Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories

Year of the Big Thaw - Marion Zimmer Bradley

Listen Ad Free https://www.solgood.org - Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and meditative sounds.

Duration:: 20m
Broadcast on:: 21 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

When it comes to renting out your property, the uncertainty of finding reliable tenants can feel like a real guessing game, responsible renter or perpetual party animal. Enter renters warehouse. The pros who turn the uncertainty of finding great tenants into peace of mind. Renters warehouse offers top-notch leasing and tenant placement services, ensuring you get trustworthy renters without the hassles and headaches. With no upfront fees, renters warehouse works for you, not the other way around, from marketing and showing your property, to screening tenants and preparing the lease, their team of experts handles it all so you can sit back and watch the rent roll in. Renters warehouse even warranties their tenants for up to 18 months at no extra cost, and if you need ongoing management, they've got you covered too, all for a flat monthly fee. Visit renterswearhouse.com to request a free rental price analysis that's renterswearhouse.com or call 303-974-9444 to speak to a rent estate advisor today. My favorite social spin slot games on Chumbakasino.com, I looked over the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing, they're also playing Chumbakasino, everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumbakasino's home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime anywhere. So sign up now at Chumbakasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus at Chumbakasino.com and live the Chumbalites. "Year of the Big Thaw" by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Mr. Emmett did his duty by the visitor from another world, never doubting the right of it. In this warm and fanciful story of a Connecticut farmer, Marion Zimmer Bradley has caught some of the glory that his man's love for man, no matter who he is nor whence he's from. By heck you'll like little Matt. You say that Matthew is your own son, Mr. Emmett? Yes, Reverend Doan. And a better boy never stepped if I do say as shouldn't. I've trusted him to drive team for me since he was eleven, and you can't say more than that for a farm boy. Way back when he was a little shaver so high, when the war came on, he was bounding he was going to sail with this Admiral Farragut. You know boys that age like runaway cults. I couldn't see no good in his being cabin boy on some tarnation navy ship and I told him so. If he'd wanted to sail out on a whaling ship, I'd lo- I'd let him go. But Marthy, that's the boy's maw, took on so that Matt stayed home. Yes, he's a good boy and a good son. We'll miss him a powerful lot if he gets the scholarship thing, but I lo- it'll be good for the boy to get some learning besides what he gets in the school here. It's right kind of you, Reverend, to look over this application thing for me. Well, if he is your own son, Mr. Emmett, why did you write birthplace unknown on the line here? Reverend Dawn, I'm glad you asked me that question. I've been turning it over in my mind, and I've just about come to the conclusion it wouldn't be know how fair to hold it back. I didn't lie when I said Matt was my son, because he's been a good son to me and Marthy, but I'm not his paw and Marthy ain't his maw, so it could be I stretched the truth just a mite. Reverend Dawn, it's eternal, funny yarn, but I'll walk into the meeting-house and swear to it on a stack of bibles as thick as a cord of wood. You know I've been farming the old corning-place these past seven-year. It's good flat, Connecticut bottom-land, but it isn't like our land up in Hamshire where I was born and raised. My paw called it the Hamshire grants, and all that was King's land when his paw came in there and started farming at the foot of the Scutnik Mountain. That's engine for fires. Folks say, because the engines used to build fires up there in the spring for some of their Heath and Doodads. Anyhow, up there in the mountains we see eternal power acquire things. You call to mind the year we had the big thaw about twelve years before the war? You mind the blizzard that year? I heard tell it spread down most to York, and at Fort Orange the place they call Albany now, the Hudson froze right over so they say. But those York folks do a sight of exaggerating, I'm told. Anyhow, when the ice went out there was an almighty good thaw all over, and when the snow run off Scutnik Mountain there was a good-sized hunk of farmland and our valley went underwater. The creek on my farm flowed over the bank, and there was a foot of water in the cow shed, and down in the swimming hole in the back pasture wasn't nothing but a big gully fifty foot and more across, rushing through the pasture, deep as a lake, and brown as the old cow. You know fresh at floods, full up with sticks and stones and old dead trees and somebody's old shed floating down the middle, and I swear to goodness parson that stream was running along so fast I saw four inch cobblestones floating and bumping along. I tied the cow and the calf and Kate, she was our white mare. You mind she went lame last year and I had to shoot her, but she was just a young mare then and skittish was all get out, but she was a good little mare. Anyhow I tied the whole kitten caboodle of them in the woodshed up behind the house where they'd be dry, then I started to get the milk pail. Right then I heard the gosh off-less screech I ever heard in my life, sounded like thunder and a freshet and a forest fire all at once. I dropped the milk pail as I heard Martha scream inside the house and I run outside. Martha was already there in the yard and she points up in the sky and yelled "look up yander!" We stood looking up at the sky over a Shaddick mountain where there was a great big shoot now I don't know as I can call its name, but it was like a trail of fire in the sky and it was making the dangest racket you ever heard, Reverend. Looked kind of like one of them fourth of July skyrockets, but it was big as a house. Martha was screaming and she grabbed me and hollered "has, has, what in tunk it is