The Seven Gifts (6 page)

Saturday in the hospital was a sad day for
Nellie, when the loss of her family weighed most heavily upon her,
when she felt most lonely. She always tried to get away and visit
William but it was not easy with all the bustle in the hospital.
Often she would close her eyes and lie for hours trying to get away
from her body, with no success. At such times she would pray
through all the day: ‘Dear Father, I'm weary; I've lived out my
life. Please take me at the end of this day; I so long to come
home. Dear Father, please take me home.'

Sunday was perhaps the saddest day of the
whole week; the day in which thoughts of the wider world that
Nellie Matilda longed so much for welled up into her heart with
greatest force. There was a time when the Parson would visit all
the patients on a Sunday, but in those secular days of the Snow
Queen's reign it was not deemed right that religion should be foist
upon the people, so the Parson never came. There was a time when
hymns were broadcast on a Sunday morning, but that had been stopped
too. There was little for Nellie to do on a Sunday but pray: ‘Dear
Father, I'm weary; I've lived out my life. Please take me at the
end of this day; I so long to come home. Dear Father, please take
me home.'

On Monday Sonia, the nurse who tended Nellie
Matilda in the daytime, was not at her best.

“Come on, Nellie!" she grumbled. “You've got
to take these pills."

“I don't want any pills," said Nellie
wearily. “Just leave me in peace, please."

“But you must take them," said Sonia.
“You'll die if you don't."

“I'm quite happy and ready to die," Nellie
said calmly. “I've lived my life and it is over. There is nothing
left for me here, and it is time now for me to move on."

“Move on?" queried Sonia. “What are you
blethering about? I said you'll die if you don't take the pills; I
did not say you would move on. What is wrong with this place
anyway? You won't find a better hospital in the land. Now be a good
lady and take your pills."

Nellie sighed. “You don't know what I'm
talking about, do you?" she said, knowing well what the answer
would be.

“No I don't!" snapped Sonia, “and if you
don't take your pills I'll call the doctor and he'll make you, like
he did last week. You should know better at your age, causing all
this trouble to those who are trying to help you." And she scowled,
with the smug disapproving look of one who knows best.

Nellie resigned herself to her pills and
said no more. The prospect of being force-injected by that arrogant
and ignorant old doctor was too much on a Monday morning. But when
Sonia had gone she lay back quietly on her bed with her arms down
along her sides and closed her eyes. After a moment or two's
concentration she climbed thankfully out of her painful old body
and . . . . . . .

* * * * *

The boy stopped reading, confused suddenly.
He was sure he had already read that bit. He riffled back through
the pages, and discovered that he had been reading a verbatim
repetition of Nellie Matilda's first Monday in hospital. There must
be a printing fault he decided, so he flicked on a few pages,
looking for something new. But Nellie's second week seemed to be a
word-for-word clone of her first.

He sat back and thought about this for a
little while, then gradually the significance of it dawned on him.
He smiled warily, uncertain whether to be amused by the writer's
ploy or saddened by the old lady's plight. Then, curious he turned
to the last page to see how it finished.

But he could not find the last page. Every
time he turned over, expecting to find it, he found the story
continuing as ever. Even when he flipped backwards from the end
cover he still ended up in the middle of the story, which went on
just as before when he attempted to read on again to the end.

Baffled, the young boy put the book down on
the table and stared at it for a while. It must have an end, he
thought; it is of finite size, therefore presumably of finite
length. It was not as though the last page simply petered out,
there just was not a last page. However often he turned what seemed
to be the last page he found another, and the story went on and on;
every week identical to the previous one.

Then suddenly he grinned. It must be a
subtle joke of the Angel's, a dig at the Queen's scientists'
inability to discover Quantum Physics. She had constructed the book
in such a way that he could not observe the end, and thus collapse
it into reality.

But what if Nellie was real? What if he was
seeing in print something that was actually happening on the Earth?
And his failure to observe the end to Nellie's misery was
preventing that end from coming about.

No, he decided. The Angel did not play silly
games like that with people's lives. If the story was happening,
then he was viewing a version of it in which something was very
wrong; in which something essential was missing from the very
fabric of Nellie's existence. And that something must be the clue
to the gift.

o ------------------------
o

The young boy closed the
book on the Second Gift

and remained a while with
his thoughts

in the lonely tower at the
end of the beach

And the Angel watched over
him

o ------------------------
o

The Journey

THE BOY finally closed the second book
having given up all hope of finding the last page. What could be
missing from this version of the old lady's life, that could in any
way be related to a gift? He felt little wiser than when he had
opened the book. He had hoped to find this second gift in time to
spend the day fishing as the weather was so lovely, but the chances
now seemed very slim. Feeling rather fed up with it all he went in
search of his tormentor.

The Angel smiled as he approached looking
thoroughly glum. “Come on," she called out encouragingly, “let's go
for a walk. It's a lovely day and I've got something to show
you."

The boy sighed, but he tagged along
dutifully. What could this gift be? he wondered. Ordinary life? No,
he didn't think so. Death perhaps? But how could death be a gift?
Maybe it was. He shrugged. Doubtless the Angel would winkle it out
of him eventually.

She took his arm companionably and steered
him along the lane out towards the open countryside. After about
ten minutes' brisk walking they emerged onto the bank of a
river.

A fishing river, the boy observed ruefully.
Its clear, fast-running water tumbled and glittered over a
gravelly, rock-strewn bottom that he could see quite plainly. Tall
willow trees drooped their shadows over the rippling surface, their
leaves almost kissing the swirls of deeper pools by the bank. The
water wound around the trees, rushing headlong for the open sea.
But despite the hurrying noise of the river it was a peaceful place
- there was a special sort of quiet under those stately trees.

