From the Dust Returned

by Ray Bradbury

  At which time …

  Someone, passing on the road in dark Dickensian storms, left a picnic basket by the front iron gate. Within the basket something wailed and sobbed and cried.

  The door opened and a welcoming committee emerged. This committee consisted of a female, the wife, extraordinarily tall, and a male, the husband, even taller and gaunter, and an old woman of an age when Lear was young, whose kitchen boiled with only kettles and in the kettles soups better left from menus, and it was these three who bent to the picnic basket to fold back the dark cloth over the waiting babe, no more than a week or two old.

  They were astonished at his color, the pink of sunrise and daybreak, and the sound of his respiration, a spring bellows, and the beat of his fisting heart, no more than a hummingbird’s caged sound, and on impulse the Lady of the Fogs and Marshes, for that is how she was known across the world, held up the smallest of mirrors which she kept not to study her face, for that was never seen, but to study the faces of strangers should something be wrong with them.

  “Oh, look,” she cried, and held the mirror to the small babe’s cheek, and Lo! there was total surprise.

  “Curse all and everything,” said the gaunt, pale husband. “His face is reflected!”

  “He is not like us!”

  “No, but still,” said the wife.

  The small blue eyes looked up at them, repeated in the mirror glass. “Leave it,” said the husband.

  And they might have pulled back and left it to the wild dogs and feral cats, save that at the last instant, the Dark Lady said “No!” and reached to lift, turn, and deliver the basket, babe and all, up the path and into the House and down the hall to a room that became on the instant the nursery, for it was covered on all four walls and topmost ceiling with images of toys put by in Egyptian tombs to nurse the play of pharaohs’ sons who traveled a thousand-year river of darkness and had need of joyous instruments to fill dark time and brighten their mouths. So all about on the walls capered dogs, cats; here too were depicted wheatfields to plow through to hide, and loaves of mortality bread and sheaves of green onions for the health of the dead children of some sad pharaoh. And into this tomb nursery came a bright child to stay at the center of a cold kingdom.

  And touching the basket, the mistress of the winter-autumn House said, “Was there not a saint with a special light and promise of life called Timothy?”

  “Yes.”

  “So,” said the Dark Lady, “lovelier than saints, which stops my doubt and stills my fear, not saint, but Timothy he is. Yes, child?”

  And hearing his name, the newcomer in the basket gave a glad cry.

  Which rose to the High Attic and caused Cecy in the midst of her dreams to turn in her tidal sleep and lift her head to hear that strange glad cry again which caused her mouth to shape a smile. For while the House stood strangely still, all wondering what might befall them, and as the husband did not move and the wife leaned down half wondering what next to do, Cecy quite instantly knew that her travels were not enough, that beginning now here, now there with seeing and hearing and tasting there must be someone to share it all and tell. And here the teller was, his small cry giving announcement to the fact that no matter what might show and tell, his small hand, grown strong and wild and quick, would capture it and scribble it down. With this assurance sensed, Cecy sent a gossamer of silent thought and welcome to reach the babe and wrap it round and let it know they were as one. And foundling Timothy so touched and comforted gave off his crying and assumed a sleep that was a gift invisible. And seeing this, the frozen husband was given to smile.

  And a spider, heretofore unseen, crept from the blanketings, probed all the airs about, then ran to fasten on the small child’s hand as nightmare papal ring to bless some future court and all its shadow courtiers, and held so still it seemed but stone of ebony against pink flesh.

  And Timothy, all unaware of what his finger wore, knew small refinements of large Cecy’s dreams.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mouse, Far-Traveling

  As there was one spider in the House, there had to be—A singular mouse.

  Escaped from life into mortality and a First Dynasty Egyptian tomb, this small ghost rodent at last fled free when some curious Bonaparte soldiers broke the seal and let out great gusts of bacterial air which killed the troops and confused Paris long after Napoleon departed and the Sphinx prevailed, with French gun-pocks in her face, and Fate splayed her paws.

