A Spectrum Story for Christmas
By
Marion Woods
O
star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.
The
complementary voices of Symphony and Melody Angel were raised together in the
strains of the familiar Christmas carol as they finished decorating the tree by
fixing an ornate, multi-faceted crystal star on the top, which reflected the
lights of the Amber Room in a sparkling cascade across the walls.
Harmony
smiled and said, “That looks very well, girls.
The tree is even better this year than it has been in others.”
The
Spectrum Angels had developed a series of rituals around the process of
decorating the Amber Room over the years they’d been on Cloudbase and each of
them enjoyed playing their part. This year, decorating the tree had fallen to a
team consisting of Harmony and the American Angels.
As usual, Harmony had been employed in
wrapping the presents the Angels had bought for each other and for the team of
the senior colour captains, with whom they shared so much of their time. Her innate ability at creating charming and
elegant displays, as much as her skills at origami, made Harmony the ideal
candidate for that task, and as she did not celebrate Christmas in the same way
as her colleagues, doing the presents was one way she could play her part in
their enjoyment in her own inimitable way.
Standing
beside her was Captain Magenta, holding a plastic storage crate with
multicoloured, deftly-wrapped parcels of all shapes and sizes, carefully piled
within. He had added the less-expertly-wrapped offerings from his colleagues to
Harmony’s exquisite parcels and was waiting to assist her with piling them
around the base of the tree.
Captain
Blue and Captain Grey - who’d been co-opted onto the decoration detail as what
Melody had chosen to designate as ‘Assistant Decorators: with special
responsibility for Ceilings’ – gave a gentle round of applause as their
compatriots finished.
Symphony
gave an ironic bow and winked at them both with a merry smile. “I think decorating the tree and putting up
the garlands is probably the best part of Christmas. I mean, you have the pleasure of anticipating all the presents
you’re going to get, and the fun you’re going to have with the people you care
about all around you.” She skipped over
to slip her arm through Captain Blue’s, before confiding, “Christmas is my
all-time favourite time of year.”
“What
about Thanksgiving?” Grey asked her teasingly.
Symphony lived very much for the moment and he recalled her saying
almost the same thing less than a month ago.
“Well,
yes, that too – but Christmas is special.”
“And
birthdays?” Magenta suggested.
Symphony’s
arched brows sank in the pucker of a slight frown. “No, I’ve never really enjoyed my birthday. When I was just a kid I always wondered why
everyone took the decorations down on my
birthday. I used to get so worked up
about it,” she confessed with a wry glance at her boyfriend, “that my
grandparents used to take them down a day or two early and always make sure I
had birthday cards and presents and cakes – but I always felt responsible for
the ending of Christmas, nevertheless.”
“Sure it
wasn’t just a ploy to make sure you got more presents?” Magenta asked, with a sceptical
smile.
Symphony
shook her head and Melody gave a wry grimace, adding, “I have to agree with
you, Karen; having a birthday near Christmas is a major set-back – everyone
gives you one ‘special’ thing ‘for both’.”
“You
shouldn’t have worried, älskling,”
Blue said sympathetically, “In some traditions Christmas presents aren’t
exchanged until Twelfth Night anyway – in honour of the three kings reaching
Bethlehem.”
“I know…
sort of, but you can’t explain that to a kid,” she reasoned.
“I
thought presents were always given on Christmas Day,” Harmony said, “like a
‘birthday present to Baby Jesus’.”
Before
anyone could answer, Captain Blue began, “Well, it sort of started out like
that, but it got all mixed up with the legend of Saint Nicholas so that some places
exchange gifts on December 6th – St Nicholas’s Day - and some on the
Feast of Epiphany, which is your birthday, älskling. The Swedish tradition is to exchange
presents on Christmas Eve, but mostly it has mutated into one huge commercial
spend-fest…” He paused to consider his mother and sister’s extravagant spending
over Christmas.
“Quick!
