The Seven Gifts Read Online Free PDF
Author: John Mellor
said: “Go on.”
“Your garden is beautiful,” the boy
continued, “and lives in harmony with itself, simply because
everything is in the right place. The Snow Queen's palace was the
wrong place for Coalhole Custer's music, and the imbalance
generated some sort of destructive discord between the two. In the
end Coalhole Custer's music was presumably the stronger because it
grew out of spirit rather than matter.”
The Angel nodded her head slowly. “His music
was born in the mountains," she explained. “It was created for the
mountains out of the spirit of the mountains, and it should have
stayed in those mountains where it belonged. In the right place it
would have grown strong and beautiful, for it was honest music. It
would have inspired and enriched itself and everything and everyone
around it, for its honesty gave it great power. In the wrong place
its energy was confined and frustrated, and ultimately
destructive.
“Now I think you have found the first gift,"
she concluded.
“Space," said the boy confidently. “The
right part of it. The guardian put the Earth in exactly the right
place; and every thing on it - every rock, plant and animal - was
given its own rightful place in the overall scheme of things. That
is why and how the Earth works, isn't it?"
“Yes," affirmed the Angel.
“ SPACE was the
first gift to the Earth."
o ------------------------
o
~ The Second Gift ~
Seven Days in the
Death
of Nellie
Matilda
IN A small grimy industrial town, far
removed from the splendours of the Snow Queen's city, an old woman
lay dying in a hospital bed. Further along the corridor, and from
which the old woman was equally far removed in a somewhat different
sense, a much younger and very pregnant woman was going into
labour. Whether there is any connection between these two scenarios
I leave you, my long-awaited reader, to decide as the story
progresses.
For all that it was a small grimy industrial
town its hospital had the very latest equipment and first rate
medical staff. The Senior Consultant was greatly respected by his
peers throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom and he had
brought together into this nondescript little hospital a team of
doctors and nurses that was second to no other in the land. Just
why this should have happened has no relevance to the story so we
shall not pursue it. Suffice it to say that the hospital was the
best; and that does have some bearing on the matter in hand.
The old woman's name was Nellie Matilda
Johnson, although she had been born an Arkwright. William Johnson,
her much beloved husband, had died some two years previously at the
very respectable age of ninety-two. Nellie was now eighty-six and
very lonely as she had outlived even her children, who had both
died sadly young.
But Nellie was not sad as such. She had had
a good and happy life with no regrets, and now that the time was at
hand for her to depart it she was ready. Not everyone in the Snow
Queen's kingdom believed that death was just a doorway to a new
world, in fact very few did; but Nellie Matilda Johnson was one of
the few. Religion no longer reigned in this kingdom since the
onward march of Science had gradually relegated it to the realms of
peasant superstition. The development of science under the auspices
of the Snow Queen had followed a rather interesting route, having
somehow circumvented the discovery of that great watershed in the
oh-so-slowly-unfolding synthesis of science and religion that lies
buried deep in the destiny of all people. I speak, of course, of
Quantum Physics. Without this particular ghost clogging up their
materialistic machinery, the Queen's scientists had continued
happily along the reductionist road that even dear old Descartes,
that doyen of doubt from some other distant Universe, had grown
away from since waking from his deathbed to find that he was
somewhere else: the blueprint, it seemed, was not in the big toe.
One of the results of this
“Your garden is beautiful,” the boy
continued, “and lives in harmony with itself, simply because
everything is in the right place. The Snow Queen's palace was the
wrong place for Coalhole Custer's music, and the imbalance
generated some sort of destructive discord between the two. In the
end Coalhole Custer's music was presumably the stronger because it
grew out of spirit rather than matter.”
The Angel nodded her head slowly. “His music
was born in the mountains," she explained. “It was created for the
mountains out of the spirit of the mountains, and it should have
stayed in those mountains where it belonged. In the right place it
would have grown strong and beautiful, for it was honest music. It
would have inspired and enriched itself and everything and everyone
around it, for its honesty gave it great power. In the wrong place
its energy was confined and frustrated, and ultimately
destructive.
“Now I think you have found the first gift,"
she concluded.
“Space," said the boy confidently. “The
right part of it. The guardian put the Earth in exactly the right
place; and every thing on it - every rock, plant and animal - was
given its own rightful place in the overall scheme of things. That
is why and how the Earth works, isn't it?"
“Yes," affirmed the Angel.
“ SPACE was the
first gift to the Earth."
o ------------------------
o
~ The Second Gift ~
Seven Days in the
Death
of Nellie
Matilda
IN A small grimy industrial town, far
removed from the splendours of the Snow Queen's city, an old woman
lay dying in a hospital bed. Further along the corridor, and from
which the old woman was equally far removed in a somewhat different
sense, a much younger and very pregnant woman was going into
labour. Whether there is any connection between these two scenarios
I leave you, my long-awaited reader, to decide as the story
progresses.
For all that it was a small grimy industrial
town its hospital had the very latest equipment and first rate
medical staff. The Senior Consultant was greatly respected by his
peers throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom and he had
brought together into this nondescript little hospital a team of
doctors and nurses that was second to no other in the land. Just
why this should have happened has no relevance to the story so we
shall not pursue it. Suffice it to say that the hospital was the
best; and that does have some bearing on the matter in hand.
The old woman's name was Nellie Matilda
Johnson, although she had been born an Arkwright. William Johnson,
her much beloved husband, had died some two years previously at the
very respectable age of ninety-two. Nellie was now eighty-six and
very lonely as she had outlived even her children, who had both
died sadly young.
But Nellie was not sad as such. She had had
a good and happy life with no regrets, and now that the time was at
hand for her to depart it she was ready. Not everyone in the Snow
Queen's kingdom believed that death was just a doorway to a new
world, in fact very few did; but Nellie Matilda Johnson was one of
the few. Religion no longer reigned in this kingdom since the
onward march of Science had gradually relegated it to the realms of
peasant superstition. The development of science under the auspices
of the Snow Queen had followed a rather interesting route, having
somehow circumvented the discovery of that great watershed in the
oh-so-slowly-unfolding synthesis of science and religion that lies
buried deep in the destiny of all people. I speak, of course, of
Quantum Physics. Without this particular ghost clogging up their
materialistic machinery, the Queen's scientists had continued
happily along the reductionist road that even dear old Descartes,
that doyen of doubt from some other distant Universe, had grown
away from since waking from his deathbed to find that he was
somewhere else: the blueprint, it seemed, was not in the big toe.
One of the results of this