The Day the Angels Fell

by Shawn Smucker

  Abra looked at me and raised her eyebrows, wondering why I was getting any praise.

  “Hey,” I said, “I was watching him.”

  “Is that what you call that?”

  “I’m taking him up for his nap,” Mrs. Miller said. “You two have fun. And be careful.” She looked at Abra. “Your father found an enormous set of tracks by the river. He’s still not sure what it might be. So stay close to the house.”

  She walked up the stairs, carrying little Francis, who by now had stopped crying and was sucking on his fist. He looked over at me with obvious contempt. Or at least that’s what I thought I saw.

  Once Mrs. Miller had disappeared upstairs, Abra looked over at me. “Want to go see it again?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Did you bring the key?” she asked.

  I reached into my pocket and held it up like it was the answer to every question anyone had ever asked.

  The feel of the correct key turning in a lock is a satisfying feeling. I pulled the skeleton key back out of the slot and looked at Abra before turning the knob and opening the closet door. Everything was where we had left it. The log was back in the shadow, the hole facing away from us just as I had placed it the night before. The duffel bag sat on the other side of the closet, the square edges of the box visible.

  “There it is,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I walked into the closet, picked up the log, and carried it out into the room. It was heavy. I wasn’t sure how I would carry it all the way to Mr. Jinn’s house.

  “Oh no,” Abra said in a sad voice, pointing to the hollow side of the log. “That little plant is gone.”

  I practically dropped the log and looked upside down into the end where the Tree of Life had been the night before. Nothing. I turned around, got down on my hands and knees, and peered deep inside the log, hoping that maybe it had fallen in further. But there was nothing there, nothing except the rich dirt and small patch of moss that I pulled out and held in my hands.

  I thought I was going to cry. Every dream I had ever had about my mom returning evaporated into that hollow log.

  “It was so pretty,” Abra said. “But it was a sign. Your mom is watching over you.”

  No! I wanted to shout. No! That was the thing that would make my life normal again. It would bring back everything I’ve lost! That little plant was what I needed. I had to have it.

  But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t dead, at least not in the log. Someone must have taken it.

  Who?

  I stared over at Abra. The darkness that had moved into my soul flared up.

  “Did you take it?” I asked.

  She looked hurt. “Take it? I gave it to you! I gave you the key to the closet. Why would I take it?”

  The darkness subsided. She was right. If she had wanted it, she could have chosen never to show it to me. And she didn’t even know what it was.

  “What about your parents?” I asked. “Were they in here?”

  “They never come over here,” she said. “Why are you so paranoid? Why would anyone even want that thing? It was pretty, but that was it. It was just a flower.”

  I sat down under the weight of loss and shook my head, and before I could stop them, the words came pouring out.

  “It wasn’t. It was the Tree. The Tree of Life. Mr. Jinn told me to bring it to him so that we could bring my mom back. He said he could do that.”

  I wondered what she would say. I knew she had been skeptical from the beginning. But her response surprised me.

  “So what’s he going to do if we don’t have it?”

  “You believe me?”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “He won’t be happy.”

  “Were you going to tell me, or were you just going to take it to him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  She sat down on the floor beside me. We both stared into that empty log for a long time. And strangely enough, I felt a small seed of peace.

  “So what’s in the bag?” she asked.

  I stared at it. The box seemed suddenly important again. Even without the Tree, I was left with something. Maybe something in there would lead me to it. Maybe something in that box would put the whole thing back on track.

  “This has been one crazy summer,” I said, looking over at Abra. She smiled, and it made me smile.

  “What’s in the bag?” she asked again, this time punching me in the shoulder, but not very hard.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” I said, shaking my head. There was nothing believable about that summer. Not one single thing.

  I pulled the bag over to where we were sitting. Everything seemed to grow serious, but the sun still shone in the window. The empty half of the house we were in felt even emptier. I felt like I always did on that side of the house, like we were the only two people in the entire world. But maybe that wasn’t it—maybe we were the first two people in the whole world, and this was the first day.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” I said again as I pulled the zipper back and lifted out the box.

  “Try me,” she said, staring as I drew the lid back.

  22

  THE SWORD SEEMED LARGER SOMEHOW. I didn’t know why. But there it was in the box on top of the atlas and the clump of news clippings and notes. More than anything, though, the sword felt significant. In my mind, it had replaced the missing Tree as the thing I must hang on to. I wasn’t sure why.

  Movement across the window caught my attention, but when I looked up I didn’t see anything. I walked over and looked through the glass. The vultures circled high overhead. I must have seen one of them as its dark shape passed by. I was tired of seeing them. I wanted them to leave.

  “The vultures are still out there,” I said, turning back to Abra.

  She was sitting there quietly, holding the sword and running her fingers over the blade.

  “Abra!” I shouted, taking three quick steps toward her. She backed away from me, holding the sword by its small hilt. The blade was short, but for her, for both of us really, it was almost long enough to be a normal-sized sword.

