The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater

stood between their cages and could not decide which to look at first.
    â€˜Good afternoon,’ said the Puma.
    â€˜Hail!’ cried the Falcon.
    â€˜How do you do?’ said Dinah and Dorinda.

Chapter Ten
    â€˜I think I ought to tell you,’ said Dinah, ‘that we aren’t genuine kangaroos. We are really human children who have been turned into kangaroos by a magic draught.’
    â€˜How interesting!’ said the Golden Puma.
    â€˜It’s very honest of you,’ said the Silver Falcon, ‘to admit such a lowly origin.’
    â€˜A lowly origin?’ said Dinah. ‘I never thought of it like that. Do you despise human beings?’
    â€˜Well,’ said the Falcon, ‘you can hardly expect me to admire them. In Greenland, of course, where I used to live, there weren’t very many human people, but I saw enough to form a pretty accurate opinion, I think. There were some Eskimos, and trappers, and traders, and fishermen, and people of that sort, and I don’t deny that they were very enterprising creatures. They tried to do a lot of things, but they couldn’t do anything properly. They could see a little, hear a little, run a little, swim a little, but they couldn’t do anything really well.’
    â€˜I like human beings,’ said the Puma. ‘I like the sound of their voices, and the way they can laugh or look sad. I often wanted to make a friend of one.’
    â€˜And that didn’t do you any good,’ said the Falcon. ‘That’s what put you in a zoo.’
    â€˜I know,’ said the Puma in a melancholy voice. ‘I was very foolish. I didn’t realise that human beings could be treacherous.’
    â€˜Don’t you like being in a zoo?’ asked Dorinda. The Puma’s cage looked very comfortable, and behind it there was an outrun with bushes and a bare stony rise and a little brook.
    The Puma was silent for a while, and then she said, ‘I used to live in a forest in Brazil, and in every part of the forest there was something new to look at. Every tree had a different shape, and some were smooth as a young leaf, and some were rough and deeply crinkled. Their branches made pictures against the sky, and at night they became a fishing-net and caught the stars like a shoal of little fishes. Flowers like trumpets grew upon the trees, sweet-smelling, and among the huts of an Indian village were small brown children playing in the sun. There were long winding paths in the forest, I could run for fifty miles. There was a river, sometimes brown and swirly, sometimes clear and smooth. I used to lie on a branch above the water and look at my reflection in a greenish pool. And when I was hungry I went hunting, and that’s the loveliest thing in life, to go hunting in the moonlight, and feel your blood like quicksilver in your veins. Not a bird wakes but you hear it. Not a leaf closes but you see the edge turn in. Nothing moves but you smell the wind of its movement. And you go like a shadow through the trees, and even your skin and your claws are laughing and alive.’
    â€˜I suppose a Brazilian forest is good in its own way,’ said the Falcon, ‘but I wish you could see Greenland. There’s nothing in the world so beautiful as that enormous tableland, covered with snow, peaked and shining in the sun, cut by great ravines, and patched with blue shadow. I used to ride upon a breeze, a mile above it, in air like crystal, and on either side I could see a hundred miles of snow and sea, and icebergs shipwrecked on the beach, and the pack-ice moving, and the Eskimos in their kayaks, fishing. Then I would close my wings and dive like a bullet through the diamond sky, down to the little bushes and the glinting rocks, the heather and dwarf-willow getting bigger and bigger, yellow poppies rising like bursts of fire to meet me, and the quartz in the granite boulders like pinpricks of light. Headlong down, the thin air