  The ghost mouse, so dislodged from darkness, excursioned to a seaport and shipped out with but not among the cats for Marseilles and London and Massachusetts and a century later, arrived just as the child Timothy cried on the Family’s doorstep. This mouse rattle-tapped under the doorsill to be greeted by an alert eight-legged thing, its multiple knees fiddling above its poisonous head. Stunned, Mouse froze in place and wisely did not move for hours. Then, when the arachnid papal ring presence tired of surveillance and departed for breakfast flies, Mouse vanished into the woodwork, rattle-scratched through secret panelings to the nursery. There, Timothy the babe, in need of more fellows no matter how small or strange, welcomed him beneath the blanket to nurse and befriend him for life.

  So it was that Timothy, no saint, grew and became a young manchild, with ten candles lit on his anniversary cake.

  And the House and the tree and the Family, and Great Grandmère and Cecy in her attic sands, and Timothy with his attendant Arach in one ear and Mouse on his shoulder and Anuba on his lap, waited for the greatest arrival of all …

  CHAPTER 9

  Homecomimg

  “Here they come,” said Cecy, lying there flat in the High Attic dust.

  “Where are they?” cried Timothy near the window, staring out.

  “Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the Islands, some over South America!” said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long, brown, and quivering, her mouth opening to let the words whisper out swiftly.

  Timothy came forward upon the bare plankings and litters of papyrus. “Who are they?”

  “Uncle Einar and Uncle Fry, and there’s Cousin William, and I see Frulda and Helgar and Aunt Morgianna, and Cousin Vivian, and I see Uncle Johann! Coming fast!”

  “Are they up in the sky?” cried Timothy, his bright eyes flashing. Standing by the bed, he looked no more than his ten years. The wind blew outside; the House was dark and lit only by starlight.

  “They’re coming through the air and traveling along the ground, in many forms,” said Cecy, asleep. She lay motionless and thought inward on herself to tell what she saw. “I see a wolflike thing crossing a dark river—at the shallows—just above a waterfall, the starlight burning his pelt. I see maple leaves blowing high. I see a small bat flying. I see many creature beasts, running under the forest trees and slipping through the highest branches; and they’re all heading here!”

  “Will they be here in time?” The spider on Timothy’s lapel swung like a black pendulum, excitedly dancing. He leaned over his sister. “In time for the Homecoming?”

  “Yes, yes, Timothy!” Cecy stiffened. “Go! Let me travel in the places I love!”

  “Thanks!” In the hall, he ran to his room to make his bed. He had awakened at sunset, and as the first stars had risen, he had gone to let his excitement run with Cecy.

  The spider hung on a silvery lasso about his slender neck as he washed his face. “Think, Arach, tomorrow night! All Hallows’ Eve!”

  He lifted his face to the mirror, the only mirror in the House, his mother’s concession to his “illness.” Oh, if only he were not so afflicted! He gaped his mouth to show the poor teeth nature had given him. Corn kernels, round, soft, and pale! And his canines? Unsharpened flints!

  Twilight was done. He lit a candle, exhausted. This past week the whole small Family had lived as in their old countries, sleeping by day, rousing at sunset to hurry the preparation.

  “Oh, Arach, Arach, if only I could really sleep days, like all the rest!”

  H
e took up the candle. Oh, to have teeth like steel, like nails! Or the power to send one’s mind, free, like Cecy, asleep on her Egyptian sands! But, no, he even feared the dark! He slept in a bed! Not in the fine polished boxes below! No wonder the Family skirted him as if he were the bishop’s son! If only wings would sprout from his shoulders! He bared his back, stared. No wings. No flight!

  Downstairs were slithering sounds of black crepe rising in all the halls, all the ceilings, every door! The scent of burning black tapers rose up the banistered stairwell with Mother’s voice and Father’s, echoing from the cellar.

  “Oh, Arach, will they let me be, really be, in the party?” said Timothy. The spider whirled at the end of its silk, alone to itself. “Not just fetch toadstools and cobwebs, hang crepe, or cut pumpkins. But I mean run around, jump, yell, laugh, heck, be the party. Yes!?”

