THE BUTTONED SKY
By Geoff St. Reynard
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories ofScience and Fantasy August 1953. Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness.But this was the future, ruled by god-globes, as men gazedfearfully at—
CHAPTER I
He swilled the blood-dark wine:
"O who can blight my happiness,
Or face the power that's mine?"
"The priest can end your joy;
The globe can sap your might away,
And the Mink can you destroy!"
The day that Revel killed a god, he woke early. There was a bitter tastein his mouth, and a pain in his ear where somebody'd hit him during ashebeen brawl the night before. He rolled over on his back. The bed wasa hollowed place in the earth floor, filled with leaves and dried grassand spread with yellow-brown mink skins sewn into a big blanket; he'dslept on it every night of his twenty-eight years, but this morning itfelt hard and uncomfortable.
The water gourd was empty. In the cold gray mists of dawn he groped hisway sleepily to the well behind the hut, and drew up the bucket.
"Damn the gentry!" he burst out. The bucket, an ancient thing made ofoak slats pegged together with wooden dowels, was half filled with dirtand rotten brush. "Curse their lousy carcasses to hell!" he yelled, and,suddenly scared, looked around to see if perhaps a god was floatingsomewhere near him. But no yellow glimmering showed in the mists.
Laboriously he cleaned out the well, dropping the bucket time after timeand dragging up loads of trash. Some roving band of gentry had fouledthe water for sport. Anything that hurt the ruck, made them more work orinjured them in an