the Tree of Life
I sigh. So many years have passed. So many things have been lost. Where will we find the courage we need?
I turn to the first page, and I can almost hear her voice reading the opening sentence to me.
After the death of the Amarok, I went to New Orleans. It is a city surrounded by water, a city full of magic. The sword took me there.
“I DIDN’T SPEAK WITH ABRA for many years, you know,” I say, trying to sound convincing. “Many years. We grew apart.”
I pour two cups of coffee, my nerves on edge. The porcelain spout of the coffeepot chatters against each of our porcelain mugs like the teeth of a cold man. Steam rises, swirling, and the smell calms my nerves.
“Yours is here on the counter,” I say as I make my way to the table, holding my own scalding mug.
I had forgotten the very particular feeling that comes when sitting across the table from someone like him, someone who is what he is, but when he returns to the table and settles in, it comes rushing back: the sense that you are not sitting across from a person as much as you are sitting across from an era, an epoch. Looking at this man was like looking at the Grand Canyon and seeing all those lines in the rock, all those different ages of the earth.
“Did you know anything about what she did after your mother died?” he asks.
“How do you know about my mother?” I ask.
“Everyone knows about your mother,” he says with a hint of impatience. “Your mother was . . . What do you know about what Abra did after your mother’s passing?”
“She was my best friend. I gave her some things. Our friendship died. No, it didn’t die—it wasn’t that dramatic. We grew apart.”
“You could have helped her, you know,” he says, sipping his coffee, glancing at me over the rim.
I shake my head and look down. “No,” I murmur into my coffee. “I was never strong enough.”
“Come now. That’s not true?” he says, but his voice turns the words into a question.
I look at him. “Apparently you know the story,” I mutter. “I don’t have to tell you about it.”
“Our weaknesses are poised to become our greatest strengths. If we are patient and if we believe, the switch will often happen when we most need it to. Weakness”—he pauses, tilting his head from one side to the other—“to strength.”
“I don’t think that switch ever happened in me.”
“Maybe you haven’t needed it yet,” he says. “What did you give her?”
“She ended up with the box. With everything.”
He nods. He knows about the box. Of course he does. Mr. Tennin had it—they probably all wanted it after what happened at the Tree.
“Recently. Did you give her anything recently? Or did she give you anything?”
I stare into the black depths of my drink, and it feels like I’m still staring into this man’s eyes. His eyes are everywhere.
I picture the box I put into her coffin.
The atlas.
The notes.
I envision the sword and the journal given to me by her husband. This was the moment. It was why this man was here.
I look up at him. “I can’t help you. I don’t know you.”
I say these things in a voice that I hope will communicate that it’s time for him to leave. I have been kidding myself thinking I can perhaps climb back into that adventure from my youth. I am too old for this. I have nothing to do with whatever real or imagined saga is going on around me, behind the curtain.
That phrase sticks in my mind: “behind the curtain.” That’s how Abra and I used to talk about the strange things that happened, as if normal life was on one side of a veil, and the other things—the Tree, the angels, the Amarok—were behind it. If we looked hard enough in those days, we could see the rustling. But not now. Not for many, many years.
“I appreciate your . . . discretion. But there is something Abra had that we need.” He waits, then speaks again in a careful, insinuating tone. “I think you might have it. Here.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I have no way of knowing which side this man is on. I have no way of knowing if he is a Mr. Tennin or a Mr. Jinn. I look in his eyes, desperately searching for something. Kindness, maybe.
“There’s nothing here for you,” I say, nerves stealing my breath.
He nods. His dangling earlobes sway. He reaches up and strokes his eyebrow with its seven small piercings all in a line. The space between them is the space between stars, which means that he and I, across the table from each other, must be light-years apart. How long is it taking his words to reach me? How many worlds have fallen in the time it takes me to refill his coffee?
“Do you have time for a story, Mr. Chambers?” he asks.
“I have as much time as I have.” I shrug. “Look at me. I have no friends. I have no family. I have very little money. Time is all I have.”
He smiles a sad smile. “You have less time than you think. This is a long story.”
I take a long drink of coffee.
“It’s about Abra,” he says.
I nod, and the sadness rises again, this time without the apprehension.
