The Saint of Osaiga

 

Miracles travel farther, faster outside the city.  

In this way, miracles are like people. Or light. Few people recognize the similarities between natural light and supernatural miracles. Left alone, light travels heartily through a vacuum without dissipating, so long as it doesn’t bump into anything. Stars from billions of light years away are visible for this reason. Without water, glass, or atmosphere to stop it, light travels in perfect paths from one source to the earth. But no light we make here on earth, steeped in atmosphere, will ever reach the stars. Isn’t it a shame? 

 

Miracles, similarly, travel easily with nothing in the way. What would it look like if miracles were as visible as light: currents of phenomenon and light grasping at other currents all around the world.

 

Some miracles go unseen, by vice of disturbance. Not all light and miracles go unseen, though. Some bounce over the surface of water, where depth and clarity join hands to volley them back at different angles. Some are refracted back by the atmosphere at a specific height and air density, and, like atmospheric refraction produces beautiful sunrises or sunsets via celestial objects, they are thrust back to the earth, less visibly. Miracles and light can be sent across states or countries, depending. Can leap from Colorado, get sloshed around in the atmosphere, bump its head on some temperature and air conditions, and land in Virginia or Maryland, mostly unaffected. 

 

And across the tundra? The sun is an accessory that many find meddlesome when they’re trying to achieve progress. So is warmth, tall buildings, medium-sized buildings, crowds of people, walls of glass. In the tundra, light and miracles can scamper to and fro so easily that they sometimes, unpredictably, end up dozens or hundreds of miles away from their original broadcasting points. A miracle in the South Pole might be found in the North Pole, just as strong as ever, or vice versa. It has been called science and religion, by saints and scientists and people who are both. An invisible animal is difficult to argue the shape of, no matter who feeds it. Which is why the scientists and saints have stopped arguing. It doesn’t matter that they both believe they’re right. 

 

Except neither had an answer when the light travelled so far across the world it took the other light’s hand and didn’t let go. The miracles went nuts. 

 

 

Osaiga was full of miracles. 

 

It was too windy for impermanent structures, and too sparsely populated for tall structures, so every structure was a cabin or barn or house in a frozen circle of cabins close to one another, possibly to share heat, like penguins protecting eggs. Like eggs, dead cars sat adrift in barbed wire and frost between the cabins. Osaiga shone with porch lights and the aurora borealis. 

 

Before Osaiga was Osaiga, the land had been nothing at all. A large piece of icy rock, connected by a small bridge south of Osaiga to the larger rock that was the continent of North America. There was little in the way of animals, less in the way of arable land. It was before the Santi’s had come north, before they’d left South America, when they had been Los Santos Santis. They had populated one town permanently, and hundreds of people seeking miracles, blessings, confession, healings, and many other things the church didn’t provide to all populated the town impermanently. Tents were always erected on the Santi’s property. Lines of tents and the occasional back packer went for miles, into the mountains. Merchants walked up and down the lines in the day time to sell cheap alcohol, small charms, prayer cards. Musicians busked in the night, moving up and down the line, getting into skurmishes when their territories touched. Those leaving left with stories- good or bad, neither dissuaded those who came to line up for the saints. They weren’t here for the good stories, just the interesting ones. Impassioned citizens who had met and survived the Santis declared they would name their children for the children in the family. This didn’t catch the attention of the government, but it did catch the attention of the Church, which brought it to the attention of the government. The government visited the Santis and told them politely that they were to stop providing miracles, or they would need one to save them. The Santis turned to the church. The Catholic Church told them, less politely, that they were to stop providing miracles, or they should ask for one to save them. 

 

The Santis had saint blood. 

 

It was getting too bright and crowded for miracles here anyway, they told the church in the afternoon. In the morning they were gone. 

 

They walked in the dark and slept in the day, until they’d found another place, flatter and emptier, enough for light and miracles. 

 

That was generations ago. Now there was Osaiga. And in Osaiga were aunts, uncles, grandparents, infants, cousins, second cousins, other relatives too distantly related to remember the titles of, and the unsaved. The unsaved occupied more and more cabins every year, and the Santis found more and more each year the idea of refusing the unsaved more appealing than buildings new cabins in the snow. The beds were full, the kitchens were emptying faster. Osaiga was full of unsaved that could not be saved. 

