The Seven Gifts

by John Mellor

  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.

  High up on the swaying yardarms snow and sleet whistled out of the darkness to clutch at the seamen's frozen fingers, as they fought to subdue flogging, ice-laden canvas. The ship was overwhelmed. Sail had to be furled and lashed to the yards before the screaming wind ripped the masts out of her. If it did, that would be the end. To stay off the shore, she had to keep sailing, somehow.

  Great creaming waves hissed and tumbled out of the night, roaring like thunder, to curl and break in torrents on the heaving decks. The little ship staggered and struggled to pull herself free of the tons of foam and spuming water which roared the length of her decks, ripping away stanchions and lockers as it went. The men working in the w
aist leapt for the lifelines, hanging on grimly as each wave washed over the ship. As it poured away, spent, through the open scuppers, the men would drop back to the deck and heave away again on the braces, trying desperately to trim the few remaining sails to the wind.

  All through that long nightmare the seamen worked without pause - trimming braces and sheets, heaving on buntlines and securing frozen gaskets round sails that were as stiff as wood. And all the while the wind screamed incessantly and plucked at their hands and oilskins like a living creature. And the sea plucked at the ship, flinging her here and there like a cork.

  Throughout it all the Captain stood alone on the windswept poop, numb with tiredness. One arm was deep in the pocket of his oilskin, the other hooked firmly round the weather mizzen rigging. It was the second night of the storm and he had not moved since it began, save to gesture orders to the Mate. It was impossible to shout against the screaming wind. Impossible almost to move. Impossible almost to breathe at times.

  In twenty four hours, he estimated, they had struggled perhaps half a mile from the coast, most of that at the beginning of the first night, before the storm had reached its full ferocity. Now, he thought they were losing ground. It was hopeless to try and navigate in those conditions. Only his years of experience enabled him to sense the ship's progress. And it was that experience which had kept his ship and his men safe for the last twenty four hours.

  No-one could calculate which sails to set, which course to steer; which waves to drive into, which to ease her over gently. No formula could tell him when to push and when to give a little. He had to feel, sense the delicate balance which would keep the ship off the shore without smashing her up against the inhuman forces of wind and sea.

  He stood alone, apparently oblivious to the wind that screamed and dragged the very breath from a man's mouth; oblivious to the waves that reared out of the blackness and fell in great swirling, foaming torrents onto the deck of his tiny ship; seemed barely to notice the faint, drifting cry of a man dragged bodily from his grip on the yardarm, blown away like a feather into the inky nightmare around them.

  While the Mate and his men fought in that hellish wind to control flailing, murderous canvas high up the masts, the Bosun's party struggled grimly on deck, up to their armpits in swirling water, to handle braces and sheets and keep the few remaining sails trimmed so that the little ship would sail. The Captain stood apparently unaware; thinking, feeling and hoping.

  Four men fought with the huge wheel, trying to steer and trim the ship to just the right angle with the wind and sea; tried to feel out that delicate, indefinable course that just might take their ship and her crew to safety.

  The Bosun remembered it all vividly, right up to that big wave. There had seemed a strange lull in the wind and he had looked up from the deck, into the blackness to windward. But it was no longer black. Reaching almost to the truck of the mainmast, barely a ship's length away, breaking, foaming, cascading like a torrential waterfall, gleaming white with hundreds of tons of boiling spray and spume and water, was a wave. The eternal nightmare of every mariner, it was the chance meeting of perhaps a dozen wave-trains, each crest piling atop the others till the weight of water could no longer be sustained.

  Momentum brought the top of it curling over to fall on the game little ship. Masts, yards and sails splintered and crashed to the deck. The pilothouse ripped from its coamings and was smashed out through the bulwarks. Hatches and deckbeams caved in under the sheer weight of water, and broken men floated like dolls in the swirling foam. The Bosun was washed clear through a gaping hole in the bulwark and never saw his ship again. His last sight was the Captain still standing, unmoved, on the poop.

  All this was still sharply etched in the mind of the old Bosun as he lay in the darkness on what felt like a sandy beach. Waves washed over him, but they were small ones - expended remains of ocean growlers that had broken themselves against the land elsewhere. Miraculously, he was somewhere sheltered, somewhere hidden from the rocks that he knew fringed the shore that had been to leeward when the ship went down. He lay there in the darkness for a long time, spluttering occasionally as a wave passed over his head, but unable to move. He gave thanks to God for his deliverance then passed out.

  When he awoke it was daylight. The clouds still tore across the sky, but they were breaking up into patches of blue. The wind was easing, and gradually shifting to blow off the land. It was turning into a nice day.

  The Bosun felt carefully all over his body and was relieved to find that, apart from a few cuts and bruises, he had escaped the wreck unharmed. He sat up gingerly and looked around him. He was lying on a small stony beach between two headlands, beyond which he could see just the wild sea, tumbling away into the distance. He appeared to be in the lee of something. An island perhaps?

