Angel of Death by Danielle Bolger (classic novels to read .txt) 📕

by a set of governing rules. Just as you cannot fashion gold from lead I cannot weave time from desire. It can be transferred, if that is your wish, but it will come at a cost.”

 

The woman nodded, the whites of her eyes tinging red, the soft skin beneath them dragging with the weight of decades of sorrow.

 

“I cannot create time,” I cautioned. “The child’s has run out and you are not young, your sacrifice will not buy her a full life.”

 

She grasped her hands tightly as she asked her question, “If I agree, how long will she have?”

 

“I am sorry, I cannot say.”

 

The woman nodded, she almost bestowed a sly sarcastic smile, almost. “Even death plays by a rule book.”

“We all have laws we are compelled to follow.”

 

“Well then, I guess the next best question to ask is what your price is.”

 

“Smart question,” I relayed my fee.

 

“I see...” the woman murmured. “So you cannot take time unless it is given willingly?”

 

I nodded.

 

“And without time nothing lives, not even angels.”

 

Again I nodded.

 

“But you will take no more than what you say? You will give the rest to her?”

 

“Yes,” I agreed. “From the period you permit me to take your time I will give it to her minus my fee. This can be arranged at any point but understand I cannot give time to a clock that has stopped.”

 

The woman shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “I understand. Three days, that’ll give me time to settle my affairs. In three days,” her eyes snapped open and a new woman shone forth. No, not new, just clearer than ever. A ferociously determined woman locked eyes with mine. “Take my remaining lifespan and give it to Madeleine.”

 

“Aright, then.” The room dimmed further for a moment before an object materialised into my hand. I walked back around the woman. She started but allowed me to continue and place a necklace around her neck.

 

“Your symbol,” she breathed as she stared at the adornment in the bathroom mirror, “the unending hourglass. Same on top as it is on bottom, the sand falls up just as it falls down.”

 

“It is the channelling of time,” I explained. “Not a scythe like your Grim Reapers, my kind do not seek to destroy. We simply rearrange the sand remaining to those of the living. As long as there is life, no matter your perspective, the sand will always fall.”

 

“And you’re right at the centre of it, the neck where the sand will always pass through.”

 

“No one else will see it except for you. It binds to your time, no one else’s.”

 

“A shame,” she remarked, the glint of a smile on her lips. “It truly is beautiful.”

 

“And you’ll be able to take it off any time that you wish, set it down and put back on. You can treat it like any other piece of jewellery but when the trigger sets and you are not wearing it the contract will be broken and you’ll never see one of my kind again. I will receive none of your years, just as your granddaughter will not either. You have three days, not to the hour but not within a wide margin. If you are wearing it however, when the trigger sets, then you will die of a heart attack.”

 

“Not peacefully in my sleep then? I see. Makes more poetic sense this way—I am doing this for love, after all, and it is my love that destroys me. Still, if it can save her, allow my son and daughter in law to have their daughter in their lives a little longer then I remained resolved. There are worse ways to go.”

 

I smiled gently. I never know if it’s the right thing to do at time like this, in a plane such as this one, but on Earth I like to smile to my callers. Their braveries deserve that small positive appreciation, I think.

 

I evaporated my material form then and the room glowed a little brighter with the returned energy. The woman spun around, searching left and right for me, eyes wide. I was still there, but incorporeal. Our transaction was completed so there was no need to linger as I was, and I craved to be back in my free-form.

 

Returned to the Unstrung Realms I could see her: fidgeting with her hands once again, eyes locked onto the burden she now carried, but at the same time I could also see the child, already fallen back asleep in the hospital bed as the television played the horse teen show. I could see the ward between where the kids transitioned from pillow fights to a game of marbles on the floor, and wards further on where a woman squeezed her bald husband’s hand as fluid dripped into his other arm. I could see outside the hospital where a group of young woman sat gossiping at a diner for afternoon tea, and kids being dropped off by school buses to their neighbourhoods. I could look into other countries, copy my essence over the stone carvings of cathedrals and reach up to skyscrapers that soared beyond even the clouds. I could stretch further, to the neighbouring red planet, to gaseous giants and barren rocks, and right up to the solar-system’s yellow sun itself. I could stretch out to other solar-systems, admire the life-forms there, and still cross into entirely new galaxies.

 

Time and space are like that. Though they work within a set of rules in one universe, they abide by completely different rules within another plane of existence. My realm, it’s not so complicated. There are no strings to keep things in place just as there are no strings to keep them apart. I can see into one world, see the details, then my set my sights over to another universe trapped in webbing and watch its undertakings there. I can see into any time, so long as it does not predate or exceed my own.

 

I still have yet to learn the limitations of my sight.

