Read The Stories of Ray Bradbury for Free Online Page A

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 the twine ball, held one end in his teeth, gave the other end to his children, and up, up into the air he flew, away into the Match wind!
    And across the meadows and over the farms his children ran, letting out string to the daylit sky, bubbling and stumbling, and Brunilla stood back in the farmyard and waved and laughed to see what was happening; and her children marched to the far Kite Hill and stood, the four of them, holding the twine in their eager, proud fingers, each tugging and directing and pulling. And the children from Mellin Town came running with their small kites to let up on the wind, and they saw the great green kite leap and hover in the sky and exclaimed:
    ‘Oh, oh, what a kite! What a kite! Oh, I wish I’d a kite like that! Where, where did you get it!’
    ‘Our father made it!’ cried Meg and Michael and Stephen and Ronald, and gave an exultant pull on the twine and the humming, thundering kite in the sky dipped and soared and made a great and magical exclamation mark across a cloud!

The Traveler
    Father looked into Cecy’s room just before dawn. She lay upon her bed. He shook his head uncomprehendingly and waved at her.
    ‘Now, if you can tell me what good she does, lying there,’ he said. ‘I’ll eat the crape on my mahogany box. Sleeping all night, eating breakfast, and then lying on top her bed all day.’
    ‘Oh, but she’s so helpful,’ explained Mother, leading him down the hall away from Cecy’s slumbering pale figure. ‘Why, she’s one of the most adjustable members of the Family. What good are your brothers? Most of them sleep all day and do nothing. At least Cecy is active .’
    They went downstairs through the scent of black candles; the black crape on the banister, left over from the