The bend in the river came as it narrowed and slowed. The fast flowing water eased and softened its way around the curve and left exposed large sandy banks on either side. Upon these banks perched the occasional stunted, dead stump of a tree, but very little else. It was by one of these half trees that Samuel spent his days sitting, squatting or crouching as the state of his knees demanded.

Perched against the parched wood, with his skin baked parchment brown and his beard a mottled by stately white, he gave every impression that when he had first sat there the tree had been able to give him shade. And maybe that was true. Either way he leaned back imperiously, defying the hot sun in the middle of the day and focusing his still piercing blue eyes upon the water. Every now and again he’d grunt with satisfaction, spot what he was looking for and reach down by his side for the long, hooked stick the lay waiting on the dusty earth. Then, with a quick movement, that belied his age, he fished his pray from the water and dragged it up the smooth sandbank to his resting place. And once there he waited for it to recover, so it could tell its story.

‘Cos if you were floating down the river of lost souls the wrong way up, the odds were it was quite a story that had bought you to this place at this time…

And when Old Sam had listened, he’d give the stranger a sip of water and wait for the messenger to arrive and take him onwards. Always, by nightfall the messenger of the Devil’s would arrive and take the strangers away from him and in return Samuel got… life.

It was a strange deal, but the High Council of Devil’s, keen not to miss a single lost soul, had struck a deal with Sam back in the days when the trees were indeed green. In return for fishing them from the water, the then young Sam got his own ageing process overlooked by those who mattered. And if he was lucky, the messenger chucked in a loaf of bread to satisfy his more mortal needs as well.

It was on one such perfectly ordinary day that Samuel had picked out a rather unusual lost soul. He knew as soon as the soft white linen of her dress snagged against his hook that it was not ordinary catch he had snared. There was no weight to speak of as he hauled her up on to the dry ground where she would dry so quickly. And turning her gently over to check her breathing he realised what he had done…

He’d caught a fallen angel.

*          *          *

It had started as an accident as most things do. The day had been long and boring and frankly the small group of angels couldn’t wait for night to fall so that they could being their serious work, but in the meantime, they were occupying themselves by nibbling gently on luscious fruits from the garden of Eden and getting on with the sewing that needed doing. After all, white frocks and halos don’t fix themselves. The small fair haired angel in the corner was busy darning yet another pair of white tights. None of the angels actually liked the damn things, and a few years back there had been a move to introduce flesh coloured ones, but such a radical move had been voted down by the older angels who needed fake tan to look good in the moonlight.

So it was her fingers were still stitching the same old stockings whilst her mind was flitting ahead to her nights work and even though the mind wasn’t fully controlling them, the fingers moved deftly in their oft repeated motion, up and down through the fabric, making sure to pull the thread tight. It so happened that on one of the downward thrusts instead of passing neatly through the material, she instead passed neatly into her finger.

“Ouch”

“What’s up?” cried a couple of the other girls

“I’ve just stabbed myself with the needle; its ok though it’s not bleeding much, just pricked the skin”

And with that understated moment of clumsiness, she went back to work.

Later that night, after all their work had been done, both in heaven and on Earth, the little angel lay in her bed asleep… or at least nearly asleep. Somewhere, deep within her brain she was replaying the events of her day. At some point she came to the moment her finger had met the cold hard metal of the needle, and something made her brain pause right there…

… It could have been the memory of the pain, burnt deep into her subconscious, it could have been the flush of colour that pain had momentarily bought to her cheeks or it could have been the tiny particles of silver from the needle that had passed into her bloodstream and were now flowing around her system. Whatever it was, the moment lingered and the innocent angel remembered something else, deep within her sleepy mind something she had barely noticed at the time, a tiny, sparkling, shiver of pleasure.

That fleeting sensation of pleasure stayed with her when she woke up the next day. It stayed with even when she was darning tights again and it seemed to tempt her to make a mistake again.  It was definitely there as she nibbled upon her fruit, her lips revelling in the juiciness and the softness of the bite. And it was without a doubt the naughty, mischievous thing at the back of her brain that made her take a bit more time over her hair and before she descended down to earth for her nights work.

And that was the start of the little blonde angel’s journey which took her to the banks of the river with Old Sam.

It was the start of her descent from purity, which ended in the hands of the devil, but on the way it passed through the greatest moment of them all… The little angel was on the slide from her pedestal and she was heading to the Moment of Surrender.

Her slide was very gradual though. The older, more world wise angels made sure of that. It was a fact of life amongst nearly all angels that at some point they would be faced with temptation and that they would have to prove the fealty to their heavenly calling by ignoring it and dedicating themselves to their work and the pleasures of sewing and nibbling fruit in an innocent manner. It started with a little more care with her hair, the hem of her snow white dress rose by a quarter of an inch, there was a touch of red to her lips. It moved, silently on to taking the silver tipped needles away from the sewing cloud and reaching out for more of the shiver of exciting pain. And wise old angels, nodded to themselves and saw some of what was happening, but knew that the phase would pass as it did with young girls.

But it never did pass…

And before the perma-tanned angels could whisper in her ears to warn her of the danger, she was face to face with her Moment of Surrender. And she did. So the next morning she found herself floating alone down the river of lost souls… until Samuel did the gentlemanly thing and fished her from the water.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

So we’d better returned to the Moment.

The formerly innocent angel had by now found herself a very mortal temptation. He was called Adam and he was very definitely not an Angel. Back up on the heavenly clouds, she had joined the other angels in gazing wistfully at the manly gods on far off clouds as they went about their heroic work whilst gazing at each other’s muscles in manly admiration. And she had whooped and sighed, and drooled and giggled at the right moments but there had never been a temptation like this.

Adam had taken that tiny fraction of silver metal in her blood and twisted it and turned it until it felt as if her whole body was wire and every inch of her skin had bristled with pain and pleasure. But at the same time she had felt safe and warm, wrapped in a tenderness that only enhanced the sensual ness of the pain she so enjoyed.

And she had fallen in love.

It was the truest, deepest love of an angel who has fallen from the skies. The love of the strongest of hearts which has found an opening she never knew existed. And so when the moment had come and Adam had wrapped his arms round her one more time, she had given in and embraced the trust and the love and she surrendered…

The angel gave herself completely and in return he gave her the ultimate pleasure of the Moment of Surrender.

In the morning the more important, still innocent angels had acted vengefully, as only those completely sure of their moral superiority can. They had called upon the gods to deny their fallen sister her love and reluctantly they had agreed. Adam was banished once more, this time from the arms of an angel, and the angel in question was herself thrown to the river of lost souls, abandoned as a lesson to others…

*          *          *

Old Samuel laid the feather light body down beside his faithful tree stump and reached for the small leather flask of water. Gently he bought it up to the girl’s lips and poured small amounts between them, carefully letting her swallow each mouthful before administering the next.

Gradually the fallen angel recovered herself and within time she was sitting beside Sam and his gnarled wood telling her story as best she could between rising sobs and cries for the love she had lost.

And when the story ended, the elderly man gently stoked his beard and said quietly, almost to himself; “aye you’re a right tearjerker you are, and no mistake”.

And the name stuck. By the time the messenger of the devil’s arrived, the frail angel had gone and Tearjerker was in her place.

Buoyed by the certainty the Moment had given her and the wise words of Old Sam,  she went arm in arm with the messenger towards a life full of a very different type of needle craft, confident that if you can surrender yourself once and survive, the future can never be frightening again.