The Edge of Over There

by Shawn Smucker

  She stood there staring into the puddle for a long time, thinking, and the fair music grew more and more distant in her mind. A group of kids pushed past her, one of them stepping in the puddle, splashing water on her jeans. No one fell into that sky of stars. There was no sudden passage to another universe. She sighed and followed the group of kids to the Deen fair entrance, her one wet toe leaving a strange track on the sidewalk.

  Is this all there is? she wondered. Is the world really only made up of what I can see?

  A girl at the back of the pack looked over her shoulder. “Abra?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  Abra saw a girl about her age with reddish-brown hair pulled back into two braids. Her eyes were dark brown, and they immediately reminded Abra of the pools she had been looking in, both because of their depth and the way they reflected the lights from the fair. She didn’t recognize her, which was strange, because in a town like Deen you usually recognized people. You certainly didn’t know everyone, but most faces were familiar, especially someone your own age in a town where everyone went to the same school.

  “Hey,” Abra said hesitantly. “Do I . . . Do we know each other?”

  “It’s me, Beatrice!” the girl said, running to her and linking arms with her.

  Abra fought the urge to pull away. “Hi, uh, Beatrice,” she said, still searching the girl’s face for something she recognized. It struck her as extremely odd how familiar this girl was pretending to be, when she couldn’t remember ever seeing her before in her life.

  “Stop that! You always call me B,” the girl said in a bashful voice. “Everyone else does too. I’m going into the fair. You too?”

  Abra nodded, still not sure what to say or do.

  “Your friends are going inside,” Abra warned the girl, motioning toward the group that had left her behind, hoping B would run off and leave her. But the longer Abra looked at her, the more she thought, yes, there might be something familiar about the girl, something in her eyes, and it was this something that kept Abra from telling the girl to get lost.

  B waved at the group of kids dismissively. “That’s okay. They don’t like any of the good rides anyway.”

  The two girls walked through the admissions gate. They wandered the animal exhibits, and Abra secretly hoped B would leave her alone, go find her friends. The girl continued to give her an uneasy feeling, and Abra wanted to head down into the dark part of the fairgrounds. She was retracing the steps she had walked with Sam four summers before.

  But as the two girls walked together, Abra found herself softening toward B. They both laughed at the chickens with the strange combs and reached in through iron bars to pet the calves’ hard heads and down-soft sides. Slowly, gradually, something shifted in Abra. She began to hope B wouldn’t leave her. She’d had no one to talk to for a long time, not like this, and the spring had stretched on long and lonely. After her exchange with Koli Naal, she had wanted more than anything to run to Sam’s place and tell him what was going on. But she still didn’t trust him. She didn’t know if he would try to find the Tree for himself. The space between them felt impossible.

  Before the two girls got too far into the fair, they were talking quickly like long-lost friends. Abra felt herself giving in to B’s easygoing manner, even though she asked a lot of questions. Abra was a loner, and B’s loud, friendly personality fascinated her. She’d pepper Abra with surface-level questions like, “How old is your brother?” or “How long have you lived at the farm?” or “Do you have any pets?” Then she’d ask Abra something deep, something that made Abra feel strange, as if B had been watching her closely for a very long time.

  “How are things between you and Sam?”

  “What ever happened to your neighbor to the north of Sam’s house after the fire?”

  “Do you think they’ll rebuild the church?”

  The easy questions, well, she answered those simply enough. B didn’t ask too many of the intrusive questions in a row, but when she did ask them, they stuck out like an unexpected splinter on an otherwise smooth table. But now Abra was looking for reasons to like B, and she reminded herself that Deen was a small town, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s business. That explained why B knew so much about her—everyone else did too.

  It was unlike Abra to take to Beatrice as quickly as she did. She went from wondering who this girl was to laughing hysterically with her on the carousel and shouting down at strangers from the top of the Ferris wheel. If she had been her normal self, she would have had the awareness to question what was happening.

  But she wasn’t herself, not in those days between meeting Koli Naal and what came next. She was distracted by thoughts of New Orleans and the possibility of another Tree. She was disoriented, searching for signs of the hidden, the rustling curtain, and it was easy for someone to take her by the arm and lead her where they wanted her to go.

  The two girls came off the Ferris wheel. Abra’s face was flushed from the summer night and the excitement of ride after ride. B was going on and on about the town where she had grown up—turns out she hadn’t grown up in Deen but in a town on the other side of the mountain. She had story after story, each one funnier or more entertaining or more solemn than the one before it. When B told stories, Abra felt herself getting caught up in them, swirling in something like a make-believe world. It was a relief not having to worry about the Tree or New Orleans or Koli Naal. It was a pleasant kind of distraction.

  Then, there stood Sam.

  He seemed suddenly older, a stranger. He stood there with his friends, his hands in his pockets. The boys were being rowdy, pushing and shouting the way young men sometimes do in order to get attention or prove themselves. But Sam stood at the fringe, and Abra couldn’t help but think he didn’t belong in that group. She knew he was more thoughtful than that. After all they had experienced together, it seemed as though they had both skipped through that stage of life, going straight from childhood to adulthood.

