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 remained 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.”
Pete worked.
He began to work as soon as he tossed his bags into the room he was to share with Padre Jiminez, and he worked without pause all day long. He worked for six hours straight, pausing only to suddenly divert his path when he caught sight of Beatriz Soria, waiting until the coast was clear and his heart was safe before he began work again.
“New boy!” called Robbie, one of the twins, who could not remember his name. “Come talk to us.”