The Edge of Over There

by Shawn Smucker

“I don’t know where my dad is,” she said, tears choking her voice, and in her dream this was suddenly very concerning, the absence of her father. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” B said, holding her close, stroking her forehead. “It’s okay.”

  Ruby looked up into her face, a round tear falling from each of her eyes. “I like you,” she said.

  “I like you too,” the woman said. “Are you feeling better? You were very sick.”

  Ruby nodded. “I feel good.”

  “Of course you do. Better than good.”

  B looked around, holding Ruby at arm’s length while bending down and talking to her at her height.

  “It’s the tree,” she whispered. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Ruby nodded. A thought came to her then, from some faraway place, that this might not be a dream. In the uncertainty, she felt like she might float away, cease to exist. She joined her hands in front of her, needing to hold on to something.

  But there was still the tree. Being reminded of it made her reach up for another leaf, which she broke off. The tree was so full of sap that when she pulled the leaf away from its stem, a long string of it drooped along. Ruby licked the sap off of her fingers, feeling more alive, more energized by the second. She broke the leaf in half and licked the sap again, and before she knew what she was doing, she had stuck the entire leaf in her mouth and was munching on it like a salad. It had a green taste to it, but it was also sweet. She closed her eyes and savored each chew.

  “It’s wonderful,” Ruby repeated.

  “Have you tried the fruit yet?” the woman asked, reaching up and plucking a piece from one of the lower branches.

  Ruby shook her head. No, she hadn’t.

  The woman held the fruit in between them and, separated from the tree, it took on a new appearance. While hanging in the tree it had looked shiny and solid, but up close Ruby realized she could see inside of it. She saw strange things swirling around inside the fruit, visions of things that had happened to her. She saw her bedroom in her father’s house! She saw the backyard of azaleas, her brother Leo chasing her down the rows!

  “Leo,” she said quietly. In what dream had she had a brother? In what world?

  “Did you know the fruit of this tree grows in twelve different seasons?” the woman asked her. “When one of the types begins to drop, another type begins to grow. They don’t all grow at once, but they do overlap—that’s why you see three or four different kinds of fruit in this one tree.”

  The woman shook her head in awe, and Ruby could tell that she found the tree fascinating.

  “Have you ever eaten your dreams?” the woman asked, lifting the fruit to her mouth and taking a large bite. Juice dripped down onto her chin, and she closed her eyes, seemingly overwhelmed with delight at the taste of the fruit.

  Ruby reached for a piece that hung heavy on a branch close to her head. She plucked it off and looked at it, looked inside it. She saw visions of her mother and her brother and a lady standing with her father in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1. Her small, five-year-old hand held that large piece of fruit, and it smelled wonderful. She had never wanted to do anything more than eat that fruit.

  Ruby stopped, staring at the fruit. The woman’s voice was so clear, so present. It couldn’t be a dream.

  Could it?

  Ruby felt something strange well up inside of her, another new feeling: it was the sense that she wanted to do something she should not do. But that wasn’t new—she had often felt that. The new sensation was her awareness of it, and her deep desire to disobey for the sake of disobedience. She wanted to be sneaky. She stared at the woman for encouragement.

  The woman nodded, her eyes beckoning Ruby to take a bite. “Go ahead,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  As if to illustrate this, the woman reached for another piece of fruit and plucked it from the tree. The sap hung in a draping string from the tree to the stem of the fruit. But this time, when the beautiful woman lifted the piece of fruit to her lips, Ruby noticed something about her that made her drop her own piece to the dusty floor.

  The woman’s teeth, they didn’t look like normal teeth. They were pointed instead of flat, like the teeth of a shark, and her mouth opened farther than it should. This time she didn’t take a bite of the fruit—she closed her eyes and put the entire thing in her mouth, devoured it, the way a snake consumes an animal that at first appears much too big for it.

  Ruby took a few steps back.

  The woman opened her eyes, and they were deep pools. She looked at Ruby, and when she saw the child’s reaction to how she had eaten the fruit, her voice swelled with alarm.

  “Oh, child, I’m so sorry,” she said, lifting her arm and using her sleeve to clean the light green sap from the corners of her mouth. She seemed embarrassed, as though Ruby had caught her doing something improper, like talking with her mouth full or picking her nose.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Did I frighten you?”

  Ruby nodded, taking another step back. This was not a dream. This was real, and it was a nightmare.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Go ahead, take a piece.”

  For a moment Ruby didn’t move. On the one side, there was the absence of her father and the presence of what appeared to be a kind, caring woman. Yet there was something about this woman that felt horrid—her sharp teeth and the way she ate with such greed. But Ruby liked how the leaf had made her feel. She liked feeling healthy. She enjoyed it. She imagined the fruit would be like that, perhaps even more so.

  Ruby looked down at the piece of fruit she had dropped on the floor. It was dusty, so she picked it up and rubbed it off, but already it had grown too soft, and as she rubbed it the skin pulled back and the fruit fell apart in her hands. Within moments the inside of it had blackened and she dropped it back down to the floor. Ruby watched as it decayed before her eyes, turning to dust. All that dust. She became aware of something she hadn’t heard before: a soft thudding sound. It wasn’t happening very often, which is perhaps why had she hadn’t noticed it, but there, in the silence of indecision, she heard it off to her right. She looked and watched as another piece of fruit fell and turned to dust in less than a minute.

