The Seven Gifts

by John Mellor

  He that overcometh shall inherit all things

  and I will be his God, and he shall be my son

  The Seven Gifts

  - that came to Earth

  John Mellor

  “One of those unique & wonderful manuscripts

  that come one’s way all too rarely”

  - London publisher

  © 2010 : JohnMellor @ 7-books.net

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover Art by Sarah-Jane Lehoux

  o ------------------------ o

  Reviews

  The Nelson Mail

  “Brilliant, wise and funny book . . .

  lingers in your head like a piece of music”

  Inkweaver Review

  “A highly unusual book . . . walks that

  fine line between profound and insane”

  The Book Bee

  “everyone will take something from this novel

  that will stay with them for a long time”

  Luxury Reading

  “the most enjoyable book I have read in a long time

  .. something of importance I hope will touch everyone”

  Zuzka @ Goodreads

  “Some things linger in mind long after you read it.

  it is really a wonderful, unique book”

  o ------------------------ o

  Story

  This story is for my friend Michèle,

  who talked to me about such things

  And for my children

  who I hope will do the same

  A young boy must undertake a rite of passage, the like of which we cannot begin to imagine. The time has come for seven precious gifts, bestowed on the Earth by its guardian, to be revealed. The boy is charged by an Angel to find and understand them. He must read seven books, whose stories hide the gifts.

  The mysterious books defy our earthly sense of normal, and challenge even this boy's perceived reality as he seeks to unveil the secrets of the seven gifts; and the enigma of the Angel; and the reason for himself.

  When the books close, the gifts will no longer be hidden,

  the Angel no longer veiled; and the boy no longer a boy.

  And we no longer who we were.

  o ------------------------ o

  ~ The Seven Gifts ~

  Custer’s Last Band

  Seven Days in the Death

  of Nellie Matilda

  Charlie’s Angel

  The Flight of a Honey Bee

  The Philosopher’s Stone

  George and the Weed

  The Beauty of the Beast

  o ------------------------ o

  ~ The Angel ~

  Country Garden

  The Journey

  Gone Fishing

  Leaning on a Gate

  Get Thee Behind Me

  The Neverending Story

  I Come Not to Bring Peace

  o ------------------------ o

  The Angel’s Story

  ‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols’

  IT WAS a simple story that the Angel told; and it was couched for these times, in which we read it.

  She took her theme from St Paul: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things'. Then she wove those words around a little girl to whom everything was still possible and all things had meaning.

  With such convictions, it was natural for the little girl to assume that life was straightforward and just as it seemed. It was plain, for instance, that the sun went down in the evening so that everyone could sleep, and rose again in the morning to wake them up. The fairies that she could see at the bottom of her garden were clearly there, even though no adults seemed able to see them.

  It was quite obvious to the little girl - long before it became so to the scientists - that if she could imagine something then it must exist. Thus her world was full of wonder and magic; peopled by daring and handsome Princes who rescued damsels in distress, saved woodcutters and milkmaids from tyranny, and rode fine white chargers across the land, their goodness proudly emblazoned across their hearts.

  Good fought with Evil all through the early years of her life, and Good always triumphed. And so life for a little girl was simple, and she had no difficulty in understanding what St Matthew had really meant when he said: ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.'

  But her elders had no more idea of the real truth behind those words than they had of the theme that St. Paul has threaded through this story. They translated his words according to the dictionary; then smiled at the smug illusion of their maturity. Life was considerably more complex than any little girl could imagine, what with stock exchanges and mortgages, pension funds and life assurance, technology, social mores and atom bombs.

  St Paul was right. And it was the bounden duty of adults to make little girls grow up and face the true facts of modern, civilised life. And that, undaunted by dreams, was what they did.

  So the little girl was coerced out of childhood; and she carefully put away all her childish things, according to the example set her.

  She laid aside her childish charm and wonder, and drew on the mantle of acquisitive adulthood. She replaced her trust and simple honesty with a grown-up worldliness, and the sophisticated pragmatism that comes with maturity. And she came to view the world with the sad eye of the realist: a bleak and practical world with no magic.

  And with her dreams died also her beliefs. For who could prove that Jesus lived? Or Matthew wrote? Their storybook, whose parables and pictures had inspired so many of her dreams, was discarded in favour of more realistic and socially orientated writings: the intellectual and literary fashions of her day.

  The little girl settled herself - as she had been taught - to the rewards and responsibilities of citizenship. And she grew into a modern young woman, aware of and sensitive to her own important needs and desires; and knowing her rightful niche in the community.

