Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/87

 And the exultant, whistling voices high above were shrilling, "Upward—up with us! You belong among us, not down there! Upward—fly!"

He sprang! The stunted wings smote the air wild, and he was soaring! The dark trees, the lighted window of the cottage, the whole hilltop, dropped behind and below him as his wings bore him upward on the bellowing wind.

Up, up—clean, hard battering of the cold air on his face once more, the crazy roaring of the wind around him, the great thrash of his wings bearing him higher and higher.

David Rand's high, ringing laughter pealed out on the screaming wind as he flew on between the stars and the nighted earth. Higher and higher, right up among the shrilling, southing birds that companioned him on either side. On and on he flew with them.

He knew suddenly that this alone was living, this alone was waking. All that other life that had been his, down there, that had been the dream, and he had awakened from it now. It was not he who worked in an office and had loved a woman and a child down there. It was a dream David Rand who had done that, and the dream was over now.

Southward, southward, he rushed through the night, and the wind screamed, and the moon rose higher, until at last the land passed from beneath and he flew with the flying birds over moonlit plains of ocean. He knew that it was madness to fly on with these poor wings that already were tiring and weakening, but he had no thought in his exultant brain of turning back. To fly on, to fly this one last time, that was enough!

So that when his tired wings began at last to fail, and he began to sink lower and lower toward the silvered waters, there was no fear and no regret in his breast. It was what he had always expected and wanted, at the end, and he was drowsily glad—glad to be falling as all they with wings must finally fall, after a brief lifetime of wild, sweet flight, dropping contentedly to rest.

By EDGAR DANIEL KRAMER