Selected Short Stories of Ray Bradbury: The Flying Machine

In the year A.D. 400, the Emperor Yuan held his throne by the Great Wall of China, and the land was green with rain, readying itself toward the harvest, at peace, the people in his dominion neither too happy nor too sad.

"Let me guess then—the sun has risen and a new day is upon us. Or the sea is blue. That now is the finest of all miracles."

And in the sky, laughing so high that you could hardly hear him laugh, was a man; and the man was clothed in bright papers and reeds to make wings and a beautiful yellow tail, and he was soaring all about like the largest bird in a universe of birds, like a new dragon in a land of ancient dragons.

Instead he looked at the Great Wall of China now taking shape out of the farthest mist in the green hills, that splendid snake of stones which writhed with majesty across the entire land.

That wonderful wall which had protected them for a timeless time from enemy hordes and preserved peace for years without number.

He saw the town, nestled to itself by a river and a road and a hill, beginning to waken.

The Emperor glanced in all directions while the flying man soared down the morning wind.

The flying man alit with a rustle of paper and a creak of bamboo reeds.

He came proudly to the Emperor, clumsy in his rig, at last bowing before the old man.

The Emperor reached out a thin hand to touch the pretty paper and the birdlike keel of the apparatus.

I rose in the night and walked to the cliffs far away. And when the morning breezes blew and the sun rose, I gathered my courage, Excellency, and leaped from the cliff.

"Hold this man." The guards seized the flier.

"What's this!" cried the flier, bewildered. "What have I done?"

"Here is the man who has made a certain machine," said the Emperor, "and yet asks us what he has created. He does not know himself. It is only necessary that he create, without knowing why he has done so, or what this thing will do."

The executioner came running with a sharp silver ax.

He stood with his naked, large-muscled arms ready, his face covered with a serene white mask.

He fitted his key to the tiny, delicate machine and wound it up.

The machine was a garden of metal and jewels. Set in motion, the birds sangs in tiny metal trees, wolves walked through miniature forests, and tiny people ran in and out of sun and shadow, fanning themselves with miniature fans, listening to tiny emerald birds, and standing by impossibly small but tinkling fountains.

"Is it not beautiful?" said the Emperor. "If you asked me what I have done here, I could answer you well. I have made birds sing, I have made forests murmur, I have set people to walking in this woodland, enjoying the leaves and shadows and songs.

"But, oh, Emperor!" pleaded the flier, on his knees, the tears pouring down his face.

I have done a similar thing! I have found beauty. I have flown on the morning wind. I have looked down on all the sleeping houses and gardens. I have smelled the sea and even seen it, beyond the hills, from my high place. And I have soared like a bird; oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there

"Then spare me!"

Some other man who, seeing you, will build a thing of bright papers and bamboo like this. But the other man will have an evil face and an evil heart, and the beauty will be gone.

It was all a dream, a most sorrowful and beautiful dream.

And that farmer in the distant field who also saw, tell him it would pay him to consider it only a vision.

"You are merciful, Emperor."
"No, not merciful," said the old man.

He saw the guards digging a tiny pit wherein to bury the ashes.

"What is the life of one man against those of a million others? I must take solace from that thought."

He stood looking out across the land at the Great Wall, the peaceful town, the green fields, the rivers and streams.

The tiny garden whirred its hidden and delicate machinery and set itself in motion; tiny people walked in forests, tiny faces loped through sun-speckled glades in beautiful shining pelts, and among the tiny trees flew little bits of high song and bright blue and yellow colour, flying, flying, flying in that small sky.