The island nations were known to the world for the miracles of art and craftsmanship found throughout their many-shored lands. On one island lived makers of masks, on another lived machinists who built clockwork devices of unparalleled ingenuity, and on one island lived men and women who drew portraits in ink and charcoal for which other men traveled from far across the oceans to procure.

In a small town of this last island a finely dressed gentleman opened a small shop wherein he sold finely crafted art supplies. The gentleman ran a modest profit, and came to be known as an artist of no small talent with the brush and ink himself. He made his own ink and kept it in a tiny silver bottle. He tied his own brushes from strands of silvery, silken hair the likes of which no man or woman had seen before. Oft times he was asked where he might have found such hair, or if he would sell the brushes, but he would only reply, “I have spun the hairs of my brushes from the moonlight, and they are not mine to sell. Such dishonesty would bear terrible consequences, for no dishonorable hands may touch the silver of the moon.”

The gentleman’s gallery and art supply store came to be held with some regard, and his drawings found their way onto the town’s walls, a stairway there or a foyer here. Ladies would sit for portraits, and he would dip his silver brushes into his little silver jar, until the portrait very nearly seem to breathe life upon its completion. The gentleman was given to wandering the small town’s cobblestones, lit by gaslamps in the night, drawing the shadows. Some days, when it snowed, or when it was especially cold and gray, the gentleman left the borders of the town and returned with landscapes so perfect their buyers claimed to be able to feel the cold off them.

One young woman followed the gentleman out of the town on just such a bleak winter’s day, and hid herself away as she watched him sit upon a rock and draw the many empty branches of the trees around the small town. After a time the most gentle smile she had ever seen crossed his arch face, and he lifted his silver brush into the air. There, without paper or parchment, he drew a tiny fluttering sparrow. “Go on, little bird. Flutter away and sing songs for the bold.” And that was just what the sparrow did, for all the young woman knew. She had fled as soon as he spoke the words, thrilled and frightened in equal measure by what she had witnessed.

Over the next few days the gentleman found his small gallery haunted, not with a ghostly spirit, but by a small young woman. She drifted silently through his shelves, peering into his drawings in search of any birds they held, searching for sparrows perhaps. She looked closely at all his inks and the brushes, as if they were fountains from which water might spring at any moment. The gentleman would watch her for however long he wished to be amused, and then he would ask with a sardonic tone if he could help her. The young woman would blush furiously and tell him no, and after a few minutes more of looking at his drawings with her ears bright red, she would run out of the shop.

One evening the gentleman took in the midnight air, as he was fond of doing, and a shadow followed his own. The young woman watched him wander from lamplight to moonlight, until he sat on a bench beside a deserted street and began to fill in all the shadows on a page of parchment with broad strokes of his silver brush. She shivered as she watched, for as he drew, the empty street came to life on the page. In images alone, at first, but then the shadows he drew upon the page came to life in the empty street. Finally, with a single sinuous movement, he inked a black cat onto his page which was not anywhere to be seen until his brush lifted from the paper. “Go now, little black cat,” he said, “and watch behind those too honest to watch for themselves.” The young woman sank deeper into the shadows as she watched the cat vanish into the night and the gentleman pack up his ink and brushes. It was no surprise to her to see the drawing, without the cat, hanging in his gallery the next day.

The gentleman smiled his sardonic smile and took his amusement as always, making the young woman blush with his inquiries, and drumming his manicured nails on the lacquered wood of his desk when she had left. His gaze traveled to the tiny silver inkwell and contemplated his brushes. He spent the next several days making the finest inks he had ever made, in fifty colors, and tying fine brushes from the softest hair in his possession. Every day he would watch the young woman come in and see what she made of his lovely new inks and wonderful brushes, but though his inks and brushes were most elegantly crafted, she seemed to have eyes for nothing but his inked drawings, staring at each one as if she could see clear through the woods or the windows or the eyes in them all.

Of course, he could not go for very long before he felt the need to walk out past the borders of the town. Any day the sky was full of clouds (and there were many such days in the island nations) filled him with the desire to travel. It was on just such a day as this - as he sat on the roots of a great and gnarled old elm tree, with paper in his lap and a brush in his hand - that he said, “You may as well come out. I know you are watching me draw.” Thus the young woman crept out from the tree where she had hidden herself away, and came to sit next to the well dressed gentleman.

“Well,” he said, “now you see why my own ink and my own brushes are not for sale. Though it is my greatest joy and love to share beauty with the world, they could not be used by aught other hands but my own.” So saying, he sketched in a deft few strokes a springtime tree, and the young woman watched in amazement as a tree grew up from the earth and unfurled its leaves. “The tree is for truth,” he said. “I draw such things as I may so long as they bring the world to rights.”

“Do you suppose,” asked the young woman, “that you could draw an eagle?”

“I assuredly could, my dear,” said the gentleman, and he dipped his brush into the silver inkwell, and drew into the air itself until he had drawn an eagle onto the branch of a tree fully twenty feet away. “The eagle,” he said, “is for honor.” The eagle looked down from its perch and the gentleman said, “Go then, and watch always over the honorable, so that even in solitude their actions do not go unobserved.” The eagle gave a cry as if in response to the gentleman’s words and took off from its perch to perform its task.

The young woman had no more questions for the gentleman, but she sat in silence while he drew, watching the lines take shape and the shapes take form. Whether she ever saw what images he drew was not so certain, for she seemed as much lost in her own thoughts as the fine gentleman was lost in his drawings.