  “You can’t keep it, you know,” the woman whispered. “It won’t last. Otherwise we could take it from here by the truckload and give it to everyone outside. Everyone could feel this way! But it won’t keep. We’ve tried everything. And they destroy the tree every time it grows out there. Now go on. Eat.”

  Ruby nodded, reached above her, and plucked another piece. She took a deep breath. What was it inside of her that held back? She raised the fruit and opened her mouth, pushing through the uncertainty.

  “Ruby!” a different voice shouted. “No!”

  It was the voice of her father.

  10

  Samuel

  I FEEL LIKE I’VE BARELY BREATHED since Mr. Henry started the story. When he finally pauses, I wonder if he’s had me in some kind of a spell. Maybe he kept me transfixed so he could go upstairs and steal the sword. I look at the window and it’s nearly dark out, one of those snowy winter nights when you’re glad to be inside. The dusk is a purplish-gray and the snow howls against the house, a beast checking for any way inside. My coffee is cold.

  “You’re probably wondering what happened to that little girl,” Mr. Henry says with a serious look on his face.

  “Actually, I was wondering what happened to the story you were going to tell me about Abra,” I say, staring at him for a moment before standing and taking our empty mugs into the kitchen for a refill. Despite my sarcasm, I have to admit that he has drawn me in. I pour myself another cup and steady my breath. I have to push the fear back down. I pour him another cup.

  I stay for an extra minute in the kitchen, wondering if I should slip out the back door and make a run for it. So to speak. Could Mr. Henry be gaining my friendship only to let me down at the end? Fear is a physical thing and it r
ises inside of me, pushing upward from my gut and into my throat, threatening to choke me, threatening to take away my breath.

  “Fear is a funny thing,” he says, his voice coming to me from where he sits at the table. For a moment I think he’s talking to himself. “It can make you freeze up, or it can make you run faster.”

  I wonder if he can read my mind. It feels like, in all of this, he is appraising me. I know he’s one of them. But is he a Mr. Jinn or a Mr. Tennin? Is he shadow or light?

  “When it came to fear, I was always a runner,” I say loudly, still in the kitchen.

  I take a deep breath. I walk back to him with the two steaming mugs. I sit down and stare at Mr. Henry.

  “So, the city where the man took his child. That is Over There?”

  Mr. Henry shakes his head harshly while taking a sip of too-hot coffee. “No, no. Absolutely not. The city is only the Edge of Over There, although many who find their way there don’t realize it.”

  “I don’t understand. I’m not going to pretend I do.”

  He smiles. “You will, when the story is over. You’ll understand more than you ever have.”

  “How did Abra get involved with this?” I ask.

  “Well, as I said, Ruby and her father walked through the grave of Marie Laveau four years before the Tree appeared here in Deen, four years before you fought the Amarok. Four years before you killed Jinn.”

  “It wasn’t really me,” I said.

  He frowned. “Then, after all that, another four years passed. By then, you and Abra were sixteen.”

  “By then, the little girl, Ruby, must have been . . .”

  “Yes, eight long years had passed since Amos had taken her and the Tree through the grave. She was thirteen years old.”

  “And Leo . . . ”

  “Eighteen years old. He never stopped trying to find a way into the grave of Marie Laveau. But he had nearly lost hope.”

  I stare out the window into the snow. I wish I could be more critical of Ruby’s father. I wish I could despise Amos for running away with his child. But I can’t. I would have done the same with my mother all those long years ago, if I’d been given the choice. I would have taken her through whatever door I needed to, if her healing lay on the other side.

  “Hope.” Mr. Henry says the word quietly, as if even the sound of it is fragile. “Hope can last a long time, longer than we expect or imagine. Even after you think it’s gone, the smallest of things can bring it back.”

  “They lived in the city all that time?” I ask. “At the Edge of Over There? For eight years?”

  “For eight long years, yes, they did. And much happened during that time. But first, Abra’s story.”

  I nod. The wind has begun to howl.

  11

  ABRA COULD ALMOST FEEL THE RAIN, even though it was only the dream again. She was surrounded by the same old leaves and branches, details she recognized easily now that she had been having the dream off and on for nearly four years. The drops clattered down through them, all around her. She was up in the tree again, up in its highest branches, and despite her familiarity with this particular dream, she was still afraid. She clung to the branch she was on, a branch much too thin to hold her. It broke, and she fell. She grabbed for anything she could hold on to, eventually finding another branch much too thin to hold her for long. It was the same branch she always grabbed. She dangled there, looking down at the ground far below.

  She watched a huge wolf-like creature pick up the small girl in its jaws and toss her aside. She watched as the boy grabbed on to a small sword, cried out in pain before swinging it again and again at the wolf. She watched as the sword found its mark and the huge creature listed to the side like a boat preparing to sink. When the creature fell, the boy fell.

