"Another rat?" Brother Herman's face wrinkled into a grin. The rats of the South Bronx were legendary in size.
"Who knows?" The friars entered the church, genuflected, and walked into the vestibule. There they saw Charley squatting before something in the corner, staring with his mouth wide open. Matt slipped up to the burly novice. "What is it, Charley?"
"It's a girl," Charley said hoarsely, pointing at the foot. For a moment, Matt mistook the white ankle for a dismembered limb and he breathed, "Sweet Jesus."
The whole community was gathered in the vestibule now. Brother Herman was frowning. He had edged closer to the pile of coats and was leaning his chubby frame over the body, turning his red, round face this way and that. Finally he leaned back heavily with a sigh. "I think she's just sleeping," he said in a stage whisper to Fr. Francis. There was an almost audible group sigh.
"Well, that's something to be thankful for, said Fr. Francis briskly, in a soft voice. "But why should she be sleeping here?"
In this modern-day retelling of the old fairy tale Snow and the Seven Dwarves, a young woman is fleeing a haunting evil and a young man is being forced to come to grips with himself and with his past. Bear and Blanche, with the support of Rose and Fish, seek light amidst mysteriously dark and puzzling circumstances. They receive unexpected help—from seven ready-for-anything Franciscan friars!
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