They turned upriver and sauntered slowly
along the grassy bank, taking in the sights and sounds and smells
of the riverside. There was life here. The boy could feel its
vibrant energy surging beneath the blanket of peacefulness
surrounding them. But beneath the Weeping Willows it was quiet by
the river. A background tinkling of water falling over rocks was
studded with the occasional sound of a distant bird, the irregular
plop of fish jumping.

The water was so clear the boy could see the
fish, swimming along close to the bottom. There were quite a number
of them, all making their way upstream, tails swishing lazily
against the current.

“Salmon and Sea Trout," said the Angel,
following the boy's gaze. “They are coming home to spawn."

The boy looked up sharply. Did he detect a
clue? Was this what the Angel wanted to show him? But she said no
more until they rounded the next bend in the river and came to a
weir, where the water tumbled and fell three or four feet down a
craggy face of splintered rocks. In the foam and spume that filled
the air, the boy could see more fish, flying in desperate leaps as
they tried to scale the obstacle and reach the calmer water
beyond.

They stopped by the weir and watched for a
while the trout and salmon struggling to fling themselves over the
cascade of water, clear of the rocks and into the next stretch of
river. Some reached it and some failed.

“Every year," said the Angel, “without fail
they battle their way up this river, past nets and fishermen, over
weirs and waterfalls, just so they can spawn in the same place they
came from. Many of them don't make it; but still, each year, they
come in their thousands to find a mate, and lay their eggs in the
shallow upper reaches where they themselves were born. Then they
die; leaving their eggs to hatch alone.

“When the eggs hatch, the fry head back to
the sea, facing even more dangers than their parents had. The few
that survive to maturity then make the long journey all over again,
back to the very same river in order to lay their eggs. And with
that done, they die. Every year is the same."

The Angel turned away from the quiet
struggle going on in the river and continued her stroll along the
bank. Her companion remained watching the fish for a little while,
thinking about all this, before finally running to catch her
up.

“A bit like the old lady," he said, a shade
breathless. “Dying when her time on Earth was up."

“Yes," agreed the Angel, “much like
that."

“Only they wouldn't let her die," added the
boy, “even though she had lived her life and was ready to move
on."

“They wouldn't." The Angel gave away nothing
and they walked on in silence, the sound of the river now muted by
the rustling of a light breeze creeping around the branches of the
trees.

The boy was still thinking about all this
when they reached the final stretch of the river - the shallow
gravel beds where the salmon spawned. Here was a frenzy of activity
- a boiling melee of fish churning the water almost to a froth:
water that was barely deep enough to contain them.

The females were busy scooping out shallow
redds in the gravel - nests in which to lay their eggs. Around them
male fish fought and jostled to get in position above a female so
they could mate. As each female dropped her eggs into the redd, the
male covering her sprayed them with his milt. The fish then washed
a protective covering of gravel over the fertilised eggs with their
tails, before swimming away to die.

In the midst of this frantic, all-consuming
activity smaller fish were darting about, snatching up and eating
eggs before even they reached the gravel; while younger salmon hid
beneath their big sisters, adding their sperm to that of the
rightful mates above. Practising, perhaps.

As he watched spent, emaciated fish drifting
away downstream, uncaring, their thin bodies tearing on rocks and
stones, the boy thought again of the old lady in the story. No
doctors to stop this lot, he thought.

The Angel broke into his reverie. “Look at
them," she was saying. “Torn, diseased, starved and exhausted from
the journey; they've had enough. But they've done what they came to
do. Now it's all over; and they can die in peace.

“Can you imagine," she went on, “battling
all this far; struggling over weirs, evading fishermen and
poachers, fighting otters and the like, your quest so urgent you
even fail to eat, then finding that the river is endless? That you
must follow it forever, fighting and starving all the way, yet
never reach the spawning grounds? Never reach the end of the
struggle?

“Can you imagine a life with no attainable
goal? No end? No death to bring peace when the time comes?"

“That," said the boy, visibly shaken,
“sounds like a vision of Hell."

“Exactly," said the Angel. “And what is it
that saves the salmon from such a fate? What is it that would bring
peace to the old lady in the story if the doctors didn't meddle?
What is it that enables cycles to begin and end? And begin again?
What is it that prevents us from being imprisoned in crude,
material bodies for all of Eternity? What brings all things on
Earth to a close?"

“Time," said the boy quietly.

“Time," echoed the Angel.
“
TIME
was the
guardian's second gift to the Earth. Time to live; and when
living's done, to die. Time to learn; and when learning's done, to
die. Time for toil and strife; and when that is done, to die. Time
for dying; and when that is done, to live anew.

“Time brings change. It begins and ends all
things. With the gift of Time, we can now safely live on Earth,
knowing that all things must end. Knowing always that one day we
will return home. That is the secret of the gift of Time."

o ------------------------
o

~
The Third Gift
~

Charlie’s Angel

FAR AWAY at sea, many miles from the land of
the Snow Queen, a small sailing ship was battling for survival in a
fierce winter storm. Deeply laden with pearls and spices, silks,
precious metals, artefacts and all manner of aphrodisiacs for the
nobles of the Snow Queen's court, the little vessel was struggling
to round the notorious Cape of Storms. It was the dead of winter
and she was beating hard against a full gale to try and squeeze
through the narrow gap left between land and ice-cap.

And the wind had shifted as she stood close
inshore for a favourable eddy in the current. A scant five miles
off the coast she had found herself suddenly on a dangerous lee
shore. Instead of battling to round the Cape, she was now battling
to avoid being blown onto it; onto the jagged rocks that fringed
that inhospitable coastline, far too close, yet invisible in the
wild blackness of that howling wintry night.