by John Mellor
“I do," he said with some feeling.
“Well; Eternity," she elaborated, “can be viewed as a series of goals - an infinite progression of spawning grounds, with rest and recovery here between each. It is countless lives and deaths - incarnation and return - each different, each containing something for us to do - something for us to learn.
“Eternity is a never-ending cycle of cycles; and although the Eternal Cycle can never be ended, it can be frozen. It is possible to become trapped in one particular cycle for an indefinite period."
“Wow!" The boy's eyes were wide. “You mean like a salmon that can never reach the spawning grounds?"
“Something like that. We must learn the lessons of each cycle before we can pass onto the next. Just as you have had to learn the secret of each of these books before you could read the next.
“If we do not learn the lessons, we have to go through that cycle again and again until we do. As you would have to read the book over and over until you understood it."
“Wow!" the boy muttered again. “I don't like the sound of that. Does it happen often? Are the lessons very difficult to learn?" He looked worried, perhaps thinking of his own coming lifetime.
The Angel shook her head encouragingly. “No," she said, “the lessons are not difficult to learn. But there are distractions, as you saw in the story of the fifth gift. The learning does require perseverance and a strong will. When these are lacking, it is possible to get caught in a recurring cycle. And the longer one remains in the same cycle, the more difficult it becomes to get out of it.
“Added to which, there are no rest periods, as there are between changing cycles."
The boy whistled. “So the destruction of the Snow Queen's palace, yet again, was a sign of her kingdom being caught up in a recurring cycle?"
“That's right."
“Because of the behaviour of the Queen and her subjects?"
The Angel smiled wryly. “Well, they did not learn much from their lives, did they? Hardly on a par with the philosopher and the bosun, or George for that matter. Or even Coalhole Custer.
“These four all learnt what their lives showed them. And by varying means were released from the recurring cycle that gripped the Snow Queen's kingdom.
“The bosun's sensitivity to his experiences drove him back to his island and away from the trapped kingdom. The philosopher's enforced childhood preserved him automatically from re-entering the cycle, while George was simply left alone by the weed because it knew he had cared for it. Coalhole Custer was literally blown out of the cycle by the power and honesty of his music."
There was a pause. “But what about Henry? The honey bee? Surely he learnt his lesson?"
A smile spread slowly across the Angel's face at the memory of Henry the honey bee, and she took her time answering the boy's question. Finally she said rather enigmatically: “When you have read about the seventh gift you will understand the deeper significance of Henry's experiences, and also those of the old lady dying in hospital."
The boy thought for a moment about all this before he spoke again.
“Well, then presumably the Snow Queen and her kingdom will start life all over again, just as it was before?"
“Yes," said the Angel. “And live it as they did before. And they will go on doing so until they learn what their lives are trying to show them. Only then will they be able to break their bonds and enter a fresh cycle."
“Mmm..." The boy was pensive. “That's some penance," he said. “But...... I still don't quite see how Coalhole Custer fits into all this. I mean, he seemed to be appearing in the recurrence of the cycle. Yet you say he escaped it."
“He did," the Angel confirmed. “Although he appeared as the Snow Queen's cycle began yet again, he was, himself, in a new one. Coalhole Custer, you will discover, is not a part of the Snow Queen's kingdom, so he cannot be trapped in its cycles."
o ------------------------ o
~ The Seventh Gift ~
The Beauty of The Beast
QUITE WHAT Coalhole Custer's guitar and left arm were doing poking out of the smouldering ashes of the Snow Queen's palace, we may never know. A more enquiring mind than George's might have hung around to see what would happen. George, however, had had enough.
So far as he could tell, there was not a living soul left in the land - not a person nor a thing, save only his garden. Perhaps the weeds would take care of that; or maybe that bearded weirdo of a pop singer - if that really was him under the ashes - could do it. For George had no intention of staying around himself.
He took one last long look at the garden, a blaze of colour and cheer amidst the desolate, smoking landscape. It was a nice garden, he thought; who would have believed it could cause so much trouble. He hoped it would be alright without him. He experienced a slight twinge of conscience at leaving it; and almost began to feel that he could be persuaded to stay.
But a sudden rumbling noise from the ashes of the palace persuaded him otherwise. George turned and fled, just as a strange-looking object, that a musician would have recognised as a psychological synthesizer, pushed its ungainly way into the thick, dust-laden daylight. If Coalhole Custer's band really was coming back, George did not want to see it.
The old gardener did not stop running until he reached the coast, where he shipped aboard the first vessel he saw that was bound for foreign lands.
“Anywhere!" he panted, when the Master asked him where he was headed. “Fine," said the Master. “That's where we are going."
So the old man of the land took to the sea. And the clean salt air slowly healed the wounds in his heart, and cleansed his soul of the hurt and hate and anger seared into it by the things he had seen.
More there may have been to what he had seen than the old man saw. But he was a simple soul, and saw only through his eyes.
