“You must have known I would find out,” he said.
Hanna wheezed, trying to catch her breath. She gave Edwin a confused look.
“Don’t play dumb with me, little girl!” he yelled. “You know what I’m talking about. Makala just told me that Paul’s sons found you on the outskirts of town with Francis’s boy. And if Makala told me, just imagine who else knows.”
Edwin kicked a candlestick in a swift, violent strike. It collided against the wall and then clattered back to his feet. He picked up a second candelabra and raised it like he was about to strike. Hanna held her hands in the air. She ducked her head. Only, Edwin heaved the candelabra against the window, cracking the glass.
He paced back and forth, swinging his arms, seething. “I treated you with respect! I was kind to you when I didn’t need to be. And this is how you repay me? By humiliating me in public? You are betrothed to me! Don’t you understand what that means? Do you have the foggiest idea the opportunities I’ve given up?”
Hanna was still panting, still struggling to stand. Underneath Edwin’s feet, the wreath had fallen from Hanna’s hair and landed against the candles and now several flowers were smoldering in the flames. Edwin looked around at the damage he’d caused, his bottom lip twitching. He picked up the headdress and brushed off the burnt flowers. Edwin reached out his hand and Hanna flinched, unsure whether he was about to strike her or try to help her stand up.
“No!” Hanna yelled.
“Keep your voice down. They’ll hear you in the other room,” Edwin said. “Let’s call your mother. See if we can fix your dress.”
Hanna looked down at her wedding gown. The buttons in the back had ripped open when he threw her to the ground and now half lay strewn across the floor. Hanna picked up a handful and was staring at them—momentarily mesmerized—when Edwin moved to help her up.
“Don’t you dare!” Hanna screamed, wildly this time. She threw the buttons across the room and climbed to her feet. “Don’t you come near me. Don’t you ever touch me again! I’m not going to live in your house, Edwin. I’m never going to sleep in your bed.”
Just then, the stairwell door opened and Brother Paul stepped into the room. He saw the overturned candelabras, the smoldering flowers, Hanna’s torn dress, and his eyes bulged. He raised a shaky finger to his lips and hissed “Shh!” before clumping down the stairs. “You are in the Creator’s house. This is not the place for unseemly talk. A little decorum, please! Now, what’s going on here?” he said.
Hanna edged away from him. In the flickering light, Brother Paul’s tall, awkward frame no longer looked like a blessed luminary in white. He was just a desperate man clinging to his authority.
Edwin stepped toward him and pointed an angry finger at Brother Paul’s chest. “Makala just told me about Hanna and Francis’s boy,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me what happened?”
Brother Paul gaped at Edwin, speechless.
“I knew it!” Edwin yelled. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It’s all an exaggeration,” Brother Paul said. “I can explain everything.”
As the men quarreled, Hanna stepped back against the far wall. A feverish desire swelled in her to flee, only their bulky frames were blocking the back door and Hanna could never slip outside.
Brother Paul was whispering something in Edwin’s ear, something to calm him perhaps, when, suddenly, without warning, Hanna darted past the two men. She rushed up the stairs and through the doorway into the cathedral. Hanna ran out onto the stage where the altar stood waiting. She stopped dead in her tracks. A sea of candles lay before her. The women were kneeling in the pews, the men standing, all eyes upon her. A collective gasp echoed when she appeared, running, half-mad, her wedding dress a shambles and clumps of hair fallen from her braids.
Jotham stepped forward from the front row, a wolfish look in his eyes. The crowd murmured as Kara and Emily stood up and stared in disbelief. Behind Hanna, Edwin thumped up the stairs. He entered the stage with Brother Paul following close behind.
Hanna held out her arms. “No!” she yelled.
She backed up perilously close to the edge of the stage and the crowd let out another gasp as Hanna nearly fell into the pews. On one side, Edwin drew nearer. On the other, Jotham lumbered up the stairs, trapping Hanna between them. The crowd stood to their feet.
“Stop!” Hanna screamed. “Don’t come any closer.” She held her arms up in both directions. Hanna looked at the townspeople, at her family. “I fell from the sky. Why does no one believe me?”
From the front row, Kara shouted, “I believe you, Hanna!”
Others yelled horrible things. Makala screamed out, “Whore!”