it?" and when Martha cusses like that, Reverend, she don't know what she's saying, she's so scared. I was plumb scared myself. I heard Liza, that's our youngin, Liza Grace, that got married to the Taylor boy. I heard her crying on the stoop and she came flying out with her penny all black and holler into Martha that the pea soup was burning. Martha let out another screech and ran for the house. That's a woman for you. So I quieted Liza down some and I went in and told Martha it weren't no more than one of them shooting stars. Then I went and did the milking. But you know, while we were sitting down to supper there came the most awful grinding, screeching, pounding crash I ever heard. Sounded if it were in the back pasture, but the house shook as if something had hit it. Martha jumped a mile and I never saw such a look on her face. "Hez, what was that?" she asked. "Shoot now, nothing but the freshet," I told her, but she kept on about it. "You reckon that shooting star fell in our back pasture, hez?" "Well now, I don't know it did, nothing like that," I told her. But she was jittery as an old hen and it weren't like her know-how. She said it sounded like trouble and I finally quieted her down by saying I'd saddle Kate up and go have a look. I kind of thought though I didn't tell Martha that somebody's house had floated away in the freshet and run aground in our back pasture. So I saddled up Kate and told Martha he to get some hot rum ready in case there was some poor soul run aground back there and I rode Kate back to the back pasture. It was mostly uphill because the top of the pasture is on high ground and it sloped down to the creek on the other side of the rise. While I reached the top of the hill and looked down, the creek were a regular river now rushing along like Niagara. On the other side of it was a stand of timber, then the slope of Shaddick Mountain, and I saw right away the long streak where all the timber had been cut out in a big scoop with roots standing up in the air and a big slide of rocks down to the water. It was still raining a mite and the ground was sloshy and squanchy underfoot. Kate scrunched her hooves and got real bulky, not liking it a bit. When we got to the top of the pasture she started to whine and wicker and stamp and no matter how loud I wowed, she kept on a stamp and I was plumb scared she'd pitched me off in the mud. Then I started to smell a funny smell like something burning. Now don't ask me how anything could burn in all that water because I don't know. When we came up on the rise I saw the contraption. Reverend it was the most turnal crazy contraption I ever saw in my life. It was bigger nor my cow shed and it was long and thin and shiny as Martha's old pewter pitcher, Herman, brought from England. It had a pair of red rods sticking out behind and a crazy globe fitted up where the top ought to be. It was stuck in the mud, turned half way over on the little slide of roots and rocks and I could see what had happened all right. The thing must have been, no reverend, you can say what you like, but that thing must have flew across shatic and landed on the slope in the trees, then turned over and slid down the hill. That must have been the crash we heard. The rods weren't just red, they were red hot. I could hear them sizzle as the rain hit them. In the middle of the infernal contraption there was a door and it hung all to other as if every hinge on it had been wrenched half way off. As I pushed old Kate alongside it I heard somebody holler on alongside the contraption. I didn't know how to get the words but it must have been for help because I looked down and there was a man flopping along in the water. He was a big fellow and he wasn't swimming, just thrashing and hollering. So I pulled off my coat and boots and hove in after him. The stream was running fast but he was near the edge and I managed to catch onto an old tree root and hang on, keeping his head out of the water till I got my feet aground, then I hauled him onto the bank. Up above me Kate was still winning and raising Ned and I shouted at her as I bent over the man. Well Reverend, he sure did give me a surprise, weren't no proper man I'd ever seen before. He was wearing some kind of red clothes, real shiny and sort of stretchy and not wet from the water like you'd expect, but dry and it felt like that silk and India rubber stuff mixed together. And it was such a bright red that at first I didn't see the blood on it. When I did I knew he were a goner. His chest were all stove in, smashed to pieces. One of the old tree roots must have jabbed him as the current flung him down. I thought he were dead already but then he opened up his eyes. A funny color they were, greeny yellow, and I swear Reverend, when he opened them eyes, I felt he was reading my mind. I thought maybe he might be one of them circus fellers and they're flying contraptions that hung on at the bottom of a balloon. He spoke to me in English, kind of choky and stiff, not like Joe the Portagie sailor, or like those Tarnall dumb Frenchies at Canadian Way, but well funny. He said, "My baby, in ship, get baby." He tried to say more, but his eyes went shut and he moaned hard. I yelped. "God Almighty, excuse me Reverend, but I was so blame upset, that's just what I did say. God Almighty, man, you mean there's a baby in that there ding-fall contraption?" He just moaned. So after spreading my coat around the man a little bit, I just plunged in that there river again. "Reverend, I heard tell once about some Tom full idiot going over Niagara in a barrel, and I tell you it was like that when I tried crossing that freshet to reach that contraption." I went under and down and was whacked by floating sticks and whirled around in the freshet. But somehow, I don't know, how, except by the pure grace of God, I got across that raging torrent and clum up to where the crazy ding-full machine was sitting. That he'd called it, but that were no ship, Reverend. It was some flying dragon kind of thing. It was a real scary-looking thing, but I clum up to the little door and hauled myself in, and sure enough, there was other people in the cabin, only if they was all dead. There was a lady and a man and some kind of an animal, looked like a bobcat