  “Hey, Abra,” he said when he caught her eye.

  “Hi, Sam,” she said.

  Beatrice launched herself in between them. “Hi, I’m B,” she said in a chipper voice. “I’ve seen you around.”

  She laughed when she finished a sentence. It was like her way of saying she was finished talking, at least for a moment.

  “Hi,” Sam said to Beatrice, but he didn’t look at her. He was still looking at Abra. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Abra was suddenly filled with a great sense of sadness at the loss of a good friend. She wished it all away—the sword, the Tree, everything that had happened. She wished they could have gone on being friends, exploring the valley, watching the river. She thought about childhood and how it passes too quickly, how it’s one of those things you can’t look directly at or it will flee. She wondered where those four years had gone and if she could get them back.

  “It’s going okay,” Abra said, shrugging. “How’s your dad?”

  “Dad? He’s good. Things are good.”

  “Good,” Abra said.

  The three of them stood there for a little longer than what felt appropriate. An awkwardness settled between them.

  “Anything new?” Sam asked. It was an innocent question, two words people ask each other every single day. But to Abra they felt different. Maybe it was in Sam’s voice, the way it made the question sound important, or maybe it was in his eyes, the way they suddenly stared intently, or maybe it was the way his body tensed up. Abra knew he wasn’t asking about life in general—he wanted to know if she had found anything new in the atlas, if she had seen anything strange, and she knew this the way best friends know things about each other.

  He hadn’t forgotten.

  She paused. She would have told him about Koli Naal and about the red #69 written beside New Orleans, a new number signifying the new Tree. She wanted to. She wanted to bring him back into it all with her. She was willing to forgive him his obsession with the Tree, his previous insistence on using it t
o bring back his mother. She would have told him. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she sensed Beatrice right there beside her, eyes staring, mouth suddenly and strangely quiet.

  B hadn’t stopped talking all night, but now she was all ears.

  “Nah,” Abra said, shrugging, trying to look indifferent. “Nothing new.”

  14

  ABRA COULD ALMOST FEEL THE RAIN, and she knew she was in that dream again, the way you can know it’s a dream but still feel like there’s no way out. But she didn’t feel trapped—she felt relieved to be back. There was something unfinished, something she needed to revisit. She was surrounded by the same leaves and branches, the same sound of drops pattering down through it all. She was up in the same tree, hanging by one of its highest branches, but there was something different this time.

  She wasn’t afraid.

  Her heart raced and her muscles tensed, but the heavy drag of fear wasn’t there. She clung to the branch she was on, a branch that was still much too thin to hold her, and she felt herself beginning to fall down through the tree, but still there was no fear. She grabbed for anything she could hold on to, confident this time without a seed of panic. There she was, dangling, looking down at the ground far below.

  She watched as the same small girl was picked up in the jaws of the same huge, wolf-like creature and tossed aside. She watched as the boy grabbed on to the small sword, cried out in pain, and swung it again and again at the wolf. She watched, waiting for the moment when the sword found its mark and the huge creature listed to the side, drifting, plummeting. Then it was down, and the boy fell.

  She twisted and turned where she hung from the branch, and for some reason this time she didn’t worry about the girl. This time, in the dream, she knew she would be okay. The streak of light came exactly when she expected it, and the 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 brought the girl back to life.

  And like every other time, she heard the man begin to whisper.

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

  But this time she didn’t fall. This time he kept talking, and she heard what he said. She heard again what Mr. Tennin had told her almost exactly four years ago, words she had somehow grown over or forgotten.

  “You will have to be very strong. I don’t understand why this responsibility is passing to you, but it is. And who knows? Maybe children are the only ones brave and true enough to save the world.”

  He smiled a sad smile, looked over his shoulder, and then looked back at her, serious and determined.

  “The sword is also a key, or perhaps you already know that by now. There are seven gates. Lock the gates with the sword. But don’t only lock them—seal them. You’ll know how when you get there. The atlas will show you where to go.”

  He paused, and when he spoke again he sounded sad and confused.

  “There is another Tree. I know that now. They are trying to plant the Tree on the other side of one of the gates. This one in Deen was only a diversion. The other one is already growing. Two at once. You will have to destroy it.” His voice trailed off. A sonic boom reverberated and the fire roared across the river.

  “It’s all up to you now,” Mr. Tennin said as he stood up, then shot into the sky like a rocket.

  Abra woke up as if rising out of cool water on a warm day. There was no falling this time. Her eyes opened and she stared at the ceiling, wondering where Mr. Tennin had gone. Had he died? Could angels die? Or, as he had said, had he simply passed on?

  Was there a difference?

  Reality returned to her slowly like an old memory. It was an early morning in July. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and the setting moon cast a pale light that would soon fade as the east turned a navy blue that grew into purple, red, and finally orange. The sun would drift into the morning sky. She stared out into that pale darkness. Stillness settled over everything on her farm at that time of day. The trees were heavy with dew, motionless. The barns held sleeping animals. The cornstalks, nearly approaching waist height, stood very still, listening.

