Angel of Death, Danielle Bolger [classic children's novels TXT] 📗

parents will be here any minute, let them have this happy moment, daughter and grandchild.”

 

Carefully, making sure the baby was still secure, Madeleine reached out and touched her husband’s cheek. He pressed it back against his face with his hand, eager to give his warmth to the frozen body part.

 

“Tell them...” her eyes closed for two harrowing seconds before reopening into slits. “That I’m sorry. I love them, I love you, and I love her...”

 

“Wait!” Kieran called, louder than he intended but still the baby did not stir as if she knew this was not a time to interrupt. “No, you need to stay awake, Maddy, fight this!”

 

“I won’t sleep,” she whispered. “Not until I tell you her name. That was the promise, you let me keep her and refuse the treatments and I get to pick her name. Well, she’s born now so I guess I can give you the surprise.” Her eyes were closed, she stopped looking at her daughter.

 

“Don’t then. Don’t tell me until you’re feeling better!”

 

“It’s Caroline. That was my grandmother’s name. Pretty, isn’t it?”

 

Kieran forced a grimace. “Yeah, it’s a beautiful name, it’ll suit her well.” Then he noticed that the arm around the child had gone slack.

 

“Madeleine!”

 

The buzzers screamed a moment later.

 

The nurse sitting at the end of the room was quick to scoop the child up. She was concerned that the babe had still not woken.

 

Doctors swarmed in with a relative blur to Kieran. He laid over the bed, face buried where the child cradled just before, weeping.

 

I heard it then, his desperate desire to give anything, everything, just to give his wife more time. He was so consumed with his fading love that he didn’t even glance over to the silent babe.

 

A doctor threw Kieran off the bed the same time another inspected the child. The commotion allowed his eyes to wander and fully realise what was happening.

 

“Caroline, why isn’t she crying?!”

 

Then it came, the high-pitched wail of what only a newborn could produce. The cries were deafening.

 

A year I stole from mother and child, a year that was added to my own growing lifespan. I could take more, there would be some who would accept. There are some that I demand it from, but I cannot take less. It is not in the rules, not those that govern the Unstrung Realm, but more simply in my own. There are other Angels of Death out there, extending themselves freely as they gaze through space and time. Some feel sympathy for life on the Strung Realms, some hold very little taxes, months, weeks, days. Some even forgo them if the case warrants it. As soon as they do a free case their lifespans begin to shrink. It never grows again.

 

I skipped on ahead, I saw Caroline grow up. She never became sick like her mother, not in the years that I viewed. She grew strong and tall like her father, and I saw her have a daughter of her own, she was called Madeleine. Two more kids followed the litter. Many lives, many time-spans given birth from the sacrifice of one old woman.

 

The outcome was not a justification of my tax, more a reminder of my own limitations. Space and time are loose and easily acquired things for me. I could reach across any dimension, pluck out one thing from the strings and relocate it onto an entirely different set. No trouble at all. I was the vessel for such things, the waypoint sand needed to travel between to reach its new destination. But that didn’t make me strong, it made me empty—a negative space. I am called an Angel of Death but that’s a misnomer really, for it is not really me doing the giving or taking, I am simply the resistance that process passes through. If I were really something grand, something worthy of a heraldic name, then I’d be capable of more.

 

Men cannot create gold, I cannot create time, but because neither of us are capable of the tasks ourselves does not mean they are not possibilities. Stars, though admittedly through their deaths, fuse elements so densely that they dispense the universe’s entire contents of gold. Matter and time are fixed to strings on this plane, everything expands, things only appear to move forwards, this universe is one on an accelerating collision course to destruction and yet my lifespan keeps increasing; time keeps increasing.

 

More life is being born—each gifted with their own unique lifespans. Time is being created. It’s increasing, pushing the edges of the Strung Realms out faster and faster. People are worried about the universe stretching too far that it will no longer keep form, well that is foolish. Matter does not need to keep the universe together, in fact it only makes up a very small portion of these people’s worlds. They cannot see it, but they know it is there, even if they shun it to darkness. Time wraps itself around matter and it will always hold it. Not until it runs out, not until the universe dies, will it collapse. They don’t need me, a stealer of their most precious commodity; they just need the organ I attack when I make my claim.

 

Men cannot create gold and sometimes they cannot save lives, but they can create time.

 

All it takes is the creation of life.

 

 

 

 

Imprint

Text: Danielle Bolger
Images: Danielle Bolger
Editing: Danielle Bolger
Publication Date: 02-05-2017

All Rights Reserved

Dedication: