And on the Eighth Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands and ate and drank, the meal proceeded in silence.
    “Are you content with this food?” the Teacher asked
    “Yes,” said Ellery. “I am content.”
    “Blessed be the Wor’d, and we are thankful … We may now go.” He brushed the table clean of crumbs, repacked the basket, and rose.
    Puddles of sunlight lay along the tree-lined lane which they followed to a building of gray stone: A murmur of childish voices became audible as they approached. Small rooms, each containing a table and two benches, opened off the main hall where the children were assembled. Of course, Ellery thought, without surprise: he is the Teacher—this must be the school.
    The smallest children sat up front on the lowest benches; girls sat on one side, boys on the other. They rose as the Teacher confronted them. Row on row of shyly smiling, grave, or respectfully curious faces—all sun-tanned, all clean, all devoid of apathy or insolence—row on row to the teen-agers at the rear. Ellery saw each face clearly, and each face was clear.
    “My children,” said the Teacher. “Let us bless the Wor’d.”
    No head was bowed, no eye closed, no word spoken. An intense silence settled over the room. Dust motes, dancing in the sunbeams from the unglazed windows, seemed to move more slowly. A bird lifted up its song not far off.
    “This is a great thing,” the Teacher said. “You have all been guests in one another’s houses. Now there is a guest among us who is a guest of all, of all Quenan. His coming is a gift to us of the greatest importance. I will tell you now only that it has been foretold. What he is to do, you will all witness. To the Wor’d, our thanks for sending him. This is today’s lesson. We shall keep today as a holiday. You may go home now; you may put on your holiday robes, you may play or study or help your parents as you wish. Now, go. Blessed is the Wor’d.”
    He passed among them, touching the head of one, the shoulder of another, lightly patting a cheek or an arm. The children looked wonderingly at Ellery, but they did not speak to him. The boys were dressed in the fashion of Storicai, the old man’s companion at the End-of-the-World Store—collarless shirt and “clam-digger” pants; the girls wore long one-piece dresses. All were barefoot. Presently he was to see them emerge from their houses like figures in a Biblical painting, yet with no hint of masquerade; some carried flowers.
    Ellery walked with his guide through the village, accepting with wonder the occasional flower offered to him, even by the older boys.
    “Do you have many visitors—guests—from outside?” Ellery asked. And found himself adding, “Teacher?”
    “None,” said the Teacher.
    “None? In the past, surely—?”
    “In the past, none. You are the first—as it is written. We know little of the outside, and the outside knows nothing of us.”
    The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not .
    Ellery observed the village with mounting excitement.
    Nestled in their patches of garden, the weathered little cottages were bare of ornamentation except for vines, which had been allowed to overrun the walls. The natural wood had turned silvery gray and yellow-brown, with an occasional splash of ochre; the green of the vines and plants and the multicolors of the flowers completed a chromatic harmony that brought peace to the eye. And for contrast there was the rough and random stone of the few larger, public buildings.
    Visually the dwellings had a curious vitality, as if they too had grown out of the earth. And here was a lesson, Ellery thought, for architects. It was as if art (or artfulness) was not so much frowned on here as unheard of. There was an artless beauty about it, an innocence, a natural functionalism that, when he thought of the mathematical Bauhaus -style urban boxes or Le Corbusier’s machines for living, made him wince.
    There was no paving. There was no electricity. There were no telephone lines.