Three of us boys were always together, had been from the cradle- Gilbert Beilschmidt, Vash Zwingli, and I was the third—Roderich Edelstein. We knew the hills and the woods as well as the birds knew them. We were always roaming them when we had time. We were all out one spring day to up into the hills on the left to a woody hill-top which was a favorite place of ours to go, and there we stretched out on the grass in the shade to rest and smoke. But Gilbert couldn't find the flint and steel he thought he brought with him.
Vash huffed, "Well there goes my afternoon… I had told you Roderich that you should have not relied on this clown."
"Hey, hey!", shouted Gilbert, "Why do you think I'd had none! I really fucking did! Roddie saw it after mass in my hand, right man?!"
"Yes he had it, Vash. It must have fell out on the while we were walking and really Gilbert, you should use such a vaguer tongue…"
"W-What the hell, why can't I talk the way I want out here?! You're on my ass too, Roderich?!"
"No one is on being rude to you, Gilbert, It's just you." Vash snorted. Gilbert glared at Vash and Vash looked with dagger eyes right back. When I said we were all friends I meant when we had beer.
"Please stop it; I thought we could have just some good times with-"
"Hello strangers!" A voice called.
We looked thought the trees and we saw a youth strolling toward us through the trees. He had new good clothes on, with a round pale childish face with a noticeable nose and walking with an easy grace. He sat down beside me and smiled at us. He sat up bold looking, not slouchy and awkward like other boys.
"How are you all? Are from the village a ways off? Oh yes of course you must be! Well what are you all doing out here? Relaxing?" He looked at me for an answer.
But none of us answered him, we just stared. He was a stranger and we weren't used to strangers for not many people came into our part of the country. I wanted to be friendly to him, but didn't know how to start off. Then I thought of the pipe, and wondered if it would be taken as kindly meant if I offered it to him. But I remembered that we had no fire, so I was disappointed and felt odd again.
His eyes grew bright and pleased at me, "Fire? Oh, that's simple, I will supply it."
I was so astonished, I hadn't said anything. He took the pipe from Gilbert and blew his breath on it. The tobacco glowed red and spirals of blue smoke rose up. We jumped back from him, I wanted to run for that was my first reaction and we all did run a few steps from him.
"Oh no, I forgot about you humans! It's fine I will not hurt any of you, I guarantee it! I only wanted to be friends with you all and have company!" He yearningly pleaded.
I pulled on Vash's sleeve and we both stopped. Gilbert stopped and looked at us like we were insane. I wanted to go back, being full of curiosity and wonder, but afraid to go.
"I will show you other things if you wish of me too… Yes indeed…." His voice soft, persuasive in a way I felt my feet start to move back; we were all going back to him. When we saw that the pipe did not blow up and nothing happened, we ventured closer—but slowly, and ready to fly at any alarm. I presently became more curios got to be stronger than my fear.
"How the hell did you do that…?" Gilbert asked.
"Oh this," The boy said puffing the pipe, "I didn't learn it at all, it came naturally to him like other curious things."
"How many other things do you know how to do?" Vash said in an unstable voice, which was odd for him.
"Oh, a number… let me think… well I don't know how many." He said.
"Will you let us see you do them?" I blurted out.
"Yeah do some!" Gilbert said.
"You won't run away again?" The foreigner said.
"No indeed we won't. Please do. Won't you?" I calmly asked.
"Yes, with pleasure; but you mustn't forget your promise, you know."
"Yeah, yeah we won't!" Gilbert said.
He stood and went to a small puddle nearby. He came back with water in a neat little cup which he had made out of a leaf. He blew upon the cup and threw it out. The muddy water was now a lump of clear ice the shape of the cup. I was astonished and charmed, no longer afraid anymore.
"Holy shit!" Gilbert yelled, "Do it again, man!"
He laughed and said, "I will give you any kind of fruit you would like, whether it is in season or not."
"Oranges…?" Vash said confused.
"Apples!" Gilbert screeched.
"I think... um, grapes…?" I said.
"They are in your pockets," he said. We all went into our pocket and it was true. They were of the best, too, and we ate them. The stranger just sat there watching and grinning. After I was done I wished I had more, but I said nothing.
"You all find them where those came from," he said, still puffing, "and everything else your appetites call for and you need not name the thing you wish, as long as I am with you, you have only to wish and find it."
"This is so fucking awesome." Gilbert said, pulling out another fruit.
We pulled out fresh bread, sweet cakes, nuts—whatever one wanted, it was there. He ate nothing himself, but sat and smiled playing with some clay. Out of the clay he made had a tiny toy squirrel out of clay, and it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead. Then he made a dog that was not much larger than a mouse and was as alive as any dog could be. It ran to the squirrel's tree and danced about the tree, excited and barking. It frightened the squirrel from tree to tree and followed it up until both were out of sight in the forest. He made birds out of clay and set them free, and they flew away, singing.
