Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1. Ray Bradbury

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and rustled, fell in a shower of horse-chestnut, thumped like winter apples on the earth, with an overall scent of farewell-summer on the wind they made in their rushing. The ceremony? The ceremony was brief as a black candle lit, blown out, and smoke left still on the air. Its briefness, darkness, upside-down and backward quality escaped Brunilla, who only listened to the great tide of Uncle Einar’s wings faintly murmuring above them as they finished out the rite. And as for Uncle Einar, the wound across his nose was almost healed and, holding Brunilla’s arm, he felt Europe grow faint and melt away in the distance.

      He didn’t have to see very well to fly straight up, or come straight down. It was only natural that on this night of their wedding he take Brunilla in his arms and fly right up into the sky.

      A farmer, five miles over, glanced at a low cloud at midnight, saw faint glows and crackles.

      ‘Heat lightning,’ he observed, and went to bed.

      They didn’t come down till morning, with the dew.

      The marriage took. She had only to look at him, and it lifted her to think she was the only woman in the world married to a winged man. ‘Who else could say it?’ she asked her mirror. And the answer was: ‘No one!’

      He, on the other hand, found great beauty behind her face, great kindness and understanding. He made some changes in his diet to fit her thinking, and was careful with his wings about the house; knocked porcelains and broken lamps were nerve-scrapers, he stayed away from them. He changed his sleeping habits, since he couldn’t fly nights now anyhow. And she in turn fixed chairs so they were comfortable for his wings, put extra padding here or took it out there, and the things she said were the things he loved her for. ‘We’re in our cocoons, all of us. See how ugly I am?’ she said. ‘But one day I’ll break out, spread wings as fine and handsome as you.’

      ‘You broke out long ago,’ he said.

      She thought it over. ‘Yes,’ she had to admit. ‘I know just which day it was, too. In the woods when I looked for a cow and found a tent!’ They laughed, and with him holding her she felt so beautiful she knew their marriage had slipped her from her ugliness, like a bright sword from its case.

      They had children. At first there was fear, all on his part, that they’d be winged.

      ‘Nonsense, I’d love it!’ she said. ‘Keep them out from under foot.’

      ‘Then,’ he exclaimed, ‘they’d be in your hair!’

      ‘Ow!’ she cried.

      Four children were born, three boys and a girl, who, for their energy, seemed to have wings. They popped up like toadstools in a few years, and on hot summer days asked their father to sit under the apple tree and fan them with his cooling wings and tell them wild starlit tales of island clouds and ocean skies and textures of mist and wind and how a star tastes melting in your mouth, and how to drink cold mountain air, and how it feels to be a pebble dropped from Mt. Everest, turning to a green bloom, flowering your wings just before you strike bottom!

      This was his marriage.

      And today, six years later, here sat Uncle Einar, here he was, festering under the apple tree, grown impatient and unkind; not because this was his desire, but because after the long wait, he was still unable to fly the wild night sky: his extra sense had never returned. Here he sat despondently, nothing more than a summer sun-parasol, green and discarded, abandoned for the season by the reckless vacationers who once sought the refuge of its translucent shadow. Was he to sit here forever, afraid to fly by day because someone might see him? Was his only flight to be as a drier of clothes for his wife, or a fanner of children on hot August noons? His one occupation had always been flying Family errands, quicker than storms. A boomerang, he’d whickled over hills and valleys and like a thistle, landed. He had always had money; the Family had good use for their winged man! But now? Bitterness! His wings jittered and whisked the air and made a captive thunder.

      ‘Papa,’ said little Meg.

      The children stood looking at his thought-dark face.

      ‘Papa,’ said Ronald. ‘Make more thunder!’

      ‘It’s a cold March day, there’ll soon be rain and plenty of thunder,’ said Uncle Einar.

      ‘Will you come watch us?’ asked Michael.

      ‘Run on, run on! Let Papa brood!’

      He was shut of love, the children of love, and the love of children. He thought only of heavens, skies, horizons, infinities, by night or day, lit by star, moon, or sun, cloudy or clear, but always it was skies and heavens and horizons that ran ahead of you forever when you soared. Yet here he was, sculling the pasture, kept low for fear of being seen.

      Misery in a deep well!

      ‘Papa, come watch us; it’s March!’ cried Meg. ‘And we’re going to the Hill with all the kids from town!’

      Uncle Einar grunted. ‘What hill is that?’

      ‘The Kite Hill, of course!’ they all sang together.

      Now he looked at them.

      Each held a large paper kite, their faces sweating with anticipation and an animal glowing. In their small fingers were balls of white twine. From the kites, colored red and blue and yellow and green, hung caudal appendages of cotton and silk strips.

      ‘We’ll fly our kites!’ said Ronald. ‘Won’t you come?’

      ‘No,’ he said, sadly. ‘I mustn’t be seen by anyone or there’d be trouble.’

      ‘You could hide and watch from the woods,’ said Meg. ‘We made the kites ourselves. Just because we know how.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘You’re our father!’ was the instant cry. ‘That’s why!’

      He looked at his children for a long while. He sighed. ‘A kite festival, is it?’

      ‘Yes, sir!’

      ‘I’m going to win,’ said Meg.

      ‘No, I’m!’ Michael contradicted.

      ‘Me, me!’ piped Stephen.

      ‘God up the chimney!’ roared Uncle Einar, leaping high with a deafening kettledrum of wings. ‘Children! Children. I love you dearly!’

      ‘Father, what’s wrong?’ said Michael, backing off.

      ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing!’ chanted Einar. He flexed his wings to their greatest propulsion and plundering. Whoom! they slammed like cymbals. The children fell flat in the backwash! ‘I have it, I have it! I’m free again! Fire in the flue! Feather on the wind! Brunilla!’ Einar called to the house. His wife appeared. ‘I’m free!’ he called, flushed and tall, on his toes. ‘Listen, Brunilla, I don’t need the night any more! I can fly by day! I don’t need the night! I’ll fly every day and any day of the year from now on! – but, God, I waste time, talking. Look!’

      And as the worried members of his family watched, he seized the cotton tail from one of the little kites, tied it to his belt behind, grabbed СКАЧАТЬ