Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The New Complete Edition (10 page)

All that time passed; half a century, forgotten.

Sabryna found the story not long ago, ragged and faded, squashed under useless business papers.

“Do you remember this?”

“Remember what?” I said. “No.”

I read some paragraphs. “Oh. I remember, sort of. This was . . .”

“Read it.” A smile for the antique manuscript she’d found, which had touched her.

The typewriter’s letters were faded. The language was an echo of mine, though, way back then, a sense of what I was. It was not my writing; it was his writing, the kid from then.

The manuscript ended, and filled me with his warning and his hope.

“I knew what I was doing!” he said. “In your twenty-first century, hemmed about with authority and ritual, it’s strapped now to strangle freedom. Don’t you see? It’s planning to make your world safe, not free.” He lived his story, last chance. “My time’s gone. Yours isn’t.”

I thought about his voice again, the last chapter. Are we seagulls looking at the end of freedom in our world?

Part Four, printed at last where it belongs, says maybe not. It was written when nobody knew the future. Now we do.

—Richard Bach

Spring 2013

R
ICHARD
B
ACH
is the author of twenty other books, including
Illusions, One,
and
The Bridge Across Forever.
A former USAF fighter pilot, gypsy barnstormer and airplane mechanic, he flies seaplanes in the Northwest.

His website is
www.richardbach.com
.

R
USSELL
M
UNSON
began photographing airplanes as a young boy in Denver, Colorado. Photography and flying have been his passions ever since. In addition to his commercial photography career in New York City, Munson has taught Visual Perception at Phillips Andover Academy, Yale University, and the International Center for Photography. He is the author and photographer of the book
Skyward: Why Flyers Fly,
and authored and produced the DVD
Flying Route 66
. Munson’s fine art aerial photography is in private and museum collections, and can be seen at
www.russellmunson.com
. He photographs from his Aviat Husky airplane.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1970 by Sabryna A. Bach

Copyright renewed © 1998 by Sabryna A. Bach

New material copyright © 2014 by Sabryna A. Bach

Photographs copyright © 1970 by Russell Munson

Photographs copyright renewed © 1998 by Russell Munson

New photographs copyright © 2014 by Russell Munson

Photograph on dedication page copyright © 2014 by Sabryna A. Bach

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First Scribner Complete ebook edition January 2014

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Interior design by Joan Stoliar

Cover design based on an original cover design by Tom Bean

Cover photograph by Russell Munson

ISBN 978-1-4767-5469-7 (eBook)