When the early spring sky lightened and began raining cherry blossoms, the village knew that she was coming. White flowers drifted down past still bare branches, landing in the muddy streets. Those who could found excuses to linger near the widest of the throughfares, mobbing the butcher's shop and the blacksmith's yard without business to complete, crowding the porch of the town's only inn. Doors were set ajar and windows prised open by the less fortunate, curious faces only inches from the rapidly-warming drafts of air.

The sun strengthened, warming high-peaked roofs and narrow porches still further with a generousity uncharacteristic for the season, and the cherry blossoms continued to fall, tangling in hair and clothes. Children played in the street, chanting game-rhymes, scattering only when threatened with the back of a hand or a whack from a broom. The crowd outside grew, until it seemed that every person in the village had turned out to line the rutted main street.

Old Guis the chandler squinted into the sky, a pale petal sticking to one of his eyebrows as he grunted, and then spat. The glob of soot-stained spit narrowly missed a grubby toddler splashing in a mud puddle. "So she's come, has she?" His lined face rearranged into a scowl, dissatisfaction graven deep by wind and weather. "You'd think that with her reputation, there'd be something useful, like water into wine, or fishes and loaves. Not cherry blossoms."

His words were swept away on a tide of rising excitement, before his oldest daughter could dig an elbow into his ribs to reprimand him for his impiety. Cries of 'I see her!' and 'there she is', could be heard clearly over the general buzz of conversation. Then Weeping Iniga stumbled into his view, gait weary with a blister-worn hitch.

Despite her name, her eyes were dry. She was a woman of average height, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with a figure that spoke more of hard labor and a diet of potatoes than lissome youth. Her hands were callused, her fingernails dirty, and the expression on her face was stony. Where she walked, grass and hyacinths sprang up. Twining ivy coiled itself around trees and walls each time she faltered and thrust a hand out for support. Old Guis leaned forward a little, shivering, as she turned her unseeing face his way. Her gaze was blind with grief and questions, fraying around the edges in a way he knew too well.

The village had a festive air, people shoving at each other to see the delicate green grass that limned each footstep, trampling the tender blades in their eagerness. Nauzi the innkeep's wife pushed her way forward, into Iniga's path, her hand clamped firmly around the arm of her son, a moon-faced child who had never learned to do much more than smile and babble. He'd been born blue and floppy, with the birthing cord wrapped four times around his neck and nearly knotted.

Only Guis was watching Nauzi's son and ignoring the hyacinths and cherry blossoms, at least at first. When the boy stumbled, falling to his knees in the muddy road, he snorted and shrugged. Even the stories couldn't be true all the time. But then Guis saw the boy lift his head, the vacant look gone from his face. Drool dried in a runnel down the side of his chin as he stretched out muddy hands, and said clearly, "Mother?" The sound of his voice killed excited conversation, for the space of ten heartbeats. Gossip died out, only to be reborn at greater volume. The street erupted around Iniga, villagers crowding around her.

People began pushing forward, plucking at her clothes. Pleading. Requesting. Demanding cures for joint-ail, for obesity, for poverty, for piles. She did not respond. It was as if the press of the crowd did not exist for her. The woman continued forward, fingers slipping from her skin, her hair, her clothes-- she seemed made of nothing more substantial than light and shadow, the expression on her face never changing. People began to fall away from her, panting with the effort to keep up, although it seemed her weary gait did not quicken.

Old Guis grunted again, elbowing someone out of his way as he tried to fight through the crowd, backward, away from the woman that everyone wanted to touch. Blessed Iniga. Weeping Iniga. Iniga, beloved of God. All he wanted was to stay away from that terrible uncaring look on her face and the loss worn thin in those dark eyes. But his old bones and older muscles could not compete against the tide of humanity. He found himself carried along as the crowd followed, calling after her.

The woman continued up the street, alone, hair falling knotted and snarled down her back, her most persistent supplicants left behind and out of breath. The villagers were reduced to muttering amongst each other, telling and retelling what had just happened. Each one of them claimed to have seen Nauzi's son healed with their own eyes. Each one of them had a bit of the story of Weeping Iniga to tell to their neighbors, wisely, as if it had never been heard before. Old Guis merely looked sour, as the gossip flowed around him.

It wasn't until Steforo the carpenter called her Saint Iniga that Guis spoke up, harshly. "And just what makes you think she's a saint, you dunderheaded fool?"

Blank stares met his query all around, those nearby falling silent mid-anecdote as Steforo answered, looking confused. "How could she not be a saint, Guis? Even you had to have seen the miracles. Don't you know the story?"

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