Bradbury, Ray - Chapbook 13 (2 page)

The gull circled a final time, crying.

"Oh," whispered Ahmed. "Shall
we fly one
day?"

"In another year," said his father,
"but no
one knows its name. Come. You must walk be
fore you ride and
ride before you fly. In the
night, will your camel grow wings?"

And it was during that night that Ahmed
stared at the sky and
counted the stars until he
was dizzy with counting. Then, drunk with
light, he swayed as
he inhaled the night wind.
Crazed with delight at all that he saw in the heavens, he
toppled and fell and was buried in
the cooling sands. So, unseen by his father
or the caravan of marching beasts, he was left to
die among the dunes
in the hours after
midnight
.

When Ahmed swam up through the sands,
there were only the
hoofprints
of the great cam
els sifting away down the wind, at
last gone,
whispering.

I die, thought Ahmed. For what
am
I pun
ished? Being only twelve, I do not recall any terrible
crimes I committed. In another life, was
I evil, a devil unseen and now discovered?

It was then that his foot scraped something
beneath the shifting
sands.

He hesitated, then fell to his knees to plunge
his
hands deep, as if searching for hidden silver
or buried gold.

Something more than treasure rose to view
as he swept the sand
to let the night wind blow
it away.

A strange face stared up at him, a bas-relief
in bronze,
the
face of a nameless man or a buried myth, immense,
grimacing underfoot, magnificent and serene.

"Oh, ancient god, whatever your
name,"
whispered Ahmed. "Help this lost son of a good
father, this evil boy
who meant no harm but
slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray
from his heart,
ignored his mother, and did not
hold his family in great esteem. For all this
I
know I
must suffer. But
here
in the midst of
silence, at the desert's heart,
where even the
wind knows
not my name? Must I die so young?
Am I to be forgotten without having
been?"

The bronze bas-relief face of the old god
glared up at him as
the sand hissed over its empty mouth.

Ahmed said, "What prayers must I offer,
what sacrifice must I
give, so that you, old one,
may warm your eyes to see, your ears to hear,
your mouth to
speak?"

The ancient god said only night and time and
wind in syllables that
Ahmed understood not.

And so he wept.

Just as all men do not laugh or all women
move alike, so all
boys do not weep alike. It is
a language that the ancient gods know. For the
tears that fall come
from the soul out of the
eyes unto the earth.

And the tears of Ahmed rained upon the
bronze bas-relief face
of the ancient spirit and
rinsed its shut lids so they trembled.

Ahmed did not see, but continued weeping,

And
so he
wept.

and
his small rain
touched the half-seen ears of
the buried god and they opened to hear the
night and the wind
and the weeping, and the
ears—
moved!

But Ahmed did not see and his last tears wa
tered the mouth of the
god, to anoint the
bronze tongue.

So at last the entire face was washed and
shook to let bark a
laugh so sharp that Ahmed,
shocked, flailed back and cried:

"What!"

"Indeed,
what?"
said the
gaped mouth of
the
god.

"Who are you?" cried Ahmed.

"Company in the desert night, friend to
si
lence,
companion to dusk, inheritor of the
dawn," said the cold mouth. But the eyes
were
friendly,
seeing Ahmed so young and afraid. "Boy, your name?"

"Ahmed of the
caravans."

"And I?
Shall I tell you
my
life?" asked the
bronze face gazing up from the moonlit sands.

"Oh,
do!"

"I am
Gonn
-Ben-Allah.
Gonn
the
Magnifi
cent.
Keeper
of the Ghosts of the lost names!"

"Can names be ghosts and lost?"
Ahmed
wiped
his eyes to bend closer. "Great
Gonn
, how long
were you buried here?"

"Hark," whispered the bronze mouth.
"I
have
been to my own funeral ten thousand
times your days."

"I cannot count that far."

"Nor should you," answered
Gonn
-Ben-Allah.
"For I am found.
Your tears move my
eyes to
see,
my ears to hear, my mouth to speak long
before the Sack of Rome or Caesar's death,
back to the caves and
the lions and the lack of
fire. List!
Would you save yet more of
me and
all
of you?"

"I would!"

"Then no more tears! No more cries! With
your
robes,
sweep off
the dunes from the pave
ments of my limbs.
Rouse
Gonn
the Great to
the stars.
 
My funeral bones bring forth
,
 
and
clothe
them with your breath so that long be
fore dawn, great
Gonn
will be
reborn from your
sighs and
shouts and prayers!
Beginl
"

And Ahmed rose and sighed and prayed and
shouted with joy and
used his robes as broom
to sweep and quicken this newfound friend of
such a size the stars,
seeing him, danced in their
pivots and shivered in their burning gyres.

And what Ahmed's breath did not move,
then his bare feet
kicked away in the wind until
the great bronze torso burst free. And then the
snaking arms, the
blunt fists, legs, and incredible
feet, so that the naked god was unclothed of
ancient dunes and lay under the burning gazes
of
Aldebaran
,
Orion, and Alpha Centauri. Star
light finished the revelation, even as Ahmed's
breath,
a fount, went dry.

"I
am!"
cried
Gonn
-Ben-Allah.

And he lay there, three men wide and two
dozen tall, his torso
a monument, his arms obe
lisks, his legs cenotaphs, his face a noble half-
Sphinx, part sun god
Ra, Arabian wits in fiery
eyes, and a storm of Allah's voice in
his cavern mouth.

"I," said
Gonn
-Ben-
Allah,
"am!"

