Sam Weller - Shadow Show

But at night…

She had her children.

How many?

Hundreds? Thousands?

Very, very many.

The woman allowed herself to sometimes wonder if they were more than holograms and sparks. She wondered if they were the spirits of children yet to be born. She wondered if when they came to real life, they would not have some memory of the stories, some feeling that they knew them even before they heard them the first time. Because she was sure that through these children the stories would live forever.

The wind didn’t sound so lonely anymore. Life was a pleasure, not a chore. Maybe the birds would come back someday, and maybe the trees would grow strong. Maybe they would build nests again, and maybe from them would come the sweet song of youth.

But in the meantime, from the house came the sweet music of children’s laughter. From the house came the awed rush of electric breath. From the house came the voice of a woman, strong and steady and joyful to live because there were so many stories yet to be read.

So many.

And the house?

The house itself was never lonely again.

The house stood firm against any wind.

At night its blue glow lit up the land like a world full of candles.

The house was happy.

And so too were the woman and her children, both of the present and those yet to be born, in the towns she reached with her backpack of books and her green bicycle the color of May.

I wrote “Children of the Bedtime Machine” to express my feeling that Ray Bradbury’s work is timeless. There is little doubt in my mind that his fantastic flights of the imagination will continue to inspire readers—and particularly young readers—into the limitless future.

Ray Bradbury’s work has personally given me tremendous happiness. In “Bedtime Machine,” I am the boy who appears first, and who gleefully asks to be read to. What great memories I have of fabulous stories such as “The Lake,” “The Jar,” “The Fog Horn,” “The Scythe,” “There Will Come Soft Rains,” and so many, many more.

Live forever? Certainly Bradbury will, and his amazing work will continue to speak to the heart as long as hearts beat with passion, emotion, and pure joy upon this earth.

That day the Aegean might have been a nest of dragons with teeth of white foam. The leaping waves were scaly bodies blue as metal, and the noonday sunlight lent them glittering reptile eyes. The wind from the sea was their breath so hot it turned its spittle into a desiccated spray of sand. “The dragons are back, Joyce,” Ewan said.

“That’s right, dear.”

He couldn’t tell if she recalled her flight of fancy here on the beach all those years ago or was simply humouring him. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard him for the wind, which flapped his shirt and her long silken shawl on the backs of the sunbeds as though equipping the couple with wings. It had already felled several umbrellas, strewing them alongside the tideless sea. Just a few determined tourists were staying on the beach, fat novels clamped open in front of their faces with both hands, while the most adventurous souls braved the waves. Surely Joyce wouldn’t, and Ewan was sinking back with an obese best-seller when he heard a cry. “Stop there, stop.”

The voice was almost indistinguishable from the wind. Ewan had to sit up to locate the man, who’d dashed onto the beach at the westward end of Ikonikos, where the sunbeds gave out and the clusters of clifftop apartments fell short of a few isolated villas. The wind tugged a linen suit taut on the man’s thin frame and made an unruly halo out of his white hair. He was chasing a page that the wind must have torn out of a book. “Joyce,” Ewan said.

She peered at him while the wind disarranged the greyest of her locks before hitching herself around on the sunbed. “What do you want me to see?”

“It was just a chap running after a bit of his book.”

The man and his papery game had disappeared around the rocks that screened the next inlet, and Joyce settled back with a sigh. “That wasn’t worth it, Ewan.”

He would rather feel accused than risk emphasising the effort she’d had to make. He was silent as she retrieved her book, which needed to diet as much as his did. The wind tousled the pages, and before long Joyce let her novel drop on her venerable canvas bag. “I’m going in.”

On days like this Ewan was all the more aware of never having learned to swim. “I wouldn’t mind some lunch.”

“Don’t you ever think of anything except your stomach?” Joyce gave the sagging bulge a wearily indulgent glance. “Jump up, then,” she said. “Give it a chance to behave.”

No doubt she meant the weather. Ewan struggled to his feet and managed to wriggle into his playfully fluttering shirt in time to offer Joyce his arm. She mustn’t want to seem to need it, since she let go too soon, almost falling on if not across the bed. “I can manage,” she protested when he clutched her yielding waist, and wouldn’t let him carry the bag.

At least the Philosophia was just above their section of the beach. The waiters had lowered a plastic sheet to protect the taverna from the wind. The sheet blurred the view like a cataract and palpitated loudly throughout the meal. Joyce helped finish several dishes and more than half of the carafe of wine, by which time the sea was rearing as fiercely as ever. “Will you get the towels?” she said. “I think I’ll have a nap.”

Once she would have done so on the beach. Ewan retrieved the towels and clambered up the unequal steps embedded in the cliff. On the road that had sprouted apartments and hotels since the couple had last stayed in Ikonikos, Joyce took his hand. He suspected she needed more support than she would admit on the uphill road.

The Mnemosyne Apartments were near the middle of the village. Children too young for school or absent from one were keeping the play area beside the bar alive. Ewan knew Joyce hoped to see the grandchildren there or somewhere similar. As he fumbled in the bag he experienced the familiar panic at losing a key. “For heaven’s sake let me,” Joyce complained.

She took longer than he already had. A good deal of heat was occupying their room. Ewan switched on the air-conditioning as Joyce lay down. She reached out a hand for him to squeeze while he took his place on the other narrow bed. As soon as he closed his eyes he saw the man chasing the page along the beach. How important had it been? Had its owner recaptured it? The questions kept sleep well out of reach, and before long Ewan swung his legs off the bed. “I’m just going out. You rest.”

Joyce put out a slack hand and thought of opening her eyes. “Can’t you wait for me?”

“I only want to try and find the shop that had our favourite olives.”

She released a breath so protracted he heard it begin to give out—the kind that always made him breathless until he heard another. “Don’t be long,” she eventually said.

He didn’t mean to be. They weren’t often apart now that they’d retired, but whenever they were he grew anxious until he saw her again. She stirred as he let a blaze of sunlight in. The sight of her frail shape under the thin sheet was dismayingly suggestive of a memory he was trying to commit to mind. “Go if you’re going,” she mumbled, and he had to close the door.

He made for the cliff path where the running man had come from. In the past the dusty roads had boasted just a few tavernas, but now those were outnumbered by bars full of Brits watching football on huge flat screens like paintings brought to life. The wind had ripped blossoms from trees and shrubs and vines, strewing the roads with them—even cactus flowers had been torn loose, and the spiky clubs of leaves. The spectacle put Ewan in mind of the wake of a parade—not of a funeral, not that kind of wake.