“No. No. There’s been no change. But she’s fine.”

Vincente’s face creased in a thought. If Jhana-Merise was fine, he couldn’t figure out what else Arama wanted. Why had she come? He asked if she wanted to join him with his friends. She said that she hoped they might be able to talk alone.

They sat in a corner of a nearby café. A small black and white TV behind the counter played the local news.

Arama spoke of how she believed God had something special in mind for Jhana-Merise.

Her voice soothed Vincente. It cut through the haze of beer.

“Your daughter is a special child of God. I knew that the first time I saw her.”

“We’re all supposed to be, aren’t we? None more special than another?”

“There are some who are more special. It’s those we must protect.”

“Jhana-Merise is special, but God has nothing to do with it,” Vincente said.

Arama told him she wouldn’t make an excuse for having a relationship with God. She’d done that enough when she was young. She confessed to her jealousy of having been in the shadow of her older sister, who was deemed the success. But she’d learned to transcend feeling superfluous through the grace of God.

“I used to believe He was merciful and good, too,” Vincente said.

“What happened?”

“Life exhausts faith.”

He folded his strong, dark hands on his lap. They looked like they were in prayer. He looked down and realized they were. And in spite of his having buried his belief in miracles when he buried his wife, Arama was reaching that pain.

A news story came on the TV.

A report on a shamanic legend from the ruins of Machu Picchu, in the mountains near by.

A local guide spoke of when a sensitive person touched their forehead to the Intihuatana stone at the sacred site, it opened their vision to the spirit world.

Vincente couldn’t look at Arama as the report continued. Memories were being stirred.

“We are more than we know,” she said.

“I need to get back to the hospital.”

He wanted to avoid the emerging intimacy and awareness that he, too, was capable of more than he knew.

11

11

In the burn unit of the hospital, on a different floor from where she was being treated, Jhana-Merise approached the bedside of a young boy, his burned body swathed in white gauze. His sweet eyes and dark lips showed through the bandages.

“I told you I’d come,” she said.

“I believed you,” the boy replied.

“You still want to get well?”

The boy nodded.

Jhana-Merise held his shrouded hand.

A subtle light filtered into the room.

The clouds parted to let in a slender stream of moonlight.

“Is the pain gone?” she asked.

The boy nodded.

She unwrapped the piece of bandage from his hand.

He moved his fingers and stared at the healed flesh.

12

12