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Ursula K LeGuin — The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of
Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing
of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between
houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown
gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public
buildings, processions

moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and
gray, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies
and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a
shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the
procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls
rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the
singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city,
where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and
girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and
long, lithe arms,exercised their restive horses before the race. The
horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were
braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their
nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly
excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our
ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains
stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so
clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned
withwhite-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark
blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that
marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of
the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding throughout the
city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful
faint sweetness of the air from time to time trembled and gathered
together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.  Read more... (2816 words, estimated 11:16 mins reading time)