  The fair had been a dead end. Abra hadn’t wanted to go exploring with Beatrice constantly looking over her shoulder, chatting and smiling and waiting. Because no matter what Beatrice had said, no matter how she had acted, Abra had been overwhelmed with the sense that she was searching for something.

  Abra looked down the lane and across the road, and she wasn’t surprised to see Koli standing there, facing away this time, facing the river. She was the only thing that wasn’t still—her hair and dress billowed out to the south as the north wind swept out of the narrow place where the east and west mountains collided. Koli stood there clasping her hands behind her back.

  Abra crept downstairs without even changing out of her nightgown, opened the front door quietly, and guided it back until it rested against the frame. She danced lightly over the wet grass. This time she took the short sword. The cold metal somehow felt alive to Abra, as if it was a thinking, living, breathing being. She looked at it in her hands while she walked, examined its dullness. From a distance, someone would have thought she was carrying a piece of gray plastic or an ashy branch already burned. But it felt full of life, and she wondered why she hadn’t named it yet.

  Already the light gathered. The moon, directly to her left, was sinking down below the mountains. The air felt like warm water with streaks of coolness in it, the way the surface of a swimming hole can be warm while arms of cold reach up from the depths. The curtain felt light to Abra that morning—whatever it was that divided Deen from the Tree of Life seemed especially thin, almost transparent. She kept looking around, expecting to see anything. Nothing would have surprised her.

  But nothing out of the ordinary showed itself. Nothing except Koli Naal, facing the river.

  Abra continued down the driveway, the stones digging into the soles of her feet. She wasn’t afraid. After the dream and Mr. Tennin’s words, Koli was nothing more than a distraction off to the side, something only marginally important. Abra knew now what the sword would do for her. She knew her mission, and this time she carried it. She would go to New Orleans and destroy the Tree. Somehow, she would do it. Abra felt powerful, invincible.

  The moonlight faded and the morning paused, neither night nor day. The woods across the street had their own sounds: crickets and cicadas and the rustling of young leaves learning to dance for the first time. And always the river, always the river, that distant roar of time and life. Rivers run, always the same, always different. Out of the blue Abra remembered something she had read during all of her research into the Tree of Life.

  A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches.

  A river flowed.

  Koli started walking away again, walking north on Kincade Road, and Abra followed her. They were like two stars, gravity pushing and pulling, spinning through the endless universe. Koli seemed somehow less than she had been the previous time, as if some crucial part of her had been spent on another venture.

  They arrived at the parking lot, the place the church used to stand, and Koli walked around its ruins with light steps. She seemed to draw a power from those remains, as if desolation and abandonment filled her up. Abra stood on the edge and watched. Waited.

  “Will you help the man and his child? Will you unlock the gate?” Koli asked absentmindedly without turning to face Abra.

  “I’m going to New Orleans, if that’s what you mean,” Abra said. She felt annoyed with this . . . thing. Whatever Koli was. And not knowing made Abra even more annoyed.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Koli said slowly, her voice somewhere between a hiss and a whisper. She turned and looked at Abra, and she had that horrid face again, the one that had terrified Abra before.

  “You can’t scare me,” Abra said, clutching the sword.

  Koli glanced at the sword. “What, this?” She pointed at her o
wn face, which suddenly reverted to that of a beautiful woman, with smooth teeth and gentle, pink tongue. “Oh, Abra, that’s nothing. That’s simply a preview, a glimpse, a foretaste. You have no idea.”

  “I do know. I know who you are and I know what you’re trying to do,” Abra said. “I stopped Mr. Jinn and I can stop you.”

  “You did not stop Jinn. He grew . . . tired, careless,” Koli said in a sympathetic voice. “And who can blame him? Tree after Tree after Tree. Tennin always waiting, always sitting there with that smirk on his face, sword buried up to its hilt in the soft bark. No, Jinn was a tiny, dying flame. Snuffing him out required so little.”

  Her eyes were like fire.

  “I will not be so easily extinguished,” she said.

  Abra took a deep breath. “Why don’t you take the sword from me? Unlock it yourself?”

  Koli seemed to grow angry at that, and she paced the ruins faster, waving her arms as she spoke. “Take the sword? I won’t disgrace myself by touching it.”

  It burns you too, Abra thought.

  “Why did you think I would help you?” she asked. “Why would I go all the way to New Orleans and unlock a gate without knowing what will come out?”

  “Help me? Child, it’s much bigger than that. You don’t see what’s coming. I don’t have to scare you into helping me. Once you see what is happening, you’ll gladly help. You’ll see why our side is the right side.”

  “No,” Abra said.

  Koli shrugged. “Go to New Orleans, child.” When she said “child” it was in a pitying, whiny voice reserved for parents talking to the youngest of children. “Go to New Orleans. Unlock the gate that leads to Over There, and leave it unlocked. Leave the door open. That is why you have the sword. Use it.”