“Let me put it this way,” he says. “It’s primarily about Abra, but there are others involved. It took me time to gather all these stories together. Decades. There were large gaps. Recently, I had to reopen doors that were not meant to ever be opened again. I sat in the shadows for years, looking for answers, always looking, never finding. Always seeing, never comprehending. I went very close to The Edge.”
His voice fades. The wind kicks against the door. The windows rattle. Sleet falls for a minute or two, tapping against the glass, but it turns to snow, a swirling cloud of thick, hypnotic flakes.
“Do you know about her trip to New Orleans?” he asks.
“Only the basics,” I say. “She mentioned it in her journal, but it was only a few paragraphs. Something terrible happened there, something she didn’t want to write about. She was different after that. Her journal went from descriptive and flowery to matter-of-fact.”
He sighs and nods. “How about Egypt?” he asks. “Jerusalem? Paris? Rio? The South Pole? Sydney?”
I am stunned but try not to let it show. I had no idea.
“Those are only the major journeys she took. There were smaller trips. Side trips, you might say. New Orleans was . . . unexpected. For all of us. And we only knew about the Tree growing there after Tennin fell. By then Abra held the sword. The Shadows were rising everywhere. People like me were turning. No one could be trusted. Two Trees at once! Who could have ever imagined? Jinn’s replacement was . . . ruthless. Her name was Koli Naal. She wanted it all.” He shakes his head. “She wanted every last thing. Not only the Tree. Not only everything and everyone here.”
The name shoots through me like the memory of an intense pain.
Koli Naal.
I had never spoken that name to anyone.
He stares hard at me to see if I understand what he’s saying. “You’ve heard that name before,” he says, and it sounds like he feels sorry for me.
I nod.
“She wanted every last thing,” he repeats. “Those who came before her, the Mr. Jinns of the world, wanted all of this.” He raises his arms to take in the walls of the house, the ends of the earth. “Those who came before her wanted all of you—all of humanity and all of this earth. But Koli Naal wanted even more than that. She wanted everything.”
When it’s obvious I’m not catching on, he says something in a whisper, something I can barely hear. He says it as if it’s blasphemy.
“She wanted Over There too.”
“Over There?” I ask.
We stare at each other there in my little farmhouse, frost on the windows, the snow sliding along the hard ground. We stare at each other over mugs of coffee that are cooling. We stare at each other over eternities and galaxies, cities and friendships, swords and shadows.
He shrugs as if it will all make perfect sense
to me at some point. “There was no one else who could go inside and do what needed to be done. Only Abra. Those were dark times.”
“They must have been,” I say in an even voice, “if you had to turn to a young girl to rescue you.”
When he speaks again, there is something tender there, something that begs me for understanding. Or forgiveness. I wonder if he can be trusted after all. Perhaps.
“She was the only one who could go,” he insists. “I would have gone. I hope you understand that. But it had to be her.”
I wait, and the steam from our mugs rises between us like spirits.
“The story starts four years before the Tree appeared in Deen. Four years before the two of you killed Jinn and the Amarok and Mr. Tennin fell. Four years before your mother died.”
“I didn’t actually kill Jinn, you know,” I say in a quiet voice. “Abra took care of that.”
It feels a cowardly thing to have said, as if I’m trying to pawn all the dirt of that summer onto Abra, trying to save my own skin in case this man has come for revenge. I have a feeling that he knows far more about those events than I do, even though I was there and he was not.
He keeps talking as though he didn’t hear me. I stare past him out the window. The snow is really coming down now. It looks like a blizzard is on the way.
“This is what happened,” he begins, “the day Ruby vanished from the world.”
This is the story he told me.
Acknowledgments
MANY, MANY YEARS AGO, a skinny kid sat on a farmhouse porch under the reaching arms of two large oak trees, shooing away the flies, putting off his chores, and devouring any books he could get his hands on. His greatest dream was to someday write a novel.
That boy was me, and this book is the realization of that dream. So many of you played a part.
Ruth Samsel, this wouldn’t have come about without your encouragement and patience. Thank you.
Sarah Hoover, you (very rashly, I might add) forwarded my email to your literary agent, and without that one quick click, this would not have happened. Thanks for your friendship and your belief in my writing.
Kelsey Bowen and the rest of the team at Revell, your vision and kindness and enthusiasm have overwhelmed me. Thank you for reading the manuscript of an unknown novelist and believing.
