The Magic Feather Effect by Melanie Warner

Author:Melanie Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

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The Emotional Rescue

A miracle at Lourdes

It all started in the middle of a large and craggy rock. On a cold February morning in 1858, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous was sent out by her mother to collect firewood for cooking. She headed out of the village with a friend and one of her four younger sisters to an area where pigs and cattle grazed and where, in warmer months, children came to bathe or fish for trout. This wild and sometimes rancid place, ringed by a river, was covered in what one account describes as “blood and pig hair.” Bernadette’s sister and friend waded firmly through the frigid river, but Bernadette, who suffered from asthma and had never fully recovered from a bout of cholera, sat down in an attempt to preserve her dry socks.

As she was removing her stockings, she noticed it. On the other side of the river, where a large dark outcropping of rock folded inward to form a shallow cave, was a child about Bernadette’s age dressed in a flowing white robe and blue scarf. She was standing in one of the rock’s indents just above the cave’s opening, next to a wild rosebush. Barefoot and bathed in soft white light, she looked calm and peaceful. As she stared at the girl, Bernadette heard a stiff wind suddenly blow, although none of the trees or bushes seemed to move. Startled, she padded her hand around on the ground to find her rosary, which she often had with her. But Bernadette was too frightened to pick it up. She watched as the figure produced its own rosary and made the Catholic sign of the cross. Then, as mysteriously as she had appeared, the girl disappeared. Bernadette quickly scrambled across the river to her companions. “You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked. Her sister and friend stared at her blankly. They hadn’t seen anything. Nor had they heard any wind. Whatever it had been was only apparent to Bernadette.

At home, Bernadette’s sister explained the incident to their mother, who grew angry and forbade her daughters from ever going back. But three days later the girls went anyway, this time with another sister, more friends, and holy water from a local church. Again, the image appeared only to Bernadette. To test whether it was an evil spirit, she threw the holy water at it, to which the glowing girl gently smiled and bowed her head until the bottle was empty. One of Bernadette’s friends had another test in mind. She threw a large rock at the area where Bernadette said the invisible girl was, to see if that would knock her off her perch. Everyone except Bernadette jumped as the rock crashed against the much bigger one. Deeply pale and immobile, she looked as if she were paralyzed, in a trance.

On the third visit, now with dozens of curious onlookers in tow, Bernadette tried to speak to the ghost, which was still standing in the same spot. To her

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