The Miraculous Page 8

  He shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the letter.

  “Not now, Faye,” Wunder said. “We need to deliver this.”

  Part Four

  THE LETTERS

  Chapter 21

  “Florence isn’t Sylvester,” Faye said for the tenth time.

  They were riding their bikes across town, away from the woods and cemetery, toward St. Gerard’s.

  “I know,” Wunder said for the tenth time. “But they have the same last name, and I don’t know any other Dabrowskis. Maybe they’re related.”

  “So we’re going to go to the church and ask for Florence Dabrowski?”

  “Why not?” Wunder asked. “It’s worth a try.”

  St. Gerard’s was an old building, the oldest in town except for maybe the DoorWay House. It was, however, in considerably better shape. The outside was made of silver-flecked light stone that gleamed in the sun. A bell tower rose above the main building, its top a soft blue. The front door was blue too.

  “Can we go in the sanctuary?” Faye asked as Wunder pulled the door open.

  “In the church?” Wunder said. “We can, I guess. But I don’t want to.”

  “I do,” Faye said. “I’ve always wanted to see what it looks like in here.”

  She went in ahead of him, straight to the glass double doors that Wunder had not been through since his sister died. He followed her reluctantly, which seemed to be how he spent a lot of his time lately.

  The inside of the church was even more beautiful than the outside. The stained-glass windows shone with rainbow light, dappling the wooden pews and white columns. Winks of gleaming gold added to the illumination, especially beyond the altar rails, in the sanctuary, where everything seemed to glow. There was a faint scent of incense, sweet and sharp and ever-present. And, like the door and the top of the bell tower, the vaulted ceiling, behind its wooden arches, was blue.

  Wunder had always liked that about his church, that the highest places and the way in were the color of the sky. He sometimes imagined that all the words in the sanctuary—all the prayers and verses and songs—were carried up to the sky-blue ceiling, carried up and then out, out, streaming from the bell tower and flowing through the cracks in the front door, like wind, like smoke, rising up from the sky-blue paint into the sky-blue sky.

  Where the sun shone. Where birds flew.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Faye pinning her bangs to one side and craning her neck this way and that, like she wanted to see every possible nook and cranny.

  “It feels very supernatural in here, doesn’t it?” she asked with a little shiver.

  “I don’t think so,” Wunder said. He stayed at the back, and he didn’t look up at the ceiling. “It just seems that way because of the decorations and the light.”

  “Wundie, you know that’s not true.”

  Wunder didn’t answer. And he still didn’t look up.

  Instead, he turned and went back through the glass doors.

  Faye could stay for as long as she wanted. But he wasn’t going to stay with her.

  * * *

  The church offices were not beautiful. They looked like normal offices, like the ones at Safe and Sound Insurance. There was a woman sitting at a desk at the front. She was folding bulletins that read All Souls’ Day and pictured white flowers and candles, but she stopped when they came in. Wunder knew her—Mrs. Ceiba. She had led his Sunday school class when he was in preschool. She used puppets in her lessons and gave out tiny cups of animal crackers.

  “Wunder,” she said. She gave him a sad smile. “I’ve been meaning to come by. How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He didn’t want to talk about himself—not one bit—so he quickly continued, “We’re here to see Florence Dabrowski. Do you know her?”

  Mrs. Ceiba’s expression went from sympathetic to distressed. “Florence?” she whispered. “You’re looking for Florence? Well, I’m so sorry, but—did you know her? I’m so sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” Faye asked. “What happened?”

  “Lydia, are you talking to me?”

  A creaky bellow emitted from the door off to the side of Mrs. Ceiba’s desk. Wunder recognized the voice. It was very recognizable. There was the sound of shuffling feet and a cane tapping, and then a shaggy, gray head leaned out the door.

  It was the Minister of Consolation.

  Chapter 22

  “Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry we disturbed you!” Mrs. Ceiba had stood up. She was talking very loudly.