At last I became bold, "Who are you?"
"An angel," he said, quite simply, and set another bird free, clapped his hands and made it fly away.
A kind of awe fell upon me when I heard him say that, and I was scared again.
"There is no needing be troubled, there was no reason for you to be afraid of an angel, and I liked you three, anyway." he said.
He took some new clay and made some a crowd of little men and women the size of your finger, and they went diligently to work and cleared and leveled off a space a couple of yards square in the grass and began to build a cunning little castle in it, the women mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings in pails on their heads, just as our work-women have always done, and the men laying the courses of masonry—five hundred of these toy people swarming briskly about and working diligently and wiping the sweat off their faces as natural as life. In the absorbing interest of watching those five hundred little people make the castle grow step by step and course by course, and take shape and symmetry, that feeling and awe soon passed away and I were quite comfortable and at home again.
"Might we make some people too?" I asked.
"If you wish it, yes." He said happily.
Vash made some cannon for the walls, and Gilbert made some soldiers in full uniform with guns. I also made some cavalry men with horses. The boy made them come to life and he said good work to us by our names, but did not say how he knew them.
"Man, hey," Gilbert said, drawing the boy away from the villagers, "what's your name?"
"General Winter or just Winter." he said, tranquilly. He held out and caught a little woman who was falling from the scaffolding and put her back where she belonged.
Winter laughed and said, "She's an idiot! To step backward like that and not notice what she was doing."
It caught us suddenly, that name, and our work dropped out of our hands and broke to pieces. Winter laughed, and asked, "What's the matter, didn't any of you find it funny?"
I said, "Nothing, only it seemed a strange name for an angel."
"Why?" He asked
"Because it's—it's—well, it's his name, you know." Gilbert said.
"Yes, he is my uncle." He said it smooth. It took my breath for a moment and made my hearts beat. He did not seem to notice that, but mended our clay toys and said, "Don't you remember? He was an good person himself, once."
"Yes, i-it's true," said Vash, "I didn't think of that."
"My family is a good family," said Winter, "there is not a better. He is the only member of it that has ever done any wrong."
I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was. You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it's just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world.
I was bursting to ask one question, I had it on my tongue's end and could hardly hold it back... but I was ashamed to ask it; it might be a rudeness. Winter set an ox down that he had been making.
He smiled up at me and said, "It wouldn't be a rudeness, and I should forgive it if it was. Have I ever seen him? Millions of times, from the time that I was a little child a thousand years old I was his second favorite among the nursery angels of our blood and lineage, to use a human phrase, yes, from that time until the Fall, eight thousand years, measured as you count time."
"Whoa eight thousand!" Gilbert said
"Yes." He turned to Vash, and went on as if answering something that was in Vash's mind, "Naturally I look like a boy, for that is what I am. With us what you call time is a spacious thing; it takes a long stretch of it to grow an angel to full age."
There was a question in my mind, and he turned to me and answered it, "I am sixteen thousand years old, counting as you count."
Then he turned to Vash again and said: "No, the First Winter did not affect me nor the rest of the relationship. It was only he that I was named for. We others are still ignorant of wrong. We're not able to commit it, we are without blemish, and shall abide in that estate always. We—"
Two of the little workmen were quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Winter reached out his hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking where he had left off: "We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is."
It seemed a strange speech in the circumstances, I was so shocked and grieved at the sight of murder he had committed—for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way. It made me miserable, for we adored him and his gifts. I had thought him so noble and so beautiful and gracious, I had honestly believed he was an angel. To have him do this cruel thing, it lowered him so, and I had had such pride in him. He went right on talking, just as if nothing had happened, telling about his travels, and the interesting things he had seen in the big worlds of our solar system and of other solar systems far away in the remotenesses of space, and about the customs of the immortals that inhabit them, somehow fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in spite of the pitiful scene that was now under our eyes.
The wives of the little dead men had found the crushed and shapeless bodies and were crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting, a priest was kneeling there with his hands crossed upon his breast, praying. Crowds and crowds of pitying friends were massed about them, reverently uncovered, with their bare heads bowed, and many with the tears running down, a scene which Winter paid no attention to until the small noise of the weeping and praying began to annoy him. He reached out and took the heavy board seat out of our swing and brought it down and mashed all those people into the earth just as if they had been flies, and went on talking just the same.
He was an angel of sweet mercy, and kill so many people! An angel who did not know how to do wrong, and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women who had never done him any harm! But he went on talking right along, and worked his enchantments upon us three again with that fatal music of his voice.