As the sun burned down into the west, a wall of clouds gathered in the east. Those fluffy mountains of pink and purple and orange moved with such imperceptible slowness that when Amy blinked, it seemed as if they were moving in reverse. A white flash illuminated the interior of the wall. Muffled thunder brushed the edge of her hearing. Two more flashes. No noise.

The wind picked up, blowing from the cloud wall into her face. It cooled her overheated eyes and cheeks, though it could do nothing for the snot built up in her sinuses. Once again, she snorted into a cloth, the remains of the remains of an old blouse. Her nose felt raw. Everything ached.

Despite this, Amy pulled herself to her feet. She needed to move, to do something, *anything*, and to do it anywhere but here. Staying still only made her frayed emotions turn inward and down into herself like a whirlpool of crude oil. She took one step. Then another, and another, and another, toward the cloud wall. She began to jog against the cool wind, her flat shoes slapping the dirt street.

'Clean,' she thought. All the lingering stenches of Peking, blood and decay and filth, blown away by the smell of rain tinged with salt. To her, it smelled exactly like Charleston Harbor did before a thunderstorm, exactly like home. 'Home.' Her mind wandered east across the Pacific Ocean and followed the thousands of miles of railroad that bound San Francisco to Charleston. What was her father doing now? Drinking, probably. He was probably in that pub behind the textile factory with all of his mates, slugging glass after glass of spirits, wondering where on God's green Earth his little Amy had gotten to.

She turned a corner and kept jogging, familiarity guiding her toward the edge of the slum. The bustling streets had thinned out considerably, allowing her to keep a steady pace. Memories of her father led to others: the sweet tones of her grandfather's violin. For three years she'd played it, and played and sang at the factory pub while her father drank away most of her earnings. One month, they had to pawn that violin to help pay the rent. Father and daughter downed the last jug of whiskey in the cupboard together that night, and then-

Amy shut the memory down, even as revulsion spasmed through her. Vanilla's face swam into her mind's eye. "'If your heart condemns you,'" it recited quietly, "know that He is greater than your heart."

She slowed her pace.

"You can be bold before Him," the face said, "Talk to the real, good God Who loves you, Whom will never refuse to hear you."

Amy stopped at a street corner, looked around: she had been jogging north for a while, almost to the spice markets. She decided to turn west. While her feet moved, her mind knelt before a simple white throne in her mind's eye, and the pierced feet of her Savior. Lacking the vocabulary she needed for a real prayer, Amy bared a flurry of images: the baby, torn from her arms by the Boxers; Sally teaching to an empty chapel; Vanilla's blood drenching her arms as she tried to find the source of the fatal wound.

A drop of rain struck her forehead. Looking up, she saw the cloud wall soaring overhead, lit purple and red by the last few rays of the sun. How long had she been jogging, half an hour? Another fat drop of rain tapped her on the cheek.

"Scheisse!"

Amy turned at the barked curse behind her, and saw two riders, a blue hedgehog and a twin-tailed gold-brown fox in grey uniform. The hedgehog had spoken, and was busy folding up a large piece of paper when she and the fox made eye contact. "Miss, would you kindly help us?" the fox called out in slightly accented English. He sounded almost French to her ears.

Sally often refused contact with foreigners outside the mission field, and she had told Amy often enough that it wasn't a good idea to be friendly with the people who populated the Legation Quarter. Amy, however, wasn't nearly so hesitant: help was help, the right thing to do regardless of who needed it. "With what?" she asked, deciding to approach them.

"Are you a missionary?" he asked, and she nodded. "We must find your church," the hedgehog said, "Vital letters, for every one of you. We have a map, but as you can see-" he gestured to the sky above. "It won't be much use if it's drenched."

Amy felt puzzled. 'What would they want with us?' she wondered. She knew Sally wouldn't like it, but at least she wouldn't mind letting two strangers out of the rain, would she? Even if they were soldiers? 'Yes, she would mind,' Amy thought, but the words "vital letters" prompted her to ask: "Letters? From whom?"

"All the legations: more Boxers are coming," the hedgehog said.

"H-how many?" Amy asked.

A white flash illuminated the street for a moment, and the following thunderclap momentarily deafened all three of them. The two horses screamed and stamped, but didn't rear up. "Enough questions: can you show us or not?" the hedgehog demanded.

Even if Sally slapped her again for bringing two foreign soldiers home, this terrible news was too important. Everyone needed to hear what they had to say. "Yes," Amy said, "May I ride with you?"

Sonic nodded, reaching down to pull her up into the saddle. "Many thanks, Miss..?"

"Rose," Amy said as she mounted up. She couldn't recall the last time she'd been ahorse, but to her it somehow felt natural.

With her direction, the odd trio made their way back to the chapel inside fifteen minutes. The wind was howling around them by then, and the cloud wall was no longer a wall: it was a black ceiling.

Sally heard thunder, and then the baby. Then she realized that she'd fallen asleep while knelt in prayer. 'Some good news, for once,' she thought as she unfolded herself and stood. Perhaps some rain was all that Peking needed: from what she could gather, many who had joined the Boxers had done so because their crops were failing from drought, which had something to do with Zhang, the sky god, being angry.