Change the subject,” Melody interjected, “or he’ll lecture us for hours and
hours…”
Everyone
laughed, even Captain Blue.
Carefully,
Harmony started placing the presents around the base of the tree. “I don’t know about these three kings you
are speaking of, Captain,” she said.
“They came to give presents to the baby?”
“Yes,
they did. They brought gold,
frankincense and myrrh – that’s what the song is about,” Melody replied and
sang:
We three kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.”
“Orient? They were from China or Japan?” Harmony
asked in surprise.
“No – that’s poetic license, I think,” Melody explained.
“They were scholars and important people,” Blue chipped in. “One, Balthazar, was supposed to be a Moor – African; well North-African.”
“See? I
warned you,” Melody remarked with a dramatic sigh. Her dark eyes caught the
forbearing smile on Blue’s face and she winked. The genial captain was a favourite target for her teasing, but it
didn’t do to push even him too far. As
the only daughter in a family of five, Melody was adept at teasing young men,
and she could see that, for the moment, Blue seemed mellow enough not to
mind.
Symphony
chuckled. “It’s a nice carol, kinda
sticks in your mind…” She hummed a few bars.
“Must be the tune, although it’s kinda gloomy somehow, for a Christmas
carol.”
“Well,
the words are gloomy,” Blue replied.
“No they
ain’t,” Melody argued. “It’s all about giving presents. What’s gloomy about
that?”
To
everyone’s alarm, Blue cleared his throat and they feared he was going to sing,
but he merely recited, in a sing-song voice:
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
“Nice
present for a new-born, don’t you think?” he added.
Melody
grimaced, realising she ought to know better than to get into a dispute with
the knowledgeable captain.
“It is
kinda creepy,” Magenta agreed as he handed Harmony another of the parcels. “But
gold isn’t creepy… and he gets that too, don’t forget.”
“Sure,”
Blue shrugged, and made no further comment.
Symphony could see that something had unsettled him.
“What’s
up?” she asked, squeezing his arm.
Blue
shook his head. “Nah, s’nothin’.” His
Boston accent was unusually evident in that simple phrase, alerting Symphony to
the fact that he was lying.
“Come on,
out with it, Adam. You’ll have to tell
us what’s bugging you – well, me anyway,” she amended, remembering her lover’s
pathological dislike of making a spectacle of himself or his emotions.
Grey
nodded in agreement, backing her up. “Don’t go all mysterious on us now, Blue.”
The tall
American shivered as if he’d felt someone walking over his grave. He shook his head and gave a weak
smile. “It just reminded me of
something.”
Symphony,
who was now aware of the terrible trauma the young Adam Svenson had undergone
as child, when he’d been kidnapped and held for ransom, patted his arm. “It was a long time ago –”
“No not
really,” Blue said surprisingly. “It started in ’68; when we’d just discovered
the truth about Captain Scarlet’s recovery and his escape from the control of
the Mysterons.”
“Eh?” She was puzzled.
“What’re
you thinking about, specifically?” Grey asked.
“When we
had to move that bomb from the car park in London to the underground blast site
where it could detonate safely. It was early on in the War of Nerves and we
were still unsure what Paul could survive. Nonetheless, he took the truck down
in this slow-moving, industrial elevator and drove it out into the cavern. Then he had to run back and set the thing
going to get out of there as fast as he could.
I was waiting at the top, watching the indicator as the elevator rose…
counting the seconds off until the bomb was due to go… He wasn’t back at the top when it
exploded. It was like nothing I’d ever
experienced. The ground shook, the
noise was ear-splitting, even where I was, which was deemed to be safe
enough. Paul was still in the elevator;
the blast ripped through the cage and he was entombed all right, entombed in
tons of mangled metal and rock. I was
frantic, calling him on the radio cap – but there was no reply; I hoped it was
just because the blast had destroyed the comms links in his uniform. It took the rescue teams almost ten hours to
get him out. They didn’t expect to find more than a shattered, burnt skeleton
and they couldn’t understand why I was so anxious they get a frigging move on
and find him. Of course, by the time
they did get to him, he hardly looked
more than slightly scuffed at the edges and a bit cut and bruised, but imagine
– just imagine what it was like, lying there, in the dark, bleeding and shattered
by the blast.”
