Read Online The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury - Free Book Online Page A

the house to stumble over and your ma have to call you every three minutes, even though you're in the room next her elbow?"
    Charlie had not considered it. He sort of simmered down and whispered out a little "Gosh" and felt of his long bones carefully.
    "You'll be mighty lonesome. People looking through you like a water glass, people knocking you aside because they didn't reckon you to be underfoot. And women, Charlie, women —"
    He swallowed. "What about women?"
    "No woman will be giving you a second stare. And no woman wants to be kissed by a boy's mouth they can't even find !"
    Charlie dug his bare toe in the soil contemplatively. He pouted. "Well, I'll stay invisible, anyway, for a spell. I'll have me some fun. I'll just be pretty careful, is all. I'll stay out from in front of wagons and horses and Pa. Pa shoots at the nariest sound." Charlie blinked. "Why, with me invisible, someday Pa might just up and fill me with buckshot, thinkin' I was a hill squirrel in the dooryard. Oh..."
    Old Lady nodded at a tree. "That's likely."
    "Well," he decided slowly, "I'll stay invisible for tonight, and tomorrow you can fix me back all whole again, Old Lady."
    "Now if that ain't just like a critter, always wanting to be what he can't be," remarked Old Lady to a beetle on a log.
    "What you mean?" said Charlie.
    "Why," she explained, "it was real hard work, fixing you up. It'll take a little time for it to wear off. Like a coat of paint wears off, boy."
    "You!" he cried. "You did this to me! Now you make me back, you make me seeable!"
    "Hush," she said. "It'll wear off, a hand or a foot at a time."
    "How'll it look, me around the hills with just one hand showing!"
    "Like a five-winged bird hopping on the stones and bramble."
    "Or a foot showing!"
    "Like a small pink rabbit jumping thicket."
    "Or my head floating!"
    "Like a hairy balloon at the carnival!"
    "How long before I'm whole ?" he asked.
    She deliberated that it might pretty well be an entire year.
    He groaned. He began to sob and bite his lips and make fists. "You magicked me, you did this, you did this thing to me. Now I won't be able to run home!"
    She winked. "But you can stay here, child, stay on with me real comfort-like, and I'll keep you fat and saucy."
    He flung it out: "You did this on purpose! You mean old hag, you want to keep me here!"
    He ran off through the shrubs on the instant.
    "Charlie, come back!"
    No answer but the pattern of his feet on the soft dark turf, and his wet choking cry which passed swiftly off and away.
    She waited and then kindled herself a fire. "He'll be back," she whispered. And thinking inward on herself, she said, "And now I'll have me my company through spring and into late summer. Then, when I'm tired of him and want a silence, I'll send him home."

    Charlie returned noiselessly with the first gray of dawn, gliding over the rimed turf to where Old Lady sprawled like a bleached stick before the scattered ashes.
    He sat on some creek pebbles and stared at her.
    She didn't dare look at him or beyond. He had made no sound, so how could she know he was anywhere about? She couldn't.
    He sat there, tear marks on his cheeks.
    Pretending to be just waking—but she had found no sleep from one end of the night to the other—Old Lady stood up, grunting and yawning, and turned in a circle to the dawn.
    "Charlie?"
    Her eyes passed from pines to soil, to sky, to the far hills. She called out his name, over and over again, and she felt like staring plumb straight at him, but she stopped herself. "Charlie? Oh, Charles!" she called, and heard the echoes say the very same.
    He sat, beginning to grin a bit, suddenly, knowing he was close to her, yet she must feel alone. Perhaps he felt the growing of a secret power, perhaps he felt secure from the world, certainly he was pleased with his invisibility.
    She said aloud, "Now where can that boy be? If he only made a noise so I could tell just where he is, maybe I'd fry him a breakfast."
    She prepared the