Eric shut his eyes and put his head down on the Tree Man's knee. And it
began to happen just as Ivra had said. There was a green hill-pasture, a
little gray stone wall slanting across it, and sheep, one by one,
jumping where the wall was broken down, following their leader. He
counted one hundred of them and then stopped although a dear little lamb
was trotting down the hill, trailing the procession. He wanted to see if
the lamb would be able to jump the wall too. But the Tree Man had said
one hundred, so he stopped and opened his eyes.
Things were strange. The Tree Man was nothing but an old stump. The room
felt very cold and it was bare. The fire in the boulder had gone out.
But he heard a soft fluttering somewhere and took heart. The Bird
Fairies! They might be hiding high, having wings. He went all around the
room, looking up into the dusk. At last, there they were in row on a
beam, their wings spread over their eyes.
"Bird Fairies, I spy!" cried Eric, and ran towards the stump. But wings
are swifter than feet, and the Bird Fairies reached the goal first.
He found Ivra at the top of the second flight of stairs, curled up in a
shadow.
"I spy!" and he ran just as fast as he could down the stairs. He was
ahead of her to the door, and thought he would surely win. But she
passed him in the room and touched the stump first.
The Tree Girl, of all places, was kneeling behind the stump. Of course
she touched it the minute Eric spied her, and so she was safe.
The Forest Children were hiding, some in the hall behind the door, some
on the stairs, one under the table. And everyone of them beat him to the
goal and touched it first.
"Now there's only Wild Star," Ivra cried. "You must catch him, Eric, or
else you'll have to be 'It' again!"
Wild Star was outside, up in the top of the tree in the starlight. Eric
discovered him by seeing one of the tips of his purple wings which was
caught in a crack of the sky door. "I spy!" he called, and pulled the
wing-tip to let Wild Star know he was found.
But of course Wild Star passed him like a flash, his strong wings
beating down.
Tears of vexation welled in Eric's eyes. One thing he had gained though.
Because he had found them all, even though he could not run so fast as
they, the Tree Man had come back, and sat there in the place of the
stump, and all was warm and bright again. The Tree Man had only wanted
to prove for himself that Eric could see Wild Star, the Bird Fairies,
and the others without Ivra to point them out to him. But he felt
satisfied now that Eric's eyes were really clear, and that he would
never hurt any of them by looking through them or pretending that they
did not exist.
"Wild Star is It now," he said. "For he didn't play fair, going outside
like that."
"Oh, I forgot outside was no fair," cried Wild Star, laughing.
So this time Eric hid with the others, while Wild Star counted sheep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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