“Ugh-”
Melody groaned. “I don’t think I wanna
imagine that.”
Blue
continued as if she had not spoken, his eyes fixed on the star glittering on
the top of the tree. “He was still unconscious when they found him, but I had
to keep the emergency doctors away from him and get him across to the Spectrum
helijet. When he came round on the
flight back to Cloudbase, he couldn’t tell me much about it – except that he’d
heard my voice over his radio cap which he’d lost in the blast and was lying too
far away for him to reach. He said he
remembered answering me: when I said ‘are you all right’ – he said ‘I will be…’
and then he… ‘passed out’. I couldn’t know that while I was waiting for the
rescue team to reach him, obviously, and I kept talking to him over the radio
link – just in case he could hear me. I
don’t know what I said, I just rabbited on – I think the rescue workers thought
I was crazy. They were certain I was talking to a dead man, of course; which in
a disturbing way, I was.” His expression
revealed his great sadness as his head sank onto his chest. “That was just the first of many similar
incidents – but he risks his life as a matter of course, every time he leaves
this base. I honestly don’t know how he
does it time after time.”
Harmony
looked up from where she was crouching by the tree. “I think we all
under-appreciate what Captain Scarlet goes through in the course of his
missions,” she ventured to say with a gentle smile.
“But,
Blue, remember that the verses of the carol go on to say: ‘Glorious now, behold
him arise’,” Magenta said hoping to reassure his friend, “and that’s what we
see, of course – Scarlet bouncing with health, time after time.”
“Yeah,
that’s right,” Melody interjected. “It’s just like the song says, Adam.” She started to sing once more, although her
voice was a little shaky:
Glorious
now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
To
everyone’s surprise Blue interrupted her, to say with startling vehemence, “King and God? No, he’s neither of those and he’d hate the very suggestion –
but, it seems to me that he is the perpetual ‘sacrifice’, true enough.”
The
others looked uncomfortable at his intensity and Blue shook his head as if
baffled how to explain the conundrum that was Scarlet’s continued willingness
to face pain and death in the course of his duties. He sighed and when he continued, it was in the far more
restrained manner his friends were accustomed to from him. “Yet, when all’s said and done, he is a willing sacrifice where he can make
the difference to the success or failure of a mission, or where he can save
civilian lives, or where he can protect his friends. I mean, he should have been here with us today, decorating the
Amber Room, but instead he’s in sick
bay recovering from being caught in that explosion in Ecuador. You weren’t there, you didn’t see what he
did, but he saved the lives of about fifty miners – he got them out and went
back inside to diffuse the device the Mysteron agent had planted in the
mine. I kept telling him to get out,
and he kept saying ‘in a minute, I’m almost there’. He was so pleased when he told me he’d made it safe and he’d
started to come back to the surface when a second – undetected - bomb went off
underground. The roof came down and the
shaft collapsed around him. This time I
knew he’d survive – he’s survived worse, let’s face it - but it was another
long, arduous wait while the miners dug him out. I know Paul hates fire more than anything, but me – I go with
being buried alive. You know what his first words to me were when he came round
in sick bay? ‘Was anyone hurt?’ He’d just
survived being buried down a mine shaft and his first concern was for everyone
else…”
There was
a long silence as the Angels and the officers considered what Blue had said. Harmony was sitting on the steps, her arms
hugging her legs to her chest, her chin resting on her knees as she listened to
Blue’s story. She closed her eyes,
sadness flooding her delicate features.
Melody sniffed slightly and raised a hand to her eyes, turning her head
away from the others to hide her tears.
Magenta cleared his throat abruptly.