  For answer, Arach spun a web across the mirror, with one word at its center: Nil!

  All through the House below, the one and only cat ran in a frenzy, the one and only mouse in the echoing wall said the same in nervous graffiti sounds, as if to cry: “The Homecoming!” everywhere.

  Timothy climbed back to Cecy, who slept deep. “Where are you now, Cecy?” he whispered. “In the air? On the ground?”

  “Soon,” Cecy murmured.

  “Soon,” Timothy beamed. “All Hallows! Soon!”

  He backed off studying the shadows of strange birds and loping beasts in her face.

  At the open cellar door, he smelled the moist earth air rising. “Father?”

  “Here!” Father shouted. “On the double!”

  Timothy hesitated long enough to stare at a thousand shadows blowing on the ceilings, promises of arrivals, then he plunged into the cellar.

  Father stopped polishing a long box. He gave it a thump. “Shine this up for Uncle Einar!”

  Timothy stared.

  “Uncle Einar’s big! Seven feet?”

  “Eight!”

  Timothy made the box shine. “And two hundred and sixty pounds?”

  Father snorted. “Three hundred! And inside the box?”

  “Space for wings?” cried Timothy.

  “Space,” Father laughed, “for wings.”

  At nine o’clock Timothy leaped out in the October weather. For two hours in the now-warm, now-cold wind he walked the small forest collecting toadstools.

  He passed a farm. “If only you knew what’s happening at our House!” he said to the glowing windows. He climbed a hill and looked at the town, miles away, settling into sleep, the church clock high and round and white in the distance. You don’t know, either, he thought.

  And carried the toadstools home.

  In the cellar ceremony was celebrated, with Father incanting the dark words, Mother’s white ivory hands moving in the strange blessings, and all the Family gathered except Cecy, who lay upstairs. But Cecy was there. You saw her peering from now Bion’s eyes, now Samuel’s, now Mother’s, and you felt a movement and now she rolled your eyes and was gone.

  Timothy prayed to the darkness.

  “Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones’ll soon be here, who never grow old, can’t die, that’s what they say, can’t die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmère who only whispers, and now they’re coming and I’m nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be one! If they live forever, why not me?”

  “Forever,” Mother’s voice echoed, having heard. “Oh, Timothy, there must be a way. Let us see! And now—”

  The windows rattled. Grandmère’s sheath of linen papyrus rustled. Deathwatch beetles in the walls ran amok, ticking.

  “Let it begin,” Mother cried. “Begin!”

  And the wind began.

  It swarmed the world like a great beast unseen, and the whole world heard it pass in a season of grief and lamentation, a dark celebration of the stuffs it carried to disperse, and all of it funneling upper Illinois. In tidal sweeps and swoons of sound, it robbed the graves of dust from stone angels’ eyes, vacuumed the tombs of spectral flesh, seized funeral flowers with no names, shucked druid trees to toss the leaf-harvest high in a dry downpour, a battalion of shorn skins and fiery eyes that burned crazily in oceans of ravening clouds that tore themselves to flags of welcome to pace the occupants of space as they grew in numbers to sound the sky with such melancholy eruptions of lost years that a million farmyard sleepers waked with tears on their faces wondering if it had rained in the night and no one had foretold, and on the storm-river across the sea which roiled at this gravity of leave-taking and arrival until, with a flurry of leaves and dust commingled, it hovered in circles over the hill and the House and the welcoming party and Cecy above all, who in her attic, a slumberous totem on her sands, beckoned with her mind and breathed permission.

  Timothy from the highest roof sensed a single blink of Cecy’s eyes and—

  The windows of the House flew wide, a dozen here, two dozen there, to suck the ancient airs. With every window gaped, all the doors slammed wide, the whole House was one great hungry maw, inhaling night with breaths gasping welcome, welcome, and all of its closets and cellar bins and attic niches shivering in dark tumults!

  As Timothy leaned out, a flesh-and-blood gargoyle, the vast armada of tomb dust and web and wing and October leaf and graveyard blossom pelted the roofs even as on the land around the hill shadows trotted the roads and threaded the forests armed with teeth and velvet paws and flickered ears, barking to the moon.

