And on the Eighth Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

unfamiliar quality.
    “Quenan,” the old man was saying. “Quenan … Quenan …”
    But this version of his surname brought no shock of recognition. Quenan …?
    And the old man, still on his knees, went on and on; but what he was saying was meaningless to Ellery, whose own train of thought wandered afield. The hand he had reflexively extended to catch the old man, he was amazed to find, was resting on the old man’s cowled head. How had it got there? Surely by accident. Good Lord! he thought. The old boy will think I’m blessing him. And he stifled an impulse to grin. He could make out nothing of what the bearded patriarch was saying—a swift mutter of unrecognizable words that might even have been a prayer.
    Ellery came to himself. The old man had risen and taken Ellery’s hand in his; and in his odd eyes there was something like excitement (though not exactly that) and something less than concern (though almost that). And he said to Ellery, quite intelligibly, “The time of plowing is over, the days of waiting are at an end.”
    Ellery searched his memory. “Was the old hermit quoting something? No, nothing Ellery could recognize. And where was the younger hermit?
    “The time of the threshing of the harvest is here, and the great trouble is soon to come upon us.”
    No, Ellery decided, nothing he was familiar with.
    “Art thou the first?”
    The question rang in Ellery’s ears.
    “The first?” he repeated foolishly.
    “The first. He who comes to us in the time of our great trouble, and prepares the way for the second. Praised be the Wor’d.”
    No doubt about it now—some sort of slight pause in Wor’d . But what could it all mean? He could only look into those unfathomable eyes and repeat, “The second?”
    The old man nodded slowly. “The second shall be first, and the first shall be second. It is written thus. We thank thee, O Wor’d.”
    Had the statement been uttered by another man, Ellery might have passed it off as gibberish, a paraphrase of some imagined Scripture. But this man—“the old, old, very old man”—this man compelled respect. Almost he compelled belief.
    “Who are you?” Ellery asked.
    “Truly thou knowest me,” the prophetic mouth smiled gravely. “I am the Teacher.”
    “And the name of this place?”
    A silence, briefly. Then, “I had forgotten that you are a stranger here, even though your coming is a sign that the Wor’d is sure to follow. The place where we stand goes by the name of Crucible Hill, and below us is the Valley of Quenan. This name you know, seeing that it is your own. And what you are cannot be hidden from you.” He bowed.
    My God, Ellery thought, he’s mistaken me for someone else, someone he’s been waiting for. A tragicomedy of coincidence, based on nothing more substantial than a similarity of sounds. But whom has he mistaken me for? On hearing my name, Ellery, he prostrated himself in humblest reverence, thinking I had said “ Elroï ,” or “ Elroy ”—“ thou, God, seest me .” He took me for …
    Ellery could not bring himself to believe it.
    Through the giddiness he fought against, he heard the old man—“the Teacher”—saying, “My people do not know the mystery that is to be; they do not know the trouble which is coming upon them, nor how to save themselves when the hailstorm dashes the crop to the earth. They have lived as children. What will they do when the fire rages?”
    His grip on Ellery’s hand tightened. “Come,” he said, “come and abide with us.”
    Ellery heard his voice asking from far away, “For how long?”
    And said the old man, “Until thy work is done.”
    Tucking his staff under his arm, the other hand still hidden by his robe (holding the trumpet?—had there been a trumpet?), he gently drew Ellery forward and began to walk him down the inner slope of the hill.
    And Ellery stepped into another world. It was so startling that almost he cried out. One moment he had been in a desert of sand and naked