Why was Zhang angry? Because his own people had allowed foreigners to humiliate them, that's why. 'Maybe this gift from "Zhang" will calm them down,' she thought. That made her brow furrow. "Father," she said quietly, "I know You don't indulge idolatry, but..." Sally trailed off as she picked up the baby, pulling aside a section of her robe to let it feed. "Please," was all that she could force out. The front door opened.

"So, you're awake." Knuckles said as he came in, followed by at least two dozen others: bats, cats, dogs, two teenage pangolins, and a few stocky boars and sows, all as weary and disheveled as Sally was.

"Is it raining?" she asked.

"I think it will," Knuckles replied, "There's more wind than water right now."

She looked about and noticed someone was missing. "Is Amy still outside?" she asked. Sally had regretted the impulsive slap as soon as she'd done it; now she wanted an hour alone with Amy, to apologize and let her know that she didn't deserve that. The poor girl was equal parts hard-headed and tender, and Sally knew that slap hit more than just the flesh of her cheek. 'Should I ask her to slap me?' She'd think it over.

"I'll check," Knuckles said, "Maybe she's around back." With that, he turned his massive frame and dashed outside, nearly clocking his head on the doorway. He didn't bother to shut the door on his way out. "Amy? Where are you?"

Annoyed, Sally went to close it. The view up the long, dirt street wasn't pretty: two dilapidated, dust-coated rows of shacks flanked the street for nearly a quarter of a mile, at which point the street bent sharply to the left and right under the blackening sky. That was one thing that Peking did have over the cities of her girlhood, like Portsmouth, Albany, or Providence: the streets formed a neat, navigable grid pattern.

As she began to shut the door, she saw movement down the street: horses, two black rounceys with white muzzles, galloping toward the chapel as if propelled by the oncoming wind. She recognized all three of the riders. Normally, this would have angered her. Now though, seeing the fear on Amy's face and the grave expressions of the two soldiers, she felt her stomach sink. Lightning cracked, immediately followed by a noise that rattled the floor beneath her feet. The baby shrieked, wailing as Sally pulled away from the doorway and shut it.

A minute later, the door opened again. Amy, the two soldiers, and Knuckles filed into the chapel. When the locals' concerned murmurs reached from behind her and touched Sally's ears, she felt as if a spider had scurried down her neck:

"What are they doing-"

"-just barging in like this-"

"Not now, not now-"

"-don't know why would she invite them, of all people-"

"A bad omen, mark my-"

Steeling herself, she spoke in English to Amy: "What's happened?"

Sonic answered. "Letters from our people, to yours." He dug into his half-full satchel and produced a snowy white envelope. "Every missionary in Peking must see them." He held the envelope out to Sally.

Knuckles stepped between her and Sonic. "I don't trust them," he said to her in Mandarin, "but I do trust you." Then, wincing from the sound of the baby's wailing: "Can you handle them?"

"I can," she answered in Mandarin, "Can you hold her?"

Knuckles nodded, took the infant in his arms, and began to rock her as he moved away.

As Sally took the envelope, she noticed the fox's eyes: they fixed on her face, danced up, then down, then quickly back up, as if trying to avoid-Sonic coughed politely. Then she realized that her chest was still uncovered. Blushing, she hurriedly fixed the issue and took the envelope, turning around to hide her embarrassment. She read the letter; it was two copies of the same message, one at the bottom of the page on Mandarin, the other at the top in terse English. Rain crashed onto the chapel roof.

'Fifteen thousand Boxers,' she thought numbly. An entire army of the same men who had attacked her that afternoon. She tried to imagine a host that size, and a military parade she'd seen as a child sprang to mind. However, instead of US Army troopers marching by in their smart, dark blue jackets and rifles on their shoulders, she saw Boxers in their blood red blouses, with leaf-bladed pikes in their hands: a throng from The Pit. 'Stop it,' she chided herself, 'stop it. They're just people like you. They need the Lord, too, you know that.'

She looked to Sonic and Tails. "Are you sure there's so many?"

Tails spoke up. "My father has reliable contacts in the Qing court. The mayor of Shangdong seems to have driven them north from his city, so they're coming here in greater numbers."

Despite the warm, stuffy atmosphere of the chapel, Sally felt icy all over. It made sense: Shangdong was a large city and relatively close, and the mayor had much influence over regional politics. If they were rejected by the mayor, then the ever-impatient Boxers would take their grievances much further up the ladder of power. Who sat at the highest rung? Who could impose the Boxers' will on the rest of the country, with the backing of the military? Why, the Qing empress and her court, who themselves had little to say of the Boxers, and much to say of foreign influences on China. "Fifteen thousand? In three days?" she heard herself say.

Amy gasped. "Let me see that," she said, taking the letter from Sally to read it herself.

"There may be more," Sonic told Sally. "It would best if you gathered your people and made for the legations now."

"My-?" Sally fell silent. Yes, with Vanilla gone, the men, women, and children who were gathered in the chapel, in addition to many huddled in their homes nearby, were indeed *her* people now. That realization touched something in her, but she didn't yet know what it was. "I'll have to seek out a few more families, but-"

The rain sounds had stopped.