bushes and banks, through orchards and meadows, on, on, on, until they
came to the town.

There Ivra pulled back for a minute, and the Wind Creatures slowed down.
Eric knew why Ivra was afraid of the town. She had told him all about it
while they played in the wood. Helma, her mother, was a human, but she
hated the town and loved the fairies and their ways. That was why she
had run away to live by herself in the wood. But Ivra was neither fairy
nor human; she was both.

Now the fairies are afraid of humans because humans look right through
them and do not see them. That upsets the fairies and makes them
uncomfortable. Of course Helma and Eric were exceptions, for because
they had no shadows in their eyes they could see them and play with
them. So the fairies accepted those two as one of themselves. Ivra was
different. Because she was only half fairy, any human could see her
whether his eyes were shadowed or not if he would only look hard enough.
The dreadful part was that when a human did see her, he was likely not
to believe in her. He would just think he was day-dreaming, and that the
little girl with the soft eyes, the ash-colored pigtails, and the quick
feet was just a piece of his day-dream. Not to be seen is bad enough.
But it is much worse to be seen and not believed in. That was why Ivra
was afraid of the town. People saw her there and either rubbed their
eyes and looked another way, or laughed.

But now she was going for her mother, and she could bear anything, even
that. She did not hold back long. They ran past the canning factory, and
Eric did not give a glance to it. A little girl looking out over a pile
of cans saw him, however, and wondered at his warm suit of brown cloth,
his leggins, sandals and the cap with wings. She remembered him in rags.