The Day the Angels Fell

by Shawn Smucker

  That’s when I saw the three large, black dogs, the same ones that had been fighting with the groundhog. They sat there in the middle of the road, just south of me. They didn’t look aggressive, but they didn’t look like nice dogs either. It seemed like they were waiting for me to make a decision, and that decision would determine their course of action. I had to pass them if I wanted to go to Abra’s house, and they didn’t look like they were going to move.

  “Out of the way!” I shouted, waving my hand at them.

  I thought about going home. But then it hit me: Mr. Jinn had sent them after me. He didn’t want me meeting up with Abra. For some reason he wanted the two of us to remain separate.

  I took a step.

  The one in the middle bristled, and I heard it growl, a sound that came at the same time as a far-off peal of thunder. The storm approached. Low gray clouds boiled with anger and rolled in overhead. It was getting darker, too, as the day wore on. Large drops of rain exploded on the dusty road. The other two dogs walked around either side of me as if they were distracted, but I knew what was going on. They were surrounding me.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted, but they only smiled at me the way dogs can sometimes smile, with their lips pulled back, their teeth bared, their tongues lolling to one side.

  The rain came down in stinging pellets, and I knew I was about to get drenched. I was also about to get eaten. One of the dogs snapped at my foot, and I kicked it in the nose. It yelped and growled even louder, coming back in to take a snap at my elbow.

  While I kicked that one back, another grabbed the duffel bag and pulled it away from me. The contents of the box spilled onto the ground, and I ran to it in a panic, trying to keep the book and the articles from getting wet. Then I saw that the sword lay in the road.

  It looked like it was on fire, and it seemed to be growing larger. The rain wasn’t hissing or steaming when it hit the sword. In fact, the rain came down even harder, but the blade and the hilt were writhing in flame, and nothing could extinguish it.

  At first the dogs drew around it, forgetting about me at least for a moment. I scrambled backward away from them, getting ready to run for Abra’s house, though I hated to leave all that stuff behind.

  Then the dogs started yelping and howling. They bit at their own fur as if trying to pull hot embers out of their skin with their teeth. These enormous black dogs were reduced to rolling on the road. It was like the heat from the sword had gone inside them.

  They rolled over and over on the road.

  Then they stopped moving.

  I was both relieved and horrified. Were they dead? I wasn’t going to get close enough to find out. But seeing those dogs lying there, I suddenly realized how serious this quest had become.

  I stared at the sword. What should I do with it? I couldn’t leave it in the middle of the road.

  It no longer glowed. It was no longer in flames. I tried to touch it but it was still hot. I bunched up my duffel bag and used it to pull the sword from the earth, then dropped it into the box, nudging it into place. Even through the duffel bag I could feel the heat. I placed the book and the articles back in their spots. They were soaking wet, and I hoped they weren’t ruined. I placed the lid on the box and managed to fit the box back inside the duffel bag.

  I looked at the dogs. They were actually quite majestic creatures. There was something very old about them, something ancient and mythical. Their fur was a deep, deep black, the night sky around a new moon. I wondered if they had been that mean when they were puppies, if that’s how their breed was born, or if they had been trained to attack. I thought I knew the answer. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that anything was born evil. It seemed that evil had to be constructed, usually in the empty places left by pain or rejection or manipulation.

  It wasn’t too much longer before I arrived at Abra’s farmhouse, but I was soaked through. The rain stopped and the sky darkened as night fell. The clouds had spilled over the western mountains, and now hints of a long, slow sunset peeked out from the edges, pink and indigo.

  I walked up Abra’s long lane and there she was, sitting on the porch alone. She looked tired and sad, but when she spotted me coming up the lane, her face brightened and she hopped up, ran through the wet grass, and hugged me. The light in the sky looked strange, as if it had been strained through many filters and what was left was light without any of the normal impurities. It was like the first day.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said.

  “Abra,” I began, “I’m sorry about—”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about that. I have something to show you. You’re not going to believe what I found.”

  19

  SHE GRABBED MY SLEEVE, then my hand, and jogged toward the house, dragging me along behind her. The duffel bag strap dug into my shoulder, and the bag itself banged against my leg as we ran.

  “Wait, wait,” I complained. “Not so fast. This bag is heavy.”

  She dropped my hand. “What do you have in there anyway?”

  “I brought a surprise of my own. I’ve been busy too,” I said, not wanting to be outdone by her.

  “I think you’re really going to like this,” she said. “I think it’s a sign.”

  Her house was similar to mine, with a large front porch attached to an expansive farmhouse. But their house was made up of two dwellings, and they often rented the other side out. That summer the other side was empty. We would often sneak into the empty half and pretend it was haunted. We would run from window to window, breathless with fear or excitement, until we’d hear her mother’s voice calling out that supper was ready.

  We walked quickly into the house. I heard Mrs. Miller putting the dishes away, the ceramic plates making loud sounds as they crash-landed into the appropriate cupboards. Her mom was always moving, always busy, and you could tell where she was in the house just by listening.

