WINGED HEELS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

WINGED HEELS.

(Prize-winning entry by IVurti Part, 120, Symonds Street, Auckland; age 16.)

Opal gazed dreamily up into the Bmoky red of a pohutukawa, a scarlet mist of blossoms that had come from eome enchanted sunset to settle on the gnarled grey branches. Somewhere over in the tall, dark trees across tho narrow blue arm of the sea she could hear a tui piping, an odd little tricky tune of little runs and trills, quivering in broken echoes across the water. Opal smiled. 'Tan is calling from his silvery-leafed olive trees, and the satyrs are dancing in the woods of Greece. I wish I had lived then, when Theseus strode the kills, with his migkty bronze club over his shoulder, when Pegasus beat the air with his' great white wings. But you are dead, impish Pan, and so are all the gods who dwelt on the blue peak of Olympus."

A tui flew out of the whispering trees, and seemed to hover a moment above the water. Opal stood up and cried out in wonderment, for above the bird swirled a faint yet luminous mist, which gradually drifted away, leaving poised in the air the figure of a tall man, clad in a short tunic of silvery white, with a gleaming bronze helmet upon his head, and his feet in shining sandals, from the heels of which grew living, quivering ■wings.

Then he was on the sand, bronzed, lithe-limbed, a being half divine, who lad come from the land of olives to the land of pohutukawas.

"Pan is not dead," he said, in a curiously soft, deep voice, slightly hesitating, as though he were using a strange language. "Pan is not dead, nor are the gods of Olympus. They live in strange lands, in different forms, for they have forsaken the land of Greece. I am the messenger of Zeus, I am the incarnation of Youth, of the liberty and unfettered joy which dwell in every land. I cannot' die, for I am born anew in every country. Behold me as I am in the land of vines and arbutus; behold me as I am in the land of rata blossom and dreaming oceans."

The wings on his sandals quivered like the wings of a tired bird. He was gone, and in his place stood a ragged Maori lad, brown, barefooted, as shy as a kiwi. In his thick, curly black hair was a green-grey poliutukawa leaf, fallen from the tree above, and on his outstretched brown forefinger perched a tui, iridescent black.

The boy laughed. "Pan lives still," he <3aid, "for Youth cannot die." The" bird ■upon his finger looked at Opal with inquiring black eyes and began to sing an odd little impish tune which was an echo of the laugh of the boy. Then lie rose and flew into the bush beyond." There r/e~s a swift scurry of feet and the boy was gone, a slim ragged shadow who belonged to the dusk and the trees. A withered leaf pattered to the sand.