Beatriz closed the door.
“Beatriz!” Judith said gratefully. “You speak sense to him.”
“How are your roses?” Beatriz whistled to Francisco. “Any luck?”
“Too soon to tell,” Francisco replied to her. Father and daughter had an easy relationship that came from possessing complementary needs. Roses and tomatoes are not precisely the same, but they both flourish in the same soil. He caught the dissonant, sour note in her sentence and asked, “Is everything all right?”
“What was that?” Antonia stormed again. “I don’t understand why I must be deliberately excluded!”
The appearance of Beatriz gave Judith more strength. She said, “What Father is doing is despicable. He is deliberately ignoring her. I arrive home last night and she tells me that Ed and I can stay in their bedroom as she has moved into mine! ‘Mama,’ I asked, ‘how do you and Papa fit in that room?’ And she tells me that Papa stays in the greenhouse all the time and never sleeps, so she is sleeping alone now! She stays in my room because the loneliness there is smaller! How do you think I felt coming home to that news, Beatriz?”
Beatriz didn’t believe she needed to think about the answer, as it seemed clearly telegraphed in Judith’s tone.
Judith went on. “I don’t care what they are fighting about. Papa cannot extort her in this way! It is not fair and it is not how a husband of forty years behaves!”
“Gosh, forty years?” Joaquin said.
“I was estimating,” Judith snapped.
“Is that how old you think we are?” Antonia demanded.
Judith told Francisco, “This mistreatment won’t do. You must move back into the house. You cannot turn your back on her this way! If you don’t like her moods, you have to know that withholding your presence will only make it worse!”
Some may have felt she was being unfair or frivolous. But for newly wed Judith, the party represented something else—a promise that a pure and passionate love was still a pure and passionate love years down the road, despite tragedy and differences in personality. It also represented security. She had remained safe at Bicho Raro all these years only because she had her mother and her father standing guard over her sister and her. But now, if they had separated, anything could happen. Darkness could swallow them all. If there was not going to be a party, she wanted to flee again immediately. She would have fled again immediately, if she did not love her family too much to leave them to their fates.
Francisco did not reply. When he did not like the sound of something, he merely went away inside his head, where it was quieter.
Beatriz joined her father and inspected the plants before him. These were not roses nor mushrooms nor lettuces but instead tender garlic bulbs, broken open for investigation. He offered her two to smell and she did, experimentally, one then the other.
“Make him understand, Beatriz, that really all I want is to make certain that he will celebrate his birthday with the rest of us!” Antonia said. When Judith had lived at home, both she and Antonia had often exhorted either Beatriz or Francisco in this way, as if Beatriz and Francisco had feelings as a second language and that someone who spoke fluent logic was needed to accurately convey their meaning. In reality, father and daughter were capable of deep feelings, but both were victims of that old saying, “believing your own press.” After years of being told they had no feelings, they began to give the opinion credence themselves, which was why Beatriz was having the crisis of decision over Daniel’s letter in the first place. If she had recognized herself capable of such deep distress, she might have been able to better address it.
When Beatriz didn’t answer, Antonia said, clearly hurt, “You always take his side.”
Beatriz said, “That is not true.” She did not take sides.
“It isn’t,” Joaquin agreed. “Beatriz is very fair.”
This statement reminded Beatriz very acutely of a similar statement made by Daniel in his letter. Realizing that there would be no good time to address the task at hand, she produced the letter now without unfolding it.
“I need to tell you something. I have a letter from Daniel,” she said.
“A letter?” Antonia asked, with confusion, unable to imagine what would drive Daniel to do such a thing.
Beatriz went on. “He helped one of the pilgrims.”
This news traveled into the interior of the brains in the room at different speeds. Francisco put down the garlic bulb he had been holding. Judith blinked, and then her eyes widened.
Rage seized Antonia.
Here are things that happen when rage overtakes you: First, your blood pressure begins to tick upward, every escalating beat of your heart punching angrily against the walls that contain it. Your muscles tense, fisting in preparation for action. Adrenaline and testosterone leap from your glands, twin horses dragging a red-faced chariot through your thoughts. It is an interesting and peculiar twist of anger that it is jump-started in the part of our brains responsible for emotions, and it is only after the blood-boiling process has taken hold that our good old cortex, the part of the brain we rely on for thought and logic, has a chance to catch up. This is why we say stupid things when we are angry.
Antonia was nearly always angry.
Pacing, she ranted, “What an idiot! He knew better! We told you all!”
“Did he say what form his darkness took?” Francisco asked calmly. His tone further fanned Antonia’s rage.
Beatriz shook her head.
“Soria darkness?” Judith whispered. Fear built in her just as rage had mounted in Antonia, only it was a lighter, more feathery structure, batting around in her rib cage.
Joaquin broke in. “But we have an idea. Even if we can’t help him with his darkness, he doesn’t have to be helpless.”
Francisco, Antonia, and Judith stared at them both, as intent as the owls that had gazed at Beatriz earlier.
Beatriz added her thought. “That boy from last night could bring him food and water. Pete Wyatt. A Soria can’t help, but there is no reason why he can’t interfere.”