  Inshore of the beach was a scraggy cliff tufted with sparse grass. That was all he could see. There was no sign of any life, not even seabirds. All inland away from the storm, he decided. Perhaps there were houses and people. With this hope he pulled himself wearily to his feet and headed slowly towards the cliff, looking for a pathway that would take him to the top. He was too exhausted for rock-climbing.

  The Bosun was no longer a young man, but neither was this his first shipwreck. What he lacked in strength he made up for in experience and resilience. In his own gentle way he was a tough man; as so many gentle people are. He had learnt that himself, over the many years he had spent in fo'c'sles of ships trading far and wide for the merchants of the Snow Queen. The Captain he had just watched go down, standing calmly on his poopdeck, had been such a man - a type found so often at sea. A gentle, unassuming man, with a backbone of steel; firm when he had to be, and scrupulously fair. His first concern had always been his ship; his second his men. For himself, he took nothing.

  And now the Captain was dead, along with most of his men. Drowned while carrying silks and satins home for preening princes and courtiers. But these thoughts no longer angered the Bosun. The contempt he had felt for such men in his youth had turned, over the years, to pity. He and the Captain were the lucky ones, he reflected, to have such clarity of thought as only the sea could give. To see life in its simple forms, uncluttered by all the confusion of riches and social graces; and the obligations and blindness they create. The Captain had found peace, and so, one day, would he.

  The Bosun found himself on an island - a few windswept acres of scrubby moorland, surrounded by the white-flecked seas. Way in the distance he could just see the high peaks of the mainland, as unattainable as Heaven itself. But he was too old a hand to let the disappointment hurt. Shelter and food were the immediate essentials, and he set out to explore his new home: a home, possibly, for the rest of his life. To think of this island as a home was a natural reaction to the old sailor. All his life home had been the particular ship he had been on. In the absence of his ship, this desolate little island would do. It wouldn't occur to him to see it as a prison - that was the city.

  Dusk found the old Bosun comfortably ensconced in a brushwood shelter, a rabbit roasting over the fire. He leaned contentedly against the pile of firewood, whittling himself a simple spear with the seaman's knife that had survived with him. Beyond the crackling of the fire he could just hear the muted roar of the surf. The sound of the sea made him feel more at home. He was lucky. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone else had survived. Why he should have done he didn't know. He simply accepted it.

  Later, with the rabbit reduced to bones that he carefully preserved for making into fish-hooks, the Bosun drank his fill at the nearby stream, then stretched out peacefully on a bed of old leaves. To a shipwrecked mariner it was sheer luxury. He closed his eyes and fell into the deep, untroubled sleep of a child.

  The next morning was clear and windless. As he wandered the island searching for firewood, the Bosun could see that they were no more than about three miles from the mainland. This was a busy trade route and he might well see a passing ship working its way through the straits
on a quiet day. Hopeful of possible rescue, he spent the day building a huge bonfire with which he could signal a distant ship.

  So the days passed for the Bosun; hunting and fishing, making clothes from the skins of animals he caught, and adding bit by bit to his bonfire. But he saw no ships.

  He had been on the island about three weeks by his reckoning when he first saw the skua. It was a Great Skua - a big brown bird like an overgrown seagull, but with the cruel hooked bill of an eagle. Whether it was looking for a place to nest, or just over from the mainland hunting, he didn't know. He saw it circling the small colony of seagulls that lived in a stubbly patch of ground at the far end of the island. He often visited the colony to collect a few eggs as a change from his usual diet of fish and rabbits.

  He stood and watched the skua for a while, circling low down over the squabbling gulls. Then it dived, disappearing behind the steep grassy bank separating him from the gull colony. There was an almighty rumpus as gulls flew off in all directions, squawking and screaming. The Bosun knew that skuas were predatory birds, not above snatching the odd baby seagull, so he dashed across to see what was happening.

  As he topped the rise he could see the bulky brown shape of the skua with its huge wings open, leaping up and down stabbing and pummelling a small seagull. The gull lay on the ground flapping its wings feebly, mewing like a cat. The Bosun ran down the hill shouting and waving his arms. As he got nearer, he stooped to pick up a stone and hurled it in the direction of the marauder. It missed, but the bird was alerted. When it saw the irate Bosun approaching at the run, arms flailing, it backed away hissing, head low down like an angry goose. Then it opted for discretion and took off, winging away in the direction of the distant mainland.

  When the Bosun reached the gull he saw that it was badly injured and bleeding, so he picked it up and quickly wrung its neck. Then he saw the egg nearby. The gull must have been trying to protect it from the skua. He reached down and picked it up to take home for his tea. But as he turned away, the sight of the dead mother made him pause. She had given her life to save that egg; it didn't seem right that he should simply take it home and eat it, as the skua would have done. That made him little better than the seagull's killer.