All the Crooked Saints

by Maggie Stiefvater

  He turned without another word and he left Bicho Raro.

  Francisco Soria had begun work on his marvelous greenhouse directly after an early fight with Antonia. She had been shouting at him as she had shouted at him each day for months, and he had realized all at once that he had nothing to say to her in response. Not only for this current argument, but for all of them. Rather than wait for her to finish so he could explain this truth to her, he had merely walked out of their house into the bright day and begun construction. Antonia had found this impossibly cruel, but Francisco had not left to hurt her. He had left to ease his own mind. Too much noise and too much anger acted like a flue on his thoughts, and as Antonia’s grief overtook her, his ideas had been choked down to only a tiny flame—and what was he, if not made purely of ideas? In those early months, he had worked on the greenhouse’s construction entirely after dark, when every other Soria was asleep, because he found that, having lived with so much noise for so long, he hungered for absolute silence. It was only after many days of quiet that his prized fluidity of thought had slowly built back up again. Once he had finished the greenhouse and begun work on his roses, he finally returned his schedule to a diurnal one.

  In this way, he lived a small and solitary life in a small and controlled world. It was not his best life. But it was an acceptable one.

  In the ruins left behind after the truck had burned down, Beatriz found that her small and controlled world was denied her. The radio dish was still smoking hot, and the truck had burned to ashes. There was no private place she could climb on or under. Beatriz’s mind refused to settle, though, and eventually, she went to the only sanctuary she could think of: the little house Pete had built.

  There she sat inside the dark. There was only a little porch light coming through the windows, the glass still filtering the handsomeness of thought from her father’s greenhouse. She curled her arms around her knees and struggled to piece together a solution to reach Daniel, but her thoughts would not order. She tried to cast them up above her, outside of her head and into the sky, so that she could study them from all directions, but they refused to leave her body. She kept testing her thoughts on branches of logic and finding the logic would not hold.

  She had been sitting there for countless moments when she heard a whistle.

  “Beatriz?” whistled her father gently.

  She did not respond, but he ducked his head and entered anyway. He had already, through process of elimination, decided that she must be in the house. He drew close enough that she came into view, still and owl-like in the corner. Father and daughter did not embrace or touch, but he sat close to her, facing her, mirroring her posture.

  “What are you doing?” he whistled to her.

  “Thinking of how to reach Daniel before it is too late.” It was not so much a whistle as it could have been, but he understood her.

  “There was no way to save the truck,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Pete has gone,” he said.

  “I know.”

  There was a long moment of quiet. Because they were both good about being quiet, it is difficult to say just how long this moment actually lasted. It was shorter than the night, but not by a lot.

  Finally, Francisco said very softly, in words, not whistles, “I believe that we have been wrong about many things.” When Beatriz didn’t answer, he said, “I’m moving back into our house.”

  Then he patted her knee and stood up and left her there.

  Beatriz began to cry.

  She had not known that she could cry, and she did not know why she was crying, and she did not realize that this in many cases is just how crying goes. She cried for a very long time and then she thought about how she had told Pete she was not upset when she had been the most upset she had ever been in her life. And then she thought about the vultures and Marisita and she cried even more. Finally, she thought of how they had been wrong about the taboo for so long and it was probably going to cost Daniel’s life.

  When she was done crying, she wiped her cheeks—the dry air took away all the tears she had missed—and the girl with strange feelings saddled up Salto and rode into the desert to find her cousin.

  Riding astride Salto, Beatriz followed the buzzards, and soon she caught up with the owl she had seen hatch from the egg in the fire. It coasted overhead with unshakable certainty, and Beatriz felt positive no owl would travel with such surety unless it was headed toward a miracle or a disaster. And what other miracle or disaster could be taking place in this valley tonight but something having to do with the former Saint of Bicho Raro?

  As she rode, she wondered what she would do when she found Daniel. She had water, and a little bit of food, but she did not know what to expect.

