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«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 is this man I fear.»
«Why? Why?»
«Who is to say that someday just such a man, in just such an apparatus of paper and reed, might not fly in the sky and drop huge stones upon the Great Wall of China?» said the Emperor.
No one moved or said a word.
«Off with his head,» said the Emperor.
The executioner whirled his silver ax.
«Burn the kite and the inventor's body and bury their ashes together,» said the Emperor.
The servants retreated to obey.
The Emperor turned to his hand-servant, who had seen the man flying. «Hold your tongue. 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. If ever the word passes around, you and the farmer die within the hour.»
«You are merciful, Emperor.»
«No, not merciful,» said the old man. Beyond the garden wall he saw the guards burning the beautiful machine of paper and reeds that smelled of the morning wind. He saw he dark smoke climb into the sky. «No, only very much bewildered and afraid.» 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 took the key from its chain about his neck and once more wound up the beautiful miniature garden. He stood looking out across the land at the Great Wall, the peaceful town, the green fields, the rivers and streams. He sighed. 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.
«Oh,» said the Emperor, closing his eyes, «look at the birds, look at the birds!»
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