The Unfinished Angel by Sharon Creech

villagers stuff Mayor Zapino so full of ravioli, and Mrs. Pomodoro stuffs him so full of good memories of being childrens together that the mayor feels surely all the permissions for the school and the childrens will be in fine order, absolutemento! I only do a small amount of flishing in the mayor’s head; mostly it is the peoples who do the flishing. I am impressified.
    The childrens are so perlieved to hear that they will not be sent away to live in a ditch that they all start drumming—with sticks and hairbrushes and spoons and whatever they can find—in a loud song of celebration. “Yay, we stay! Glocken, glocken, glocken! Yay, we stay!” It is most noiseful, the air full of booms and clangs and pomps and clacks.
    And I am perlieved to report that Zola does not think I look like a pigeon. The pigeon that came to the tower is gone, leaving behind only a stray feather and some white slopping. If it was an angel, it must have decided that we were doing finely on our own, and if it was not an angel, it was just a pigeon that was free to go whenever it liked. I think it was just a pigeon.

W HAT THE A NGEL K NOWS
    S kirtling along one side of the paths and lanes cut into our mountainside are stone walls. These stone walls keep clumpy mud and rocks from falling on the paths and the peoples. Spaced here and there in the walls, in a pleasingful pattern, are holes. Am I saying this right? Holes in the walls. Each the size of a brick maybe. Here and there. Can you see it?
    I like these holes very much. When too much rain pours down, the water has a place to sneak out. When peoples approach a lizard sunning himself on the wall, the lizard has a place to run and hide. When the peoples want surpleases of blossoms in those hard stone walls, they plant violets and other dainty purple and blue and white flowers. But childrens love these holes most of all, for there they can hide the secret notes and the tiny treasures. And the big peoples like this because they can be walking along and peek inside a wall hole and see a folded note or maybe a bracelet of colorful plastic beads or a stash of pinecones or smooth pebbles.
    Who thought of these holes when building these walls? I am liking those peoples.
    For the last years, ten or twenty, the holes have been dried up and empty except for dirt clogs and lizards. Today, though, I notice a folded note inside one hole and a piece of red cloth inside another. I see near Signora Pompa’s house the bluebells sprouting out, draping down the gray stone wall. I see Josef and Jakey with Vinny Divino, peering inside a hole, poking with a stick. I see Franz the glocken boy pick up a dead mouse and gently tuck it inside a wall hole and then carefully place thick, green leaves over the opening. He then removes one leaf and with a twig carves a cross on it and returns it to the wall hole.
    The childrens, they are spickling up the sleepy village, teasing it awake again. It is like the dust of magic drifting down over the mountain.
    And while I am feeling contentful watching the wall holes being filled with treasures, I get a sudden sorrow feeling, missing all the childrens and their mamas and papas and grandmas and grandpas who have come and gone, come and gone. It is hard work watching over the peoples and flishing and wishing them safely.
    Sometimes I feel that I have to be like the mountain, rock strong, and on the inside I have to have the arsenal ready to fight invaders who might hurt my peoples. And I don’t even have a sword.
    And then, how this happens is always a surprisement, but I see something that makes me feel like a softly melting mountain. It might be Nicola, crossing the lawn of Casa Rosa, pumping her little arms, dressed in a yellow skirt and a blue one and a turquoise blouse too big and a red scarf around her waist. She is pumping along, heading for the path, and she is singing a song: “I hate zucchini, zucchini, zucchini. I hate green glop, green glop,