  The stars stopped their laughing to watch her gallop beneath them, and the moon covered its face with a cloud, and then, as she grew close, the stars scrambled down below the horizon so that they would not have to watch. The sun delayed its rising, too, so as to not bear witness, hesitating just at the edge of the earth, so the early morning hung in an eerie half-light.

  The buzzards and pale-faced owl all gathered in the same place, a low flat area of scrub with a dune pressed up against an overgrown barbed wire fence. In this place, Beatriz caught sight of a figure and pulled Salto up sharply, meaning to be cautious. But then she recognized Marisita’s familiar dress, crumpled into a lopsided monument as she kneeled. She had Daniel’s head and shoulders in her lap. Her arms circled him.

  “Do you have his darkness?” Beatriz called.

  “No,” Marisita said.

  This seemed impossible, as Daniel had broken the taboo by holding Marisita in her distress, and now Marisita was doing the same for him. And there was no doubt that she loved him—she was there, after all, and so she should have been an heir to his darkness. Beatriz began to wonder if they had been wrong about the savagery of the Soria darkness along with everything else, and dangerously, hope trembled in her. “How is that possible?”

  “I cannot interfere with his miracle,” Marisita said with a little sob in her voice, “because it’s too late. He’s dead.”

  Now Beatriz scrambled down from Salto so quickly that she terrified even Salto. The animal leaped back from her as she hurried to Marisita’s side and crouched in the scrubby grass beside her. Here was Daniel Lupe Soria, the Saint of Bicho Raro, worn to a frayed thread in Marisita’s arms. He looked like all of the icons Beatriz had ever seen. The martyred Saint, gaunt and frail, long hair hanging. Marisita was the Madonna, holding him close.

  Beatriz thought she knew then what Pete felt like with the hole in his heart.

  Movement to her right startled her.

  “What’s that?” she demanded.

  “His darkness,” Marisita wept.

  It was a dark, pale-faced owl, standing nearly as tall as Beatriz. It was not the same owl that had hatched from the egg in the truck, but it was the same species. It was no natural owl, but rather an uncanny creature bred of miracles and darkness. Like the one Beatriz had seen hatch, its face was not quite an owl face. In fact, as Beatriz studied it in the pale light, she realized it had Daniel’s eyes painted on it. Daniel’s mouth, too. And Daniel’s ears, painted on the side of its head, as if it was made of both owl and wood.

  “It took his eyes,” Marisita said, “and just when I got here, it stole his breath. I tried to catch it.”

  This, at least, made sense to Beatriz. She had been told her entire life that Soria darkness was a terrible and fearful thing, far stranger and more difficult than an ordinary pilgrim’s darkness. And this owl with its stolen eyes and mouth and ears was a terrible and fearful thing. At least one of the stories Beatriz had been told was true.

  She did not want to get closer to the creature, but she took an experimental step toward it anyway. With a little cluck, it pranced backward. Not far. Just a few steps, its wings flapping, its expression perhaps jeering.

  Marisita gazed at it with loathing. “I just can’t
believe he’s dead.”

  “Until his darkness leaves, he is not dead,” Beatriz said. She studied the bird. It skipped from foot to foot like a boxer, as if preparing for her to make a leap for it. “The miracle dies with the pilgrim.”

  “Why is there another one?” Marisita asked.

  Beatriz tilted her head back to look at the other owl, the one she had hatched. Her thoughts flew up into the air to join it.

  The problem was that she needed to know where Daniel’s darkness originated in order to know how to solve it. What was he supposed to learn from this owl, this lechuza, that had his eyes and his ears and his mouth and his breath? It could not be easy, or he would have solved it himself already. Beatriz took another step toward it. It took another step back. Again with the hectic, hateful, almost playful skips. She took another step. It took several more back, getting a little farther away. That was the wrong tactic, then, Beatriz decided. She would drive it away if she continued to chase it. Beatriz wondered if she could strike it, but she did not understand the rules of its theft. She didn’t want to risk injuring Daniel’s eyes or his breath. She didn’t think the owl was supposed to be defeated through violence, anyway, as there was nothing to learn there—Daniel had never lacked for fight or bravery.

