The Hallowed Ones

thousands of black specks that I could see on the lightening horizon. As the light grew, so did the cacophony of their voices.

They were smart birds. I gathered this from years of watching them. They remembered faces, and gave Elijah a wide berth because they knew he’d throw stones at them. They avoided Herr Miller’s fields because he’d shot one of them, and one dead was all that it took to keep them away. When the bird had been shot, there was a terrible cawing the next dawn, as if they mourned. My father called them “gossip birds.”

I never hated them, not the way Elijah and the farmers seemed to. To my way of thinking, they were God’s creatures, same as cows and dogs. I never shooed them away from the grain. And they never avoided me the way they did Elijah.

But something had gotten them riled, some contagious thought that had them on the wing, sweeping south. I frowned as I entered the cornfield, pushing aside the stalks bent from yesterday’s activity. What did the ravens know that I didn’t?

One raven hopped on a bowing stalk before me. I looked up at him.

“What’s wrong?”

He stared at me intently, then cawed three times. I honestly felt as if he were trying to tell me something. He flapped his wings and disappeared into the sky with his fellows, the stalk he’d perched on bobbing in the gloom.

I bit my lip and kept pressing forward. I smelled the location of the crash before I saw it, smelled that dew- damp artificial burn stink that clung close to the ground. I peered into the battered clearing, anticipating seeing only the scorch mark pressed into the earth.

But I was not alone.

Ravens hopped through the broken bits of debris, puffing up their wings. In the center of the flock stood a man dressed in black, the hems of his trousers stained gray by the ash. He was turned away from me, and I could tell that he had been here for some time: a white circle was circumscribed around the crash site in something that looked like whitewash paint.

My palms began to sweat. I rubbed them against my skirt.

The man muttered to himself, and it seemed that the ravens understood some of what he said. They cawed urgently when he paused to take a breath. He was bowed in prayer, and one bird lit on his shoulder.

I was torn between asking him what he was doing here and looking on in silence. I watched him for some moments, before the wind kicked up and the ash blew toward me. I pressed both hands over my nose and sneezed.

The man turned around. I recognized him as the bent old Hexenmeister. He looked at me with glazed, cataract-covered eyes. “Katie.”

“Herr Stoltz,” I said, my cheeks flaming red at having been caught out for spying. “I didn’t mean—”

“Go home, Katie.”

“Herr Stoltz, I—”

“Go home, Katie. And do not speak of this. There is nothing here. Not anymore.”

That phrase sank deep into my bones, seemed to chase away a bit of the memory of yesterday. Dawn began to spill over the horizon, in brilliant gold, and the ravens took wing in a furious flutter of black, like rotten leaves stirred up in the bottom of a bucket.

I shuddered.

But I obeyed.

Seth and Joseph didn’t return by midmorning.

And the English didn’t come for their helicopter.

I said nothing about the Hexenmeister’s visit to the field, heeding his order. I felt that I had intruded on something sacred, fearsome, and intimate. I was ashamed and curious, both at once. No one noticed that the ravens had all gone.

Herr Miller had come to our house to use Mrs. Parsall’s phone. His hands were pale and fidgeted nervously. “They said that they’d be back this morning,” he murmured. And he kept saying it, over and over.

Mrs. Parsall redialed the number to the furniture store, then shook her head. “No answer.” Her brow was creased with worry. “Do you want to come with me in the car to go looking for them?”

“Has the curfew been lifted?” my father asked.

“I assume so,” Mrs. Parsall said. “I turned on the car radio this morning. All it was playing was music.” I’d sat with her in the passenger’s seat, listening. Everything sounded normal.

“Maybe they’re just being poky,” my mother suggested. It was almost five miles to town. By buggy, that could take a bit over an hour. If the boys were on foot, it would take up to two hours.

I squinted at the window. It had been daylight for three hours. They should be here by now.

“I’d be grateful to go check on them,” Herr Miller said. “Elijah’s doing the morning chores.”

“Maybe we’ll find them walking by the side of the road,” Mrs. Parsall said hopefully.

I followed them out to the car. Mrs. Parsall started the station wagon up, and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was playing.

I bit my lip. I didn’t believe in omens.

My father’s hand clamped down on my shoulder as I moved to sidle into the back seat. He shook his head. “Not you, Katie. There are chores to be done.”

I stepped back and stared after the station wagon as it bounced down the rutted drive to the road, the music sounding tinny in the distance.

* * *

I’d helped my father milk the cows and was feeding and watering the dogs by the time Elijah located me in the kennel.

“They didn’t find Seth and Joseph.” Elijah sat down heavily on an upturned bucket. His hands were slack in his lap, and his eyes were dark with worry.

“They checked the furniture store?” I patted Sunny’s belly, full of babies and meat scraps. I’d snuck her some canned hamburger, and she was still licking the gravy from her chops. I thought that gravy was good for the pups, but no one else shared my philosophy.

“Ja. The door was open, but no one was inside.” Elijah’s mouth thinned. “Father won’t say anything else. He came back white as a ghost, and he and Mrs. Parsall went straight to the Elders.”

I frowned. “Mrs. Parsall went with him?” They must have seen something very strange for Herr Miller to take an Englisher to the Elders.

“Ja.” Elijah blew out his breath. “Either my brothers are in trouble, or . . .”

“ . . . or they’re going to get in trouble with the Elders.” A certain amount of drift was expected, even tolerated among young Plain folk. But not the kind of disobedience that caused parents to worry so much they needed to go to the Elders.

“They didn’t check Schmidt’s?” I asked. The boys liked to visit the general store whenever they could slip away. It was the same place we swapped messages on the bulletin board with the Outside world. Schmidt’s had chewing gum, soda pop, cigarettes, beer, and, most enticingly for Joseph and Seth, comic books. The boys kept a secret stash in their shared bedroom.

Elijah shook his head. “No. I didn’t know that my father and Mrs. Parsall had left.”

And he would have been reluctant to tell his father the secret. I understood. Though we loved our parents, we often kept secrets from them. The older we got, it seemed like the secrets multiplied.

Elijah stood up, nearly knocking the bucket over and startling Sunny. “I’m going to go look for them.”

“I’ll go with you.” My morning chores were finished.

“You just want to visit Schmidt’s,” he teased as I followed him out of the barn.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I would like a Coca-Cola. And maybe a magazine.”

“What kind of magazine?”

“Maybe Cosmopolitan.” I said it only to shock him, to test boundaries.

Elijah raised a brow. He’d seen the scantily clad women on the glossy pages and the covers that announced new sex tips—probably incomprehensible to both of us—every month. I’d shown him one the other week. His mouth had fallen open. He dropped the magazine three times before getting it back on the rack. It was a