only smaller, with a funny-shaped rooster comb along its head. They all, even the cat thing, was wearing those shiny stretchy clothes, and they was all so battered and smashed I didn't even bother to hunt for their heartbeats. I could see by a look that they was dead as a doornail. Then I heard a funny little whimpering like a kitten, and in a funny rubber-cushioned thing, there's a little boy-baby, looked about six months old. He was howling lusty enough, and when I lifted him out of the cradle kind of thing, I saw why. That boy-baby, he was wet, and his little arm was twisted under him. That their flying contraption must have smashed down awful hard, but that rubber hammock was so soft and cushiony all it did to him was jolt him good. I looked around, but I couldn't find anything to wrap him in, and the baby didn't have a stitch on him except a sort of a spongy paper diaper wet at sin. So I finally lifted up the lady, who had a long cape thing around her, and took the cape off her real gentle. I knew she was dead, and she wouldn't be needing it, and that baby boy would catch his death if I took him out bare naked like that. She was probably the baby's maw, a right pretty woman she was, but smashed up something shameful. So anyhow, to make a long story short, I got that baby boil back across that Niagara falls somehow, and laid him down by his paw. The man opened his eyes, kind, and said in a choky voice, "Take care, baby." I told him I would, and said I'd try to get him up to the house where Martha could doctor him. The man told me not to bother. "I'm dying," he says. We come from planet, star up there, crash here. His voice trailed off into a language I couldn't understand, and he looked like he was praying. I bent over him and held his head on my knees real easy, and I said, "Don't worry, mister, I'll take care of your little fellow until your folks come after him, before God I will." So the man closed his eyes, and I said, "Our father, which art in heaven, and when I got through he was dead." I got him up on Kate, but he was cruel heavy for all he was such a tall, skinny fellow. Then I wrapped that their baby up in the cape thing, and took him home, and gave him to Martha. And the next day I buried the fellow in the South Matter, and next meeting day we had the baby baptized Matthew Daniel Emmett, and brung him up just like her own kids. That's all. All Mr. Emmett, didn't you ever find out where that ship really came from? Why Reverend? He said it came from a star. Dying men don't lie. You know that. I asked a teacher about them planets he mentioned, and she says that on one of the planets, can't rightly remember the name, "Marcher, Mark," or something like that, she says some big scientist feller with a telescope saw canals on that planet, and they'd have to be pretty near as big as this here eerie canal to see them so far off. And if they could build canals on that planet, I don't know why they couldn't build a flying machine. I went back the next day when the water was down a little to see if I couldn't get the rest of them folks and bury them. But the flying machine had broke up and washed down the creek. Martha still got the cape thing. She's a powerful saving woman. We never did tell Matt, though. Might make him feel funny to think he didn't really belong to us. But Mr. Emmett, didn't anybody ask questions about the baby where you got it? Well now, although they were curious because Martha hadn't been in the family way and they knew it, but up here folks minds their own business pretty well, and I just let them wonder. I told Liza Grace I'd found her new little brother in the back pasture, and of course it was the truth. When Liza Grace grew up she thought it was just one of those yarns, old folks tell the little shavers. And has Matthew ever shown any differences from the other children that you could see? Well Reverend, not so's you could notice it. He's powerful smart, but his real paw and mom must have been right smart too to build a flying contraption that could come so far. Of course when he was about twelve years old he started reading folks' minds, which didn't seem exactly right. He'd tell Martha what I was thinking and things like that. He was just at the pesky age. Liza Grace and Minnie were both a court and then, and he'd drive their boyfriends crazy telling them what Liza Grace and Minnie were thinking, and tease the gals by telling them what the boys were thinking about. There weren't no harm in the boy though, it was just all teasing, but it just weren't decent somehow, so I took him out behind the woodshed and give his britches a good dusting just to remind him that that kind of thing weren't polite now how. When Reverend Doan, he ain't never done it since. End of Year of the Big Thaw by Marion Zimmer Bradley. When it comes to renting out your property, the uncertainty of finding reliable tenants can feel like a real guessing game, responsible renter or perpetual party animal. Enter renter's warehouse, the pros who turn the uncertainty of finding great tenants into peace of mind. renter's warehouse offers top-notch leasing and tenant placement services, ensuring you get trustworthy renters without the hassles and headaches. With no upfront fees, renter's warehouse works for you, not the other way around. From marketing and showing your property, to screening tenants and preparing the lease, their team of experts handles it all so you can sit back and watch the rent roll in. renter's warehouse even warranties their tenants for up to 18 months at no extra cost. And if you need ongoing management, they've got you covered too, all for a flat monthly fee. From renter's warehouse dot com to request a free rental price analysis that's renter's warehouse dot com or call 303-974-9444 to speak to a rent estate advisor today. Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on Chumba Casino dot com. I looked over the person sitting next to me, they know what they were doing, they're also playing Chumba Casino, everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino's home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free any time anywhere. So sign up now at ChumbaCocino.com to claim your free welcome bonus at ChumbaCocino.com and live the Chumba life.