The following day the gentleman once again prepared brushes and inks. Customers came and went, and many of his fine brushes were sold, and some of them asked for pictures, while others considered what drawings he had already finished. The young woman returned to his gallery again, but now she was full of questions about his drawings. Was that one there a drawing of honor? Was this one meant to be truth? Did that one speak of courage? The gentleman smiled in his slightly ironic way but nodded, for she saw all the truth in his drawings. He tied brushes as she spoke, each one meticulous and careful, but the young woman had no interest in his brushes or inks, only what works he had done.

For three more days the gentleman pressed inks and tied brushes and spoke to the young woman about his drawings. She learned all the secrets of the strange magic he worked, and all he had brought into the world. He had planted trees on all the island nations, and sent birds to all the corners of the earth. He had filled jungles with cats which guarded secrets and sent spiders out into the desert to live with selfless men. The gentleman came to enjoy her questions, and even made her a gift of one of the exquisite brushes he made whilst talking to her. She was quite delighted by the brush, but soon returned to asking after the pictures he drew.

One evening when he went out amongst the gaslit streets she happened to walk with him. She did not ask questions or chatter meaninglessly, and he did not speak as he looked for those shadowy forms which made sense only in his own mind, which he would draw during the night. When he sat, this time on the steps of a building with all its lights put out, the young woman took a deep breath and said, “Have you ever drawn anything for another person?”

The gentleman tapped his brush against the tip of his nose and said, “I have drawn quite a few things for quite a few people, but perhaps that is not your meaning. Perhaps that is not what you wish to ask?” And here he smiled his usual sardonic smile.

“Perhaps,” she said, and was silent for a moment or two as he laid out his paper and pens. “If there was something only you could draw for me, would it be rude of me to ask?”

He looked at her again, that same smile on his lips, tilting his head, and said, “It is never rude to ask. Never be afraid of that.”

Thus the young woman asked the gentleman, “Would you draw wings for me? Would you draw wings on me? You’ve drawn the sparrow and the eagle and the dove, and they have all flown over the earth. I only wish to see what they see.”

“Ah, that,” he said. “From time to time a clever young man or woman has come to me with just that question. I’ve drawn cups always full of gold, the finest gowns ever worn, and magical horses who could ride on the air. But it is always their obligation to make the world better.”

“What would I have to do with them?” asked the young woman. “I would do anything for wings.”

The gentleman made a dismissive gesture, an ironic twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, there’s nothing you have to do. Wings are honor and courage. So long as you are honorable and brave you will have your wings.” He dipped his silver brush into his tiny inkwell and slowly drew feathers onto the young woman’s back. “That is really very little to ask of anyone, don’t you agree?” He dipped his brush again and drew wings upon her feathers.

The young woman shivered and her wings rustled for the first time as she felt them folded against her back. She ran her fingers over her feathers and closed her eyes for what seemed like a single moment. But when she opened them again to thank the gentleman, he had vanished and the dark blue of twilight glowed on the horizon.

Though she could not thank the finely dressed gentleman with his silver brushes, she was certain he knew the fullness of her gratitude, and she took to the sky as if it was her birthright. Her wings were quiet and the air was warm and she soon was flying far above the small town and leaving it very far behind. Her wings carried her to many of the distant island nations, where she met all manner of people. Some of them showed her strange sights she had never seen, and the young woman always did all she could for those who asked; her generosity was without boundaries.

One day, in a town known for its masks, the young winged woman was given a mask by another young woman who who was a maker of masks. The woman with the mask said, “Please, my true love lies far across the ocean. He sends me stories, but I do not trust my masks to the sailing ships. Will you carry it to him?” Of course the winged young woman agreed, for it was a beautiful mask and she felt herself to be as romantic at heart as any young woman, perhaps a little more. She took the mask and tied the ribbon around her head and flew off to find the young man who was the woman’s true love.

In a matter of days she flew to his island, and under the silver softness of Night’s eye, the moon, she alighted upon the young man’s balcony. She moved to wake him, but as she beheld him sleeping, her breath caught and she could not take a single step. She was struck by his beauty and held motionless. Some small noise must have woken him, for his eyes soon opened and looked at her.

“Ahh, what is this,” he said. “A dream, a dream. It must be a dream, for you wear my beloved’s face, but you have the form of an angel. Oh, my angel, oh my beloved. Such stories I would write for you. Come closer and let me speak poetry to your ivory skin.”

Still hypnotized by the poet, the young woman stepped closer, and before she quite knew what he was doing, he had written love poem upon love sonnet all about her skin. Before she quite knew how much time had passed, the sun was rising and the poet, exhausted, was sinking back into sleep. “Go, my vision,” he said. “Carry my love to my love, my angel. My vision in a dream, visit her in her sleep.”

The young woman flew from the balcony, forgetting to leave the mask. She knew she should carry the poet’s words back to the woman who loved him, but she was afraid, for he made her own pulse quicken as well. She knew she should carry the mask back to the poet, but she was afraid he would be angered or upset over her deception. Thus she flew onward, passing through rain clouds and over islands, until she returned to the small town from whence she had come. Exhausted, she collapsed into a deep sleep in a field by the trees where the gentleman used to draw portraits with ink from his tiny silver bottle.

The next morning, when she awoke, she found herself lying in a wide pool of ink. She looked at her skin and discovered all the poet’s words had been washed away. And when she brought her hands to her face, she found the fine porcelain mask cracked and broken, so that her touch caused it to crumble to dust. For all of that, it was only when she rose to her feet that she found her wings were no more. Those gifts of honor and courage had melted away in the night, with the words she did not say and the face she did not show.

She ran back to town, but the gentleman had closed up his gallery some months ago and was long departed.