The winter in St Jude, a town in Texas in 1898, held a profound, aching cold. Ezra moved quickly through the church, cleaning up after the worship earlier. He wanted to get out of here. Not only to be done with his work but also because the creature in the cage next to the altar was... Somehow unnerving.

A few days earlier, the unbelievable had happened: an angel—a genuine celestial being—had been found, tangled in a tree, one of his majestic wings broken. They brought him here, to the church, and locked him in an ugly iron cage. It was the town's miraculous, wounded prisoner. People were visiting, people offered sums of money for that creature Ezra couldn't even imagine.

This is wrong, Ezra thought, the guilt a solid weight in his chest.

He walked forward, stopping a foot from the bars. He didn't look at the creature's face; his eyes went straight to the injury—the great, pale wing lying folded and broken, the joint swollen and feathers ruffled. Bloody again, even after Ezra's father had thrown a bucket of cold water onto the creature before the worship to clean him. Whether of sins or dirt was unclear.

"It's just me," Ezra whispered. He knew he was forbidden to touch, to help, to even think about opening the lock of the cage.

He stared at the raw wound, picturing the infection that had to be setting in. Ignoring his father’s warnings, Ezra took one final step. He lifted his hand, palm open, and slowly reached for the cage. He pressed his hand against the bars separating him from the suffering creature.