  And this confluence of air and land struck the House through every window, chimney, and door. Things that flew fair or in crazed jags, that walked upright or jogged on fours or loped like crippled shades, evicted from some funeral ark and bade farewell by a lunatic blind Noah, all teeth and no tongue, brandishing a pitchfork and fouling the air.

  So all stood aside as the flood of shadow and cloud and rain that talked in voices filled the cellar, stashed itself in bins marked with the years they had died but to rise again, and the parlor chairs were seated with aunts and uncles with odd genetics and the kitchen crone had helpers who walked more strangely than she, as more aberrant cousins and long-lost nephews and peculiar nieces shambled or stalked or flew into pavanes about the ceiling chandeliers and feeling the rooms fill below and the grand concourse of unnatural survivals of the unfit, as it was later put, made the pictures tilt on the walls, the mouse run wild in the flues as Egyptian smokes sank, and the spider on Timothy’s neck take refuge in his ear, crying an unheard “sanctuary” as Timothy ducked in and stood admiring Cecy, this slumberous marshal of the tumult, and then leaped to see Great Grandmère, linens bursting with pride, her lapis lazuli eyes all enflamed, and then falling downstairs amidst heartbeats and bombardments of sounds as if he fell through an immense birdcage where were locked an aviary of midnight creatures all wing hastening to arrive but ready to leave until at last with a great roar and a concussion of thunder where there had been no lightning the last storm cloud shut like a lid upon the moonlit roof, the windows, one by one, crashed shut, the doors slammed, the sky was cleared, the roads empty.

  And Timothy amidst it all, stunned, gave a great shout of delight.

  At which a thousand shadows turned. Two thousand Beast eyes burned yellow, green, and sulfurous gold.

  And in the roundabout centrifuge, Timothy with mindless joy was hurled by the whirl and spin to be flung against a wall and held fast by the concussion, where, motionless, forlorn, he could only watch the carousel of shapes and sizes of mist and fog and smoke faces and legs with hooves that, jounced, struck sparks as someone peeled him off the wall in jolts! “Well, you must be Timothy! Yes, yes! Hands too warm. Face and cheeks too hot. Brow perspiring. Haven’t perspired in years. What’s this?” A snarled and hairy fist pummeled Timothy’s chest. “Is that a small heart? Hammering like an anvil? Yes?”

  A bear
ded face scowled down at him.

  “Yes,” said Timothy.

  “Poor lad, none of that now, we’ll soon stop it!”

  And to roars of laughter the chilly hand and the cold moon face lurched away in the roundabout dance.

  “That,” said Mother, suddenly near, “was your Uncle Jason.”

  “I don’t like him,” whispered Timothy.

  “You’re not supposed to like, son, not supposed to like anyone. It’s not in the cards, as they say. He directs funerals.”

  “Why,” said Timothy, “does he have to direct them when there’s only one place to go?”

  “Well said! He needs an apprentice!”

  “Not me,” said Timothy.

  “Not you,” said Mother instantly. “Now light more candles. Pass the wine.” She handed him a salver on which stood six goblets, brimmed.

  “It’s not wine, Mother.”

  “Better than wine. Do you or do you not want to be like us, Timothy?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. No.”

  Crying out, he let the stuff fall to the floor and fled to the front door to fall out in the night.

  Where a thunderous avalanche of wings fell down to clout his face, his arms, his hands. A vast confusion brushed his ears, banged his eyes, chopped his upraised fists as, in the terrible roar of this downfell burial he saw a dreadfully smiling face and cried, “Einar! Uncle!”

  “Or even Uncle Einar!” shouted the face, and seizing him, threw him high in the night air where, suspended and shrieking, he was caught again as the man with wings leaped up to catch and whirl him, laughing.

  “How did you know who I was?” cried the man.

  “There’s only one uncle with wings,” Timothy gasped as they shot above the rooftops, rushed the iron gargoyles, skimmed the shingles and veered up for views of farmlands east and west, north and south.