The summer of Ignatius’ fourteenth birthday was rainy. Ignatius didn’t mind too much. Summer still meant he could spend most of the week at Auntie George’s bright, white, airy house with his younger sister Anne and his sister Margaret. And the rain did not keep him from his favorite summer activity: long walks around the lakes and to the cemetery, where he would meet Samael. After breakfast, he would set out with an umbrella and a sack lunch packed by Auntie George – always something delicious spread between two slices of her own homemade bread – and sometimes not return until late in the afternoon.

“Where do you go on those long walks of yours?” George asked.

“Oh, just anywhere,” Ignatius replied, “I like to just walk and think.”

“What do you think about?”

“Things.”

“Oh…”

Ignatius never really felt like he needed Auntie George the way he might have if he were a small child, the way his sister Anne did, but he liked the security of her always being there, hovering somewhere in the background; away in the kitchen; rummaging down in the basement or up in the attic; or out weeding the garden. And he liked the sweet aroma of memories in her house, from when his mother was still alive and all the aunties used to get together there to cook and gossip around the kitchen table. Once upon a time her house had been enough room for him to play in, but now he needed to get away and walk and think.

He had been thinking a lot about the whys of Samael’s appearing to him. It had seemed natural to him when they first met, in that moment of terror when his world seemed to be falling apart at the death of his mother. His mother used to tell him every child had a guardian angel, and now here he was. But slowly it dawned on Ignatius how unusual this relationship was. There was something itchy inside him, some sense that a greater purpose was waiting to seize him. And Ignatius knew that this purpose had something to do with Samael.

As Ignatius’ birthday in early August approached, George had been planning a special celebration for him. She felt vaguely guilty about the fact that despite her best efforts to reach out to him, Ignatius continued to grow more distant and melancholy. This year she wanted to do something extraordinary for him.

When George asked him what friends he would like to invite to his birthday, Ignatius responded in typical fashion that he couldn’t think of any. “Of course my sisters,” he added, keeping a cool veneer. She didn’t push the point; she only said, “Well, tell me if you think of anyone else to invite, because I have something extra special planned for you.” And she determined that it would be something extra special indeed.

George’s husband, who had died a number of years ago of a heart attack, had been an army colonel. Through him, George knew a number of high-ranking officers at Fort Snelling, and she used her connections to arrange a special birthday tour of the local airbase for Ignatius. She explained to the commander of the airbase “what a dear, good boy” Ignatius was, and how he seemed to have fallen into a “dreadful melancholy” since the death of his mother, and how wonderfully it might “lift his spirits” to have something extra special done for him. “Besides,” she said, “it would do him such good to meet some of Minnesota’s upstanding men in uniform, men he might look to as role models.” The commander agreed, promising to meet personally with Ignatius and have his adjutant take the boy on a tour of the runways and the hangars. Ignatius could even watch some airborne military exercises and, as the climax of the visit, get an up-close, inside view of the cockpit of one of the planes. It was an extraordinary gesture. “Thank you so much,” George had gushed, “He will never forget it, and neither will I.”

“It’s the least I can do for the late colonel,” the commander had replied.

“Don’t you find it a shame,” asked Auntie Will, “not to invite at least a few boys his age? Maybe from church? It’s his fourteenth birthday!”

“It is his birthday,” replied George, “and he should spend it with whom he wants. You know he has nothing in common with those boys! No, we should just try to give him something special. Make him feel loved, and the friends will come, eventually.”

George made much ado about gathering special, expensive ingredients like coconut and pineapple and making her special lemon custard for the birthday cake, to throw Ignatius off and make him think that this “extra special” birthday would be merely ordinary. But in a final stroke of genius, she thought to arrange for a special “military escort” to the airbase. A friend of hers who worked at a limousine service managed to get a free car for the evening. They would decorate it with American flags, and the woman’s husband, who was a reservist, would wear his uniform and drive the family to the airbase. The Saturday afternoon of the party, Ignatius would think it was a birthday like any other – until his chauffeur arrived. As a final touch, George put in a good word with her very best friend of all, praying for sunny weather and a light, summer breeze. She wanted everything to be perfect.

The night before Ignatius’ birthday, George was awakened by the sound of crying. She thought she heard it in a dream at first, but then she snapped to consciousness, and lying in the dark she heard it clearly, a child sobbing. She turned on the lamp on her nightstand, climbed out of bed, pulled on her nightgown, and followed the sound down the hall to Anne’s room. She found the little girl curled up into a ball, precariously shuddering on the edge of her bed, weeping pitifully, with her bed clothes tangled up around her as though they had been swept by a whirlwind.

George sat down on the bed next to her. “What’s the matter, honey?” she asked, as she put her hand on Anne’s shoulder. And then she knew what was wrong.

“I was having nightmares!” Anne cried.