  Her life, which had once been so open and inquisitive, shrank into a solid, firmly structured matrix, built entirely around the need for material comfort. In this respect she was a fortunate young woman, for she lived in a time when there was no work for the majority, and consequently generous social benefits to compensate. She had a nice home and car, regular holidays abroad, sufficient money for her comfort and needs, and the time to pursue her own important desires. Any struggle would have to be of her own making.

  But she made nothing. In the company of her peers, she sank slowly and steadily, and quite willingly, into the seductive quicksands of mature adulthood. And as those sands dragged her remorselessly ever downward so, beneath the seeming indifferent gaze of the Angel, her spirit gradually died over the years, until finally only her body remained: a firm, lithe, sensual body, moulded to the mood of the time. She was bright, vivacious and socially aware: a most attractive young woman devoid of all childish things, and all childish dreams.

  It was a sad story; and there were few that realised. For it was a story of the time, and they were all in that time.

  Had they been in another time they might have understood the dangers of this one. She herself might even have understood. For every time has its own individual qualities; its own spiritual tide against which it is folly to fight. Though the rewards can be great.

  But the young girl did not fight. Her elders had drawn a veil over her mind and left her only eyes with which to see. So she never saw her adversary. And she died without ever knowing there was one.

  o ------------------------ o

  All this the Angel knew well

  As did the girl; for she had chosen it

  o ------------------------ o

  In the
Beginning

  THE ANGEL finished her story and then walked with the boy in silence, towards a tall, thin building that stood alone at the far end of the sands. Lights twinkled from the high, narrow windows, and they could see tiny dots of people entering and leaving by the small door at its base.

  The boy broke the silence. “A pity she had to grow up," he said. “But it was a funny time to choose to live, wasn't it, with all those problems?"

  The Angel smiled. “No," she answered. “It was a rather interesting time in fact. It was the beginning of an important change in the lives of all the people on Earth - the time when the seven gifts of its guardian were to be unveiled."

  The boy looked at her quizzically.

  The Angel explained: “When the Earth was created its guardian endowed it with seven special gifts. But the awareness of these gifts was to remain dormant until the time came when the people of Earth had grown sufficiently to understand them. The little girl's life was the beginning of that time.

  “She wanted to experience the early stages of the change - the distant sense of a new age of consciousness gradually, almost imperceptibly spreading its tentacles throughout the dying spasms of the old. In this story, she was freed from the need to work but had lost her child's simple understanding of how to replace it. When the gifts are finally revealed, all the people will `become as little children’, and regain that understanding.

  “She knew nothing of the seven gifts; only that it was a time of important and far-reaching change. You will be living on the Earth shortly after her, but before you go you must learn the secrets of these seven gifts."

  The boy was surprised. “But why?" he asked. “I don't think I want to know all that. How can I live a normal life if I learn all that before I go? Nobody else has to. Why do I?"

  The Angel turned her face away from his enquiring gaze, towards the darkening sea. A flicker of sadness showed briefly in her eyes. Only when it had gone did she turn back to him.

  “We all have things we must do," she explained gently, “and this is something you must do."

  “But ..."

  “Don't argue!" the Angel interrupted him brusquely. But then her tone softened and she went on: “You will find out why soon enough. Now I am going to show you seven books, each of which contains a story illustrating one of the gifts. You must read these stories carefully, then come to me after each one to show me that you fully comprehend the significance of the gift. When you have read all seven, you should understand the purpose of the guardian's seven gifts, and the reason for them being unveiled at this time. Then you will know why you have to do this.

  “I cannot tell you what the gifts are. It is important that you find them for yourself."

  They entered the building with the high, narrow windows, stood alone at the end of the sands, and began to climb the stairs. The Angel took the boy to a small room right at the top of the building which contained a chair, a table and a single shelf. On the shelf were seven books. She showed him the books and then left.

  o ------------------------ o

  ~ The First Gift ~

  Custer's Last Band

  FAR BEYOND the mountains that encircled the kingdom of the Snow Queen, deep within the swirling high altitude mists forever present in those regions, there lived, in a small cave cleft between two rocks, a retired rock 'n' roll singer called Coalhole Custer. He was a strange man, as befits his calling, with a wild beard and long, flowing yellow hair. His music had been way ahead of its time and so he had retired (not entirely voluntarily), penniless and unappreciated at the age of thirty three, to live alone in the mountains with only the company of a small cat and his thirteen string guitar.