 

Osaiga was, as all places made by and for saints and miracles, equipped with a Shrine. There was only one, so it got the capital S. 

 

The Shrine was the oldest building the Osaiga. It had been built by two of the Santis that first travelled to Osaiga, who had completed its construction faster than any of their family members had completed construction of their own homes. They had arrived a day sooner than the other Santis and dug out a spot in the snow for the Shrine, then fallen asleep and woken up to find their work undone in the night. They promptly began to work, so diligently that they did not look up when the rest of the family settled in Osaiga. 

 

On the first day, they built brick walls into the shape of the Shrine and let loose the dogs inside while they plastered up the outside. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the second day, they’d added insulation, and turned some of the glass windows from one of the trucks into windows for the Shrine. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the third day, they fired a kiln from the warmth of their blood and made tiles for the roof, and installed them one by the one. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the fourth day, one of them woke, claiming to have dreamt of the Virgin, or at least a beautiful, celestial woman, and they carved out a part of the new roof to install a skylight through which they could see the aurora borealis. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the fifth day, they put in furniture and an altar, and from their memories of the colours of the South American forest, painted some of the glass and the walls. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the sixth day, the one that had dreamed the celestial woman stabbed his brother with a bone knife, went to the nearest town and robbed a municipal hall full of people, then returned to fashion his murdered brother’s collarbones into a small cross for the front of the shrine. The other Santis were not pleased. 

 

He was not there the seventh day. But the cross was, and it was still there now. 

 

As was the skylight, which was cleaned as religiously as all other aspects of the Shrine were attended to. Through it, the aurora borealis hung and threw the occasional miracle. 

 

One particular saint looked after the Shrine these days. And performed most of the miracles. 

 

Carlos Frederico Santi had not always been as observant of holiness as he was now. 

 

He had been the most rotten of the Santi children, when he was a child. He was terrible enough to be exorcised. Terrible enough that no punishment could teach him, because no matter where he was placed, what tool or task he was given, he found a way to be terrible with what he was given. He had released several dogs and chased them down the road and away, first luring them with a huge steak meant to feed six people for dinner, then following them with a pointed stick his uncle used to walk without slipping in the snow, then he burned down the kennel. This was accomplished in approximately four hours. 

 

He had been terrible enough that speaking his word in a house of god was rude. Aiming his name at someone else was worse. Terrible enough that the Santis were beyond praying for him. They had prayed for miracles for him, but one had never arrived, and when Carlos remembered this, he turned his middle finger up toward the aurora. In his teen years, he had stolen a truck with his friends and decided to commit robbery. This was bad enough. They decided to rob a church. He had already robbed the Osaiga Shrine, so he turned toward the nearest Catholic Church. Specifically, toward a beautiful musical instrument that resembled a very small piano, covered in gold leaf. It was small enough to carry to the bed of the stolen truck. Or, it should have been. Carlos carried it down a hallway, then a second hallway, then a staircase. By the time he’d reached the vestibule, the instrument had become too heavy to carry. His friends joked, then tried to lift the piano, but it had grown too heavy for them. There was no chance of returning it to its original home at the back of the church, and no chance of taking it away and ridding themselves of the evidence. Carlos stared at it, thinking. 

 

While he was thinking, he became aware of a weight on him that was not new found teenage muscle, or cramps in that muscle from carrying a very small piano. Carlos marveled; he had discovered remorse, and it prevented him from leaving the church, abandoning the evidence of the intended theft, and even from lying about it. His friends vanished. Carlos waited for the priest to return in the morning. He waited inside the vestibule. He opened the doors while he waited, to watch the aurora ripple. He waited until a storm appeared, as quickly as if it had been crouched on the other side of the door. Wind rose, snow blew, ice spiked the gusts. Carlos draped himself over the instrument while the ice pelted, and waited. In this time, his many crimes and exploits and pranks pounded him, as furiously as the ice. He wished there were a real priest at the Santi Shrine, so he might repent. The ice became wind. He waited. The storm became clear sky. He waited. The aurora flooded the church with light. When Carlos moved, the piano, as light as it had been when he’d first touched it, moved as well. 

