Ray Bradbury - From the Dust Returned

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Ray Bradbury - From the Dust Returned» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: unrecognised, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

From the Dust Returned: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «From the Dust Returned»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Enter the strange world of the Elliott family: it will change you forever…They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois – and they are not like other midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids.Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the far-flung branches of this odd and remarkable family where they will mix their arcane skills and lifestyles, fall in and out of love and change the world around them forever.You have never seen their like before.

From the Dust Returned — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «From the Dust Returned», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Ray Bradbury

From the Dust Returned

Dedication

To the two midwives of this book:

DON CONGDON,

who was in at the beginning in 1946,

AND JENNIFER BREHL,

who helped bring it to completion in 2000.

With gratitude and love.

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

The Beautiful One Is Here

Chapter 1

The Town and the Place

Chapter 2

Anuba Arrives

Chapter 3

The High Attic

Chapter 4

The Sleeper and Her Dreams

Chapter 5

The Wandering Witch

Chapter 6

Whence Timothy?

Chapter 7

The House, the Spider, and the Child

Chapter 8

Mouse, Far-Traveling

Chapter 9

Homecoming

Chapter 10

West of October

Chapter 11

Many Returns

Chapter 12

On the Orient North

Chapter 13

Nostrum Paracelsius Crook

Chapter 14

The October People

Chapter 15

Uncle Einar

Chapter 16

The Whisperers

Chapter 17

The Theban Voice

Chapter 18

Make Haste to Live

Chapter 19

The Chimney Sweeps

Chapter 20

The Traveler

Chapter 21

Return to the Dust

Chapter 22

The One Who Remembers

Chapter 23

The Gift

Afterword

How the Family Gathered

Keep Reading

About the Author

Praise

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The Beautiful One Is Here

In the attic where the rain touched the roof softly on spring days and where you could feel the mantle of snow outside, a few inches away, on December nights, A Thousand Times Great Grandmère existed. She did not live, nor was she eternally dead, she … existed.

And now with the Great Event about to happen, the Great Night arriving, the Homecoming about to explode, she must be visited!

“Ready? Here I come!” Timothy’s voice cried faintly beneath a trapdoor that trembled. “Yes!?”

Silence. The Egyptian mummy did not twitch.

She stood propped in a dark corner like an ancient dried plum tree, or an abandoned and scorched ironing board, her hands and wrists trussed across her dry riverbed bosom, a captive of time, her eyes slits of deep blue lapis lazuli behind thread-sewn lids, a glitter of remembrance as her mouth, with a shriveled tongue wormed in it, whistled and sighed and whispered to recall every hour of every lost night four thousand years back when she was a pharaoh’s daughter dressed in spider linens and warm-breath silks with jewels burning her wrists as she ran in the marble gardens to watch the pyramids erupt in the fiery Egyptian air.

Now Timothy lifted the trapdoor lid of dust to call into that midnight attic - фото 1

Now Timothy lifted the trapdoor lid of dust to call into that midnight attic world.

“Oh, Beautiful One!”

A faint pollen of dust fell from the ancient mummy’s lips.

“Beautiful no longer!”

“Grandma, then.”

“Not Grandma merely,” came the soft response.

“A Thousand Times Great Grandmère?”

“Better.” The old voice dusted the silent air. “Wine?”

“Wine.” Timothy rose, a small flacon in his hands.

“The vintage, child?” the voice murmured.

“B.C., Grandmère.”

“How many years?”

“Two thousand, almost three, B.C.”

“Excellent.” Dust fell from the withered smile. “Come.”

Picking his way through a litter of papyrus, Timothy reached the no-longer Beautiful One, whose voice was still incredibly lovely.

“Child?” said the withered smile. “Do you fear me?”

“Always, Grandmère.”

“Wet my lips, child.”

He reached to let the merest drop wet the lips that now trembled.

“More,” she whispered.

Another drop of wine touched the dusty smile.

“Still afraid?”

“No, Grandmère.”

“Sit.”

He perched on the lid of a box with hieroglyphs of warriors and doglike gods and gods with lions’ heads painted on it.

“Why are you here?” husked the voice beneath the serene riverbed face.

“Tomorrow’s the Great Night, Grandmère, I’ve waited for all my life! The Family, our Family, coming, flying in from all over the world! Tell me, Grandmère, how it all began, how this House was built and where we came from and—”

“Enough!” the voice cried, softly. “Let me recall a thousand noons. Let me swim down the deep well. Stillness?”

“Stillness.”

“Now,” came the whisper across four thousand years, “here’s how it was …”

CHAPTER 1

The Town and the Place

At first, A Thousand Times Great Grandmère said, there was only a place on the long plain of grass and a hill on which was nothing at all but more grass and a tree that was as crooked as a fork of black lightning on which nothing grew until the town came and the House arrived.

We all know how a town can gather need by need until suddenly its heart starts up and circulates the people to their destinations. But how, you ask, does a house arrive?

The fact is that the tree was there and a lumberman passing to the Far West leaned against it, and guessed it to be before Jesus sawed wood and shaved planks in his father’s yard or Pontius Pilate washed his palms. The tree, some said, beckoned the House out of tumults of weather and excursions of Time. Once the House was there, with its cellar roots deep in Chinese tombyards, it was of such a magnificence, echoing facades last seen in London, that wagons, intending to cross the river, hesitated with their families gazing up and decided if this empty place was good enough for a papal palace, a royal monument, or a queen’s abode, there hardly seemed a reason to leave. So the wagons stopped, the horses were watered, and when the families looked, they found their shoes as well as their souls had sprouted roots. So stunned were they by the House up there by the lightning-shaped tree, that they feared if they left the House would follow in their dreams and spoil all the waiting places ahead.

So the House arrived first and its arrival was the stuff of further legends - фото 2

So the House arrived first and its arrival was the stuff of further legends, myths, or drunken nonsense.

It seems there was a wind that rose over the plains bringing with it a gentle rain that turned into a storm that funneled a hurricane of great strength. Between midnight and dawn, this portmanteau-storm lifted any moveable object between the fort towns of Indiana and Ohio, stripped the forests in upper Illinois, and arrived over the as-yet-unborn site, settled, and with the level hand of an unseen god deposited, shakeboard by shakeboard and shingle by shingle, an arousal of timber that shaped itself long before sunrise as something dreamed of by Rameses but finished by Napoleon fled from dreaming Egypt.

There were enough beams within to roof St. Peter’s and enough windows to sun-blind a bird migration. There was a porch skirted all around with enough space to rock a celebration of relatives and boarders. Inside the windows loomed a cluster, a hive, a maze of rooms, sufficient to a roster, a squad, a battalion of as yet unborn legions, but haunted by the promise of their coming.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «From the Dust Returned»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «From the Dust Returned» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «From the Dust Returned»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «From the Dust Returned» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x