the angel's gift

An angel was looking at a beautiful boy who was in turn looking at a beautiful girl. 

The boy and girl had the same eyes and same smile, but the girl's eyes were closed, as in sleep, and she was not smiling. They had the same hands, but hers were folded on her stomach. The boy's chest was heaving with deep breaths but his sister's chest was still, as it always would be. They had the same copper skin and curling hair, and this much was visible against the red velvet that the girl was lying on.  

The boy's head was bent over his sister's so that the tear building in his eye rolled down his nose and onto her cheek. The wooden lid closed with a thud. The girl's face would never be seen by human eyes again, and the angel whispered in the boy's ear that this was normal, that this had always been meant to happen, but she did not speak the language of earthly creatures and he did not hear her anyway. 

It was the first time he had been in the place with the crumbling gravestones that rose from the dry earth like teeth, but it was certainly not the last time the angel would find him there, his knees folded with his head safely secured in the crook of his arm. He left with heavy footsteps.  

The rest of the year dragged on like his footsteps. The angel took him to school each day, took him to stores and restaurants and sports practices, but she took him alone. His back became slightly more bent; his face, more lined. He was aging rapidly, and by the time people were putting twinkling lights on their houses and decorating sweet-smelling pine trees, he was older than she'd ever been. No one noticed. They patted him on the back and smiled more than than usual, but no one really noticed. 

Still, the angel saw the surprise in his parents' eyes when he sat at the kitchen table with a notebook and a blue crayon and wrote boldly, across the top of a page: DEAR SANTA. The mother smiled, a little sadly, and the father put his arm around her shoulders, and they watched their son etch his careful letters onto the page. The parents were older, too - much older than they should have been, at their age. The mother's dark curly hair was coming in gray, and the father's eyebrows, even when he smiled, were always in a frown. 

They asked with wide smiles if they could see the boy's letter, but he folded it up without a word. 

Sometimes letters to Santa do not reach Santa at all. This letter went straight to the angel. She read it, though she had already known what it said - the boy wanted his sister back, of course - and finally, she wept. Not for her own sake, but because the boy would have to wait so long to see his sister again despite already being so tired of waiting, and because she was his guardian angel and could not do much besides guard him. 

Well, there was one thing she could do. It wouldn't benefit the boy in the least, or even affect him, but it could be done nonetheless. 

On Christmas Day, early in the freezing dawn, the boy ran to see what was under the tree. He did run, the angel saw, his tiny feet pattering down the carpeted stairs, and how small his feet were! He was still a child, even when he saw that what he truly wanted was not under the tree. His parents were already sitting on the red couch and they greeted him and wished him a merry Christmas, and the angel saw that for now, they could take care of him. She waltzed into the snowy Christmas day. 

On Christmas Day, a little later in the thawing morning, a mother cradled a new child in her arms. She had given birth to the tiny girl, but the girl was adopted, though no one would ever have known it. The girl's porcelain skin was unique, as was her straight nose and tiny forehead, but one day, she would grow up, and her hands would get larger, and they would have peculiar rounded thumbs. Her hair would be of a slightly richer shade than the rest of her family's, and her eyes would be a brighter shade of brown than they were now. No one would wonder why. The angel knew why. 

One day, the girl would grow up and she would have a loud laugh, distinct and gentle, just like the boy's, just like his sister's. No one would ever know. They would never see each other, and their matching eyes would never meet. She would not laugh at the same things and she would not make the same people laugh, but she would make people laugh anyway. People would smile at her like they had at the boy's sister. 

The angel had done her best with the young lost soul and for this she would be rewarded. 

The angel watched the pretty child start her life and then she returned to the boy. He was sitting on the carpet playing with shiny new toy cars, even making corresponding noises. He had not done that for a long time. The angel knew that he had felt pain that could never be forgotten, but she hoped that time could help him forget, maybe even heal him. 

What she didn't know was that she had already helped heal him. Something was put back into balance on that Christmas day. A gift had been returned into the world by an insightful angel, and if that did not bring the world peace, at least it brought the boy some, because he was playing on the floor like any other boy his age. A green toy car skidded out of his grasp and hit the dog's paw, and he laughed, finally. Somewhere far from him, the newborn girl who was not his sister also laughed, and the angel laughed a little because the world felt a little more right, even if no one else could tell. 

But they could tell, and that Christmas turned out just a little better than they'd expected.