  “I’ve told you, Lydia!” the minister yelled. “There’s no need to yell. I can hear just fine!” His bespectacled eyes roamed around the room, stopping on Faye and Wunder. “Who are you?”

  “This is Wunder Ellis,” Mrs. Ceiba said, still very loudly. “And his friend—”

  “Faye,” Faye said.

  “His friend Faye. Wunder, Faye, this is Mr. Dabrowski. He’s in charge of our Ministry of Consolation.”

  “Dabrowski,” Wunder repeated. “Do you know Florence? Do you know Sylvester? We have something for him.” He held up the letter.

  The minister raised two bushy gray eyebrows at them. Mrs. Ceiba was wringing her hands together. She looked extremely uncomfortable.

  “Come into my office!” he yelled. He shuffled back inside.

  The office was a cramped room, entirely taken up by two threadbare armchairs, an old desk overflowing with papers, and a wooden chair. The minister stood at the door and glared as Wunder and Faye sat. Then he shut the door quite forcefully and began making his way back to his desk.

  It took a while, and as he waited, Wunder stared across the paper-strewn desk. There was a picture of Saint Gerard on the wall. In the picture, the saint wore a long black robe and cradled a crucifix. Behind him, a woman and a peacefully slumbering infant lay on a bed. The woman was clutching a white handkerchief. The story of this picture, taken from the About Us section of the church bulletin, had featured in one of Wunder’s earliest Miraculous entries:

  Miraculous Entry #10

  Saint Gerard performed many miracles. The most well-known involves a woman who met Saint Gerard when she was a child. During this meeting, he gave her his handkerchief, telling her she might need it someday. Years later, after Saint Gerard had been dead for some time, the woman suffered complications during childbirth. Fearing for her life and for the life of her child, she remembered Saint Gerard’s handkerchief. As soon as it was brought to her, her pain ceased, and she delivered a healthy baby.

  Saint Gerard was the patron saint of pregnant women. He was the patron saint of childbirth.

  “Let’s have that letter!” The minister had finally made it to the wooden chair behind the desk. His hand was outstretched.

  Wunder turned away from Saint Gerard.

  “It’s not for you,” Faye said. “It’s for Sylvester.”

  “I am Sylvester, you know,” the minister replied. “And Florence was my wife. But she’s dead.”

  Faye shrieked. Wunder shook his head.

  “She can’t be,” he said. The minister didn’t say anything. “She can’t be!” he repeated, louder.

  The minister glowered at him. “She can be. And she is.”

  Wunder knew that the minister was unlikely to be wrong about his own wife’s mortality. But he unzipped his backpack and yanked out The Miraculous. He flipped it open to Entry #603 and thrust it across the desk.

  “She was healed,” he said.

  There was silence in the little room as the minister took off his large black-rimmed glasses and put on small, gold-rimmed reading glasses. He studied the page. He studied it for a long time, much longer than was necessary to read such a short entry.

  “What is this?” he asked finally.

  “She was healed,” Wunder insisted. It sounded like an accusation.

  “It was a miracle,” Faye added. And Wunder found himself nodding, as if he agreed with her.

  The minister didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t hear. He was still sta
ring down at The Miraculous.

  “You made this?” he asked.

  Wunder nodded. “I’m—I used to be a miracologist.” The minister glanced up, bushy eyebrows raised high in confusion. “I collected miracles.”

  The minister went back to the book, turning the pages one by one, stopping for a moment at each entry.

  “She did get well, you know,” he said. “For almost a year, she wasn’t in pain. And she remembered more, remembered me. The doctors had never seen anything like it. I never think about that really.” He took off his glasses and looked up, from Wunder to Faye and then back. “I did your sister’s funeral,” he said, pointing at Wunder.

  “Yes,” Wunder said.

  He pointed at Faye now. “What about you?”

  “My grandfather died,” Faye said. “But you didn’t do any funerals for me. I don’t go to church here. And even if I did, I wouldn’t want you to anyway. You’re extremely unconsoling.”

