Bradbury, Ray - Chapbook 13 (6 page)

"He?"

 
thrust
himself
across
a desert
where
the
caravan lay
asleep

"He whose feet
drink of the earth and whose
head knows the sky.
And you cannot see him,
Father, for he is
hidden." Ahmed touched his
brow. "Do you not see the smallest print
of a
great
thumb?"

Ahmed's father looked deep into his son's
face and saw there the
sky and the night and
the far traveling.

"Praise Allah," he said.

"Oh, Father," said Ahmed. "If
one night I
should again fall from the caravan, might I land
on a marble
floor?"

"Marble?" The father shut his eyes
and
thought.
"In a northern place where scholars
live and where teachers profess and professors
teach?
Teach what?"

"The air,
Father, the winds, and, perhaps,
the stars."

The father gazed into his son's face.
"It must
be so."

And among the sleeping camels in his tent
Ahmed was laid to
rest and during the time
before dawn called out in his sleep.

"
Gonn
?"

"Yes?"
A whisper.

"Are you still with me?"

"Always and
forever, boy.
As long as you
loom my shadows between your ears.
Paint pictures on
the inner sides of sight so never to be
alone. Speak, and I manifest.
Whisper,
and I
shuttle and weave.
Call,
and I am the compan
ion of light.
See!"

And within his brow, indeed, Ahmed beheld
heaven swarmed with
circling craft shaped of
gold leaf and silver foil and silks the color of
the moon.

"Oh,
Gonn
,"
whispered the boy.

"Say not my name. I have another
now!"
Fading.
"Ahmed. Call me that."

"Ahmed?!"

Silence.
A
dawn wind.

Sleep. And in his sleep, Ahmed saw himself
grown and in a great
craft with rotary blades whose rushing fans stirred the hot sands away
and away
until
he
stared down to see:

Ahmed saw
himself
grown and in a great craft

There in the sand a face of beaten gold, with
the eyes of a god and
the smile of a
reborn
child.

And the medallion was plucked from the
sand and placed as
emblem on his craft, and
Ahmed flew away to the future.

As the sand, emptied
of treasure, cooled, and
the future arrived.