Stories About Things Read Online Free Page A

them. Our children could be
doctors with those eyes. Lawyers, or inventors or scholars. Those
eyes could make a president.
    "Don't take a pretty book home just cuz it's
pretty," Mom said.
    "Why do you comb your hair so careful for the
interview?" he asked.
    "First impressions count."
     
     
    First impressions count.
    How? How... To hear the flower speak! But
how? How...
    The daffodil sways in the breeze, sways
away... away.
    Stop!
    No, that's not it. Maybe...
    Hello. Are you lost? I can help you--
    But she might say no.
    What beautiful shoes--What's you're
name?...Does that come with a number?
    No.
    Hi, I'm lost, do you know where I can find a
map?
    How... how to speak to a flower? to hear it
speak back?
     
     
    The shoes disappear around the corner.
    "Wait!"
    Where ... ?
    "Wait! What's you're name? I like your–your
shoes are–"
    Already gone, already gone.
     
     

 
     
     
    Part II. Fairies and Things: things of other
worlds...
     
     
     
    ONE
Sun Set
     
     
    “Never, never look into the sun. Don’t ever.
There are creatures in there, a fairy relative of the salamander,
and the sun is their circle. They don’t much like being looked at,
and if they catch you staring, they’ll snatch you up and carry you
off through their fiery ring, which is just as dangerous as any
fairy circle on the ground.”
    Sal’s grandmother always warned him like this
when she caught him looking. His mother said this was silly, and he
was old enough not to be scared by fairy stories. If he looked into
the sun, she told him, he would go blind, and that was that.
    He never understood how someone could say
that– “Don’t look at it.” People looked. If they could, they did.
Sometimes, Sal thought, if he wasn’t paying attention he could turn
off his hearing so when the lawnmower was going while he was
reading he wouldn’t even notice. He could turn off his nose too by
breathing through his mouth. Touch was a sense that everyone
ignored unless it was too bad or too good. Taste was the same. But
he could only turn off his sight by closing his eyes, and he
couldn’t go around like that. He had to look. He didn’t know how
not to. If he could see something, he would.
    He tried telling his mother and grandmother
this.
    “You keep your eyes on this world,” his
grandmother would say. “No, you don’t go looking into others, or
looking for them either.”
    “You’ll go blind,” his mother would repeat.
“Why can’t you just look at something else?”
    Sal looked at the sun anyway, but only when
it was dark orange and low in the sky. He would try to look when it
was high up and yellow, but it hurt his eyes. When the sun was
setting, he liked to make pictures out of the patterns it cast on
the clouds. When there were big, puffy clouds, they looked like
orange sheep prancing about a fiery pasture. When there were thin
stripes of clouds, they looked like rivers of flame running into
the sun – or maybe they were running out. Sometimes he saw eagles,
or herds of horses, or people, or creatures he had no name for.
    Today, the clouds were patchy, some
voluminous, some thin and wispy, all criss-crossing all over each
other. Squinting into the aerial landscape, Sal began to make out
shapes in the clouds about the setting sun. He saw hills and fields
and rivers and even a forest.
    There were animals today, too, but they were
in the smaller fields and he couldn’t tell what they were. Sheep
maybe, but you had to be careful with clouds; when they were all
white and puffy, they always looked like sheep. In fact, as he
looked closer, straining his eyes to the field closest to the sun,
he thought the herd was more cow shaped than anything. Their heads
were square and he thought he could see longer tails on some of
them.
    How intricate the patterns were tonight! So
many different types of clouds were clustered together. They almost
made an entire town. On the hills and fields he almost thought he
saw houses and people and dogs and cats and