Holy Helpers: Origins

Heavenly visitors and a bolt from the blue send three sisters into a world of danger.

This image was made with the help of AI from Adobe Firefly.

The sun beat down on the three girls as they pushed their way through their family’s cornfield. Margaret sped ahead, her flaming red ponytail flying behind her beneath the blue sky.

“Come on Barbara,” said Catherine. “I don’t want you to get lost.”

Barbara let out a little squeak and hurried up to her big sister, grabbing onto her hand tightly with one hand and rubbing one of her braided pigtails nervously with the other. Catherine gently loosened the grip as they trudged behind in their sister’s wake.

“Where did Margaret go? I can’t see her any more,” Barbara said, standing on her tiptoes to peek over the green stalks.

Catherine squeezed her hand and kept walking. “Don’t worry, I can still see her. But she should probably wait for us – hint hint,” she called out.

“Oh, fine,” said Margaret, rolling her eyes, “but you know Grandma’s waiting for us.”

“And we will get there all together when we get there,” said Catherine, finally catching up. “Why are you always in such as hurry?”

“Well, you know, run fast so the devil can’t catch you,” said Margaret with a toss of her ponytail. “You know he’ll never catch…”

“What’s wrong?” asked Barbara, wide-eyed. She followed her sister’s gaze over the field and saw a strange mist hanging in the air. “What is it?”

The three of them crept forward. “Stay here,” Catherine whispered, slowly releasing Barbara’s re-tightening grip.

The air began to sparkle and shimmer, breaking into three clouds like ice shards floating just over the cornstalks. Then, like a pair of binoculars coming into focus, each of the clouds resolved into the form of a woman clothed in white. One with a broken wagon wheel stayed where she was near Catherine, while one with a dragon at her feet went towards Margaret and one carrying chains in her hands floated toward Barbara.

The three girls stood transfixed. Catherine glanced over at Barbara, sure that she would be quaking in fear. Instead, she was smiling peacefully up at the apparition. Catherine swallowed hard against her mouth that had gone suddenly dry. “Who are you? What do you want?” she asked as calmly as she could manage.

The figure nearest her smiled and said, “You know who we are, my dear namesake.”

Catherine blinked up at what must be St. Catherine of Alexandria, broken wheel and all. She blinked frantically, trying to come to her senses. She had of course read of this happening to other people, a long time ago. Things usually got pretty rough for them when saints and angels started showing up. She never expected to see such a thing herself, and she wasn’t too sure she was happy about it. But as she looked at St. Barbara and St. Margaret, and her own lovely St. Catherine, she couldn’t help feeling a peace and hope radiating from them. “Why are you here? We’re going to have to go fight for France or something aren’t we?”

“Something like that,” said St. Catherine.

Each of the saints reached out her hand toward the girl in front of her. As the figure touched Catherine’s forehead, she felt a surge of energy swirl through her body. With a thrill, she realized that she was being lifted into the air and spun around before being gently placed back on the ground.

She watched as St. Margaret reached toward her sister. A red light seemed to glow around both of the girl’s hands and a fire even more intense than usual burned in her eyes.

Catherine eagerly looked over at Barbara to see what would happen to her. When the saint touched her, however, the sky split open and a bolt of lightning struck her down. And the saints were gone.

“Barbara!” Catherine and Margaret screamed as she collapsed out of sight. They began pushing their way through the corn, but stopped aghast as fire started to spread all around the little girl from where the lightning had struck.

Years later, Margaret would wonder how she knew what to do next. She swatted at the flames and they seemed to fly away at her command. Wide-eyed, she swatted the other direction, and the fire obeyed. She pushed the flames apart, and they parted like the Red Sea. Margaret could hardly see Barbara through the thick smoke that swirled around her, but she dashed in nevertheless and pulled her to fresh air.

Catherine ran over to them. “Is she ok?”

“I think so,” said Margaret. “She’s breathing, anyway. But her skin…” Rather than being burned or blackened, her whole body seemed to crackle with a faint blue glow of electricity.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Catherine. “The fire is spreading…” Even as she spoke, the winds changed, pushing the fire around behind them. They were trapped. “Can you do that thing with the fire again?” she asked.

Catherine picked up Barbara, feeling the tingle of electricity coursing through her. That didn’t seem good, but the flames swirling around them was the bigger issue at the moment. Margaret walked toward the fire, pushing it to the side as she had before, but now the fire was bigger and as soon as she pushed one flame down another popped up to take its place. She looked back at Catherine helpless.

Catherine felt dizzy, like the whole world was spinning. She tried to keep her cool – panicking never helped anyone, as their mother always said. But then she realized that the world was spinning...or rather, they were spinning. She felt the rush of wind coursing out of her as it lifted them up into the air, higher and higher above the flames. With a deep breath, she blew as hard as she could, pushing the whirlwind away from the growing inferno, back towards their house. The heat receded into the distance as they soared through their air inside their own personal tornado.

Calming herself, she was able to lower them back down to the ground with only a minor thud at the bottom, knocking them off their feet. The tumble woke Barbara. “What – what happened?” she stammered. She ran her hand down her braid nervously, sending sparks shooting out of the end.

“Hey, careful,” said Margaret, “you’re going to start another fire!”

“Another fire?” squeaked Barbara.

Catherine just rushed forward, grabbing her sister into a big hug which Margaret joined with gusto. “It’s ok. It’s over now.”

As Bluebolt, Wildfire, and the Catherine Wheel sat there in their embrace, they had no idea how wrong she was.