All Summer In A Day

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds,

intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
It rained.
It had been raining for seven years; thousand upon thousands of days
compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum
and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion
of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand
forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to
be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus,
and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women
who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.
“It’s stopping, it’s stopping!”
“Yes, yes!”
Margot stood apart from these children who could never remember a time
when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and
if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour
and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at
night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming
and remembering an old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the
world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a
blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands.
But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of
clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and
their dreams were gone.
Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great
thick windows.
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had
been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her
eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an
old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all
her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and
the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.
“What’re you looking at?” said William.
Margot said nothing.
“Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not
move; rather she let herself by moved only by him and nothing else.
“Get away!” The boy gave her another push. “What’re you waiting for?”
Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was
waiting for was in her eyes.
“Well, don’t wait around here!” cried the boy savagely. “You won’t see
nothing!”
Her lips moved.
“Nothing!” he cried. “It was all a joke, wasn’t it?” He turned to the other
children. “Nothing’s happening today. Is it?”
They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook thei
heads. “Nothing, nothing!”
“All a joke!” said the boy, and seized her roughly. “Hey, everyone, let’s
put her in a closet before teacher comes!”
They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then
pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they
slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it
tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her
muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the
tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.
“Ready, children?” she glanced at her watch.
“Yes!” said everyone.
The rain slackened still more.
They crowded to the huge door.
The rain stopped.
It was as if, in the midst of a film, concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a
hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the
sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the
blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from
the projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not
move or 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 color of f laming bronze and it was very large. And the sky
around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight
as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the
summer-time.
“Now, don’t go too far,” called the teacher after them. “You’ve only one
hour, 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 octopuses, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed,
wavering, flowering in this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash,
this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones
and white cheeses and ink. g
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 at that yellowness and that amazing
blueness, and they breathed of the fresh fresh air and listened and listened
to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no
motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly,
like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles.
They ran for an hour and did not stop running. h
And then—
In the midst of their running, one of the girls wailed.
Everyone stopped.
The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.
“Oh, look, look,” she said, trembling.
They came slowly to look at her opened palm.  In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop.
She began to cry, looking at it.
They glanced quickly at the sky.
“Oh. Oh.”
A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths.
The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cool around them. They
turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their
hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.
A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane,
they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightning struck ten miles away,
five miles away, a mile, a half-mile. The sky darkened into midnight in
a flash.
They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it
was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound
of the rain falling in tons and avalanches everywhere and forever.
“Will it be seven more years?”
“Yes. Seven.”
Then one of them gave a little cry.
“Margot!”
“What?”
“She’s still in the closet where we locked her.”
“Margot.”
They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into
the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced
out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily.
They could not meet each other’s glances. Their faces were solemn and
pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.
“Margot.”
One of the girls said, “Well . . . ?”
No one moved.
“Go on,” whispered the girl.
They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of cold rain. They
turned through the doorway to the room, in the sound of the storm and
thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to
the closet door slowly and stood by it.
Behind the closet door was only silence.
They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

All Summer In A Day, Ray Bradbury.  1954.

Photo property of Redwood Family Therapy.