"Ayana" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by Stephen King that was originally published in the Fall 2007 issue of ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...

'', and later included in King's collection ''

Just After Sunset ''Just After Sunset'' is the fifth collection of short stories by Stephen King. It was released in hardcover by Scribner on November 11, 2008, and features a holographic dust jacket. On February 6, 2008, the author's official website revealed t ...

'' in November of

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

Plot

A man recounts his father's battle with pancreatic cancer in 1982, culminating in the intervention of a blind seven-year-old girl named Ayana. After being kissed by the mysterious child, "Doc" Gentry makes a miraculous recovery from the brink of death, and the narrator discovers that his own part in the working of miracles is only beginning. Over the following decades, he describes visits from a man who delivers him to others in need of their own miracles.

Plot

See also