But Eric knew without words that Wild Star was glad to see him.  So he stepped up out of the water and stretched himself on a mound of silvery moss near by.  With his chin resting in his palms and his elbows supporting, he faced the Wind Creature, his clear blue eyes open to the intent purple ones.

It was Wild Star who spoke first.

“I thought, little Eric, you would have crossed the sea before this, and be out of the Forest.  I expected to find you next fall on the other side of the world.”

Eric was amazed, for he had not said one word of his dream about that to any one.  “How did you know I wanted to go?” he cried.

“Oh, you are an Earth Child, after all, and I knew you would want to be going on, as soon as you saw the sea.”

“But why do I want to go on?” asked Eric, his face clouding with the puzzle of it.  “I am so happy here, and Helma is my mother now.  There can’t be another mother across the sea for me.  And if there were I wouldn’t want her,—­not after Helma!  No, Helma is my only mother, and Ivra is my comrade.  And still I want to leave them,—­and go on and away over there.  It is very funny.”

“No,” said Wild Star.  “It isn’t funny.  You are a growing Earth Child, not a fairy.  It is your own kind calling you.  It is the music of your human life.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Eric.

“It is like this:  you know when you begin to sing a song, you go on and on to the end without thinking about it at all.  It is the theme that carries you.  Well, a human life is made like a song,—­it carries itself along.  You do not stop to think why.  It can’t stop in the middle, on one chord, for long.  Yours now is resting, on a chord of happiness.  But soon it will go on again.  You want it to.  Life in the Forest, though, isn’t like that.  Here it is music without any theme, like the music we dance to.  Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmm.  But there is more than that to an Earth Child’s life.  It runs on like this stream.  The stream is happy here in the Forest, too, but it goes on seeking the sea just the same.”

There was a long stillness while Eric looked down into the green depths of the water.  At last he asked, “But how could I ever get across the sea?  And when I got there how could I get back?”

“Time enough to think about getting back when you are there,” laughed Wild Star.  “But as to getting there, Helma is the one to tell you that.  She has been an Earth Child, too, you know.  She felt just as you did, that spring night on the shore.  She has felt it many times.  It is only Ivra that keeps her in the Forest.  Ivra docs not belong out in the world of humans, and Helma will never leave her.  But she will understand your longing.  All you have to do is tell her.”

Eric clapped his hands, a habit he had caught from Ivra.  “Oh, I shall cross in a ship,” he cried, “and see all the foreign lands.  And when I come back, think of the World Stories I shall have to tell Helma and Ivra!”