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meager living from a small plot of land and fingers put to a spindle. God had graced her with an unusually bright, beautiful, and healthy child whom she loved more than life itself. She had known death waited nearby and there was no one with whom she could leave her little girl. She had to somehow get Linness into the abbey as a novitiate before she died. Her desperation had given rise to this far-fetched plot. The blow to her head was to create a convincing bump. She'd tell the sisters her little girl was struck by lightning and lived; that 'twas a miracle they could not ignore. She hoped it was enough to win a place for Linness, and when God Himself aided the effort by taking the child, even momentarily, up to heaven, she knew it would work.
    "Lightning struck me here." The little girl pointed, proud of the bump. Five nuns had already examined it before they had led the little girl down a clean corridor to the wooden door that had a cross hung on it. An older woman, The Abbess Constance, sat inside. She wore a white robe that reminded Linness of Mary. "It shot me up to heaven."
    The abbess's eyes widened and she cast an uncertain gaze to her underling, standing to her side, who crossed herself.
    The beautiful silvery eyes sparkled with all the attention; she beamed with pride. "I talked to Mary, who is an angel. God was there too,” she added in an afterthought.
    Then the little girl's gaze had faltered; she bit her lip. "Part of that is not the truth."
    "Oh?" the abbess had inquired. "Which part, my child?"
    "Mary did not really talk, 'cause there is no talking." She brightened suddenly with a smile that could affect the most cynical, which the good abbess was not. "It was like thinking-talking." Her beautiful little face changed with sadness, like a capricious shift of wind. "Mary said my maman was going to heaven and that I must come here. Mary said you would love and cherish me.” She looked at them curiously. "Will you?"
    The child would have convinced the pope of the miracle. In their three-hundred-year history the good sisters of the Abbey of Benedictine accepted their first charity novitiate. Still, they didn't know what they were getting into. Little Linness, whose name they had tried to change to Joan, without success, at first appeared so perfectly normal, a bright and charming little girl and nearly everyone's favorite. The precocious little girl with all those irrepressible questions, who was far happier in the stables or climbing the green fields for wildflowers than kneeling at vespers, was cherished and loved by all.
    And so the angel's prophecy came true.
    Then one winter day as they rose before dawn, after washing in preparation for morning prayers, the good sisters led their four young novices down the corridor to the galley. Linness turned to Sister Teresa and said sadly, "Good-bye, Sister Teresa. I shall miss you. Please say hello to beautiful Mary and my maman."
    "What are you talking about, child?"
    "Why," she said, smiling. "the angels are coming. You shall fly up to heaven."
    Sister Teresa grasped the nature of those words and dropped into a faint. She never recovered and she died two days later.
    "Linness, how did you know Sister Teresa was going to heaven?"
    "I do not know."
    She gave the same answer after the flood she had foreseen had come, or when she knew a stranger was going to arrive, or new orders came from Rome where the pope lived. She gave the same answer after she saw the baby in Sister Carleta's womb before there had been any sign. She also innocently revealed the father when Sister Carleta had refused—Peter, the shepherd boy. She had seen them rolling in the wildflowers. The abbess had forced the two lovers to marry, knowing that becoming the wife of a poor shepherd would be a just punishment for breaking the holy vows.
    By the time Linness was seven she began seeing visions from people's past. She saw the good abbess herself, crouching behind a trunk in terror as the little girl