Angels in My Hair by Lorna Byrne Read Free Book Online Page B

friends
one could possibly have; they are everything to me.
    One day, I slipped out and went through the little gate and
one of the angels appeared out of nowhere and caught me by
the arm. 'Come on, Lorna, we have something to show you,
something we know you would like to see.'
    As we walked across the field I turned to them and
laughingly said, 'Bet I can race you!'
    So, off we ran at full speed and I fell. I cut my knee and cried.
    'It doesn't hurt that much – it's only a little scratch,' said my
angels.
    'Hmmm,' I said, 'it's only a little scratch to you, but a big
scratch to me. I can feel it stinging. It does sting, you know!'
    They just laughed at me and said, 'Come on, up you get and
let us show you something.'
    So up I got and, sure enough, I soon forgot my sore knee. As
we walked through the field to the woods beyond they told me
to listen. I listened and I could hear lots of animals in the
distance.
    'What am I to listen for?' I asked.
    'Listen for one animal. Separate out all the sounds until you
only hear just one,' the angels said. 'This way we can teach you
to hear us more clearly when you grow older.'
    So I separated all the sounds that I heard as I walked through
the woods, and with every step I took I could hear the ground
crackle under my feet. After a little while, I was able to
distinguish all the various birds: the different songs of the
sparrow, the wren, the finch, the blackbird, and many others.
I could hear and identify what birds they were and exactly
where they were, just as I could with any animals which were
around. I seemed to learn things very quickly when the angels
taught me.
    Then I stopped and said, 'I hear a cry, that's the sound you
want me to hear, isn't it? It's like someone crying.'
    I walked on through the woods; the trees seemed to get taller
and it got darker and I said, 'Oh, angels, it's too dark in here,
can you not lighten it up for me?'
    'Don't be afraid,' they said, 'follow the cry; follow the sound
you hear.'
    So I did, and the cry brought me out into an opening. I stood
there listening and I could hear the cry again. I knew it was so,
so close. It was to the right of me, so I walked back into the
trees to the right, where there were thorny bushes. I got thorn
scrapes on my legs and on my hands. There was no sound of
crying now, which made it really difficult to find. The light was
behind me and it was dark amongst the brambles and the
bushes.
    'Angels, I can't see anything,' I said. With that, a light
appeared at the bottom of a tree.
    One of the angels said, 'Look at the light over there by the
tree, just where the little gorse bush is, that's where you will
find it.'
    And that's where I found it. It was a bird, not an ordinary
bird but a bird of prey – I later learnt it was a sparrow hawk. It
was maybe the scrawniest, most horrible-looking thing, but to
me it was beautiful. I picked it up and looked up into the tall
tree from which it had apparently fallen; I could never climb it
to put the bird back. As it moved within my hand I saw that it
was hurt – its two legs were deformed and crooked and its
neck was cut, probably from the fall. The angels told me that
its parents didn't want it, that they had thrown it out of the
nest.
    'It's a gift from God to you,' the angels said, 'for you to look
after this summer holiday and the next summer, but it won't
go home with you after that.'
    Sometimes the angels would say things to me that I didn't
understand; I would just take it that what they said was true.
So I took the bird and walked back home through the woods
and the fields and found an old hat and a box for the bird to
live in.
    My bird slowly grew strong, but it still couldn't walk
properly, so I carried it everywhere. It couldn't fly well either,
as it couldn't land on its legs. Da and I taught it to stretch its
wings and fly briefly when we tossed it between us.
    Feeding it was a problem, too, because it needed bloody raw
meat, but I wasn't going to go out and kill