  But Coalhole Custer was content. He had room to breathe that clean, rarefied air that sparkled forever round the mountaintops, and he had time for his thoughts. The solitude of those mountains freed his mind and let it fly to all manner of strange places, in a way that musicians' drugs had never been able to. He was happy simply to dream his dreams and sing his songs, and allow his restless mind to wander whither it would. And his cat was all the companionship he needed. Those crowds of weirdos that used to surround him at the court of the Snow Queen held no attraction anymore. They had never understood his music and he had never understood them. In truth, he had never even liked them. Trivial was the word that sprang to mind whenever his memories recalled them. He was missing nothing.

  On calm summer evenings he would sit quietly outside the cave, puffing on his pipe and gently stroking the cat. He would watch the glowing red ball of the sun slowly sink beyond the twinkling, distant lights of the Snow Queen's city. At times he fancied he could hear music, drifting up on the thermals and attenuating in the thin, clear air far from that city.

  Rubbish, he would think to himself; utter rubbish. No idea at all, any of them. Same old emotive diatonic junk: froth for filling meringues - or the minds of citizens. And his cat would purr in agreement, feline disdain twitching its whiskers.

  He wrote his music for the mountains now, and for the heavens that seemed so close around him. This was real music, dragged up from the depths of his soul: music that soared above the minds of mortal citizens; that suffused the earth, enveloping it, enjoining it, and drawing it up, rejoicing, to meet the gods that truly made it. For Coalhole Custer knew that he no longer stood alone in the forming of his music.

  And in between times he would walk the foothills with his cat, the old thirteen string guitar slung over his shoulder. In his mouth would be the special thirteen-note Pipes of Pan, built for him by an old radical sculptor who had been banished from the kingdom for carving images of truth. For the Queen's people desired only illusion - shadows behind which they could hide. Even the soil of the Earth was hidden by concrete. The brothels were garnished with fairy lights and the people's faces painted with ochre, their clothes tailored to deceive. Their smiles belied the material machinations constantly occupying their meringue-like minds. Truth was a dream, metamorphosing only in the clean air of the mountains.

  Coalhole Custer breathed it in deeply. Down into his lungs and around his heart it flowed, to be formed finally into music and expelled through the pipes, forever in his mouth. And the music of the gods, set free by this man, took wing and ranged all around the mountains, reaching into every crevice and every creeping thing. It filled the plants and diffused into the Earth; it formed into the songs of birds and the whirring of insects, it shaped the clouds. It brought the winds and softened the rain, and reached out for the sun. But it never reached the city.

  At that time the city was in something of a turmoil, owing to the impending Coming-of-Age of the Queen's daughter, the beautiful Ice Princess. The trouble was caused by the Princess's nature, which was as cold as her name. Nothing was good enough in the preparations for the Grand Ball. The decorations - holly plucked from a thousand trees throughout the Queen's domain; castles sculpted from ice; fountains and rare flowers; her name picked out in the lights from ten thousand glow-worms - were tawdry. The specially-made gown - designed by the greatest couturier in the kingdom, assembled by a hundred hand-picked seamstresses from the finest silk of faraway lands - was cheap. The Queen's coach - fashioned from ice of the deepest blue and drawn by twelve golden reindeer, bred for this purpose alone - was uncomfortable. And the band was abysmal.

  All the bands were abysmal. The Princess had listened to thirty seven of them, each one worse than the last. “Can no-one write decent music in this God-forsaken land?" she raged. Everyone around her was incompetent. Would anything ever go right in her life? Did she have to do everything herself?

  She had the holly burned and a thousand more trees cut down; the castles melted and rebuilt to her own design; the fountains destroyed and the flowers dug into cesspits, along with the glow-worms and the designers. She took a carving knife and hacked the gown to shreds then burnt it, along with the couturier. She drove the coach - with the reindeer - over the highest cliff in the kingdom, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks at the edg
e of the ocean; then demanded of her mother that a new one be built. And she banished all thirty seven of the bands into the icy wastes of the glacier region, where Snowman fought with polar bear over the flesh of anything that moved.

  Finally, on the very eve of the ball, she had the decorations to her taste. The gown at long last fitted properly; and a brand-new coach stood at her door with twelve blue reindeer specially captured by the Queen's Hunters after a fierce and bloody battle with the Warriors of the Tundra.

  But still she had not found a band.

  The palace was in consternation. The Queen was in floods of tears, and the King had long since gone to visit his brother on the far side of the ocean. The courtiers gathered to hold council.

  The Chief Minister presided. “I know of no band left in the kingdom," he said simply. He was ready to resign himself to his fate. He looked around with faint hope at all the courtiers gathered in the Meeting Room but they were all reluctant to catch his eye. For a long while there was uneasy silence; then a young courtier at the back stood up. “I know of one," he said.