(1972) The Halloween Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

across the moon in an exclamation point. They soared
over hills and meadows and farms. They saw themselves reflected in
dusky moon-bright streams, creeks, rivers. They brushed down over
ancient trees. The wind stirred by their passing shook down whole
government mints of coins, leaves, bright showering to the
black-grassed earth. They flew over the town and thought—
    O look up! see! here we are! your sons!
    And thought: O look down, there somewhere are our mothers, fathers,
brothers, sisters, teachers! Hey, here we are! O, someone, see us! or
you’ll never believe!
    And in a last swoop the Kite whistled, hummed, drummed along the winds to float over the old house and the Halloween Tree where first they had met Moundshroud!
    Swoomp, flutter, glide, rush, hiss!
    The suction of their swung bodies caused a thousand candles to flutter,
flicker, stutter their light, hiss with desire to reflame themselves,
so all the hung pumpkin scowls and leers and wild smiles were
half-snuffed to unhappy shadows. The whole Tree went dead for a
heartbeat. Then as the Kite sang high—the Tree blazed up with a
thousand new cut-pumpkin frowns, glares, grimaces, and grins!
    The windows of the house, black mirrors, saw the Kite go away and away,
until the boys and the Kite and Mr. Moundshroud were very small on the
horizon.
    And then down they sailed off away deep into the Undiscovered Country of Old Death and Strange Years in the Frightful Past… .
    “Where are we going?” cried Tom, hanging to the Kite’s tail.
    “Yes, where, where?” cried all the boys, one after another, below, below.
    “Not where, but when!” said Moundshroud, pacing them, his great veiled
cloak full of moonwind and time. “Two thousand, count them, years
before Christ! Pipkin’s there, waiting! I smell it! Fly!”
    Then the moon began to blink. It closed up its eye and there was
darkness. Then faster and faster it began to wink, to wax, to wane, to
wax again. Until a thousand times over it flickered and in flickering
changed the landscape below, and then fifty thousand times, so fast they could not see it, the moon extinguished and relit itself.
    And the moon stopped winking and held very still.
    And the land was changed.
    “Look,” said Moundshroud, hung upon the very air above them.
    And the million tiger-lion-leopard-panther eyes of the autumn Kite looked down, as did the eyes of the boys.
    And the sun rose showing them …
    Egypt. The River Nile. The Sphinx. The Pyramids.
    “But,” said Moundshroud. “Notice anything—different?”
    “Why,” gasped Tom, “it’s all new. It’s just been built. That means we really have gone back in Time four thousand years!”
    And, sure enough, the Egypt that lay below was ancient sand but new-cut
stone. The Sphinx, with its great lion paws treaded out on the golden
stuffs of desert, was sharp-cut and freshly born out of the womb of
stone mountains. It was a vast pup in the bright and empty glare of
noon. If the sun had fallen and lay between its paws, it would have
cuffed it like a fireball toy.
    The
Pyramids? Why they lay like strange-shaped blocks, yet other games to
be puzzled over, played with by the woman-lion Sphinx.
    The Kite zoomed down and skirted the sand dunes, flirted over one
pyramid and was drawn, as by suction, by an open tomb-mouth set in a
small cliff.
    “Hey, Presto!” cried Moundshroud.
    With a flap he gave the Kite such a kick as made the boys toll like clamorous bells.
    “Hey, no!” they cried.
    The Kite shuddered, fell down, hovered ten feet above the dunes, and shook itself like a wild dog ridding itself of fleas.
    The boys fell safe in golden sand.
    The Kite broke away in a thousand shreds of eyes, fangs, shrieks,
roars, elephant trumpetings. The Egyptian tomb-mouth sucked them in,
and Moundshroud, laughing, with it.
    “Mr. Moundshroud, wait!”
    Leaping up, the boys ran to shout into the dark tomb doorway. Then they lifted their gaze and saw where they were.
    The Valley of the Kings,