The Seven Gifts (17 page)

And there they remained. The natives were
friendly, there was plenty of food and water ashore, and there was
nowhere else to go. Above them, unseen, the Fairy Tern circled,
watching her dolphin as each day he went out to sea to seek out and
bring in more straggling ships from the very jaws of the beast.

“He asks for nothing,” the Master said to
George one day some weeks later, “and gives everything. What drives
him, I wonder? What do you suppose goes on in that head of
his?”

No-one knew. But the sailors aboard the many
ships that now lay anchored safely around the lagoon cared for and
cherished their dolphin. Nets were cast in the shallow bays for the
fish that Pilot Jack would drive towards them, and the men always
made sure the dolphin got his share. There was little else they
could do for him as he seemed to need nothing; only, perhaps, their
companionship. But the warmth of their feelings for him spread into
their feelings for one another, so what they could not give him
they shared amongst themselves. It was a happy little community.
And a lonely, wandering dolphin seemed at last to have found
himself a purpose.

Yet the Fairy Tern remained.

As did the wreckers. And they did not share
the sailors' love for the dolphin that deprived them of so much
business.

One dark night, late while the sailors
slept, they rowed out stealthily into the lagoon and netted the
dolphin. They dragged him to shore and hung him up on a tree by the
water's edge to die of dehydration, and from the cuts and gashes
and bruises where they had beaten him almost senseless in their
rage.

George and the Master found him early the
next evening when they were out collecting fruit. He was dead by
then. And their beloved dolphin was no longer white and pure, but
torn and battered, smeared with black, congealed blood and crawling
with flies. He hung from the tree like rotting carrion.

The two men stood for a moment in stunned
silence. Then George went berserk.

“It's the wreckers! The filth, the scum!” He
broke down and wept.

Then the old gardener's horror turned to
cold anger. “Get me a gun,” he snarled at the Master. “Get me a
gun!”

The Master, who seemed very calm, gripped
his friend's arm tightly. Although his own body trembled from his
attempts to hold back the revulsion, and the instinctive desire for
retribution that surged through him like a wave, he managed somehow
to speak quietly.

“No, George,” he said. “No. He would not
want that. He loved us all, and he would have saved them from
themselves, just as he saved us all from the beast, if they had
only let him.” His whole body shook from the emotions he was
suppressing. “I know how you feel, George, believe me,” he almost
cried, “but it would be wrong to compound evil with more of the
same. Let it be, George. Remember what happened in your garden.
There is evil trying to grow here but we must not feed it, we must
not let it spread to us. It would wreck everything he did, and
everything he stood for.”

The Master reached out with his knife and
cut down the body of the white dolphin. Then he turned back to
George.

“He's not gone, George. They can destroy his
body, but as long as we don't succumb to this evil he will live on
in us, and in our children and our children's children; if we hold
true to what he has taught us.”

He paused, and stared for a long while out
over the lagoon, as though a thought had struck him. Then he
continued: “You know, George, we're none of us the same people we
were.”

High above them the Fairy Tern wheeled on
her long white wings and left. Her job was done: Pilot Jack had
found his purpose. And the Master and George buried him,
companionably close to a lonely, leafless tree, whose solitude
seemed to cry for sustenance.

And as the last of the Earth closed over the
white dolphin

faint wisps of a strange, familiar music
began to swirl

around the grave, rising like early morning
mist

into the tangled, thirsting roots of a
tree

destined to be for ever nourished

by the death of this dolphin

~ Then the singer came ~

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

The young boy walked for a
long while after this final story

away from the lonely tower
and down towards the sea

where there grew a
tree

curiously shaped like a
guitar with too many strings

And with him went his
thoughts

And beside him walked the
Angel

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

I Come Not to Bring
Peace

THE ANGEL watched the young boy trudging
wearily along the sand, his hands deep in his pockets and his head
bowed low. She saw him stop and talk to some fishermen hauling
their nets by the shore.

It seemed unfair, she thought, for one so
young to have such responsibility and such loneliness. To be
incarcerated yet again in a physical body, isolated from the
familiarity of his own world, and faced with a task of this
immensity, was beyond what anyone could reasonably expect. Yet he
expected it of himself. Accepted it quietly.

He was stronger, she suspected, than anyone
knew; more resilient than perhaps even he realised. He would
survive this ordeal, as he had the last. And at this attempt she
was certain he would succeed in blowing wide open the recurring
cycle that gripped his beloved Earth. Particularly as this time he
would have a little assistance on her part.

He would find out, of course; and he would
remember the stories when he discovered the situation. But it
seemed to her that he deserved a little help. He knew as well as
she that only through suffering could a man gain true
understanding. But surely that applied to the people of Earth no
less than it did to him? It was not right, she felt, that he should
take on all the suffering himself.

He had to the first time, to make a
necessary point. But that point had been made now. If those who
lived on the Earth were ever to understand his gifts, it seemed
fairly obvious to her what had to be done. And she had exercised
her not inconsiderable talents to ensure that it was.