Immediately, Antonia said, “Absolutely not!”
“No,” Francisco agreed. Everyone stared at him, shocked by the agreement and by the firm denial of such a simple solution.
“But why not?” demanded Joaquin.
Antonia said, “We can’t know if helping him in any way would count as interfering with his miracle, even if it is through Pete Wyatt. If it counted against us as interference … where would we be? In the same foolish place he is! And what good would that do any of us?” She opened the door—humidity escaped—and shouted, “Rosa! Rosa! Rosa! Come here! Oh, come here.” She swooned against the door. Judith gasped as if she was sobbing, but she did not cry.
“Oh, Mama, Judith, you’re being dramatic,” Beatriz started.
“You’re just like your father,” snarled Antonia.
Neither Francisco nor Beatriz rose to this remark; they never did.
“I don’t see why going through that guy is a risk,” Joaquin insisted. “We don’t avoid the pilgrims who live here any more than that.”
“We can’t do nothing,” Beatriz said.
“Look, all of you. A Soria’s darkness spreads like nothing you have seen before.” Antonia’s voice was ironclad. “I forbid all of you from going to find Daniel. Over my dead body!”
To understand Antonia’s response to Beatriz’s suggestion, you must know the story of the last time darkness came to Bicho Raro. None of the cousins except Judith had been born yet; it was only a few years after Antonia had come to live with Francisco. There were more Sorias and fewer pilgrims at Bicho Raro then; the pilgrims back then seemed to be swifter about vanquishing their darkness and heading back on their way. The Soria siblings at that time were as close as Daniel and Beatriz and Joaquin were.
It was 1944, and the world was at war. Even if you had not gone to enemy territory, the enemy could come to you. In Colorado Springs, twelve thousand interned German prisoners of war harvested sugar b
eets in work camps. Trinidad housed another two thousand Germans. Tiny Saguache kept two hundred prisoners of war within their high school. Even Bicho Raro was not exempt: A branch work camp operated in the sugar beet field ten miles away, and on a clear day, the sounds of Germans singing as they worked could be heard in the grazing pastures above the houses.
The prisoners, separated as they were from ordinary life, were the source of much curiosity and contention. The government promised these young German men were the answer to the labor shortage in Colorado, but the Germans did not look like they belonged, with their fair, easily burned skin and their pale hair, nor did they sound like they belonged, with their marching, deliberate syllables. They did not dress like they belonged: Prisoners of war were allowed to wear their uniforms if they wished, and most of them wished, although their khaki shorts grew increasingly improbable as the year marched toward winter.
And winter was dark that year.
Winter in this part of the country was a frozen place. Temperatures plummeted in the desert and snow heaped over the memory of the scrub. Nothing moved. Survival happened by having a warm hole to wait in; if you had not built or found one by the time the blizzards hit, folks relayed the ending of your story with tears and a beer.
Unlike much of the world, Bicho Raro was enjoying a time of prosperity due to the previously mentioned windfall from Elizabeth Pantazopoulus. So although it was bitter outside, and claustrophobic inside, there was plenty of food and comfort to be had.
It was a grim evening when a strange pilgrim came to Bicho Raro. It had been snowing for the entire week, and it was still snowing then, the bored snowfall of a sky that cannot think of anything better to do. It was neither light nor dark—just gray. Everyone was inside when the owls began to make a commotion. They lifted from roofs, sending snow coughing down to the ground, and launched themselves in the direction of the newcomer. He was still trudging a half a mile off, but the owls went straight to him and doubled back to Bicho Raro, and then back to him again, half-mad with the promise of the darkness and the miracle.
Antonia Soria was the first out to greet him when he stumbled into Bicho Raro. She had made it only a few yards into the knee-high snow when she stopped; it had become clear to her that he was one of the Germans. She didn’t see much more than his uniform before she went back into the house for Francisco and a gun. She was joined by others: the oldest brother, José, and also Michael and Rosa Soria and their curious sister, Loyola, who was Daniel’s mother, and gentle Benjamin, who was Daniel’s father (and the current Saint). Loyola was very pregnant at this time with Daniel and should not have been out in the cold, but she did not take many steps without Antonia; the two had been the very best of friends since Antonia had come to live at Bicho Raro.
“Bitte,” the German said. His knees were knocking together with the cold, and they were bright red. He was wearing his uniform shorts, and the snow had soaked right through his socks and pressed up against his bare knees for miles.
Antonia raised the shotgun warningly.
“Bitte,” the German said again. This was because his arms had a child in them. The child’s face was the same color as the German’s knees, the ugly red of too much cold. Because he spoke very little English and no Spanish, there was no way for the German to tell the Sorias how he came to be holding the child. He was barely a child himself.
“Where did you escape from?” asked Francisco, but of course the German didn’t understand this, either. The owls were sweeping low and desperate around him as he staggered close, not looking at the shotgun, and offered the child to Michael.
Now, it must be said that it is a funny thing to be able to perform miracles. Having the ability to help someone does not automatically go hand in hand with the ability to know when it’s the right time to help someone. One is left looking at strangers who are clearly in need of aid and wondering if the Saint can merely attend to their needs, or if the Saint is required to ask the would-be recipient first.
