Changing Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

Arianna the day before. Most, however, forgot about it altogether or assumed that they had misjudged him.
    Jeremy continued, “And so, my friends, what you are about to see is not simply a young, pretty woman sailing away in a balloon. Oh, no … no indeed. What you are about to see is the very spirit of British womanhood ascending to her rightful place with the angels in the clouds. Remote, untouchable, apart. Who are these women who help us, after all, if not angels? Should they not be given the power to fly like other angels? And if this is impossible for all, should not there be one who can represent the rest?
    “Arianna Ether has chosen to perform this task, to ascend like an angel to heaven and then, with the aid of this wonderof modern invention, the parachute, to float, sylph-like, back to earth again in order to demonstrate the absolute purity, the lightness of the cleansed female soul.”
    Arianna gazed, as he spoke, reverently at Jeremy’s beautiful face. Then she looked, with almost as much awe, at her gorgeous balloon, which was growing larger and larger with the help of the fire beneath it. Already it had begun to tug at its rigging, which was being held down by several of the village’s strongest men. Arianna tensed each muscle in her body in anticipation, preparing for the moment when she would have to spring without hesitation into the basket.
    “We could call this,” Jeremy suggested, “the apotheosis of Arianna.” The crowd looked confused. “Apotheosis,” explained Jeremy, “means deification, and deification, my friends, means changing a normal human being into a god or, in this case, into a goddess. This is normally accomplished by placing the deified person above the rest of humanity, by placing her in the sky. Shall we deify Arianna? Shall we apotheosize her?”
    Jeremy paused meaningfully.
    The crowd roared, “Yes!”
    “Are you sure?”
    The word sure was Arianna’s cue to sprint towards the basket and scramble inside so that, as the crowd shouted the second “Yes!” she would be launched towards the stratosphere.
    How quiet the journey was. Arianna rested her hands lightly on the edge of her basket and looked down at the crowd, which very rapidly shrank to the size of a dark puddle. On the podium, now not much larger than a brown envelope, Jeremy was merely a small dark exclamation point, his face like a distant star. Several hundred handkerchiefs fluttered on the puddle’s surface as if there were beams of sunlight dancing there. As always, every singlemuscle in Arianna’s body relaxed except for those areas where the halter for the parachute was uncomfortably fitted.
    Below her, the balloon’s shadow slipped easily across the heather and the unconcerned sheep who fed there. It broke into angles when it crossed a sheepfold or a stone wall. Very occasionally, it mingled with the shadow of a tree, but not often, for only a few trees survived the harsh climate of the moor and its incessant winds. These winds were co-operating today, blowing Arianna steadily in the direction that she intended to go, guiding her safely over all three of the fearsome reservoirs.
    As she glided over these smooth, polished, liquid tables Arianna forced herself to look down at the water and saw, to her amazement, her balloon and a half acre of sky shining up at her. It was, at that moment, as if there were no Earth left at all, only Heaven, and she felt dizzily joyful in the excess of light and air, realizing that for the first time she could see herself the way others saw her; a circle of colour in an expanse of sky. Her fear of water vanished in the serenity of these quiet mirrors and she happily remembered how Jeremy had changed.
    She had never felt safer. She thought of the love in his purple eyes, which would be blue now as he watched the sky across which she floated. Seeing the dark, solid shape of Scar Top Sunday School emerging from behind another swell of the moor she examined her harness, its