Page 79 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade7_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 1.11
continued
poor Choices: “phaethon”
My Notes
too close to earth, but how will he know? And I won’t stay too long — just dip down toward our own village and circle his roof three times — which is the signal we agreed upon. After he recognizes me, I’ll whip up the horses and resume the path of the day.
Chunk 8
64 He jerked on the reins, pulled the horses’ heads down.They whinnied angrily
and tossed their heads. He jerked the reins again.
65 “Down,” he cried. “Down! Down!”
66 The horses plunged through the bright air, golden hooves twinkling, golden
manes flying, dragging the great glittering chariot after them in a long flaming swoop. When they reached his village, he was horrified to see the roofs bursting into fire. The trees burned. People rushed about screaming. Their loose clothing caught fire, and they burned like torches as they ran.
67 Was it his village? He could not tell because of the smoke. Had he destroyed his own home? Burned his mother and his sisters?
68 He threw himself backward in the chariot, pulling at the reins with all his might, shouting, “Up! Up!”
69 And the horses, made furious by the smoke, reared on their hind legs in the air. They leaped upward, galloping through the smoke, pulling the chariot up, up.
70 Swiftly the earth fell away beneath them. The village was just a smudge of smoke. Again he saw the pencil-stroke of mountains, the inkblot of seas. “Whoa!” he cried. “Turn now! Forward on your path!” But he could no longer handle them. They were galloping, not trotting. They had taken the bit in their teeth. They did not turn toward the path of the day across the meadow of the sky, but galloped up, up. And the people on earth saw the sun shooting away until it was no larger than a star.
71 Darkness came. And cold. The earth froze hard. Rivers froze, and oceans. Boats were caught fast in the ice in every sea. It snowed in the jungle. Marble buildings cracked. It was impossible for anyone to speak; breath froze on the speakers’ lips. And in village and city, in the field and in the wood, people died of the cold. And the bodies piled up where they fell, like firewood.
72 Still Phaethon could not hold his horses, and still they galloped upward dragging light and warmth away from the earth. Finally they went so high that the air was too thin to breathe. Phaethon saw the flame of their breath, which had been red and yellow, burn blue in the thin air. He himself was gasping for breath; he felt the marrow of his bones freezing.
73 Now the horses, wild with change, maddened by the feeble hand on the reins, swung around and dived toward earth again. Now all the ice melted, making great floods. Villages were swept away by a solid wall of water. Trees were uprooted and whole forests were torn away. The fields were covered by water. Lower swooped the horses, and lower yet. Now the water began to steam — great billowing clouds of steam as the water boiled. Dead fish floated on the surface. Naiads moaned in dry riverbeds.
74 Phaethon could not see; the steam was too thick. He had unbound the reins from his waist, or they would have cut him in two. He had no control over the horses at all. They galloped upward again — out of the steam — taking at last the middle road, but racing wildly, using all their tremendous speed. Circling the earth in a matter of minutes, smashing across the sky from horizon to horizon, making the day flash on and off like a child playing with a lamp. And the people who were left alive were bewildered by the light and darkness following each other so swiftly.
52 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 7
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.