  “Mom, Sam’s here,” Abra said as we passed the kitchen.

  “Hi, Sam,” she called out.

  “Hi, Mrs. Miller,” I said, but Abra pulled me in the opposite direction, into the dining room with its wood floor and echoing, high ceiling.

  “I have ice cream if you want,” her mom called after us.

  “Okay, Mom, in a minute,” Abra said.

  At the far side of the dining room was the door that led to the empty side of the house. An old-fashioned key was in the lock, the huge kind with oversized teeth on the end. Abra turned the key and the lock clicked. She cringed, and I hoped her mother hadn’t heard—her parents didn’t really like when we played on that side of the house. We both froze in place, waiting for a voice telling us not to go over there. When none came, she turned the knob and pulled the door open, and we vanished into the other side of the house.

  She closed the door behind us and picked up a flashlight. It always seemed so still in the empty side of the house. It felt like we had traveled to another time, another place, where we were the only two people alive. Who knew what kind of world we would find waiting for us if we dared to venture outside? Maybe everyone else had disappeared. Maybe everything was starting over again.

  “I kept this here in case you came,” she whispered. Light from the dusk outside drifted through the windows, but it wasn’t much, and it left the rooms coated in a kind of blue darkness that was difficult to navigate. The flashlight pointed the way, a round circle of light with a dim inner core.

  She led us up the stairs. My shoulder was weary from carrying the bag, so I changed it to the other side. We got to the top of the steps and doubled back to the landing to the front bedroom, the one that had a window that looked out over the lane.

  “Here, hold this,” Abra said.

  I dropped my duffel bag and took the flashlight.

  “Point it into the closet,” she said, so I did.

  She walked into the shadows and came out carrying a chunk of log that was almost too heavy for her, about a foot in diameter. She had to carry it with two h
ands and kind of leaned back as she bore its weight. She carried it tenderly, as if it might break, and placed it on the floor in front of me.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  She looked up at me, her blue eyes large and expectant. “It’s a piece of log from your tree.” Her voice came faster now. “The lightning must have blown that branch to bits, because this piece was all the way in our pasture. I saw it when I was walking back from your house.”

  “Wow,” I said, but I wasn’t that impressed. I’d seen similar chunks of wood littering our farm after the lightning strike. She treated the branch as if it was holy, as if it was some kind of a sign, but I just didn’t get it.

  “Look on this side,” she said, pointing to the thick end of the log facing her.

  I walked around, and then I understood.

  First of all, I saw how she could carry such a thick piece of wood. It was hollow. Or at least part of it was hollow. I shone the light into the hollowed-out place of the thick branch, and that’s where it was.

  A small green thing, no more than three inches tall. It looked like a miniature tree in the winter, without any leaves, except even the trunk and branches were bright, shiny green. And while it didn’t have any leaves, there were three white flowers, each the size of a pea, hanging on the tree, heavy and ripe. The branches those flowers hung on were weighed down and looked like they might break at any moment.

  “That’s . . . that’s . . .” I said, unable to speak further.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I think it’s a sign, Sam. I think it’s a sign that your mother, she’s okay, right? I mean, this is a chunk of the tree where she died, and somehow there’s this flower, this beautiful flower inside it, protected? I think it’s just beautiful.”

  She was nearly in tears, and then I remembered. She hadn’t heard Mr. Jinn’s description of the Tree of Life—what it looked like or where I might find it or what it would need to survive and grow. She had already left before he told me those things. But this was it, for sure.

  This was the Tree of Life.

  “Amazing,” I said, and with that one word I decided I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her what I knew, at least not right away. I couldn’t show her what was in the duffel bag. I couldn’t tell her about the three dogs or the flaming sword, because who knew how she would respond? She might laugh at me or try to convince me not to use the Tree to bring back my mother. She might even hide the Tree, or kill it.

  I took in a sharp breath.

  She might kill the Tree. I looked at it again. It was so fragile. It wouldn’t take much to kill it. Just a deliberate movement of the hand. A swift kick. So much could be destroyed so quickly.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  I felt evil again. I felt like she was good and I was keeping things from her, so surely that made me evil, right? Darkness spread in me, I could sense it, but I felt powerless to stop it. The only way I could stop it would be to give up on my mother, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t.

  I would do anything to bring her back.

  Right?

  Anything?

  “Thanks for showing this to me.”

  She put it back in the closet. “We can keep it here for now,” she said. “Maybe your dad can come and get it in the car. It’s kind of heavy.”

  “I can’t believe you carried it all the way here,” I said.

  “I know! But I really wanted you to see it,” she said, suddenly bashful. “So, what do you have in there?”

  My mind darted here and there. “You know what? Nothing compared to that,” I said, motioning toward the closet. “Nothing at all.”

  “But I’m curious now!” she protested, laughing. “You can’t do that.”

  “Honest, it’s nothing. Just a few old things I found in the barn.”