It was
Symphony who broke the silence. “He’s a
king among men, at the very least. We’d
all agree on that, Adam,” she assured him, with a comforting glance at her
lover.
The
others murmured in agreement.
Captain
Blue ran a hand over his face. “Hey,
I’m sorry to put a dampener on the mood – I guess I have more of a morbid
streak than I realised.”
“No,
you’re just worried about your friend,” Grey said, adding unexpectedly,
“Christmas is a time when we should all be grateful for more than just material
things. For the friends we have, for
our health and for the simple fact that, so far, we’ve managed to keep the
Mysterons from carrying out their stated intention of destroying all life on
Earth. Seems only right we acknowledge
that, without Captain Scarlet, it’d be a damn near impossible task to achieve –
with him, we stand a chance.”
“Yeah,
I’m glad he’s on our side,” Melody replied.
Harmony
and Magenta nodded, both of them were considering Grey’s words thoughtfully.
Magenta
was about to speak when the door to the Amber Room slid open, startling the
group around the tree. They turned in
time to see Captain Scarlet saunter in, his radio cap set at a jaunty, non-regulation
angle on his dark hair and an affable expression on his handsome face.
He
stopped and looked with some consternation at the faces of his friends as they
stared intently at him. He wondered if
he’d left his trouser zip undone.
“Hi,
guys…” he began rather tentatively. “I
see I’ve missed the crowning of the tree – I was with Doctor Fawn, undergoing
his final ‘final’ tests. Once his back was turned, I fled… So, what have I
missed? I’m back to A1 and ready to
party…” They continued to stare at him,
speechless. “Guys? Is anything wrong?”
“Paul!
You’re here and you’re okay!”
He
answered Symphony’s statement with a confused, “Yes, I am.” He glanced at Blue for enlightenment as the
impulsive Angel pilot rushed to his side and threw her arms around him. His partner merely glanced away with an
enigmatic smile as she hugged him and kissed his cheek. “Why shouldn’t I be here and okay?”
“No
reason,” Magenta said, a huge grin breaking out on his face as he handed
Harmony the final present. “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the
world.”
“Glad to
hear it,” Scarlet commented, disengaging Symphony’s arms from around his
neck. “Nice to see you too, Karen, but
go cuddle with Adam, eh? Rhapsody’ll be
down from Angel One in a minute or two and I don’t want to spend Christmas
explaining what I was doing locked in a compromising embrace with you… not that
I’d be averse to a quick snog under the Christmas mistletoe later on, you
understand?”
“Paul
Metcalfe, you are incorrigible!” she said with a euphoric smile.
Captain
Scarlet grinned in return. “I do like
Christmas,” he said jovially. “And you
can’t blame a chap for trying…”
Melody
began to sing:
Glorious now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Sounds through the earth and skies.
Captain
Scarlet enthusiastically joined in with the chorus and suddenly the whole group
– except Harmony – were singing:
O star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.
And, for once, nobody
even tried to stop Captain Blue from joining in.
We three
kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.
Refrain:
O star of
wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.
Born a
King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King forever, ceasing never,
Over us all to reign.
Refrain.
Frankincense
to offer have I;
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, voices raising,
Worshipping God on high.
Refrain.
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
Refrain.
Glorious
now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Sounds through the earth and skies.
Refrain:
O star of
wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.
Words & Music: John H. Hopkins, Jr. 1857.
Hopkins wrote this carol for a Christmas pageant at the General
Theological Seminary in New York City.
Author’s Notes:
Merry Christmas everyone!
Lots of thanks and Seasons Greetings to the usual
suspects: Hazel Köhler for a shockingly
speedy beta-read, Chris Bishop, for everything – as always - and the rest of
the crew: Caroline, The Docs (Brown and Denim), Keryn, Mary and the ever-sweet
Sue
Here’s
hoping 2007 can only get better….
Best Wishes,
Marion.
November
2006
Other
stories from Marion Woods
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