Fraser's Angel: -

By Richard Leviton

A mystical, whimsical romp through the universe and the Heavens for an answer to a question that cannot wait until tomorrow.

Fraser. He's English, eight years old, and has a big question. One night in bed, he calculates distances between things, his house and his uncle's, his uncle's and London, and then on to the Moon, the nearest star, and beyond, until he experiences infinity. He sits up in bed riveted with this question: when you go all the way across the universe, what's on the other side of all the stars?

As if on cue, the next morning, Elouesa, an angel assigned to him, starts to provide Fraser with an answer, but it's an answer that is an experience, and it will take him around an Earth he's never even suspected, out into the galaxy at so intimate a level he'll find his nose pressed against its very edge, and even beyond that, into the wild, mysterious, and very exciting universe.

A host of characters will give Fraser bits of the answer along the way. Such as: Perflummery, the cosmic clown whose bag of marbles contains all the universes. The enigmatic Purplessence who flies him through the silent heart of the Quiddity. Panalon, the blue-starred dolphin and celestial cocktail party bon-vivant. And the Uncle Blaises, the angelic Marx Brothers of Heaven, joking, dancing, quipping, and always quoting from their unique book, The Angel's Guide to the World.

It all comes pummeling back to Earth and "reality" when Fraser goes to school the next day and shows his classmates and teacher what's he learned. And he's lucky to have Uncle Arthur on hand, because he knows where Fraser's been, and with whom.

And the question? Does Fraser get it answered? Indeed. But you'll have to read Fraser's Angel to find out what it is

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 14, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595829026

Richard Leviton

Richard Leviton is the author of 14 books, including many on myths and the global landscape, notably The Galaxy on Earth, The Emerald Modem, Signs on the Earth, and Encyclopedia of Earth Myths. He has been in regular contact with the angelic realm for more than 22 years, and has written about his experiences with them in Looking for Arthur and What's Beyond That Star. He is the director/founder of the Blue Room Consortium, a cosmic mysteries think tank based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Book preview

FRASER’S ANGEL

richard levitón

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Fraser’s Angel

Copyright © 2006 by Richard Leviton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse, Inc.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-38521-8 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-82902-6 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-38521-4 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-82902-3 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

For Fraser Booth

Contents

CHAPTER 1  Angel Hill

CHAPTER 2  A Friend from Above

CHAPTER 3  Elouesa’s Cards

CHAPTER 4  The Singer’s Notes

CHAPTER 5  The Pine Cone

CHAPTER 6  The Other People

CHAPTER 7  Cloud-Boys

CHAPTER 8  The Fisherman’s Net

CHAPTER 9  The Snowflake

CHAPTER 10  A Tower of Frasers

CHAPTER 11  The Birthday Candle

CHAPTER 12  A Proper Lunch

CHAPTER 13  The Swan Ship

CHAPTER 14  Old Fire

CHAPTER 15  Forty Million

CHAPTER 16  A Can of Lilac Cream

CHAPTER 17  Big Love

CHAPTER 18  A Garden Party

CHAPTER 19  Fraser’s Book

CHAPTER 20  The Alarm Clock

CHAPTER 21  The Doorway

CHAPTER 22  Uncle Arthur

CHAPTER 23  Golden Wings

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

Angel Hill

You could ask your angel someday, said Uncle Arthur. She’ll tell you.

Uncle Arthur was Fraser’s favorite grown-up. With his twinkling eyes, his tickly mustache, and his warm, dimpled cheeks, he seemed to know everything yet he was always so mysterious. What had Fraser asked him? Simply this: Where do the stars come from and why are there people?

Fraser had never thought about this until one night just last week. He lay in his bed, tucked in under the quilt and cozy among its heavy folds, but his eyes were wide open. His hands rested on his tummy and he felt the rising and falling of his breathing. Then he had a peculiar sensation. It was like pulling on the threads in a large carpet until suddenly….