Hanna scanned the crowd frantically. She was met by a sea of faces with piercing, judging eyes. Then, Hanna saw him, like an oasis in a boundless desert. Daniel was in the far back of the cathedral, standing alone. He had come after all.
“Run, Hanna!” Kara shouted.
Jotham clomped down the stairs. He tried to cup his hand over Kara’s mouth to silence her and Charliss defied his father for the first time, striking him closed-fisted and hard, square in the jaw. Charliss drew back his fist again and struck Jotham forcefully, sending him reeling. Jotham released a rattling, involuntary bark that brought him to his knees.
This was all the distraction Hanna needed. She took off running, past Edwin and Brother Paul, past the altar and up the spiral staircase that led to the belfry. Quickly, furiously, she raced up the steps, tripping and standing up again when her wedding dress caught beneath her feet. She felt the blood on her knees where she scraped them and Hanna kept running. Below, the men chased her up the stairs, gaining ground with each step.
Hanna leapt over the spot where Daniel had almost fallen, where it wasn’t safe. Below, the screams of a hundred voices pulsed and still she ran. Hanna pushed up the stairs with all her might.
Finally, she reached the belfry. Ten stories above ground, she could see all of Clearhaven. Hanna edged out onto the ledge. She perched her heels at the farthest point and felt the breeze. It wasn’t cold up here. It was almost warm. Spring had sprung. The world was renewing again and Hanna raised her arms into the night air.
This was where she’d stood when Daniel first kissed her, when her shackles fell off, when the brave Hanna on the other side of the world smiled and everything was good and pure and nothing and nobody could stop her. Hanna took in a deep, liberating breath. She thought not of Edwin or Jotham, not of Brother Paul or his cowardly sons.
Down below, a scattering of candles assembled. The townspeople had come outside to see her. Hanna paid them no heed. She stood with her arms raised in a V. Everything—her body, her mind, her soul—dilated.
“Hanna.” It was Brother Paul’s voice, calling to her from the other side of the bell. “Give me your hand,” he said.
Hanna turned to face him. “Why, so that I might kiss your palm? Perhaps you might kiss my palm instead?”
“Yes. Yes, anything. Just please come down from there.”
Others were standing behind Brother Paul in the stairwell now; as many men as could fit were clamoring for a better view. Hanna spotted Edwin. She saw the men who’d stepped forward to claim her last week. But Emily wasn’t there. And neither was Daniel or Kara. There was just a sea of blank faces, men who had tried to control her.
Brother Paul edged around the bell and reached out his hand.
“You will see,” Hanna said. “I wasn’t meant for this. I can feel it in my blood. I feel it in my soul. I fell from the sky.”
Brother Paul lunged at her, a desperate stabbing swipe that didn’t find its mark.
Hanna let go. She pushed with her legs and leapt backward off the building. Hanna sailed through the air, her wedding gown fluttering in the wind. Up above, the men cried out. “No!” Below, the women screamed. The child
ren gaped in awe. Hanna herself never made a sound.
As she fell, all sense of time slipped away. She closed her eyes and saw her other self again, the brave Hanna battling the evil, faceless men. The Hanna on the other side of the world beamed with pride, because the Hanna on this side was finally truly awake. This Hanna believed.
Floating through the air, between the life she had left and the ground beckoning below, she opened her eyes and kept them transfixed on the sky. Hanna smiled when she first saw it appear. There it was—a whiteness so magnificent, so stunningly pure, it called to her. Rapidly, with purpose, the fissure overtook the night. Around its edges were bright reds and gleaming greens, colors so vivid they’d only been seen twice before by the naked eye.
Hanna’s smile grew wider as she fell. For the first time in her life, she had found her place. And why wouldn’t she smile? She had seen the light. And in her heart, she knew how it would feel to land.
34
The girl leaned against her mother’s chest as the early-morning sun colored the sky, the soft clouds brightening, their outlines accentuated by daybreak. The girl—ten years old, her sandy-brown hair cut short—gazed out at the seashore. She and her mother were perched upon a wicker bench in front of the beach house they’d inhabited for the past three weeks. A month before that, the family had slept in a cabin. Last summer, a ranch. Over the past seven years, they’d spent their summers traveling and had already visited three continents. The two of them were still keen on visiting the other four.
Soon the family would travel home in time for school to resume. The girl had classes to attend. The mother did, as well. But for now there was the sunrise. There was the amethyst sky.
“Tell me the story,” the girl said.
