(1972) The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page B

Destroy the unholy religion! Seutonius so orders!”
    “For Seutonius!”
    Samhain, in the sky, raised his scythe, too late!
    The soldiers slammed swords and axes into the bases of the holy druid oaks.
    Samhain shrieked in pain as if the axes had chopped his knees. The holy
trees groaned, whistled, and, with a final chop, thundered to earth.
    Samhain trembled in the high air.
    The druid priests, fleeing, stopped and shuddered.
    Trees fell.
    The priests, chopped at the ankles, the knees, fell. They were blown over like oaks in a hurricane.
    “No!” roared Samhain in the high air.
    “But yes!” cried the Romans. “Now!”
    The soldiers gave a final mighty blow.
    And Samhain, God of the Dead, torn at his roots, chopped at his ankles, began to fall.
    The boys, staring up, leaped out of the way. For it was like a giant
forest falling all in one fall. They were shadowed by his midnight
descent. The thunder of his death came before him. He was the greatest
tree in all existence ever, the tallest oak ever to plummet down and
die. Down he came through the wild air, screaming, flailing to hold
himself up.
    Samhain hit the earth.
    He dropped with a roar that shook the bones of the hills and snuffed the holy fires.
    And with Samhain cut and down and dead, the last of the druid oaks fell
with him, like wheat cut with a final scythe. His own huge scythe, a
vast smile lost in the fields, dissolved into a puddle of silver and
sank into the grass.
    Silence. A smoldering of fires. A blowing of leaves.
    Instantly the sun went down.
    The druid priests bled in the grass as the boys watched and the Roman captain prowled the dead fires kicking the holy ashes.
    “Here we shall build our temples to our gods!”
    The soldiers lit new fires and burned incense before golden idols which they set in place.
    But, no sooner lit, than a star shone in the east. On far desert sands, to camel bells, Three Wise Men moved.
    The Roman soldiers lifted their bronze shields against the glare of the Star in the sky. But their shields melted.
    The Roman idols melted and became shapes of Mary and her Son.
    The soldiers’ armor melted, dripped, changed. They were dressed now in
the garments of priests who sang Latin before yet newer altars, even as
Moundshroud, crouched, squinting, weighed the scene, and whispered it
to his small masked friends:
    “Aye, boys,
see? Gods following gods. The Romans cut the Druids, their oaks, their
God of the Dead, bang! down! And put in their own gods, eh? Now the
Christians run and cut the Romans down! New altars, boys, new incense,
new names …”
    The wind blew the altar candles out.
    In darkness, Tom cried out. The earth shuddered and spun. Rain drenched them.
    “What’s happening, Mr. Moundshroud? Where are we?”
    Moundshroud struck a flinty thumb into fire and held it up. “Why, bless
me, boys. It’s the Dark Ages. The longest darkest night ever. Christ
long since come and gone in the world and—”
    “Where’s Pipkin?”
    “Here!” cried a voice from the black sky. “I think I’m on a broom! It’s taking me—away!”
    “Hey, me too,” said Ralph and then J.J., and then Hackles Nibley, and Wally Babb, and all the rest.
    There was a huge whisper like a gigantic cat stroking its whiskers in the dark.
    “Brooms,” muttered Moundshroud. “The gathering of the Brooms. The October Broom Festival. The annual Migration.”
    “To Where?” asked Tom, calling up, for everyone was making traffic on the air now in whisking shrieks.
    “The Broom Works, of course!”
    “Help! I’m flying!” said Henry-Hank.
    Whisk. A broom whistled him away.
    A great brambly cat flashed by Tom’s cheek. He felt a wooden pole between his legs jump up.
    “Hang on!” said Moundshroud. “When attacked by a broom, only one thing to do, hold tight!”
    “I’m holding!” cried Tom, and flew away.

The sky was swept clean with brooms.
    The sky was yelled clean by boys occupying at least eight of those brooms at once.
    And what with