The German clearly needed a miracle.
It was not as if they could ask him, though. No one there spoke a lick of German.
Benjamin weighed his responsibility in the matter and the level of earnestness on the German’s face, and made the decision that because the German had been kind to this child, Benjamin owed him kindness as well. He performed the miracle.
At once, the German let out a small cry of surprise, put down the child in his arms, and transformed into a large-eared kit fox. Benjamin had anticipated this, or something like it. What he hadn’t anticipated was that the miracle would also operate on the child the German had brought—Benjamin had not considered it would be possible for such a small toddler to have darkness in him. But the child’s hands began to turn into dragon scales, and as they did, the child roused from his stupor and, in fright, began to cry.
What does it mean to interfere with a miracle? It is not rightly known what counts as helping pilgrims to heal themselves. It is not the indirect care of providing a roof over their heads, as they did at Bicho Raro, or the direct care of providing food for their bowl. But it was sometimes the indirect kindness of allowing a pilgrim to play a card game with you, or the direct kindness of offering advice. Better to keep one’s distance, the Sorias had decided, than to try to predict what might count as interference.
But Benjamin did not think about this as he offered comfort to the crying child. He was not thinking about the child’s miracle at all, really, as he had only intended to help the German. And for him, like for most, there was not much that the head had to do with hearing a crying child and moving toward it; that was all in the heart.
It took no time for the Soria darkness to manifest in Benjamin. Soria darkness, as said before, is faster and more terrible than the usual pilgrim’s darkness. Benjamin had barely spoken to the child when he let out a gasp. His legs had gone sprawled and odd, a foal’s legs scrabbling for footing in the snow. He could not see it, but his legs were beginning to turn to wood. Loyola, unknowing, asked him what was wrong. She tugged up his snow-crusted pants leg to reveal gray, spindly wood, dry logs like you would find left in the sand.
“Oh, Benjamin, I will love you anyway!” she told him, and even this phrase, this small comfort, counted against her, and now the darkness began to fall upon her, too. She became wood from the top down, the opposite from Benjamin, and as Benjamin’s chest and arms became wood, her head and neck and shoulders became wood.
“¡El niño!” José cried. He did not mean the dragon-scaled child, but rather the infant that the now-wooden Loyola had been carrying. As Antonia began to scream Loyola’s name, the sound swirling away in the powder, José seized a shovel and leaped forward to chop Daniel’s small body out of the now-wooden Loyola before he was sealed in forever. Even as José hacked at Loyola’s lifeless form, his own legs became wood from this interference. He shouted for his brothers to leave him.
Francisco and Michael and Rosa dragged Antonia into the house and slammed the door.
The fox ran away, and so did the dragon-scaled boy.
It was only after the sounds of destruction had died away that Antonia, Francisco, Michael, and Rosa reemerged. José’s sacrifice had worked: The baby Daniel had been hewn from his wooden mother and now sobbed in the dust beside his wooden father and wooden uncle. He was fully flesh and blood, and untouched by the darkness. As a helpless newborn, he had no way to accidentally interfere with his parents’ or uncle’s miracle, and moreover, as an innocent infant, he had no darkness inside him yet to be provoked by such a disaster.
Rosa lifted Daniel from the wooden remains of his family. Antonia touched the place where Loyola’s wooden frame had been cleaved to remove him. Francisco took the shovel from where it had fallen beside José and leaned it back up against the house. He did not say anything.
This was when Antonia became angry, and she had never become unangry since. This was also when Francisco began to use fewer and fewer words each year. Michael stopped cutting his hair. Rosa rem
ained Rosa.
Antonia finished telling this story as she led the cousins toward a small shed by the chickens. The door was barred and never opened, but she opened it now. The light sprawled over the dust inside.
She threw her hand outward to demonstrate the contents of the shed. She said, “And there they still are today!”
“That just looks like wood,” Joaquin said.
“Exactly,” replied Antonia.
“But Loyola was not a Soria,” Beatriz pointed out. “Why wasn’t she allowed to help Benjamin?”
“If you love a Soria, their darkness is yours, too,” Antonia said.
“Hm,” said Beatriz.
They all peered at the pile of gray wood inside the shed for several long minutes. Beatriz was thinking it was fortunate that she had never opened the door before, as she would have thoughtlessly burned her relatives as firewood. Antonia was thinking that she was even angrier now than she was the day she lost her best friend. Joaquin was thinking that Daniel was only alive because of José’s quick and selfless bravery … and now Daniel had been felled by the precise same thing that had claimed his parents. Judith was thinking about how she had never even considered that Eduardo was just as endangered now by the Soria taboo, by virtue of his love for her. Francisco was thinking about how long it had taken them to decide on a name for his dead sister’s baby once they had removed him from the scene of the tale.
They were all thinking about what Daniel’s darkness might look like.
“If only we could train your dogs to take food to him,” Beatriz said.
“Without killing him directly afterward,” Joaquin murmured.
Antonia snarled.
“In any case, that settles the issue of the birthday party for now,” Francisco said finally. “I won’t celebrate until Daniel returns to us.”