First he thought about Angel Hill which wasn’t far from his home, just a quick dash up through the fields. Then he thought about Uncle Arthur’s home in the next village, how it was a lot further away and you needed a bicycle to get there. Then Fraser thought about London, how that was still farther away, and took a long train ride to get there. Now the Moon—that’s much farther away than London. Fraser began to see the great distance involved. And the Sun is—Fraser felt that tremendous distance. And then there are all the stars. They are impossibly far away.

But what’s on the other side of those stars?

As Fraser gasped at this incredible distance, his body became huge and hollow. It tingled and vibrated. The billions of stars in the night sky somehow were inside him in this gigantic body he’d become. He kept expanding too. But there was still something outside of his vast body of stars, something still on the other side of that. He didn’t know, couldn’t even imagine, what it was. It was such a mystery that Fraser was shocked.

That shock immediately brought him back into his eight-year old boy’s body with a thump. There he was again with his soft grey eyes, black floppy hair, freckles all over, and large friendly ears. He squeezed his tummy for reassurance. Yet as he lay in his familiar bed, Fraser couldn’t forget that massive mystery on the other side of the stars. He remembered he didn’t know what it was, what was there. Fraser felt himself to be tiny against this infinity. He sat upright in bed, his mouth open in surprise.

All this meant—he knew it now so clearly—one day he would die.

It was impossible to describe all of this to his mother or father. They would probably tell him it was a bad dream. Anyway, he didn’t have words for it, though he knew it. It was a little scary too. Yet Fraser knew that somehow Uncle Arthur, if anybody, would understand, if he could only explain it to him. But it took Fraser’s breath away just thinking it through again.

Even though the mystery was stranger than anything he had ever experienced, it was also very curious. Different, intriguing. What he had seen was like a magician’s curtain there at the end of the stars. Did he dare pull it to look beyond? This curtain, normally, was invisible to everyone, including himself, before that special odd moment when the whole carpet of the galaxy came unravelled in his hand as he lay in his bed.

But did he dare look beyond the curtain?

In the morning Fraser sat in the kitchen, finishing his breakfast. It was Sunday and he was thinking about Uncle Arthur’s strange answer. How could he ask his angel? What angel? He didn’t know he had one. Fraser crunched on his toast and spread marmalade on the next piece when it popped out of the toaster. He dangled his feet under the table and wiggled a little in his chair as if he were dancing. His thoughts were set on

Angel Hill. This was his favorite place in the village, and he always went there when he wasn’t in school or when he didn’t have chores at home.

On Angel Hill Fraser had his forts and castles and privacies and ambushes and hiding places and launching pads and sleeping nooks. From Angel Hill he watched the big puffy clouds careen past overhead: first a schooner, then a swan, then a jam jar, and they never kept the same shape for longer than a moment. Sometimes the Fairy Folk flitted about him like happy butterflies with glorious smiles, twinkles of rose and dimples, sparkles of merriment and play. To Fraser, they were like hovering then darting bluebottles with the giggles and faces of young children.

Some mornings, the fairies danced about his nose like frisky laughing feathers. He watched them as he lay flat in the tall grass, his hands behind his head, his feet walking the clouds. He studied these little people with fascination. You can see clear through their wings, he thought. They’re like stained glass windows or great canvas sails waving in a slow breeze. So light, so fragile, so friendly. In an instant the fairies would be aloft and alight, free-roaming like swallows chittering through the morning sunshine.

Fraser crunched another piece of toast. In the old days, Angel Hill was the place people went if they wanted to talk with the angels, Uncle Arthur said. It was another of those remarks he’d make that Fraser didn’t understand, at first.

Fraser tapped his sneakers on the kitchen floor. He sang to himself, hummed and mumbled, though he had never heard this song before. Angels of the air, swaying through the clouds, coming among the grasses, flying me back to Heaven, letting go my worries.. Fraser shrugged his shoulders and wiggled some more in his chair, forgetting the song.

What is it like to be an angel? Fraser suddenly wondered. He stared at his half-empty glass of apple juice. Angels fly around in the clouds. They play hide-and-seek in the floating white mountains of mist. They squash the clouds together to make forts. They float down from the stars like spangled kites. They parade across the blue spaces, rows and rows and rows of smiling angels—so many wings, so much light in motion.