Later that night, feeling a little calmer, he stood on the bridge with the Master as the old steamship Malachi Jones rolled and rattled her way slowly south, searching for a peaceful harbour far from the ravaged ruins of the Snow Queen's realm. It was a wild, black night, unrelieved by stars or moon. The ship, weary from too many years plodding the seas, wallowed badly, lurching into the waves and shattering them into gleaming sheets of spray that hammered on the bridge windows.
The Master, tall and thin, taciturn at the best of times, was gloomy.
“There's evil about," he muttered to George through the pipe he had clenched tightly between his teeth. “I can smell it in the air."
George shuddered. He had come to sea to get away from that sort of thing.
The Master looked at him sideways. “That weed's not following you, is it?" He spoke tentatively.
George laughed nervously, and glanced over his shoulder. “Don't be ridiculous," he said. But he felt uneasy. He shook his head to try and banish the thoughts that now welled up in his brain. The weed had left him alone. Why should it follow him now? All the same, he peered round in the darkness, the hairs crawling on the back of his neck.
“I don't like it,” said the Master. And at that moment the two of them were rooted by a long, drawn-out, almost bestial scream from somewhere on the poopdeck. As one they whipped round and stared through the after bridge window into the darkness.
But around the stern of the ship it was no longer dark. A strange green light lit up the whole of the poop, and the two men could see a sailor there, crouched on his knees with his hands over his head. Towering above him, and way above the after cargo mast, swaying at the end of a long reptilian neck was a head. Perhaps twice the size of the wheelhouse and oval-shaped like that of a serpent, it glowed bright green, pulsating around a single eye that blazed with the ferocity of a red-hot coal. Above the eye, and clearly visible in the green light that shone around the beast's head, rested a crown of tiny flowers, each one as black as the surrounding night.
George fainted.
The Master stared for what seemed a very long moment, then leapt to the engine room voice-pipe. He wrenched out the
bung and yelled down to the engineer: “Full speed, Jimmy! Everything you've got. There's a bloody monster up here; sea serpent or kraken or something. For God's sake give her the gun!"
He looked back astern over his shoulder, but the beast had not moved. It just hung its great head about fifty feet above the ship, and seemed to watch them. The Master began to shake, then he ran to the wheel and bellowed into a microphone.
“All hands to the bridge. Emergency Stations. Emergency Stations. All hands to the bridge. Bosun - break out the small arms; report to the Master."
The old Malachi Jones strained and heaved and shook as the engineer stoked up his boilers for all the speed he could get. And sailors appeared from all over the ship, running for the bridge with rifles and shotguns.
Then another glowing head appeared, on the port side of the ship. It was identical to the first, even to the crown of tiny black flowers. And another appeared on the starboard side, then two more.
By the time all hands were gathered in the wheelhouse the ship was surrounded by a circle of seven huge green heads, all identical, all with crowns of tiny black flowers. And each one just swayed way up above the ship, staring down as though bemused by what it saw. Or perhaps still looking for what it sought.
None of the heads made any sound, and all seemed to sway in unison, as though they belonged to one single monstrous creature.
Heaven preserve us, thought the Master; it must be ten times the size of the ship. If it attacked them, they were all dead. What was it doing?
For fully half an hour it did nothing, except keep station with the Malachi Jones and peer down on her, with all its seven heads. The ship was bathed completely in the eerie green light, and the sailors clustered terrified in the wheelhouse, clutching their clearly inadequate weapons.
What in heaven's name is it waiting for? the Master wondered. Then George came to. Still groggy, and with no recollection of why he had fainted, he stood up. And the nearest head jabbed viciously at the wheelhouse.
There was a rending crash as wood and glass shattered and splintered, and screams came from the sailors diving for cover. A long slimy tongue, forked at the end like a snake's, licked out and curled round George's body. Then its head came down, and the great eye, blazing like a furnace, peered into the wheelhouse as though inspecting the old gardener.
It hung for a moment. And the Master seized his chance. He grabbed a large rocket flare, aimed it straight into the eye, and yanked the firing pin.
There was a shattering explosion and a shower of sparks filled the wheelhouse. The beast's head jerked up with a bellow that blew the remnants of the wheelhouse roof right out into the sea; and it dropped George.
My God, thought the Master, it's after the old man. He looked round frantically. George was sprawled in a corner clutching his head, and the Master could see another tongue snaking out towards him.
In one bound he was across the bridge. He grabbed George by the shoulders and practically threw him down the companionway to the radio shack.
“Lock him up!" he yelled at the petrified radio operator.
George fell to his knees on the floor of the tiny, steel-clad room. As seven reptilian heads crashed into the broken wheelhouse in a desperate bid to seek him out, he put his hands together and prayed with all his heart and soul to the Old Wise Woman to deliver them from this evil.
Amidst all the panic and screams, and the crash of firearms and flares, no-one noticed the dense cloud suddenly break apart over to the south-west. It revealed a round glistening full moon, that threw a path of light across the sea towards the troubled ship. In the light, racing towards them was a dolphin: a pure white dolphin that shone like a leaping halo as it bounded down the streaming silver pathway of moonlight.
The Master was the first to see it, clambering to his feet as the beast withdrew its heads on failing to find George. Why don't I just throw him overboard? he was thinking, then perhaps this damned thing will leave us alone.
