All the Crooked Saints

by Maggie Stiefvater

it does not take them long to part ways with the ground and head out to the stars. Wouldn’t we all, if

we had the chance?

ribbons of marvel and sound stretching out straight and true from all over the world.

Many things in this life work better without the sun’s meddlesome attention,

Is this science? Religion? It is difficult even for scientists and saints to tell the difference between the two.

On the night this story begins, both a saint and a scientist were listening to miracles.

It was mostly quiet, except for the radio and the miracles.

They, their. Really, it was Beatriz Soria’s truck, and Beatriz Soria’s radio station. This is every Soria’s story, but it is hers more than anyone else’s. Although it wasn’t her voice playing over the AM radio waves, it was her complicated and wiry heart powering them. Other people have smiles and

tears to show how they feel; enigmatic Beatriz Soria had a box truck full of transmitters in the Colorado desert. If she cut herself, wherever she was, the speakers in the box truck bled.

the music that’ll save your soul.”

The wires on the floor shrank back from the water. Disaster whispered briefly.

In its written form, it was constructed entirely from strings of numbers; its spoken form was sung in notes that corresponded to the mathematical formula of the desired sentiment.

Here was a thing Beatriz wanted: to devote time to understanding how a butterfly was similar to a galaxy. Here was a thing she feared: being asked to do anything else.

“Even a small voice is still a voice.”

every knuckle but his thumbs he had an eye tattoo, so that he had eight of them, like a spider, and he was built a little like a spider, with long limbs and prominent joints and light body.

As the Saint, the coming and going of miracles occupied most of his thoughts and actions, a task he took great pleasure in and greater responsibility for.

Here was a thing he wanted: to help someone he was not allowed to help. Here was a thing he feared: that he would ruin his entire family because of this private desire.

Their faith was enough for now.

rubbed sand into pearls,

They were both quiet on the inside and outside, and they both had a hungry curiosity for what made the world work. But there was also the closeness created by the miracles. All of the Sorias were gifted with the ability to perform miracles, but into every generation, there were born a few who were more suited to the task than others: They were stranger or holier than other people, depending upon whom you asked.

the cold desert sky pushed up and out and away, a story without ending.

She had a strong feeling, in the way a Soria does sometimes, that there were miracles afoot, and she had been told, in the way all Sorias are told, that there were consequences for interfering with miracles.

a time when people had imagined the night air was full of nothing, and also about the expression dead air.

This was an impulse that she often had, to touch the invisible.

voice sounded a little hollow, a cup with no water in it, a sky without stars.

owls are very attracted to miracles, though the mechanism that draws the birds to them is poorly understood.

The quiet hurried around them.

a place of strange miracles.

Legends had crept out of the town, carried on horseback and tucked in people’s satchels and written into ballads played in bars late at night.

The Mexican government at the time hadn’t thought much of this, and they’d told the Sorias they could either stop performing miracles or start praying for one to save them. The Sorias had turned to the Church for support, but the Catholic Church at the time hadn’t thought much of the dark miracles and had also told them they could either stop performing miracles or start praying for one to save them.

born to be saints.

They’d marched out of Mexico under the cover of darkness and had kept walking un...

mountain-edged place quiet enough to let mir...

They hadn’t killed a man yet, but the yet was displayed prominently in their expressions.

there were owls everywhere. There were horned owls and elf owls, long-eared owls and short-eared owls. Barn owls with their ghostly ladies’ faces, and screech owls with their shaggy frowns. Dark-eyed barred owls and spotted owls. Stygian owls with eyes that turned red in lights at night—these owls weren’t originally from Colorado, but like the Soria family, they had come from Oaxaca to Bicho Raro and decided to stay.

The promise of a miracle was rolling off him thick now, and the owls were swirling down low over the top of the Mercury.

Floods, not flowers, followed in Marisita’s wake.

Here was a thing she wanted: to taste vanilla without crying. Here was a thing she feared: that the prettiest thing about her was her exterior.

Now she could not act until the night had quieted again.

It was not that they wanted to refuse these newcomers a miracle; it was simply that every bed was already full. Bicho Raro was brimming with pilgrims who couldn’t move on. And since the Sorias could not offer a room, there was only the miracle to attend to.

Donated by an anonymous benefactor, for all the crooked saints.

a physical reminder that regret stings.

The miracles at Bicho Raro always came in twos. The first miracle was this: making the darkness visible. Sadness is a little like darkness.

They both begin the same way. A tiny, thin pool of uneasiness settles in the bottom of the gut. Sadness simmers

fast and boils hard and then billows up and out, filling first the stomach, then heart, then lungs, then legs, then arms, then up into the throat, then pressing against eardrums, then swelling against skull and eventually spilling out of eyes in a hissing release. Darkness, though, grows like a cave formation. Slow drips from the uneasiness harden over the surface of a slick knob of pain. Over time, the darkness crusts in unpredictable layers, growing at such a pa...

Darkness never boils over. Darkness r...

They would feel a stirring of the pilgrim’s darkness as it drew near, like the owls, and...

inside their mouths, like a song they knew the words to. There was barely a pause between when they chose to draw the darkness out a...

He saw only the Saint.

In this light he looked less like a human you would