  Beatriz thought about what she had learned from the events of the week before. When she made assumptions, she came to faulty conclusions. She looked at the owl again, brand-new, as if she knew nothing about it. She looked at Daniel, as if she did not know him. She removed all her fear of the darkness and all her grief at her cousin’s lifeless body. Then she asked herself what this scene could mean if she had drawn no previous conclusions about it. She struggled to school her impressions to be free of fear or rumor.

  “Marisita,” she said, “what if it is not wickedly taking his breath, his eyes, or his face? What if it is just keeping them for him?”

  “Why?” Marisita’s voice did not sound interested. She was losing hope.

  “What if it’s only there to help him?” Beatriz said. “A teacher instead of a predator?”

  Marisita threaded her fingers through Daniel’s spider-eyed ones. “My teachers never took my eyes.”

  Beatriz stared down the owl, and the owl gazed back at her with Daniel’s gentle expression. It was not so terrifying when she imagined it as a teacher, something positive, something trying to tell Daniel something about himself. She took a step toward it, but again, it pranced back away from her, even farther.

  “It will never come to you,” Marisita said.

  But Beatriz thought she knew what Daniel’s darkness stood for now. She did not like the conclusion she had come to, which is how she knew it was free of her personal bias. The lesson Daniel was meant to learn was that miracles were made to be interfered with. He was never supposed to be able to banish this darkness alone. His darkness was a puzzle that was meant to be solvable only by another Saint.

  “I think it will,” Beatriz said in a smaller voice. “Because owls are very attracted to miracles.”

  Marisita said, “Who are you going to perform the miracle on?”

  Beatriz said, “Myself.”

  This was Beatriz’s thesis: The Sorias must have once upon a time confronted their own darkness in the same way that all pilgrims were asked to confront their darkness. Somewhere along the way, a Soria must have lost the taste for facing their demons, however, and either died before performing the second miracle, creating a legend, or merely stopped the practice in its tracks, proclaiming Soria darkness too difficult to tackle. And so Sorias forgot how to solve their darkness, and they let it build up inside them until it became too treacherous, with a handful of Sorias being struck down each generation, falling prey to years of backed-up darkness.

  The only way Beatriz had to prove this theory, however, was by testing it on herself. And if there was any other explanation—if Soria darkness was truly impossible, or if it had become impossible—Beatriz might become wood like Daniel’s parents or blind and breathless like Daniel himself.

  “Take Salto and go,” she told Marisita. “I don’t know what will happen.”

  “I won’t go,” Marisita said. “I endured my own darkness and I will endure this, too.”

  “Then take Salto and at least ride a little ways off so you can watch safely.”

  She waited until Marisita had retreated just a little with Salto, and then she went to her cousin. She tied her bootstrap to his wrist so that nothing could carry her away from him before she could give him back his eyes and breath. She called her thoughts back down from where they were soaring with the buzzards and the other lechuza, the one with the woman’s face, the one who had hatched from the fire. Then she peered at the strange owl still on the ground, the one with Daniel’s face.

  Do you have darkness inside you?

  Beatriz thought of how Marisita had just overcome her darkness, and the twins, and Tony.

  Do I have darkness inside me?

  She remembered those owls sitting on the edge of the radio telescope, watching her hopefully, and she knew that she did.

  The miracle swelled inside her.

  The lady-faced owl dipped down low from above, finding the promise of the miracle irresistible, but that was not the owl she needed. She let her pending miracle rise even farther, huge and terrifying. It was such an enormous, backed-up miracle that it began to call to owls as far away as Bicho Raro, and beyond. She heard their distant cries as they began to flap toward this scrub as fast as they could, hoping to get to her before it was over. The miracle grew so much that now, finally, the owl with Daniel’s face could not resist its call. It hopped slowly toward her, as she had hoped it would. All of its evasion was gone: It simply wanted to be as close to this oncoming miracle as possible.

  She let the miracle out.