  As true as this was, Wunder thought it probably wasn’t the best time to bring it up.

  The minister, however, nodded. “You’re right, you know!” he cried. “I was consoling once, I think. When Florence was alive. But now—” He held up his hands, empty, as if to show he had nothing.

  “Why do you do it, then?” Faye asked.

  “I started,” the minister said, “when I retired. I wanted to do something useful, and the Church had need of me. It is a hard task, to console the grieving when the ones they love are gone. But I did my best. Then Florence passed. I don’t do much consolation work these days. And I never go to the cemetery, unless I’m doing a funeral.”

  Wunder thought of the rows of graves, always deserted, always silent. “Why not?” he asked.

  “She’s not in the cemetery, you know,” the minister said. “And I know that’s as it should be; I know that she is somewhere far better. I do wish though”—he paused to glance behind him at the picture of the saint, a guilty look on his face—“I do wish there was a way she could be here too. I wish there was a way they could all be here.”

  For the first time in the conversation, Wunder felt like the minister might actually have something to offer him. He noticed that Faye had scooched to the front of her seat. Maybe this was what the witch wanted to talk to the minister about. Maybe Faye had been right. Dark, terrible things had happened—his sister had died, and Florence had died—but maybe the minister knew how to find miracles in that darkness.

  “Do you ever feel,” Wunder said slowly, tentatively, “like she could? Like she might be able to come back?”

  Then he held his breath.

  But the minister shook his head right away, his halo of gray hair bobbing his answer: no, no, no. “I don’t,” he said. “I feel like she is far away, very, very far away.” He looked back down at The Miraculous, back at Entry #603. “I feel, sometimes, like everyone is very far away, you know. Like I am the only person on the earth.”

  Wunder let out his breath. Faye sat back in her seat. The room was silent.

  Then Wunder did something he’d never done before. He pulled The Miraculous back to himself and very, very carefully ripped out Entry #603. “So you remember the miracle part,” he said. “And here’s your letter.” He held both out to the minister.

  The minister took them. He set the Miraculous page gently, reverently at the center of his desk. Then he opened the envelope with a silver letter opener.

  The paper he took out had the same aged look as the envelope. When he unfolded it, the light shone through, and Wunder could see words scrawled in the same script as the name on the outside. He couldn’t read them though.

  The minister put his gold-rimmed glasses back on. Wunder watched as his eyes moved down the entire page, then went back to the top again. When he had completed his second reading, the minister yelled, “Who gave you this?”

  “A woman from the DoorWay House,” Wunder replied.

  “The DoorWay House?” The minister took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Have you read this letter?” he asked.

  “No,” Faye said. “It was sealed when we got it. But we’re supposed to get one soon.”

  “And we know it’s an invitation,” Wunder said.

  The minister nodded a few times. “Yes, but an invitation to what?” he said. He looked very old and very, very tired. “I suppose we shall see.”

  It was the quietest Wunder had ever heard him.

  Chapter 23

  The next day, Wunder didn’t go past the cemetery. He didn’t go into the woods. Delivering the letter hadn’t given him the answers he’d hoped for. The Minister of Consolation—even with his knowledge and his position at the church—seemed to be as angry and confused as Wunder. The minister didn’t have the answers.

  But Wunder’s questions hadn’t gone away. In fact, they were louder than ever.

  That was why he stayed away from the DoorWay House. He was afraid of how much he wanted to know what the witch was up to. He was afraid of how much he wanted to be wrong, how much he wanted the minister to be wrong. He was afraid of how much he wanted to believe in miracles again.

  Wunder wasn’t sure what Faye was feeling, because she didn’t try to talk to him at school or follow him after. She did give him a few slow waves of her black-gloved hand.

  But the day after that, she was waiting at the bicycle racks.

  “Let’s go to the cemetery,” she said.

  “The cemetery?”

  “Yes, Wundie. The cemetery. We need to talk about what to do next.”