"Oh, you must have been a great
god," said
Ahmed.

"I strode the earth and shadowed
continents.
Now help me rise! Speak my hieroglyphs. The
claw prints of the
birds that from solstice to
solstice touched my clay with prayers in codes,
read and say!"

And Ahmed spoke to the sands:

"Now,
Gonn
of
old, be young. Arise. Warm
limbs, warm blood, warm heart, warm soul,
warm
breath. Come up,
Gonn
, up!
Away
from death!"

The great
Gonn
stirred and settled and then
with a great shout shot into the heavens to sway
above Ahmed, his
limbs sunk deep as architec
tural pilings in the tidal sands. Set free, he
laughed, for now it
was
a goodness
beyond reckoning or word.

"There is reason, boy, why you stared
and
fell to print the dust and waken me. I have
waited an eternity for you, the keeper
of the
skies, the
inheritor of the dream, the one who
flies without flying."

And
Gonn
-Ben-Allah
moved his arms to
touch the horizons.

"The dream has stayed forever. Oh, the
clouds, men have said.
Oh, the stars and the
wind that moves not
stars
but
clouds. Oh,
the storms that wander Earth to seize our
breath. Oh, the
lightnings
we would borrow
and hurricanes race. What jealous despairs we
lie with nights and
angered, know not flight!

"So you, boy, are the Storm
Keeper."

And
Gonn
touched
Ahmed's brow.

"Lead me with your dreams, which now
must be
remembered."

"How can I remember what is not?"
Ahmed
felt
his eyes, his mouth,
his
ears.

"Step, walk, run.
Then leap, bound,
fly.
..."

And
 
as
 
they
 
watched,
  
a
 
great weather
 
of

darkness
arose from that
north from which all

And
Gomi
touched Ahmed's
brow.

coldness
comes, and that west
which swallows
the sun and that east which follows the death
of the sun and
darkens the sky. There were blizzards and hurricanes in the clouds and storms
of
lightning
in its attics and the sounds of endless
funerals lamenting as they fell off the edge
of
the
world. The great blackness loomed over Ahmed and
Gonn
-Ben-Allah.

"What is that?" cried Ahmed.

"That," said
Gonn
,
"is the
Enemy."

"Is
there such a thing?"

"One half of everything is the
Enemy," said
Gonn
. "Just as one half of everything is the
Saviour
, the bright
rememberer
of
noon
."

"And what is the name of that
Enemy?"

"Why, child, it is Time, and Time
Again."

"But, oh, mighty
Gonn
,
does Time have a
shape? I did not know you could
see
Time."

"Once it happens, yes. Time has shapes
and
shadows
to be seen. That, on the rim of the
world, is Time to Be. A remembrance forward of
things that will be erased, destroyed, if you
do not grapple with it,
seize it, shape it with
your
soul, sound it with your voice. Then Time
becomes the companion to light and ceases to
exist as the enemy of dreams."

"It is so big," said Ahmed,
"I'm afraid!"

"Yes," said
Gonn
,
"for it's Time itself we
fight, Time and the way the wind blows, Time
and the way the sea
moves to cover, hide, wipe
away, erode, change. We fight to be born or
not be born. The
Unborn One is always there.
If we can fire it with our souls, welcome it into
living, its darkness
will cease. I need you for
that, boy, for your youngness is
a
strength
, as
your innocence is.

"When I fail, you must win.

"When I falter, you must race.

"When I sleep, you must fix your eyes on
the
stars
to learn their journeys. At dawn the stars
will have left their celestial roads, their
Kings
highways
as faint breaths printed in the air. Be
fore the dawn erases it, you must print it in
your
mind to show the way!"

"Can I do
that?"

"And win a world and change men's
destinies in clouds and flight? Yes]
If
you fly high
you
cannot
escape Time, but you can pace it, and
in the pacing, finish as its keeper."

"Still
...
I have never flown!"

"There was a day when you never
lived.
Would
you
have hid forever in your mother's womb?"

"Ah, no!"

"Well, then, before Time buries us, hear
this—"

Gonn
stretched his arms to
the sky.

"I am the god of all the heavens and
airs and
winds
that ever blew the earth since Time
began,
and all the dreams
of men at night who
wanted flight but lost their wings. So! I will
summon
windship
ghost craft, to sail down
Time to cross your
sight and joy your heart!
Now lo!
hark
, look, to truly
see
¹
."

Gonn
in that instant
exploded up till his nos
trils plumed the clouds to crack the sky:

"Let all the kite machines arise, let
storms of
time erupt to summon ghosts. Hear me, all you
north winds that haunt the lands. All
the gales
that rise from
the south to fire summer around
the globe. Hear me, east and west winds, full of
flimsy skeletons of impossible
machines] Hear!"

Then
Gonn
the Magnificent
gestured like a player of harps.

"Ahmed, who knows the future
but
does not
know he knows!
Run, jump,
fly!"

And Ahmed ran, jumped, and then . . .

"I fly!" gasped Ahmed.

"Indeed!"
Gonn
wove his fingers to pull the
strings of this puppet. "But if we go north we
miss what lies south.
If we go west we shun
the mysteries of the east. Only if we fly in
all
directions can we
find what we seek.
Wings,
boy.
Wings!"

Ahmed spun about, crazed and alarmed.
"But if we fly
in all directions, how can we
arrive
somewhere?
Are there no maps?"

"Only those
written in your blood."

"But," cried Ahmed, "oh, god
of confusions,
where are we going?"