did not move or had a tremor . The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears.
They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them. The sun came out. It was the colour of flaming bronze and it was very large.
And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile colour. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the 12th - - All Summer in a Day Page children, released from their spell , rushed out, yelling into the spring time. “Now, don’t go too far,” called the teacher after them. “You’ve only two hours, you know.
You wouldn’t want to get caught out!” But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms. “Oh, it’s better than the sun lamps, isn’t it?” “Much, much better!” They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously , even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi , clustering up great arms of flesh like weed, wavering, flowering in this brief spring. It was the colour of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sunlight was the colour of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the colour of the moon.
The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until tears ran down their faces; they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and