They sing all day and never get a sore throat from it, not one of them, not once.

They make rhapsodies to the daises. They chant oratorios to the sheep. They bedazzle the fairies with their lanterns and angel dust. They ride the winds of the world faster than airplanes. They—Fraser reached for the toast as it popped out of the toaster. Then he heard something.

From a distance, Fraser heard the soft voice of a woman, calling. Fraser. We can reach the Singer. We can wear the Singer’s smile all day long. We remember our Note. Fraser turned towards the door, but there was no woman there. His mother, yes, but it wasn’t she who said this.

Fraser ran out of the kitchen, through the front door of the house, and let the screen slam, even though he knew his mother didn’t like that. He dashed into the bright sunshine. He gazed up at Angel Hill and knew his forts and hollows and secrets were safe, waiting for him. He ran down the lane waving to the cows busy chewing their breakfasts. He ran past the fat, fluffy sheep lying indolently like black-nosed rugs by the turnstile. Fraser clambered over the wooden gate and ran up Angel Hill.

On his way he noticed his favorite rocks. He patted them in his mind as he ran past them. He smiled at the big grassy tussock that lived like a giant mushroom by the hawthorn tree. He often paused here on his way up the hill. He liked the view of the village from here. All of Knole was laid out before him, everything where it belonged. The baker’s, the newsagent’s, the stout red phone box by the hedge, the spire on the church at the end of the lane near his home. The pastures and grain fields around Angel Hill looked like patches on a quilt. Farmers were planting.

The morning air was soft and moist, expectant. Everything smelled like green shoots and new leaves. Fraser knew something was waiting for him, something new, and it was at the top of the hill.

Fraser ran to the top of Angel Hill and crouched under the old oak that towered alone and reminded him of a grandfather. He picked up a twig and poked the ground. He hummed. Wiggled a little. Tapped his feet. He watched a hawk glide under the hem of the bulging clouds. Everything is the way it’s supposed to be on Angel Hill this Sunday morning, yet….

CHAPTER 2

A Friend from Above

The new spring grass under the tree was soft and rich. Fraser flicked a few blades with his finger. Dandelions were blooming on the edges of pastures, daffodils were nodding, the hawthorn was unfolding its snowflake blossoms. Fraser peered closely at the shoots of grass, looking for fairy handkerchiefs or secret messages left only for him. Then he looked up. The secret message for him was coming down the sky.

He saw a woman about twice the size of his mother and transparent. Like a huge fairy, he mused, not entirely surprised, but some. He saw the clouds through her outstretched wings yet he also saw her lovely feathers. Each was delicate, shimmering, like silk, different colors, brighter than the sun. The air crackled and buzzed yet it felt wonderful. The angel-woman had a motherly face and a gentle smile, and she winked.

Fraser watched as she floated luxuriously down, like a glorious, many-sailed yacht slowly pulling into harbor. She greeted the cows who paused in their chewing to perk up their ears and sashay their heads. She said hello to the horses who wrinkled their lips as the sunlight glinted on their big teeth. Fraser saw the angel-woman sprinkle light as if it were sifted flour on the chipmunk, balanced on his hind legs, and on the squirrel, flashing his tail like a semaphore, and on him, watching her.

She floated just above the ground, poised over the dewy grass. Her wings billowed and rippled in the sunlight and they showered sparks of light everywhere, over pebbles and scurrying ants. Her smile radiated for miles beyond her face. Filaments of light ribboned out of her fingertips to warm the ears of rabbits and bless the bark of trees. Her eyes were like mountain lakes with a skin of starlight. Then she spoke.

Hello Fraser, she said. How are you this lovely morning?

Fraser opened his eyes wide. Maybe he wasn’t dreaming after all. It was like seeing her for the first time again. He couldn’t tell if she had any boundaries, an edge where she stopped and the rest of the world resumed. Her light settled into Angel Hill like a fine rain and yet it rose up round her like a god’s bonfire. And the bonfire flamed lilac then blue, then gold, then emerald and scarlet.

I’m Elouesa. I am your angel, Fraser.

In the middle of her body Fraser saw a single brilliant blazing star.

