one?” Prissie asked.
“No,” she replied, “though your uncle Loren tells some pretty amazing stories from his travels. You should ask him about it.”
“Did Aunt Ida’s last letter say when they’ll be back?”
“A few things are still up in the air, but possibly for Christmas,” Momma replied.
Prissie nodded, but steered the conversation back where it belonged. “What else do you know about angels?”
“Well, let’s see,” she mused. “Off the top of my head, I can say for sure that angels were used to announce things. There were a lot of them in the Christmas story, and not just Gabriel. An angel spoke to Zacharias to tell him that Elizabeth would give birth to John the Baptist, and an angel spoke to Mary’s husband Joseph in dreams … twice, I think.”
“Everybody knows that!” Prissie sighed.
“Only if they’ve heard it before, sweetheart,” her mother gently chided. She gathered her thoughts, then said, “One verse in the gospels implies that every child has an angel — a guardian angel.”
There it was again, as if it was common knowledge. Messengers. Guardians. “Are there other kinds of angels?”
Momma picked up her pail and moved to the next bean tower. “Umm … Isaiah describes some fantastical creatures, and in Revelation the angels sound pretty fierce. Paul talks about ‘powers and principalities’ in conflict, so I’ve always thought some angels must be well-armed, battle-ready types.”
Prissie’s mind was spinning. “The Bible talks about angels that much?”
“Didn’t you sign up to read through the Bible in a year?” her mother asked lightly. “We started Isaiah two weeks ago.”
“I’m a little behind, I guess,” she hedged, quickly changing the subject. “Do angels have wings and halos?”
Mrs. Pomeroy threw a handful of beans into her pail and answered, “That’s how artists usually portray them, but I don’t know if they’re literal or just a convention that was adopted somewhere along the way. There’s usually some truth behind a legend.” She paused in her work, propping her hands against her lower back for a stretch. “Wings would be nice. Can you imagine what it would be like to fly?”
Prissie cast a sidelong look in her mother’s direction and noted the familiar, far-away look in the woman’s gray eyes. Naomi was a little on the flighty side, and it was obvious that her mind was off in another world. “So angels are real,” Prissie stated, bringing Momma back to earth. “Do you think there are people who can see them?”
“There are stories, but it’s hard to know if they’re true. It’s certainly possible, but the instances seem to be rare,” she replied, giving her daughter a teasing glance. “Why have you been visited by winged messengers?”
Squirming uncomfortably, Prissie gave her full attention to picking beans. “Not exactly,” she said, comforting herself that it wasn’t a lie since Koji, Milo, and Harken lacked feathers. “I was just curious.”
Momma was summoned back to the house by Jude, who brought news of Zeke’s discovery that he could make taller towers out of building blocks if he used peanut butter between the layers. Prissie stayed behind to finish up in the garden. The beans were done, which only left a long line of green onions, their spiky tops poking out from the midst of thick weeds. With a sigh, she knelt at one end of the row and began the slow task of removing the weeds without uprooting the bulbs.
Maddie clucked softly from the shallow depression she’d created under the broad leaves of a nearby zucchini plant, and when Prissie looked up, Koji was crouched down beside the hen, watching the bird intently.
Sitting back on her heels, Prissie asked, “Can she see you?”
“She knows I am here,” he replied. Maddie cocked her head to one side, as if listening to something, and Koji smiled as he mirrored the action. “And that I bear her no ill will.”
“Obviously.”
The young angel stood and wriggled his bare toes in the dirt for a moment before dropping to his knees across from Prissie. “May I help?” he inquired, tentatively touching the tips of an onion.
“You’ll get your pretty clothing dirty!” Prissie protested.
“Our raiment cannot become stained,” Koji explained, and he stood back up to show her how the dirt simply fell away from the shimmering fabric. “Without spot or wrinkle.”
“That’s from the Bible,” Prissie remarked.
“Indeed.”
She turned her attention back to weeding, keeping a close eye on Koji to make sure he was doing it right. “So, why are you back today?” she asked.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because you can see me,” he