She watched the boy walk away from the water
till he found a large rock at the edge of a pool. He sat down on
the rock and, with his elbows resting on his knees, he lowered his
chin into the palms of his hands and stared out to sea.

There was just one problem, the Angel
reflected. Her slight modification to the general run of events on
Earth might make it rather difficult for his final, and most
precious gift to be accepted. On the other hand, she knew that
without her assistance he would have just as much difficulty
getting any of the gifts accepted as he had had the last time.
Something had to be changed, and someone other than the boy had to
change it. He would never have countenanced what she had done if he
had known.

Well, no doubt he would sort that problem
out. He had read the stories; he knew how these things were done.
Besides, it would do the people of Earth no harm at all to make a
bit of an effort in the aftermath. Hopefully they might have learnt
something by then. If they had not, they never would.

She walked slowly down the beach towards the
rock upon which the boy still sat, still staring out to sea. She
had no doubts that he now knew who he was, and what he had to do.
And what his seventh gift was.

The Angel stood quietly behind him for a few
moments, alone with her thoughts and her singer; then she closed
her eyes and looked deep into her mind, down onto the still-smoking
rubble piled high up where the old Snow Queen's palace had once
stood. She watched the rubble slowly erupt in an expanding mushroom
of dust and stones as her wild, yellow-haired singer emerged with
his band and once more headed across the kingdom, spreading yet
again fear and hatred amongst those remaining as he sang new songs
drawn from mountains no man had seen. His music raged ahead across
the land, a wild, swirling cloud of chords laying waste like
locusts to all that was soulless before it. No building, no
business, no graven image, no icon, no treasure, no wealth, no
monument, no falsehood, no priest, no king, no courtier, no Prince
could stand beside this music - only people. People were all that
his passing spared; and a great fear was wrought in many on seeing
this.

And their fears were fanned by the breath of
the dying Beast into a hot and foetid hatred that clamoured for the
death of the singer's songs. But the bandmaster could no longer be
destroyed, for he marched now with Nellie Matilda at his right hand
and Henrietta on his shoulder, and ahead of him went the
philosophers, the gardeners and the sailors, to prepare the
way.

These disciples built with him a new kingdom
that would one day enable the young boy to break the people's
bonds, for they worked with tools the others had not possessed.

In the wake of the band the young boy walked
alone and calm through the scattered human debris, seeking
survivors amongst the emotional wreckage of the Angel's actions. No
bitterness accompanied him for he now understood why she had done
this thing. And as he walked, those capable still of seeing such on
this sad and lonely Earth saw who he was and reached out, like
drowning men, for the gifts he offered. And to each he gave
gladly.

Then from the spirits of these few his seven
precious gifts spread inexorably, like slow ripples on a pond, into
the spirits of their children, and thence their children's children
and their children's children's children; until eventually the day
came when all the people on Earth were imbued with the spirit and
the essence of the young boy's gifts.

Then the gifts awakened a
new Spring that threw off the shackles of the Angel's Winter and
the people at last grew straight and strong. The veils with which
science and religion had blinded them for so long crumpled and fell
away from their minds, and they saw
Space
and
Time
and
Consciousness
coalesce into a
solitary unified vision; and a fresh cycle of understanding finally
began.
Harmony
swirled through this genesis like a thousand wheeling honey
bees spiralling kaleidoscopically outward to drive all distrust
from the land; and the Philosopher's
Wisdom
spread ever into the souls of
the people, until its swelling power and glory drove the final
floundering remnants of Lucifer into the chains of his
thousand-year exile.

The people could now turn
themselves inward towards the one true goal worthy of the spirit of
a man -
Eternity
.
And the young boy's seventh and final gift gave the inspiration and
strength needed for this great journey into the farthest reaches of
their souls:

Like the white dolphin, his most precious
gift of them all

-
LOVE
-

swam soundless and endless through all their
hearts; guiding them ever onward, safely away from the spiritual
death and darkness of their earthly materialism towards the true
destiny of immortal men.

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

The young boy brought all
this to them

with a little help from the
Angel

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

And as we each of us now go also through our
own endless personal cycles of hope and disillusionment;

as each one of us struggles to free his
soul

from the chains of these material bonds;

as each of us seeks to strengthen his
spirit

for the singer,

so the Angel

- through the eyes of her Fairy Tern -

watches us too.

For this is not the end of the story

This is the beginning

The end of the story we write ourselves

with a little help from the Angel:

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

‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon
earth,

where moth and rust doth corrupt,

and where thieves break through and
steal:

but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven,

where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt,

and where thieves do not break through nor
steal

for where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also’

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

Then will the Fairy Tern wheel on her long
white wings

and leave

The Angel will wipe away all the tears from
our eyes

And we none of us

will ever again

be the people we were

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

‘Be not forgetful to
entertain strangers: for thereby

some have spoken with the
Angel unawares.’

- loosely taken from
Hebrews 13:2