 

Carlos had returned the piano and become the current saint of Osaiga. He prayed each day. He cleaned all of the windows of the Shrine so he could see the aurora. He wore a cross around his neck and a mark on one shoulder blade from the first piece of ice that hit him the night of the attempted robbery. 

 

He prayed for the sun to rise and set, for his family, for the unsaved who were in Osaiga and those on their way. 

 

He did not pray for himself. Saints did not pray for themselves. 

 

The aurora always played a part in the miracle. 

 

Because the first miracle was this: light. 

 

Because the first miracle was to make visible what needed to be miracle’d away. The dark was always the same, beginning in the gut, like a small, slow drip. Then growing upward, like rocks in a tunnel. The slickness hardens, the uneasiness buffs, until the surface of the darkness is sharp and hard, like something that would cut you to handle it. It grows mostly unpredictably from there. Usually in layers, always in such a way that movement becomes impossible. Unlike anger, or sadness, letting a little out at a time does not reduce the volume of it. The dark remains, always. 

 

The exception: the Santis. With a hand raised toward the aurora, they can give shape and image to the dark. Under the aurora, it is visible to them, like a fish sensing rapids or currents. When a saint performs a miracle, the aurora watches. 

 

The second miracle was where the saints drew back. The second miracle involved getting rid of the darkness. This was the job of the unsaved. They could not leave Osaiga healed until they had fought it, and they had to do this part on their own. It was not the place for a saint to interfere. The Santi’s did not break this rule. The Santi’s lived this rule, breathed it, forgot it was a rule as much as they forgot it was a rule to not stick yourself in a fire. 

 

Carlos could not remember why this was the rule. Only that it led to a terrible consequence for the saint performing the miracle. A consequence worse than any unsaved’s darkness. Because it was a saint. And the consequences of saints were terrible. 

 

When an unsaved came to be saved, it was Carlos that performed the miracle. Delivered it was a better word, but looking at Carlos Frederico Santi, one could believe he had created the miracle in the first place. He was the best at what he did, and he was the best at what he did for generations. For many reasons, top of which was his face. Nobody could imagine looking into his face and not feeling holier for his presence, gentler, or gentled. His face, even without expression, suggested he loved you, and so did the saint before him, and the saint before him, and so on until you could hardly imagine ever not having been loved. If Carlos Frederico Santi had turned his face toward the Catholic Church in his lifetime, they would have fought the government in the name of the Santi family. If Carlos Frederico Santi had turned his face toward the government in his lifetime, they would have immediately become a theocracy. 

 

Miracles bring light. Not just to darkness. The day and the night after a miracle is bright. Which is why it bothered no one that there was light when Carlos finished his latest miracle. Only Rosa Santi, the one member of the Santis to suffer from insomnia, the only one awake in Osaiga in the middle of the night, was the one to notice that something had gone amiss. 

 

She began by waking Carlos’ brother. “It’s the middle of the night,” she informed him.

 

Groggy, tired, and upset, he sat up. “Yes, it is,” he observed. He observed some more. Then he got out of bed to help Rosa wake the rest of the Santis. The Santis assembled outside the Shrine in their pyjamas and coats. They did not carry flashlights. They did not need to. The day after a miracle is bright. 

 

Except it was not day. It was not even the night after the miracle had been delivered. But it was light anyway. Each Santi tilted their heads up, and one by one went to investigate the Shrine. When the last Santi left the Shrine, they knew two things. 

 

The first: Carlos Frederico Santi was missing. 

 

The second: the aurora borealis had lit up the sky. So had the aurora australis. And from here to the South Pole, everyone beneath it would wake up and realize the two auroras had bled into one another and covered the sky completely. 

 

The Santis considered. Not all Santis came to the conclusion, but some did, and they were right. The third conclusion: the saint of Osaiga had tried to help an unsaved. And this light was his darkness. 

Art by Ingo