The Seven Gifts Read Online Free Page B

struck
hard in the neck by one of the guards' spears. Travelling with a
force that no human could have imparted, it knocked the singer
right off his feet, hurling him backwards and nailing him in a
cloud of spraying blood to the front of the huge leopardskin bass
drum.
    The music stopped instantly. An eerie
silence fell on the room like a blanket, stifling every tiny sound.
Coalhole Custer hung motionless, spreadeagled and dying in the
middle of the stage.
    The tableau remained, still, in a silent
snowfall of soot and dust; the only sound the soft crackle of
subdued flames. Coalhole Custer's old thirteen string guitar lay on
the floor at his feet, where it had fallen.
    As the dust slowly settled on its strings it
began quietly to play, alone, with no human intervention. The
tranquil notes, clear and liquid in their simplicity, curled
cleanly upwards through the few remaining rafters, to fall like
crystal rain around the dying singer's face.
    Coalhole Custer opened bloodshot eyes that
were squinted in pain. With a supreme effort he twisted his head
and gazed upwards into the blackness of the night sky. And as the
guitar notes sprinkled on his upturned face he called out, slowly
and agonisingly:
     
    “There ... goes ... my ... last ...
band."
     
    Then he died.
     
    And his death aroused a great wrath
    in the music he had formed.
    Around his empty body
    the discords gathered like storm clouds,
    sweeping all that was harmonious before
them,
    and the stars were darkened
    as Coalhole Custer's music went to war
    with the very demons it had itself brought
forth.
     
    For it came not to bring peace
     
     
    o ------------------------
o
    The young boy closed the
book on the First 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
     
     
    Country Garden
    THE ANGEL looked up and smiled as the boy
approached. She was on her knees raking out a patch of soil near
the far end of her cottage garden.
    “How do you think the garden is looking?"
she called out. The boy sighed ruefully. Nothing in life is ever
straightforward, he thought. First the story; now the Angel. Why
approach something directly when you can go round the houses; or
perhaps the garden in this case. Any faint hopes he had held of the
whole business being cancelled when he couldn't find the gift
vanished. The Angel would coax it out of him if it took all of
Eternity. The gift was in the story somewhere and she would make
him find it. The thought was faintly amusing, almost.
    “Very nice," he replied noncommittally. He
glanced around. It was actually a rather interesting garden:
untidy, unstructured, but curiously beautiful; with an air of
something slightly mysterious about it; almost magical. He couldn't
figure out why.
    There seemed to be no order to the garden.
Everything was just stuffed into the ground here and there, with no
attempt at creating patterns of flowerbeds or complementary sweeps
of colour. It was a shambles really, and yet strangely attractive.
Some subtle structural notion of the Angel's no doubt lay behind it
all. But he couldn't for the life of him see what it was. He walked
over to where she was still grubbing around in the soil.
    “What are you doing?" he asked. Keep cool,
he thought. Let her raise the subject of the gifts.
    “Someone gave me a geranium," she said, “and
I thought I'd plant it over here where it'll get the sun." She
pointed to a little red-petalled flower in a pot by the wall.
“Pretty, isn't it?" The boy nodded.
    “I think this will be a good place for it,"
she continued, “don't you?"
    It was a casual question, such as anyone
might lob into a conversation about plants. But the boy knew the
Angel better than that. She was throwing him a line - and he caught
it.
    “So long as Coalhole Custer doesn't come
along and blow it all to bits." He thought he detected the glimmer
of a smile on the Angel's face; but she carried on raking