I am requested to ask you something, Elouesa said. Would you like to come with me and see how the angels live, what we do? Would you perhaps care to play hide-and-seek with the clouds and ride the winds and squash the clouds into big forts? I think this is how you put it. And we might see about that question of yours, about what’s on the other side of the stars. If you wish.

Fraser didn’t know what to say for a moment, or how to say it. What are proper manners when you’re answering a question posed by an angel? Finally, he managed to say, Yes. Thank you. That would be lovely. He wriggled with excitement. He felt full of smiles and expectations.

Good, Elouesa said. I was pretty sure you’d like my idea. You needn’t worry about your parents or what to tell them. You won’t be gone but a few hours, if that. They will not even notice. It will seem minutes.

"Can we really move the clouds and hide from the crows?" Fraser asked.

Of course. That and much more. Elouesa turned around once and indicated for Fraser to do the same. When he had spun around once, he noticed that everything looked different, had changed, including the big tree.

The oak tree seemed much bigger than it had, more than twice its former size. The bark and leaves and branches looked the same, but all of it was a little transparent and sparkling now. The tree seemed to extend far into space like a wave rippling out from a stone dropped in a pond. It seemed to cast an echo of itself off Angel Hill and out across Knole. It hummed and glowed. It seemed to have a heart beat, a pulse, to breathe. Fraser couldn’t tell where the tree ended and the hill and sky and grass and hedge and flying crows and he began. The tree seemed to flow into all this, and, queerly, he started to feel he was part of the tree himself.

Fraser saw there was somebody inside the tree. An old man, it seemed. Tall, wrinkled, bearded, with a serious though amused, friendly face, draped in a rough robe of leaves and bark. What a curious old grandfather he is, living in a tree, thought Fraser. He was talking to Elouesa in an odd gurgling, very deep and slow voice. Then he started talking to Fraser.

At first, it was like listening to a recording played too fast or too slow. He couldn’t make out the words. Or maybe they were in a foreign language. Except it was more than words the tree-grandfather was speaking. Fraser saw pictures that told of this tree’s family and relations, how they grew, how branches broke off in storms, the loss of leaves, what the squirrels said as they performed their marvellous acrobatics among the branches, what the leaves heard the stars say at night.

Then the tree-grandfather handed Fraser an acorn. Thank you very much, Fraser said, and pocketed it. He sensed it glowing there. Fraser saw dozens of fairies sleeping languidly in the branches, like a hamper-ful of silken scarves flung out over a clothesline of branches. The fairy scarves flashed brighter in the sunshine as if they were getting tanned. Two woke from their nap and winked at Fraser. He winked back.

Fraser turned to Elouesa. It was strange, but she didn’t look as large now as before. She seemed about Fraser’s size somehow. That felt better. Then he glanced down at his feet. His sneakers had vanished. Also gone were his red socks with their white trim, his blue corduroys, and his gray sweater with the elbow patch on the left sleeve. Now he had a body like

Elouesa’s with see-through wings and iridescent colors. He felt buoyant, like a sail picked up by a strong breeze, like a balloon, as if he had just released himself from his hands to drift pleasantly among the clouds.

Fraser felt he could do somersaults and cartwheels just by thinking it, and he did. The minute he had the thought, there he was, doing six smart forward somersaults, then six backwards ones and a grand pirouette, upside down, landing on his feet without feeling dizzy or having grass-stained his trousers.

Then he wondered if he could run as fast as a hummingbird, faster even. Before he finished even thinking it, he had done it, sped across the hill, through the gate, down the pasture until he halted in a flock of sheep. Fraser thought surely the sheep would be surprised to find himself suddenly arrived, hummingbird-fast, in their midst, but they weren’t. They didn’t shuffle off. They didn’t even clamber up off the ground or look worried. Yet they did see him.

It seemed to Fraser that the sheep smiled at him like they were old friends, family maybe, at a reunion or birthday party perhaps. He saw himself reflected in their large eyes. This surprised him because he hadn’t quite understood he was in an angel’s form now. There were his freckles, blue-gray eyes, and floppy black hair. That part was still Fraser.