Then he saw the white dolphin. The Master of the Malachi Jones, like most experienced seamen, had grown up with the legend of the white dolphin, which was reputed to appear at times when a ship was in great distress, and then guide it to safety. The Master knew nothing of the origins of this tale, nor the reasons for the dolphin's rumoured behaviour, but deep in the recesses of his mind the ancient race memory of his breed awoke at the familiar sight of the dolphin surging through dark seas towards a stricken ship. If the Master could have tuned in to this memory he would have seen the very first stirrings of the legend begin to form.
He would have seen circling way above a small, lonely white dolphin a Fairy Tern, which was a small white bird, rather delicate in appearance with long pointed wings, to whom everything was possible and all things had meaning. She had been following the solitary white dolphin for some days now as he ploughed his lonely way through the cold southern seas, and she listened to his thoughts - the ones he understood; and also the ones he did not.
They were strange thoughts for a dolphin: thoughts that had so perturbed his peers they had cast him out of the school to wander the seas alone, disturbing the balance of only himself.
And so he roamed, sensing somewhere a solution to the troubles that seemed to be all his thoughts brought him; searching endlessly within himself and without for the tiniest clue as to where those thoughts might lead.
The more he searched the more he learnt; and the less he seemed to understand. As each piece clicked into place in the puzzle, so the final picture seemed to recede a little further, into the depths where perhaps a dolphin's thoughts should not go.
His confusion turned gradually to bewilderment: then despair; and finally fear as the conflicting images whirled into a crescendo of doubts that the little dolphin's brain seemed incapable of containing.
Yet he clung still, to the train of thought that he knew must ultimately lead him from the dark tunnel into light. And as he struggled with the demons that would hold him in the darkness, the depth, intensity and sincerity of his anguish drew to him the Fairy Tern.
For six days and six nights she followed the stricken young dolphin but did nothing, save perhaps test his resolve. And on the seventh day, although he was never to know it, he was no longer alone.
But he sensed something: an easing of the tension perhaps; a semblance of clarity creeping into his thoughts. There was no great revelation, but for some unaccountable reason he felt calmer. The fog that filled his brain seemed to clear a little, and he began vaguely to see some sort of way ahead.
And what he saw, as the Fairy Tern circled lazily far above him, was a small sailing ship crossing ahead of his path.
In itself, this was of no great import. He had seen ships before and knew they were sailed by men. And he knew something of men, from the tales of his elders - legends and stories of a certain inexplicable relationship that seemed to exist between them and dolphins. No-one knew why or when the relationship had begun, but their history was filled with stories of both creatures working together to catch fish; and also tales of dolphins rescuing men from the sea - which was to them an alien environment.
He had never thought much about this before, but suddenly, now, the whole curious business seemed to fill his head with anomalies and unresolved questions. And as he pondered on this strangeness, he realised that something was niggling at the back of his brain. Something to do with that sailing ship ahead. Where was it going, he wondered?
Idly he checked its course with his sonar. As it registered, he felt his body stiffen, his nerves jangling. Casting aside his musings, he double-checked the course, then carefully probed the waters out ahead of the ship. She was running straight towards a jagged reef close beneath the surface. He had to warn the sailors.
The little white dolphin, all confusion gone, fairly flew through the water towards the endangered ship. He circled it close at great speed, leaping constantly from the water in an attempt to attract attention.
A small knot of sailors soon gathered at the rai
l to watch the unusual sight of a pure white dolphin cavorting like a mad thing around their ship. They were used to dolphins swimming ahead of them, diving deep in the night to leave glowing tunnels of phosphorescence in the water behind them; interwoven in magic trails of light about the ship's course. They were said by some to bring storms when they leapt high in the daytime, but sailors liked dolphins. They sensed, perhaps, this curious relationship.
However, none of these sailors had ever seen a white dolphin before, nor one that leapt around so wildly as this one, and they stared in fascination, cheering him on.
But when the dolphin began swimming purposefully ahead of the ship, then suddenly turning to starboard, repeating the manoeuvre time and again, an old Able Seaman sensed something amiss and ran for the Captain.
The Captain, who was a very experienced seaman, took one look at the dolphin's antics and ordered the wheel put hard to starboard. He had seen this behaviour before, and knew one fellow master who had wrecked his ship through ignoring it.
The moment the ship altered to a safe course, the dolphin leapt high in the air, landing flat on the water with a colossal splash. Then he swam rapidly back and forth along the ship's new track, porpoising smoothly to indicate to the watching sailors that all was now well.
The Captain waved his thanks to the white dolphin, then returned to the chartroom to check his position; but the other sailors remained at the rail, waving and cheering till the warmth of their feelings flowed right across the water and into the dolphin's now tired body.
The little dolphin felt a glow in his heart that he had not known since he could remember. He felt a joy that he had not believed possible. And he felt a certainty of purpose that he never thought he would find.
Men were adrift on this ocean, in constant danger from rocks and storms. Alone in a hostile world.
But to the little white dolphin it was home: it was his world and he knew and understood it. It was for him to guide these men to safety. That was the tradition. That, surely, was his purpose.