  In the cemetery, Faye toe-dragged herself right up the hill, where she settled down next to the memorial stone. Wunder sat on the other side of her, as far from the stone as he could get. He didn’t look at it or read the words, but they played over and over in his mind. Behold, behold, behold …

  “I don’t know if we should go back,” he said. “To the DoorWay House, I mean.”

  “I knew you were going to say that, Wundie,” Faye said. “And I didn’t want to pressure you—I even gave you a whole day off—but we absolutely have to.”

  “I thought you were afraid of the witch,” Wunder said. “I thought you said she wanted to poison us or steal our souls or whatever.”

  “I was afraid,” Faye said. “Only because I know more about these kinds of things than you do. But now, more than ever, I think we have to see the witch.”

  Wunder sighed. “You’re always saying that. We don’t have to do anything.”

  “Yes, we do.” Faye’s voice grew more insistent. “We need to know what she’s doing here. We need to know who she is. I know you say you don’t believe in miracles anymore, but you went to see her. You delivered the letter.”

  Wunder shook his head. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. The minister—he said his wife is gone, gone for good. I don’t know what the witch—I mean, the old woman—wanted with him, but it doesn’t have anything to do with bringing people back from the dead, if you’re still thinking that.”

  He turned even farther away from the stone. Now he was looking down over the woods, and from this angle he could see that the leaves had almost fully changed. Reds and golds had replaced green, the colors creating a botanical sunrise, a foliage wildfire. It was the woods at their most vibrant, their most beautiful. But soon, too soon, he knew, everything would be brown, everything would be dead, the trees would be bare.

  “It doesn’t,” he repeated. Then, “Does it?”

  “Maybe,” Faye said. “Maybe not. But, Wundie, I think we both know that this is not the time to stop searching.”

  Wunder was quiet for a moment. Without his consent, his eyes wandered away from the dying forest and back to the stone. We will all be changed … He thought about what the witch had said: There is much to discuss. What did she want to tell him? What if he let himself listen? Could there truly be a miracle waiting to be found, bright and shining, after the darkness of his sister’s death?

  “Even after what the minister said, you st
ill think the witch—the old woman—has something to do with my sister?” he asked. “And … resurrections?”

  He looked over at Faye. Her hood was pulled up over her head and she was nodding.

  “I do, Wundie,” she said. “I do.”

  And Wunder found himself nodding along. Because, he realized, he did too. “We’ll go back, then,” he said.

  Chapter 24

  They met in the woods on Saturday morning. It was the coldest day that autumn yet, too cold for October. Wunder shivered in his sky-blue jacket; he hadn’t anticipated such low temperatures. Faye seemed toasty in a poufy purple coat covered in sparkly turquoise hearts and her black cloak.

  When Wunder arrived, she handed him something small and shiny. It was a flat silver hand. The spread fingers were covered in intricate designs, and a bright blue stone eye punctuated the palm.

  “I brought these,” Faye said. She held up one of her own.

  “What are they?” Wunder asked, lifting the eye to his own eye.

  “Hamsa amulets, otherwise known as Hands of Fatima or Hands of Miriam. They’ll protect us from spells and the evil eye and other witchcraft.”

  Wunder lowered his amulet and frowned. “She’s not a witch, remember?”

  “I remember that you think she’s not a witch,” Faye said. “You should remember that I still think she might be one, although there are, as we have discussed, other possibilities. When this saves you from all kinds of hexes and jinxes and curses, you’ll thank me.”

  The witch was on her porch, as always. She smiled when she saw them. She had, Wunder noticed, perfect teeth, small and white and even.

  “You are back,” she said in her faraway voice. “I am glad. Yes, yes, yes. I am glad. Come in.”

  When they walked through the house’s door, Wunder felt the stone of his heart begin to rattle the same way it had on the first visit. This time, he wrapped both arms around himself. He was there for answers. He didn’t want to get sidetracked by his heart.