I write stories, though nobody asks.

They come and I can’t help it.

I write a story about a girl…

In an old country, long ago, a girl is poor. Awkward, pubescent, alone. And likely bound for the convent, her family lacking means. But first to make sure it will do, a test. The girl must wash for the sisters, and what little she earns will help her family. As she works one day in the hot bright light, she is joined by an old nun. No, up close, she is still of middle age. The girl’s friends have always laughed at this lady—her flighty air, her whiskers. Her pointy beak of a nose! But as the girl works alongside the nun, discolored linens in the mangle, they discuss this girl’s sorry faith, all her doubts, her rage. The nun makes the girl’s questions clear, and they plan to talk more. It is a surprise to the girl, this catechism. On this day, she thinks she sees God.

And about a family…

On a farm, in the heartland, a family grows corn and wheat. As they have done for time immemorial, going back to the father of the father of the father. The father in the family is hardworking and taciturn, the mother frail but determined. The children work the land, squabble and fight among themselves, but always, it is the farm, it is the land that matters. The locusts come to the heartland, and the family learns that crop after crop has disappeared, that the locusts are coming near now, the whole plague. But there is a mystic in the family, the youngest daughter. Is she blind? No, mute. She has never spoken aloud. She speaks locust though, and what she tells them, this mystic child, as they circle the farm, causes the insects to drop down dead from flight. Their bodies fill the furrows and feed the corn.

Then a town, yes. A town…

In a town, in a valley, there is resentment and fear. Outsiders arrived months ago, and they are washing floors and clothes, minding babies and elders. But they don’t keep the right religion, they eat smelly foods, sometimes they look at you funny. One day, a young man from this tribe is caught—they say he touched a girl, the prettiest girl, out in the lanes. The outsiders deny this, but the townspeople put the young man in the stockades at the center of town until the magistrates decide what to do. There is a curfew enacted because vandalism takes place in the streets after dark, and there is a brawl outside the school when the two sides come to blows. But then one afternoon, a stranger arrives, with a buckskin coat and hair of shining gold. Birds appear as he descends into the valley by the old mill trail, crosses the bridge, and strides into the town square at the height of market hours. He calls the people to him, and says that he has a new charter, he knows the way. They will all be able to live in harmony, and the people, God be thanked, they listen.

I write, then know my stories for bad ones, false at heart. That magical people make all the difference, and that isn’t how it works. Rather, what happens is…

The town enacts the charter and separates, sending the tribe to live across the river away from the schools, the churches, all enterprise. The townspeople sigh in relief, for they can interact with the others only when needed. The buckskin man becomes mayor, marries the prettiest girl. The birds fly away, and the young outsider sits in jail.

There is a storm. A storm like no one in the farmland has ever seen. The family tries to shelter the crop, but it is futile. The water falls in buckets, flattening the cornstalks, turning the wheat to mulch. Even the corpses of the locusts flood away. The youngest daughter can’t speak to the storm, and so it rages. This rain, it falls for days and days and days.

The girl’s father loses his work, and they must all move far away. Her mother dies, so the girl has to care for her young siblings day after day. Thoughts of the convent are given up, and she never sees the nun again. The girl’s anger resurges, fluttering inside of her, but it is all right, she says. She never has time to think about it anymore. And so…

The town simmers with fear until the uprising.

That farm, and all the others, are lost. The family scatters.

The girl works long, the rest of her days. She will never know God.

It all made me so sad, I decided I had to write the truer story. I just wasn’t sure what it was. Then I was walking on a street in warm weather down a hill due west of Chinatown, past the coin laundry and storefronts where you might post money orders—all those bare pavement places. Sirens were blaring, as was common there. But looking up from my feet I noted the particular blue of the sky, and I saw a murmuration in it.

I watched the birds as it swept, it eked, it waved across the sky. It dazzled me, made me giddy, that all of them together knew their minds and their ways so well that they could act as one, no single member slipping out of time. I knew right then there was no one coming to save us. But I took comfort in the allof them. Their concert, the communion, the things that they could do, all in all in all. So much comfort did I take that suddenly, in their wave, the birds were everything at once, and I knew that I knew this story. All the magic I needed for the moment, there before my eyes.

– Heather Pegas