The Sound of Thunder

A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant,

beautifully reverse itself. Eckels remembered the

wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of chars

and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden salamanders,

the old years, the green years, might leap; roses sweeten

the air, white hair turn Irish-black, wrinkles vanish; all,

everything fly back to seed, flee death, rush down to their

beginnings, suns rise in western skies and set in glorious

easts, moons eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and

everything cupping one in another like Chinese boxes, rabbits

in hats, all and everything returning to the fresh death,

the seed death, the green death, to the time before the

beginning. A touch of a hand might do it, the merest touch

of a hand.