fire would die?

Suddenly I wanted no more of this island. I took up my cane and turned back toward the shore.

The dilwildi were arrayed in a crescent, barring my path. There was neither anger nor hostility in their expressions. Rather, their entire attitude was of sorrow and hurt. Still they frightened me, lined up against me as they were, and I reached for my rifle.

I could not find it.

For the first time since I had built it, I had forgotten it. It lay with my belongings near the gig.

I turned downslope toward the dilwildi. They closed about me, mewing with the soft cry I had heard in the night, a heart–rending cry of sadness entirely unlike their exuberant “dilwildi.” They closed about, gripping my legs, restraining me gently. In fear as much as in anger, I struck out with my cane. One of the dilwildi was bowled over, bleeding from parallel cuts where the antler tip had caught him.

Instantly they retreated, ringing me with a wall of shocked horror. The presence was likewise horrified.

I fell to my knees, tears streaming, my insides torn and twisted at the thought that I had harmed so harmless a creature. I fell forward and buried my head against the earth. There was cold on my shoulders and I looked up to find the sun obscured by clouds – clouds on a planet that knows no clouds. Fear was in me, but more so a load of guilt so great that I could not bear it. I buried my face again.

They surrounded me then, burying me in a mass of soft, furry bodies, each tiny creature radiating good will and forgiveness. I slept.

(Guilt before God. Innocence in Eden. Is there anyone alive who doesn’t recognize the Judeo-Christian tradition here? And there is nothing wrong with that. Our common heritage is what makes literature comprehensible between us.)

***

When I woke the sun was up on a new day. I had slept warm under a blanket of living fur and only now did the dilwildi stir themselves and rise. One lay near my face and as I rose he looked inquiringly at me. I could see the twin weals across his belly. Raising his tiny hand, he touched my face and traced down to my chin. I drew myself awkwardly into a sitting position and faced him, ready for whatever message he bore, but if he was a messenger, he was mute. He waddled up and slipped into my lap like some huge cat, stretching and watching me with an intensity that provoked my laughter.

All that morning we worked our way higher and inland until at noon we had reached the barrier presented by great balks of stone set into what I knew to be a pier. How I knew, I could not have said, but it came to me that they sat at the edge of a fossil ocean and that the jungle I had traversed was the floor of some long-dead bay. more tomorrow

III

The dilwildi stayed with me throughout the day and his brethren from the trees dropped down by ones and twos to inspect me. I laughed insanely at their antics and wondered if my mind was slipping from being too long alone. They were friendly and inquisitive creatures who got into every part of the gig and all of my belongings, save one. They would not approach the rifle. This I could not understand since they had not seen it used, nor could I understand my revulsion from meat. Finally I dismissed the dilwildi’s actions as a dislike of the smell of gunpowder and my revulsion as a stomach too long accustomed to raw fish.

For all my rationalizations, I could not dismiss the presence I had felt.

I slept most of the morning, making up for the night, and when I woke the dilwildi were still with me. I felt a nameless restlessness and a desire to explore.

Leaving the gig, I limped inland, avoiding the glade where the dead herby lay. For hours I walked, eating from time to time of the fruits available. Siskal and lal were both in fruit, though they never fruited at the same time near the colony. Here, I thought, would be the ideal place to move our settlement, but no sooner had the thought occurred than I was dumbstruck with grief as I pictured the destruction of the paradise by my brother hunters.

I had gone about two kilometers when my way was blocked by a rock ledge overgrown with brush. I did not know how far it extended in either direction, so I tried to climb over. My antler cane slipped on the first rise and tore away the turf.

I viewed the exposed material with amazement.

Neither rock nor soil, but flaky rusted metal. At first I thought this was the remains of something lost during the colonization, but our artifacts would not have gone to rust so quickly. Whatever lay here predated man’s arrival on Harmony. I surveyed its length and breadth in wonderment. It could be the wreckage of some air or space craft, but I thought not. Once, we are told, this planet’s ice caps must have been smaller and at such a time the sea level would have been higher. This, I felt, was the remains of some gigantic sea vessel, lying where it had come to rest on what had been the bottom of the sea.

I circled the wreck, if such it was, and continued inland. The dilwildi accompanied me, flying in intricate patterns above me. Always one or more of them flew just above me or waddled beside me. Occasionally one of them brought me fruit. My guides, for so I thought of the ones who stayed near me, eased my path by pointing out game trails and twice led me to seeps of clear, cold water.

Still it was not an easy journey for me and my leg ached abominably by mid-afternoon. I sat in a sunny glade and brought together the makings of a fire, determined to go no farther that day. I piled a pyramid of kindling and took out my flint and steel, but the afternoon was warm and somehow I lost interest in making a fire. I put the flint and steel back into their packet.

Suddenly, I was scared. First the meat, then the call to the interior, and now this. My will no longer seemed my own. How had I concluded so readily that the overgrown ridge was a ship? It seemed more sure than a surmise. Somehow, I knew. more tomorrow