 

I could see already that the woman didn’t take the necklace off, not even once to get a better look at it. A hand mirror sufficed for her, one that she smiled every time she gazed into it. She died on the third day, a heart attack as I predicted. It happened as she walked from her kitchen to her lounge and just before she made the sofa she collapsed, the tea cup and saucer cluttering beside her. She clutched her chest as they all do but she did not fight her demise.

 

The woman’s son, Thomas, cried when he heard the news. It fell on him like a crashing avalanche—his daughter was already on her death-bed but now his mother just passed away? It was too cruel, both his wife and I could read the murmurings of his silent lips, it was just too cruel.

 

Madeleine’s mother noticed her daughter looked a little better the day after her mother-in-law died, but she said nothing. Though her daughter’s better days were getting fewer, she did not dare mark it as a bright day in light of the news.

 

Then the next day Madeleine looked a little better again, then a little more the next. Three days since her grandmother’s death the doctor walked into the room wearing a massive grin.

 

“She’s responding!” he declared, so elated as if he was stating the good news about his own daughter. “It was a one in a million shot but she’s responding to the new drug—we’re looking like we have a fighting chance here!”

 

Even though he was wracked with grief Thomas allowed himself to smile.

 

A few days later Madeleine was permitted to leave the hospital for a few hours. Though her black dress made her skin appear so white it almost shone, she looked healthier than her parents could remember in weeks. She was white, but colour returned to her cheeks and lips, returning them to their full deep pink. She looked beautiful as she said her speech about the grandmother who never let her give up hope.

 

Three weeks later she was placed back into the children’s ward. Two months it was deemed that the therapy was responding so well she could return home, only needing to return for treatments and tests once a week.

 

Five months later the doctors happily declared that the treatment was an astounding and terrifically surprising success. Madeleine was cured.

 

She had to repeat the fourth grade. She was going to turn eleven soon and most of her peers were still only nine years old, but she took it with stride. The other kids were incredibly supportive. They even seemed to think of her in awe, like she was some superhero who defied a terrible evil.

 

“That’s what Grandma would have said,” Madeleine stated one day to the horse she was riding. “The power of determination is the best power a superhero can have.” It was during her third lesson and she was just picking up the knack. She couldn’t have them often, the tuition was dreadfully expensive, but every couple of months her parents managed to make one happen.

 

She grew up, finished school, became an attractive young woman that diverted the attention of many young men, but her focus was only for one other.

 

When she was seventeen a boy named Kieran told her that he loved her. He was a year her junior but towered a good half foot over her even at that age. They proved to be high school sweet hearts.

 

When they finished school they both studied at university, both enrolled into journalism and after three years got to wear the long black gowns and silly four sided hats. They married three months later.

 

Then, after nine months, Madeleine was back in the hospital. This time she was aged twenty-three and placed into a ward for adults. It was called the maternity ward.

 

I watched her stare into the crumpled red face of her sleeping child and admired how her excitement and determination warded off her growing fatigue.

 

“She’s wonderful,” Madeleine husked.

 

“Yeah, she’s really something, else,” Kieran’s hand brushed his daughter’s tiny forehead as the babe laid in her mother’s arms.

 

“I’m so glad we got here, I’m so thankful I get to know what it’s like to hold my daughter in my arms.”

 

In another year the child would have been starting to walk, saying her first words amongst the jumble of nonsensical ones. She would have been learning her shapes, placing the cube in the square hole, the sphere in the round one. She would know how to laugh, understand what her parents were saying to her, she would know who they were, even if that memory would be forgotten in time.

 

The child would cease to remember the mother, but if it were not for my fee then at least the mother would leave with a glimpse of who her daughter was growing up to be.

 

“I’m so happy that I...” Madeleine added, the exhaustion of birth sapping at her determination. “Made it to term.”

 

A year never seems like such a long time when you deal with decades.

 

Her eyes closed then, baby still held in her hands but only because her arms were arranged in such a way that it didn’t tax them.

 

“No, no, Madeleine—wake up!” Kieran insisted. “You’ve got to stay around for your daughter. She’s born now so as soon as you’re recovered we can start the therapy. You beat this illness before, you can again!”

 

Madeleine opened her eyes. “Shh... not so loud, you’ll wake her.” Wanly she maintained her smile. “You know it’s too late, it’s all through my body, far worse than when I was young.” She was sweaty and pale, her hands ice to touch. If not for the blanket cradling the child she would have been woken by her mother’s hold. Her voice was even weaker than her appearance.

 

“Don’t talk like this, you can beat this,” Kieran pressed, careful to keep his voice hushed.

 

“Kieran...” Madeleine started but he cut her off, it wasn’t hard.

 

“Just, don’t fall asleep yet, okay? Your