Read And on the Eighth Day for Free Online

Barns and farmland and pasture revealed no combustion-engine equipment; even the plows were mostly of wood. And yet everything was lush and teeming. It was hard to remember that beyond the circle of the hills—Crucible Hill, had the old man said?—lay all but lifeless desert.
    And the people …
    Now and then a woman came out on her doorstep to greet the Teacher respectfully, a respect tinged with something remotely like uneasiness, as if the newness and wonder of the guest had suddenly overshadowed everything. Or a man on his way to the fields, or returning—feet stained with earth, hoe on shoulder, gourd of water in hand—would greet the Teacher; and again the eyes would dart to the newcomer, and away, and back again.
    Except for the children, free on their holiday, everyone was busied with some task; yet there was no air of drudgery, none of the tension or depression so often produced by industrial work. Everyone Ellery saw seemed happy and at peace.
    In spite of an occasional browsing animal, the un-paved streets were remarkably clean, a phenomenon presently explained when they came upon the village’s department of sanitation. It consisted of one very old man and one very young woman, who were raking the dirt of the lanes with whisklike implements and carefully depositing each twig and turd and leaf in a donkey cart
    The wonder in their eyes as they glanced at Ellery, and then hastily away, was as deep in the very old man as in the very young woman.
    It was a wonder not confined to the people of Quenan. Ellery himself was filled with it. Here, indeed, was the Peaceable Kingdom.
    Or so it seemed.
    “Here we must stop awhile,” said the Teacher, pausing before a large building, barn-size and barn-simple. The heat of the day had increased, and it was a relief to rest. This building had fewer windows than the school, and it was cool inside. Blinking in the dimness after the dazzling sun, Ellery located a bench and sat down.
    They were evidently in a sort of central warehouse or supply depot. Shelves ranged the walls and divided the interior into sections; there were bins and compartments and drawers. Bunches of herbs hung drying and dried, wreaths of chili peppers, ropes of red onions glowing like embers in the half-light; white corn, and yellow corn, and Indian corn with kernels of every color from black to lavender; sacks of meal, dried beans in greater variety than Ellery had ever seen outside a Mexican or Puerto Rican grocery. He saw wheels of cheeses, bales of wool, dirt-brown on the outside and creamy white on the shorn underside; hanks of yarn, huge spools of thread, bolts of cloth, tools, parts of looms and spinning wheels, bundles of wax candles hanging by looped wicks, kegs of nails, packets of bone needles, heaps of horn combs, buttons, wooden spools, earthernware, seeds, even crocks of preserves.
    It was a primitive cornucopia, a rude horn of plenty; and there was a counter of sorts behind which stood the man Storicai, who had been with the Teacher at Otto Schmidt’s store. He greeted Ellery solemnly, his glance slipping past as if to see whether the guest had not, perhaps, come to the storehouse in that strange vehicle which had so fascinated him outside Schmidt’s that day …
    That day? It seemed like only yesterday—
    Suddenly Ellery realized that it had been only yesterday.
    The shock jolted him out of the sense of dream-participation which he had been experiencing. It was as if he had been caught in a time maze, in which past and present kept shifting like the colors of a kaleidoscope. Certain now, as he had not been a moment before, which day of the week it was (although he was by no means certain of the year, or, for that matter, of the century), Ellery watched the Teacher take a knife from some pocket or pouch within his robes and sliding it from its sheath show Storicai that the blade was broken.
    “Shall I fetch you a new one, then?” asked the younger man.
    “No—” the Teacher said. (Or