  “What?” she asked, inadvertently pointing it at my gut.

  I stared at her hands. “Isn’t that . . . doesn’t that hurt?”

  “Hurt? Why?”

  “It’s not burning your fingers?” I asked.

  She laughed. “No. Why?”

  I reached out for it. She stretched out her arm to give it to me. But as soon as it touched my fingers, it burned me again.

  “Ouch!” I said, jerking my hand away.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t get it.

  “That thing burns me if I touch it,” I said. I showed her the red marks on my fingertips.

  “Really?” she said, looking it over, staring down the sharp edge of the blade. “What else is in your box?”

  I could tell she was excited, that she thought we were on the edge of something. The strange nature of the sword definitely got her attention.

  Some of the things had gotten wet when I brought the bag over, and now they had that crinkly, dried-again look to them. But nothing had been permanently damaged, and all the papers I saw were still readable.

  I showed her the atlas and we started scrolling through the pages. There were at least one hundred pages with notes on them. Some of them were places we knew or at least had heard of, like New York City or Jerusalem. But there were also strange places and names that felt ancient. Meshech. The land of Havilah. Miletus. The places that had smaller numbers beside them tended to be the ones we didn’t recognize, while the pages that were numbered in the sixties and above were places we knew about.

  “What do you think this is?” I asked her. “And why all of the numbers?”

  “It looks like the kind of map someone would keep of their journeys. Maybe they went to all of these places and numbered them?”

  “All t
he places with numbers beside them?” I asked. “You’d have to be super old. Or super rich. Or both.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but why else would you number different places?”

  I skimmed through the atlas. “Maybe they’re all places the person wants to go?”

  She shook her head. “No. A lot of the notes are observations. Whoever took the notes had definitely been there. In person.”

  “If you were traveling to all of these places and you were going to number where you went, wouldn’t you go to the closest place next? This person looks like they were skipping all over the world for no reason. Look here, in Turkey—#1 and #46. Why wouldn’t you do those #1 and #2? Or #45 and #46?” I looked at her with my eyebrows raised, as if I expected her to have an answer.

  “I don’t know, Sam,” she said, sounding frustrated. “I don’t know. Why would you skip all around?”

  I thought for a moment. “I guess if you didn’t know where you were going next.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Or if you weren’t in charge of where you were going next—”

  “Or if someone else was telling you where to go!”

  “Yes! That’s it,” she said. “Mr. Tennin works for someone else, some huge, rich, important company. Probably an oil company or something. And they send him all over the world to do his job!”

  “With a short little sword,” I said, unconvinced. “And a pack of old newspaper clippings.”

  Abra frowned at me. “I think we’re onto something,” she said. “It kind of makes sense.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me see those.” She gestured to the papers.

  I handed the entire wad to her—it was probably about an inch thick. She unwrapped the rubber bands and started spreading the articles on the floor in front of her. Some of them were stuck together from getting wet, and we had to gently peel them apart. Some weren’t from newspapers but were old note cards with writing in foreign languages. Some were in English and some weren’t. But all of them—the newspaper clippings, the note cards, the torn-off pieces of paper—had a number written in the top corner.

  “Hey, careful,” I said. “What if they’re in some kind of order? Mr. Tennin’s not going to be happy about us messing it up.”

  “That’s it!” she said. “In order. Sam, look up this place.” She handed me the atlas.

  “What place?” I asked.

  “Look, an article about a tree called L’Arbre du Ténéré.”

  She paused, and I saw her gaze flitting down the small newspaper clipping.

  “It was the most isolated tree in the world, 250 miles from any other tree! A Libyan truck driver ran it over.” She looked up at me. “Look, here’s the number on the article—60. Can you find the Sahara Desert in the atlas?”

  I looked in the back and found a page number for the Sahara. I scrolled through the book until I came to the page. There, in tiny script, right in the middle of the desert, was a number.

  #60.

  “You figured it out,” I said in a solemn voice.

  “Let’s try another one,” she said with excitement. “How about this? It’s another article with a number in the top corner.” She skimmed over the note card. “Okay, this one is about a tree too. Its name was Prometheus and it was almost five thousand years old!” She looked up at me again, amazement on her face.

  “Go on,” I said. “Then what?”

  “It was in the White Mountains of Nevada, and it was the oldest living thing on the planet. A graduate student was given the responsibility to count the rings.” She paused, reading some more of the article. “But instead of taking a core sample, the student requested to have the tree cut down? And the park service agreed! That’s ridiculous. Why would they give someone permission to cut down a five-thousand-year-old tree?”

  “What’s the number?” I asked.

  “Sixty-two,” she said.

  I looked up the White Mountains in the atlas. Right there, along the mountain range, was another number.

  #62.

  She looked up at me, and I could tell she was connecting the dots. She spread out all the articles and note cards.