Ignatius woke, as he usually did, at six in the morning, and was surprised to find activity in the house. The yellow glow of Anne’s nightstand lamp shone plaintively through the cracks of her bedroom door. Auntie George emerged in her nightgown looking tired and disheveled, and stopped Ignatius in the hallway.

“Nate, thank God you’re up,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Your little sister Anne is very ill,” she replied, “And we’re out of cough syrup. I need you to watch her while I go to the only pharmacy in town that’s open this early. It’s on the other side of town. As soon as urgent care is open, we’ll need to take her to the hospital.”

George began to scuttle down the hall and then stopped abruptly, her sock-covered feet skidding slightly on the smooth wooden floor. She turned around slowly and looked at Ignatius with a face puckered in contrition. “I’m so sorry you have to start your birthday this way.”

Ignatius nodded and shrugged. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

She turned and scurried away down the hall. Ignatius pushed his sister’s bedroom door open and walked quietly in.

Ignatius noticed a sour smell as he walked into the room, and then he saw the basin full of vomit on the floor next to the bed. There was a pile of wet bedding crumpled up in a pile in the corner. Ignatius looked at the nightstand and saw a half-drunk glass of water, an open bottle of aspirin, and a wet cloth in a basin. His sister was lying peacefully, curled up on her side between crisp, clean sheets.

Ignatius sat down on the chair that had been pulled up next to the bed and looked down at his sister. Her face was flushed and sweaty. He remembered the first time he had looked at her, when she came home from the hospital. Auntie Roberta had been sitting them, and listening to the radio with him and the girls when father walked through the door, his arm around mother and mother holding a small white bundle in her arms. Everyone had crowded around to see the new baby, and Ignatius had fussed because he couldn’t see her. “I want to hold her,” he had cried out, and his sister Margaret had pushed him aside and said, “Nate’s too little to hold her!” but Ignatius’ mother had said, “It’s a family tradition, the youngest always gets to be the first to greet the newborn.” Ignatius nicknamed her “Baby Doll” because she was so tiny. As his mother carefully placed her in his arms, he had been amazed at how all five of her miniature fingers wrapped around one of his eight-year-old fingers. As she grew older he would help his mother wash and change and dress and feed “Baby Doll.” He held her in his lap and read stories to her and helped his mother put her to sleep. It seemed like ages since he had been close to her like that, since before his mother died.

Suddenly, her whole body was convulsing. The nice, smooth sheets were getting tossed and wrinkled, as she made a horrible, grating sound like when a snow shovel scrapes on a sidewalk. She was coughing. She sounded as if she were strangling. Helplessly, Ignatius reached out to try to sooth her. “Hang in there, Baby Doll. Auntie George is getting you cough medicine,” he said. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the coughing stopped. Her body shuddered and she drew in a long, raspy breath, and then she was still again. He carefully straightened out her covers, and placed his hand on her forehead. It was burning hot. He had never felt a fever so hot. She did not seem to be aware of his presence. It was then that Ignatius noticed how black the sky looked through the window next to Anne’s bed. He stood up and walked to the window, pressing his face against it. He saw thick, proud storm clouds roiling from horizon to horizon. The air looked green, as though everything were under water. He saw trees bending, branches waving wildly. He heard the joints of the house creaking fragilely, the wind humming around it.

He heard his sister cough again. He turned toward her and saw her sitting straight up in bed, staring oddly at him. He moved toward her.

“You’d better lie down, Baby Doll,” he said.

Her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out, her face distorted in a terrible frown. “What’s the matter?” Ignatius asked, as he reached out to smooth her hair.

She emitted a squeak, as though she were trying to scream, but couldn’t, and then she jerked away from him, thrashing at him. “Get away!” she hissed. Tears ran down her face. “Get away! Get away!” “What’s the mater?” he asked again, but she only pushed herself up against the headboard, as far from him as she could move.

“OK,” he said, backing away from her. He sat down in the chair, while she stared at him wary and panic-stricken. They watched each other, until she slumped down into the bed again, mercifully fading out of consciousness. He helped stretch her out, laying her head on the pillow and covering her gently with a sheet. She lay still there again until the next fit of coughing.

It seemed an eternity till Auntie George returned again, windswept and soaking wet from the torrential rains that had begun to pummel the roofs and streets of the city.

“I’m scared about Anne,” he told her as soon as she arrived, “She doesn’t recognize me!”

“I know,” said George, “She’s been delirious from the fever half the night. We need to get her to the doctor as soon as we can. I’m sorry, dear. I should have warned you.”

Auntie George took over the vigil in Anne’s bedroom, and sent Ignatius downstairs to listen to the radio. All the channels were talking about the weather. Tornados had been spotted in Burnsville, Minnetonka, and West St. Paul. Even with all the lights on, the house was dim, hemmed in by the gloom outside, where the hum and wails of the wind slowly grew in intensity. As mid-morning approached, Margaret came downstairs complaining of a scratchy throat and a cough, and Auntie George found her guilty of a rising fever as well. She placed the back of her hand on Ignatius’ forehead too.