Bryan Allain, thanks for the many years of breakfasts where we talked writing and built huge dreams for ourselves.
Jeremy Martin, your long friendship and kind words have led me through many a dark place, including a time in my life when discouragement nearly stopped me writing fiction.
Thanks to DC for all of your constant friendships.
There are many families who embraced this book and continue clamoring for a sequel, including the Harveys, the Schneiders, the Haineses, and many others. Thanks for welcoming this child of mine into your own families.
Andi and Philip, God’s Whisper Farm is a haven. Thanks for letting me do a reading there and for welcoming my family so often.
Thanks to those who made special contributions to the initial self-publication of this book, including Tim Lapp, Scott Bennett, David McCarty, Tamara Perry-Lunardo, and Gwyn McVay.
I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to those of you who supported my Kickstarter campaign and helped make this book possible. I’m going to list you all here because you’re awesome: Steve Goble, Carl and Fan Smucker, Leanne Shirtliffe, Ryan Haack, Meghan Diller Glick, Dave Stoltzfus, Merrill and Verna Smucker, Dan and Jamie Smucker, Brenda Lee Sieglitz, Andrea Cumbo-Floyd, Dianne Yuninger, Jessie Buttram, Tor Constantino, Bryan and Erica Allain, Jesse and Sarah Hoover, Stewart Conkle, Christine Niles, Gordon Delp, Tammy Turney, Laura Stocker, Jim and Suzy Ogle, Ben and Shar Halvorsen, Susan M. Andrews, Deanne Bullock, Matt and Suzanne Silva, Brian and Angie Schmidt, Noah Martin, Jon Martin, Jay and Dena Riehl, Diana Trautwein, Preston Yancey, Robert and Bethany Woodcock, John and Kim Sanderson, Jason Boyett, David McCarty, Milynda Foushee, Jon Fisher, Jon Hansen, Jason McCarty, Patricia Gibbons, Corri Gross, David and Orpha Longenecker, Sean McCarty, Joshua Samuelson, Todd Adams, Ryan and Janae Dagen, Brandon Fisher, Rich Hartz, Samantha and Lauren Good, Justin and Cindy Smucker, Mark and Heather Buckwalter, Rob Stennett, Roxanne Stone, Jim and Sharon Silva, Alicia Sierra, Tamára Lunardo, Dustin Sangrey, Jill and Brad Kane, Sharon Osielski, Matthew and Jessica Turner, the Arthurs, Joel Cornett, Michelle Woodman, Anna Haynes, Arne Radtke, Chris Davis, Susan Pogorzelski, Kevin Hostetter, Paula Aamli, Eric Wyatt, Evan and Laura Brownstein, Paul and Julie Peachey, Janice Riley, JR Forasteros, Gabe and Michelle Harvey, JJ Landis, Jeanne Befano, Chuck Blair, Patrick and MJ Miller, Samuel Gray, Blaine Houger, Robyn Pretorius, Nissa Day, Alexandria Gilbert, Seth and Amber Haines, Clay Morgan, Marilyn Coblentz, Caleb McNary, Allison DeHart, Daniel Fedick, Tamara Thompson, Paul Heggie, Doug and Shannon Schneider, Burnie Smucker, Donna Coleman, Gregg and Lize Landis, and Ashley Smucker.
To the entire family of Peter Perella, for enduring such a difficult loss and bearing it with grace and hope, and then supporting a book that made the audacious claim that “death is a gift.” I thank you.
To Jason Darity, my friend.
Aunt Lin, I wish I could hand this book to you. And number six was a girl, but you probably already know that.
Mom and Dad, thanks for all the books. And everything else.
To my sisters, Sharalee, Angela, and Ashley, for putting up with me for so many years.
To my children, Cade, Lucy, Abra, Sam, Leo, and Poppy. You helped me create this story around the dinner table one spring evening in Holtwood in the middle of our forty-acre wood. Your imaginations inspire me and remind me to stay childlike.
And to Maile. We actually did it. We did it! Without you, my life would be unrecognizable. Without you, this book would not exist.
Shawn Smucker lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Day the Angels Fell is his first novel. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com, where you can also sign up for his newsletter if you would like to be notified when and where the Tree of Life grows once again.
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The Day the Angels Fell Page 24