  She twisted and turned where she hung from the branch, wondering if the girl was okay. Wondering if she could do something differently this time, but it was always the same. That’s when the streak of light came, and a man, or something in the shape of a man, knelt beside the girl. He put his hands on her head and closed his eyes, and Abra knew that the man was bringing the girl back to life.

  She could hear through the girl’s ears again. She was still dangling there in the air; she was still feeling the soft patter of rain on her head and bare arms; she could still feel the thin branch slipping ever so slowly from her grasp. But there it was: her hearing was the girl’s, and she heard the man begin to whisper.

  “Abra, this is very important. I have a few things I need to tell you . . .”

  But again, she fell.

  I should have hit the ground by now, she thought. And just as she remembered this thought always came to her in this dream, she looked down, and there was the ground coming up at her, and she took a sharp breath.

  She woke up.

  She was not hanging from a tree. There was no rain falling on her head. There was no Amarok, no boy, no man speaking into her ear. It was only her, alone in her bed while the dim, early morning light crept up over the eastern horizon. She could tell it would be another cold winter day. She tried to enjoy the warmth under her covers, but the images wouldn’t go away.

  The man in her dream had been Mr. Tennin.

  He had saved her life.

  What had he been trying to tell her?

  She had dreamed the dream on an almost monthly basis for the last four years, ever since that first night in the hospital on the day the angels fell. It didn’t surprise her. Nothing surprised her anymore.

  This didn’t mean everything was the same as it had always been.

  Before the Amarok and the Tree of Life, everything about the valley had felt predictable. She went to school. She worked around the farm. There was baseball and fireflies and bike riding all summer. There was the church at the end of Sam’s lane. There were the mountains rising up on either side, solid and unmoving.

  But since the Tree, everything felt tenuous, as if the slightest movement could change everything. It was like holding a soap bubble in the palm of her hand. The reality she saw felt thin and breakable, a film of ice covering a deep, still pool. Her eyes had been opened to another layer of reality, and she spent those weeks and months looking for signs of the other world, waiting for it to break through.

  Four years is a long time. A northern red oak, for example, grows more than two feet per year. That’s eight feet of living bark and twigs and leaves shooting for the sky. A red maple grows three to five feet per year—that’s twenty feet in four years. A weeping willow can stand at the edge of a pond, its wispy tendrils flowing, and grow up to thirty-two feet in four years.

  A child. A child can become a young adult in four years. A friendship can grow faster than trees or vanish altogether in that time. The world is always changing all around us, molecules shifting from this to that, so that in four years, what is recognizable? What could possibly remain the same under the erosion of so much flowing time?

  On one particular day, after those four long years had passed, Abra found herself lying on her bed after school, the heavy sword beside her, pressing down the blankets. You would barely recognize her if you saw her lying there on her stomach, legs crossed and propped up behind her. Her hair was longer and straighter. Her form had somehow become less awkward, the way a foal grows into its stride. She rolled over and her blue eyes stared at the ceiling. She thought about the dream that wouldn’t go away. She thought, for the first time in a long time, about Sam. She thought about all that had happened that summer. And she was filled with a familiar, aching disappointment.

  Of all the things she remembered about that day when the angels fell, the thing she recalled with the most detail was the final sentence Mr. Jinn had said, smirking.

  “And you,” he said, staring deep into her eyes, looking for something. “You have only just begun.”

  He had seemed to utter those words like a curse, but they filled her like a promise. She reached over and gripped the sword beside her on the bed, and it fit her hand like the right
puzzle piece.

  When everything happened, she had felt suddenly crucial. She had a feeling that she was something more (and oh how silly it seems for her to even think these words), that she was Mr. Tennin’s replacement, given the responsibility to destroy the Tree of Life whenever and wherever it appeared.

  Replacing an angel.

  Abra Miller.

  The idea had filled her with purpose, but it seemed ridiculous four years later, in the light of day. She was still only a teenager, after all, and how could she take over a task of such massive importance?

  She wandered over to the window, staring aimlessly in the direction of the eastern mountain range.

  That’s when she saw the woman.

  It was a fair distance from her window to the road, but even from there something intrigued her about the woman. First of all, Abra couldn’t remember the last person who had walked up Kincade Road. She lived a long way from town, and unless you were going to her house or Sam’s house, there was no other reason to go out that road.

  She looked closer. The woman wore a tan jacket over a light blue dress. She had brown hair, and it rustled in the cold breeze. But that wasn’t what got Abra’s attention.

  “Mrs. Chambers?” she whispered to herself, because the woman she saw on the other side of the road looked exactly like Sam’s mom. His mom, who had died when lightning struck the oak tree all those years ago.

  She dropped everything and ran out of the house without even putting on her coat. She sprinted down the lane—it was the kind of run where she nearly outran herself, where every stride felt like it might lead to a fall. Her feet pounded all the way to the stone road, and the cold swept down, stinging her eyes and her ears and her nose. It was so cold.

  She stopped, panting the icy air into her aching lungs. She looked both ways, peering into the woods that stood dark against the drab grays and tans of winter. There hadn’t been any snow recently, but the air smelled crisp and the clouds were low and flat with no blue sky to be seen.

  Who was that woman? Where had she gone?