“How do you feel?” she interrogated him.

“Fine,” he replied.

“Thank God you’re normal,” she sighed, “I’m going to have to take both of your sisters to the doctor.”

Just as George was getting ready to pack the girls into the car and take them to urgent care, the phone rang. It was Auntie Will. Christine and Helen were coming down with something bad, some kind of flu or pneumonia.

“I’m not sure how long this will take. You wait here,” Auntie George told Ignatius, as she carried Anne out to the car wrapped up in an orange and yellow quilt. Margaret was fussing about something as she trailed Auntie George. “You go ahead to the car,” George commanded her.

She stopped herself just before rushing out the door, the same way she had earlier that morning when she first met Ignatius in the hall. “I am so sorry about your birthday,” she said, “but I’m afraid we will have to postpone it. And I did have something so special planned for you too!”

“It’s not your fault,” said Ignatius, and she was out the door.

Ignatius sat alone in the house listening to the radio. “There are reports of severe wind and tornado damage in Burnsville. We repeat, stay indoors and away from windows unless it is absolutely necessary!” The phone rang again, and Ignatius picked it up thinking it might be Auntie Will again. It was not. It was a stranger, a male. “Is Mrs. Benson there?”

“No,” said Ignatius, “She’s gone to the doctor.”

“Will you please give her a message that the tour will have to be cancelled today due to the weather?”

“I guess that was her surprise,” Ignatius thought.

He dutifully wrote the message down on a piece of paper and thanked the man and hung up the phone. He sat in the kitchen, alone, watching the light bulb in the ceiling lamp flicker and dim, listening to the alternately frantic and mournful song of the wind outside and the lonely rattling of the house. Then he slowly put on a rain coat, dropped the house key that Auntie George kept in a small jar on the kitchen counter into his pocket, and slipped out the side door, locking it behind him.

Outside the door, there was an invisible boundary between the calm that hovered under the skirts of the house, and the full fury of the weather. Ignatius crossed the boundary and suddenly he was baptized by the wet, green air, and seized forcefully by the wind. It yanked him away from the house and sent him scampering down the street, tearing wildly at his raincoat as if it would yank it off and toss it away. It seemed to want to lift him up and carry him into the sky. Everything was pointing skyward: it was in the dance of the trees, in the flight of the leaves, and in the reflection of the slick, wet streets. The wind was irresistible; to walk counter to it was impossible, like pushing against an invisible elephant. To walk with it was almost to fly. Ignatius found skips turning into leaps, and leaps turning into flight. It was terrifying and elating.

The wind took Ignatius down Eighteenth Avenue, ever eastward. He watched the houses pass by him, cowering under blackened skies, shuddering darkly in the wind. There was bright light ahead, breaking down through the clouds. Suddenly he recognized where the wind was taking him, and he laughed through his tears. The open gate to Hillside Cemetery rattled in the wind as Ignatius tripped past, but the willow tree on the hill overlooking Ignatius’ mother’s grave was strangely calm.

Samael was waiting for him there.

The remainder of August was unpleasantly cold and rainy and summer ended precipitously and disappointingly. There was news that the tornados had torn up a dozen or so buildings and homes on the outskirts of the cities, though fortunately no one had been hurt. The girls all had the flu and Anne had pneumonia, which worried Auntie George to no end. Most of Auntie George and Auntie Will’s attentions were focused on nursing the girls safely back to health before school started. Ignatius never did hear anything more about Auntie George’s special surprise. Perhaps she had not had time to revive her original plans, or she had tried and failed and was too embarrassed to talk about it. He kept waiting for her to say something, but she never did. And then the few precious days left before school started were squandered, Ignatius was back home under his father’s roof, and summer was officially over. But to Ignatius none of that mattered any more.

Something much more important had taken a hold of him. That day the tornados hit Samael had shared a secret with him. He had told about a veil of invisibility and forgetfulness between the living and the dead that was sometimes crossed by rebellious spirits and he had told Ignatius that only “one in a million” living was capable of seeing across that veil in the flesh, that those who could were special. He had also mentioned “keys and offices” and “keys pertaining to the gates of death.” He described a great ladder of Heaven, the height of which stretched infinitely upward, and on which humanity occupied the second to lowest rung. And he spoke of “the Called,” who occupied a rung just above humanity. Ignatius had assumed that the Called were a class of ministering angels, and he thought Samael must be one of them. And then Samael had smiled at him and gently told him the greatest secret of all: “Ignatius, you are one of the Called.” Ignatius was so completely taken by surprise, he only managed to stare back at Samael in amazement, and Samael just smiled back, saying, “It is true.”

After that day, while Ignatius was getting dressed in the morning, or doing chores, or eating dinner, or getting ready for bed at night, he was lost in thought. He could not help but turn the memory of those words over and over again in his mind.