The Halloween Tree

"Watch out with that scythe!"

The scythe fell and lay in the grass like a lost smile.

But the two boys hung down now from all the half-washed ankles, and the Kite rose more, higher, higher, adding a boy and a boy, and a boy until with a yell and shout, eight boys were down-hung in a magnificent thrashing tail, the last two being Ghost who was truly George Smith and Wally Babb who had, inspired, made himself up to look like a Gargoyle fallen off the top of a cathedral.

The boys yelled with elation. The Kite swooped and--took off!

"Hey!"

Whoosh! The Kite purred with a thousand animal whispers.

Whannng! The Kite rope strummed the wind.

Hush! said the entire thing.

And the wind flew them high across the stars.

Leaving Moundshroud to look up with awe at his contraption, his kite, his boys.

"Wait!" he shouted.

"Don't wait, come on!" the boys yelled.

Moundshroud ran along the grass to seize the scythe. His cape fluttered taking air, making wings until he, also, very simply, took off, and soared.

The Kite flew.

The boys hung down from the Kite in a fine lizard's tail, now weaving, now looping, now snapping, now gliding.

They yelled with delight. They shrieked with ingasped, outgasped terror. They rode 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 d

own 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 moon-wind 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.