  Immediately, she felt darkness surge up behind it. If you have never had a miracle performed on you, you cannot quite imagine what it feels like to have your invisible darkness suddenly given flesh. It is a little like reaching for a step and finding there is no ground beyond it. The sudden weightlessness and vertigo make it seem for a brief moment like you have no body, but you realize a second after that you will be given this body back just in time for it to be dashed to the ground. It is not fear, but it is something people are often fearful of, so it is easy to see how the two are confused.

  Beatriz’s vision began to narrow. She was going blind, like Daniel.

  Doubt widened.

  Doubt was not truth, though; it was opinion. She pushed past it to a fact: She needed to get ahold of the owl with Daniel’s face before her miracle left her completely blind.

  As black curtains pressed on either side of her line of sight, she seized the owl. It was not a real animal after all; it was only fear and darkness under her fingers, which seem solid only until you have them in your grasp. She tore Daniel’s face from it and sucked his breath into her mouth. She saw his eyes appear on her own hands, painted lightly, like his spider eye tattoos, and she knew that she had taken his vision from the owl merely by touching it. It no longer wore his face or ears, so she knew she carried them too. The owl nodded to her, and Beatriz saw that it had wanted her to figure out this puzzle all along.

  She couldn’t thank it for the lesson because she still held Daniel’s life breath in her mouth, and she couldn’t let it escape until she reached him. So she simply nodded back.

  The owl vanished at once with a sound like a wind kicking up in the distance.

  Above her, the other, lady-faced lechuza swept low, right over Beatriz. The owl’s wings brushed her face and she just had time to catch a glimpse of how it was now wearing Beatriz’s eyes.

  Then everything went completely black.

  She did not have much time. Now that Daniel’s darkness was gone, the only breath he had was in Beatriz’s mouth, and it was useless there. Lost in darkness as complete as night, she hurriedly felt along her bootlace to Daniel’s wrist, and then from his arm to his chest to his face. Leaning s
wiftly, she breathed his breath back into his nostrils first, so that he would not die, and then she pressed his eyes back onto his eyelids and his hearing back into his ears.

  She did not think she could bear it if it was too late.

  Because Beatriz existed mostly in her own head, she was never generally overcome with wanting for anything that she didn’t have. The things that made her happiest didn’t have concrete forms, which made them extremely hardy. Ideas couldn’t die.

  Cousins could die.

  She wanted Daniel to be alive, and the ferocity of that wanting hit her harder than anything she had felt so far. She could not believe she had told Pete Wyatt that she didn’t have feelings, that anyone would have told her that she didn’t have feelings, because even if the force of her fear for Daniel’s fate hadn’t convinced her of their existence earlier, the force of her wanting him to be alive now would have.

  Daniel gasped.

  She gave herself only half a second of relief before she hastily untied herself from him. His darkness was cured. Hers was not. That meant that her second miracle could be interfered with, and even though Daniel’s lesson was that Sorias could interfere with miracles didn’t mean that he was in a state to help her.

  “Give him water,” Beatriz said to Marisita, though she had no idea if Marisita was still close. “Don’t come close to me!”

  “What should I do?” Marisita called.

  “Don’t talk to me!”

  Beatriz kept backing away, hands outstretched in the blackness. Above her, the lechuza’s wings batted air at her, out of her reach. There were no more miracles for her to perform to draw it close, however. And in any case, she didn’t think that she was supposed to solve her darkness in the same way that she’d solved Daniel’s. This was about her, somehow—a lesson, not a fearful punishment. She asked herself what she had learned, and what she still needed to learn. Casting her thoughts up again, out of herself, into the dark air above her, wherever her eyes were, she imagined looking down at the pilgrims. From that height, she considered how they had healed themselves. She mused on how the Sorias’ real collective darkness was that they would not let themselves help others because they were too afraid of losing themselves, that they were so afraid of being open and true about their own fears and darkness that they put it in a box and refused to even accept that they, too, might need healing. And the longer they blocked it up, the more the pilgrims also blocked up, and the worse everything got, until husbands and wives parted and siblings fought and everything was terrible.