The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox.
Mae Tuck, and her husband, and Miles and Jesse, too, had all looked exactly the same for eighty-seven years.
You’ve got nothing that lasts, you know. That’s not the first town that ever stood there. There was one before that, and one before that, and one before that one, on back for 900 years. But this tree has stood here all along. What do you make of that, boy?
The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old.
Waktulah satu-satunya yang kita miliki dalam jumlah yang banyak.
She had wanted to cough as soon as it occurred to her that she mustn’t, and she passed a long hour trying to swallow away the tickle that perversely constricted her throat.
And then his throat closed. For it was there. He had wanted it to be there, but now that he saw it, he was overcome with sadness.
These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.
Belong to yourself, then, like me,” said Big Tom. “That way, when changes come, you’ll always be ready to hold your tail high and move along.
Well, boys,” she said, “here it is. The worst is happening at last.
You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time.
The first week of August was long over. And now, though autumn was still some weeks away, there was a feeling that the year had begun its downward arc, that the wheel was turning again, slowly now, but soon to go faster, turning once more in its changeless sweep of change.
The pastures, fields, and scrubby groves they crossed were vigorous with bees, and crickets leapt before them as if each step released a spring and flung them up like pebbles.
The late sun’s brilliance could penetrate only in scattered glimmers, and everything was silent and untouched, the ground muffled with moss and sliding needles, the graceful arms of the pines stretched out protectively in every direction. And it was cool, blessedly cool and green.
So she was unprepared for the homely little house beside the pond, unprepared for the gentle eddies of dust, the silver cobwebs, the mouse who lived – and welcome to him! – in a table drawer.
Always moving around and never having any friends or anything.
Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.
The first house only is important; the first house, the road, and the wood.
The people would have noticed the giant ash tree at the center of the wood, and then, in time, they’d have noticed the little spring bubbling up among its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there to conceal it. And that would have been a disaster so immense that this weary old earth, owned or not to its fiery core, would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin.
The house was so proud of itself that you wanted to make a lot of noise as you passed, and maybe even throw a rock or two.
A guilty conscience can be very troublesome, I’ve heard.