disappointing for the young man who had purchased the land, because it had been his hope that the healing water would serve as the cornerstone for a great center of metaphysical study. To keep his dream alive, he found it necessary to spend almost all his time traveling the country soliciting funds to pay taxes on the property, keep up insurance policies, and maintain a minimal staff of two to oversee daily operations.
Miller's Creek's two employees were a night watchman, to ensure that people did not remove the water from the creekâthat would eventually cause a drought in the pine forest downstreamâand an administrator working out of the ramshackle house on the property to take care of the myriad details of a nonprofit enterprise.
In this, the owner had been lucky. The night watchman, Enrico Santori, was a local septuagenarian whose grandson was the chief of police of Dawning Falls. Miller's Creek was patrolled every hour of every night from six in the evening to six in the morning.
And the administrator was a woman whose prodigious powers of organization kept everything running so smoothly that one would not have guessed that there was any work at all involved in keeping a shrine visited by millions of people each year. Her name was Emily Blessing.
Ms. B, as she preferred to be called by the local populace, had appeared in Dawning Falls seemingly out of thin air, and looked like everyone's idea of a small-town librarian. Perched on her nose were a pair of black-framed, mannish glasses that were so old that they had actually become more fashionable than they had been when new. She always wore her hair parted in the middle and pulled into a severe bun on the back of her head. Her wardrobe reflected a sense of style so undeveloped that a number of women in town speculated that Ms. B might be a renegade nun.
They were wrong. What she had been, back in the days before her life became so utterly, unalterably changed by circumstances she still did not fully understand, was a prime mover at the Katzenbaum Institute, a think tank devoted to exploring the implications of science on society. She had been an intellectual, a scientist, and an atheist. She had also been the reluctant guardian of a child she had never wanted, a child she had lost one day, whose loss had made her radically reassess her life.
Most of the populace of Dawning Falls neither knew nor cared about her background, however. What was interesting about Ms. B was that she had come to Miller's Creek covered by a twisted mass of scar tissue that ran from the base of her right ear all the way down her arm, and that it had never gone away.
Emily Blessing was the first person to have been unaffected by the healing waters.
"I'm a reminder to everyone who visits here that the miracle doesn't always work," she told Gwen Ranier's high school class in the same crisp, matter-of-fact manner that she explained the molecular structure of the curative water or the history of other "miracle" sites around the world. Part of Ms. B s job was to drum up volunteers to clean the grounds around the creek.
After hearing her speak. Gwen went to the makeshift office at Miller's Creek the next day to volunteer. She had returned every week since then, mostly for the chance to speak with Ms. B.
Gwen admired the woman's factual, unemotional approach. After the teary, fairy-tale world in which she had been raised, Gwen's head nearly spun from the freshness of the air around this woman of ideas.
And there was another reason Gwen liked to spend time around Ms. B. The woman never commented on Gwen's appearance. Most people had a quite strong reaction to her. Either they were afraid of her, or they found her disgusting. But Ms. B seemed to notice nothing about her but her mind.
"Why do you suppose the water helps some people and not others?" she asked Gwen pointedly on the first day she came to volunteer.
The girl had looked around awkwardly, her kohl-rimmed eyes reluctant to
Miller's Creek's two employees were a night watchman, to ensure that people did not remove the water from the creekâthat would eventually cause a drought in the pine forest downstreamâand an administrator working out of the ramshackle house on the property to take care of the myriad details of a nonprofit enterprise.
In this, the owner had been lucky. The night watchman, Enrico Santori, was a local septuagenarian whose grandson was the chief of police of Dawning Falls. Miller's Creek was patrolled every hour of every night from six in the evening to six in the morning.
And the administrator was a woman whose prodigious powers of organization kept everything running so smoothly that one would not have guessed that there was any work at all involved in keeping a shrine visited by millions of people each year. Her name was Emily Blessing.
Ms. B, as she preferred to be called by the local populace, had appeared in Dawning Falls seemingly out of thin air, and looked like everyone's idea of a small-town librarian. Perched on her nose were a pair of black-framed, mannish glasses that were so old that they had actually become more fashionable than they had been when new. She always wore her hair parted in the middle and pulled into a severe bun on the back of her head. Her wardrobe reflected a sense of style so undeveloped that a number of women in town speculated that Ms. B might be a renegade nun.
They were wrong. What she had been, back in the days before her life became so utterly, unalterably changed by circumstances she still did not fully understand, was a prime mover at the Katzenbaum Institute, a think tank devoted to exploring the implications of science on society. She had been an intellectual, a scientist, and an atheist. She had also been the reluctant guardian of a child she had never wanted, a child she had lost one day, whose loss had made her radically reassess her life.
Most of the populace of Dawning Falls neither knew nor cared about her background, however. What was interesting about Ms. B was that she had come to Miller's Creek covered by a twisted mass of scar tissue that ran from the base of her right ear all the way down her arm, and that it had never gone away.
Emily Blessing was the first person to have been unaffected by the healing waters.
"I'm a reminder to everyone who visits here that the miracle doesn't always work," she told Gwen Ranier's high school class in the same crisp, matter-of-fact manner that she explained the molecular structure of the curative water or the history of other "miracle" sites around the world. Part of Ms. B s job was to drum up volunteers to clean the grounds around the creek.
After hearing her speak. Gwen went to the makeshift office at Miller's Creek the next day to volunteer. She had returned every week since then, mostly for the chance to speak with Ms. B.
Gwen admired the woman's factual, unemotional approach. After the teary, fairy-tale world in which she had been raised, Gwen's head nearly spun from the freshness of the air around this woman of ideas.
And there was another reason Gwen liked to spend time around Ms. B. The woman never commented on Gwen's appearance. Most people had a quite strong reaction to her. Either they were afraid of her, or they found her disgusting. But Ms. B seemed to notice nothing about her but her mind.
"Why do you suppose the water helps some people and not others?" she asked Gwen pointedly on the first day she came to volunteer.
The girl had looked around awkwardly, her kohl-rimmed eyes reluctant to
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