  “Every single one of these is about a tree, either a really old tree or a tree that was vandalized or destroyed. At least the ones that are in English.” She held up a note card written in some kind of strange slanting script that neither of us could read or understand. “So, what kind of a company would send Mr. Tennin to places with trees like that?”

  “A tree company?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “How about one of those preservation societies—you know, the ones that try to save the environment?”

  Abra didn’t look convinced. “I don’t think so,” she said again.

  What was the connection between the contents of Mr. Tennin’s box and us? Where did he come from? Why was he here?

  “What if he’s here because of the lightning tree?” I asked quietly.

  Abra looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what if my grandfather’s oak tree is another tree that’s been damaged, and that’s why he’s here?”

  “That might be what brought him here, but we still don’t know why he does this over and over again,” Abra said. We were thinking on the same track. “Here’s a question. If he’s here for another company, why is he pretending to work for your dad? He doesn’t need the work, not if he’s working for this business that has enough money to send him all around the world.”

  “So he’s lying,” I said. I felt justified in stealing his box, and that gave me a certain sense of relief.

  Abra nodded. “He’s here for something else.”

  “The Tree of Life,” I said without even thinking. Our eyes met. “He’s here for the Tree of Life.”

  I thought about Mr. Jinn’s words again, when he had said that he’d find the Tree. That he always found it.

  “Mr. Jinn is the angel who tries to find the Tree. The one from Mr. Tennin’s story.”

  Abra stared at me, curiosity mixed with excitement and a little bit of skepticism covering her face. “And?”

  “Maybe Mr. Tennin is the other one. The angel whose job it is to find the Tree and destroy it before anyone eats from it and lives forever.”

  We knew this was serious.

  “Maybe one of them already stole the Tree from the closet,” Abra said.

  “Could they have come in here?”

  “I doubt it,” she said. But neither of us felt safe anymore.

  I looked out the window. “It’s getting late. I promised Mr. Jinn I’d bring you and the Tree to his house this afternoon. But I have to be home in time for dinner and to help with chores.”

  I couldn’t decide what to do. If I didn’t go back to Mr. Jinn’s house, it would seem suspicious. But what would he do if I went back without the Tree? Without Abra?

  “I don’t think you should go back there,” she said. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

  “Me neither.”

  We sat there quietly for a moment.

  “We have a lot to figure out,” I said. “But I have to go home. Can we leave everything here, locked in the closet?”

  “Do you think it’s okay here?” she asked. “The Tree was stolen from there.”

  “Do you have any other good hiding places?”

  We went into a different room and found a different closet with a key in the lock. It didn’t feel completely secure, but we didn’t know where else to put the box, and I didn’t feel right carrying it home with me, so close to the clutches of Mr. Tennin. He had seemed so nice, but now that I knew he was lying about why he was here and that he would do anything in his power to destroy the Tree, everything about him seemed dark and twisted.

  I gave Abra the old key. There wasn’t any reason for me to take it. She was in on this now. We were in this together. It felt comforting not having to bear everything on my own. But I still wondered, if it really came down to it, would she help me bring
my mom back to life?

  I told her about the three dogs that had attacked me on the road and the Amarok I had seen running alongside her mother’s car.

  “I’ll come back tonight,” I said, “after my chores are finished. Around eight?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but be careful.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get my dad to give me a ride. Don’t walk onto our property unless it’s an emergency,” I said. “I think it’s safe here, on your farm, but I’m not sure why. Mr. Jinn said he couldn’t come here, or at least he didn’t want to come here.”

  “Be careful,” she said again.

  She led me back to the side of the house where her family lived. I said good-bye to her mother. When her baby brother saw me, he started crying again. I rolled my eyes at him.

  Mr. Tennin ate his dinner up in his room that night, so it was only Dad and me at the table. He had sunk back into a state of despair about my mom, so he wasn’t saying much. Actually, he wasn’t saying anything. We ate in silence, and he didn’t ask me about Mr. Jinn or what the man had wanted me to help him with.

  After dinner we went out to the barn and I did my chores. Mr. Tennin came out and worked mostly with my dad. He didn’t say anything either. It felt strange. Why wasn’t anyone talking? Why was everyone being so quiet?

  Not only that, but I kept looking over my shoulder, waiting for Mr. Jinn or the Amarok to show up. I knew the Amarok would devour anything that came between it and the Tree. I wasn’t necessarily between it and the Tree, but Mr. Jinn might think I was. What if he sent it here to devour me?

  I stayed close to my dad all evening.

  Finally, my part of the chores was nearly finished. All I had to do was get this bottle of milk into the lamb and I’d be free. My dad was in the cow stalls, shoveling out the manure. Mr. Tennin had vanished.

  “Dad, could you drive me down to Abra’s?” I asked.

  “Drive you? Since when do you need a ride there?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought it would be quicker.”

  “Sorry, boy, I don’t have time to drive anyone anywhere tonight. Just ride your bike or walk.”