  “Whatever it is, it looks heavy,” she said, and I was relieved that she seemed content to let it go, to move on. “You should leave it here. I could even lock the closet. When you and your dad come for that log, you can get your bag.”

  At first I panicked. I thought she was trying to steal it from me, to separate me from the blade and the atlas and the articles. But I calmed myself quickly. She didn’t know. She was only trying to be nice.

  “Do you think if we locked it in there tonight, I could take the key with me?”

  She looked confused. “Sure, I guess. Why? Do you think I’m going to steal it?” She looked bothered, as if she had stubbed her toe on something in the dark, something strange, something she couldn’t identify.

  “’Course not.” I forced a laugh, but it came out sounding hollow. “I just, you know, I really like it. I’d like the idea of knowing that little plant is mine. That the sign is mine and no one else can get to it.”

  “Okay . . . weirdo,” she said, smiling.

  We both laughed, and that time I laughed for real. It felt good. There is something about laughing that pushes back against the darkness, even if only for a moment.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I was hoping you would.”

  I smiled, and it was genuine, because I had missed her too.

  “What are friends for?” I asked, but those words made me feel worse, as if cementing my betrayal.

  I clutched the closet door key tightly in my pocket as I got into the car with Mrs. Miller. She had agreed to give me a ride home since it was already dark and I didn’t have my bike. They had one of those old station wagons with the fake wood panel that ran down the side. It always smelled like a pine forest in there, thanks to the little green tree hanging from the rearview mirror. It felt strange sitting in the passenger seat with only Mrs. Miller and me in the car.

  “How is your father doing?” she asked.

  “He’s okay,” I said.

  “And how are you?”

  “I’m okay, I guess.”

  “The funeral was beautiful this morning,” she said, wiping her eyes. She glanced over at me while she drove. “You know, it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay if you cry from time to time.”

  Silence. Only the sound of the tires spitting out muddy rocks and the clattering they made on the underside of the car.

  I nodded and turned away, looking out the passenger-side window. It was strange how talking about crying made me want to cry. It sounded like something my own mother would have told me, if she hadn’t died. But I didn’t believe Mrs. Miller. Adults rarely cried. I hadn’t once seen my father cry, not in my entire life, not even since the funeral, though sometimes when I came into a room unannounced or unexpected, his eyes were red-rimmed and tired.

  No, what she said wasn’t true. We weren’t supposed to cry. I didn’t know why she was trying to tell me any different.

  That’s when I saw it—a deeper shadow moving against the night. A blackness within a blackness. It stood on the eastern side of the road toward the river, in a clump of trees that led up into the mountain. At first I thought it was only a strange shadow, a trick of the early night. But after we passed it, and just before it went out of my view, it gathered itself, sprang out of the glade of trees, and ran alongside the car.

  20

  I COWERED IN MY SEAT, moving down farther until only my eyes and the top of my head were visible in the glass.

  “That’s okay, dear,” Mrs. Miller said, reaching over and patting my leg. She must have thought I was bent over with emotion after her kind speech about the acceptability of mourning. But that wasn’t it. I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been.

  The thing that ran along beside us, off the side of the road, reminded me of the three dogs that had attacked me earlier on the road, except it was so much bigger. If it would have stood on its hind legs at the base of the oak tree, its forepaws and head would have easily reached into that small nest of branches where my cat had hidden, where I had stood in that terrible storm. And even though it was running al
ongside the car, it kept up with us easily. It didn’t look tired or like it was trying very hard. It looked like it was loping, running for the fun of it.

  Sometimes when I blinked I lost sight of it. It was a shadow within a shadow, a deeper blackness. It was a hole in reality. I couldn’t see it. And then I could. And every time I caught sight of it, every time its shape became recognizable, I ducked down again, fear gripping me.

  We slowed to make the turn into my lane, and it stopped in the church parking lot. It bared its teeth at me as we drove away, a silent warning.

  That fruit does not belong to you.

  I remembered it. The fierce thing that had come to me in my dream, when the fruit kept rotting and I couldn’t get a piece of it to my dying mother.

  “An Amarok,” I muttered to myself, and I realized what it had come for. It had come for the Tree.

  I remembered my father’s words.

  It only devours those who are foolish enough to hunt alone.

  “Sam?” Mrs. Miller asked in a kind voice. “Are you going to get out?”

  We were parked in the lane, fifty yards from the house. I hadn’t even realized she had stopped. I looked in the side-view mirror, backward down the lane, desperately searching for the Amarok. There were strange shadows in the church parking lot, sliding shadows cast by the single flickering streetlight mounted on the corner of the church. But I didn’t see anything else.

  “Sam?” Mrs. Miller asked again.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Miller,” I said, trying to contain the fear in my voice. “The ice cream was delicious.”

  I opened the door and cringed, expecting to feel the savage bite of an Amarok on my leg as it yanked me into the darkness, devouring me after I told it all of my secrets. But nothing happened. I only heard the rumble of the station wagon’s engine more clearly, mixed with the summer sound of crickets chirping.