THE GRAYBEARDS  

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   Why had they left? They always stayed at least a week.          

     After breakfast, Morgan got on his bike and rode back up to the top of Old Baldy. The skies were clear as far as he could see in any direction.      
      All that week the weather stayed sunny and hot. Even his parents and the other grown-ups Slywater looked worried. Charlie, the owner of the Mountain View Diner, was standing outside looking at the sky one day when Morgan rode by. Morgan heard Charlie saying to a customer, "If the reservoir dries up, we're finished. We can't truck in enough water."      
      Morgan himself felt more sad than worried. He wondered if the Graybeards were mad. He wondered if he might have done something to drive them away. He had to find them. No one else could do it. He knew they were far away somewhere by now, though, and he had no way to go there to beg them to come back.     
      "Dad, will you drive me to find the Graybeards?" Morgan finally asked in desperation. His dad only gave him a funny look and pretended he hadn't heard.       Morgan's heart felt like a frog that wanted to leap out of his body and go to find its friends, but there was no way to do it—or even, for that matter, to know which way to go.      

     One night that week when Morgan went to sleep, though, his bed grew wings. It flew him many, many miles away, to where the Graybeards were brooding and murmuring over a greening land they were lovingly watering.      
      "Please," begged Morgan. "Please, we need you!"      
      "Hmmmm, hmmmmm," said the leader of the Graybeards. His "hmmmmm" did not sound hopeful.      
      "We had to leave there," the Graybeards said. "The people did not give us homes in their hearts. No one really cares there. They take us for granted."      
      "How can you say that?" Morgan interrupted, bawling at the top of his voice. "I care! Don't you know I care?"      
      "Oh, please," the boy went on. "If nobody else cares, please come for me! I miss you so. I need you so." The Graybeards murmured among themselves. Then they looked at Morgan. He could feel, rather than see, their eyes on him.      
      "Little brother, we feel your deep pain. For you and for you alone, we will come back."      
      "Oh, thank you, thank you!" shouted Morgan to the sky, dancing a jig of joy that made him fall off his bed onto the floor. He got back up and fell asleep again, and the dream continued where it had left off. Morgan's bed began flying back toward Slywater, with him in it. Morgan kept waving for as long as he could see a dim gray on the horizon.    

      Morgan saw his mom looking up at the sky the next day.      
      "Don't worry, mom, they're coming," he reassured her.      
      "Who?" his mother asked.      
      "The Graybeards."      
      "Who?" she repeated.      
      "Oh, never mind," said Morgan. He would never speak about his friends again, he decided, unless he found someone very special who could understand.      

     Sure enough, later that day, Morgan saw a great, grey-black mass rolling in from the far horizon. As he got on his bike and sped out of town, the first drops were already falling.      
      "You came, you came!" shouted Morgan when he reached the top of Old Baldy.       "For you, little brother, for you," laughed the Graybeards as Morgan pulled his shirt off and danced joyfully in the rain.      

     After that the Graybeards always came. The town seemed a nicer town. The people in seemed to know, without being told, how close they had come to losing their benefactors. Morgan greeted his friends on top of Old Baldy every Spring, until one year when he was old enough and had a car, not a bike. That year he went away with them when they left, and didn't come back, except to visit.

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