The mother ran her fingers through the girl’s hair. She’d just told her the story last night. Two days earlier, she’d repeated the tale while swimming in a nearby lagoon.
“Please?” the girl said.
“I suppose...”
“And promise not to leave anything out this time.”
“I promise,” the mother said. The girl sat up excitedly and the mother began. “Once there was a beautiful girl, a kind girl, a brave girl who wasn’t born like everyone else. Instead, she swam out of the ocean—”
At that moment, a young woman walked into the room. She hobbled, her one leg touching the ground before the other, her back shaped like a question mark that leaned too far to the right. She was carrying a letter and gazing at it with delight. “He wrote me again,” she said.
Hanna eyed the letter in her sister’s hand. That boy had written Emily three times this week, covering multiple sheets of lined paper with words Emily refused to share. She almost told Emily to put the letter away and watch the sunrise, only to catch herself before she opened her mouth. Emily wasn’t her little sister anymore. Soon she would be nineteen years old and Emily had gotten delightfully headstrong as she grew more independent. Plus, there was that boy back home, the one with the sweet nothings always at the tip of his tongue. Emily had taken to swooning at the sound of his sugary voice over the telephone and rushing to the post office each morning to see whether a new letter had arrived. Hanna wanted to make sure she didn’t fall too deep too fast.
“Let me see it,” Hanna said.
Playfully, with a wide grin on her face, Emily hid the letter behind her back. She went to step away when she slipped. Her foot landed on its side and her heel caught on a rut in the wood.
Hanna leapt from her seat to grab her. She saved Emily before she fell to the ground, and when she did, the purpling sky caught her eye. The sun had ascended and in that moment, Hanna saw melting lavenders, auras gleaming off the rising red orb. It captivated her. It enchanted her. The colors tore Hanna away from the present. Everything turned pink and pristine.
Hanna’s knees buckled. In one instant, it all came back. The fall from the tower. The impact when she hit the ground. Lifting her arms in the air, pulling herself to her feet and realizing she’d landed unscathed. Like it was yesterday, she recalled the onlookers’ gaping faces. Jotham’s enraged scream, his guttural shriek piercing the silence, then her father collapsing to the ground in a fit, turning purple, then blue.
She remembered Daniel grasping her hand, pulling her toward the open car door, the townspeople standing still, bewitched. No one moving, save Jotham, kicking his last few desperate kicks before dying. She heard the voices of the men atop the tower, calling out as loudly as they could, saying nothing, their power lost forever. Her mother screaming for her to run.
Hanna scooped up little Ahmre in her arms. She grabbed Emily’s hand and this time the girl came with her. Hanna in her torn dress. The bride fleeing into the back seat of the car with her sisters. The other children clinging to Charliss’s protective arms. Daniel pressing on the gas. Dust billowing in their wake. The people of Clearhaven, the town growing smaller as it drifted from view, as though it was moving away from her, not the other way around. Then The Road. Darkness. Ahmre crying and refusing to let go, the young girl finally falling asleep in Emily’s lap. Nothing except their car’s headlights for the longest time, until a single light of a farmhouse. Then another. Civilization and buildings as tall as the sky. Morning. Waking up to the smell of bacon and eggs sizzling in the pan. Safety. Her sisters in her arms.
The vision was so real, so lifelike, it felt as though only moments had passed, not years.
Then the present roared into being and Hanna looked up to see Daniel rushing in from the other room; Daniel, her partner of seven years, reaching out to help her up off the floor; Daniel whose amber-tinted words had proven true.
Emily leaned against the table beside him, concern etched in her face.
“Did it happen again?” she said. “Did you see Clearhaven?”
Hanna nodded. She took Daniel’s hand and climbed to her feet.
“What’s Clearhaven?” Ahmre said.
Hanna sat down beside Ahmre, who placed a comforting hand on her arm. Hanna had never intended on becoming her sister’s mother. But, before the age of four, Ahmre had started calling her Mama. Hanna corrected her a dozen times and another dozen after that, before she started answering to the name. She looked at Ahmre now, at the family she and Daniel had made their own. Hanna steadied herself. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Clearhaven couldn’t take away these past seven years. It couldn’t change the love they’d shared.
“Clearhaven is what we call the past,” Hanna told Ahmre.
Daniel steered Emily toward the front steps. “How about you and I pick up some breakfast on the beach?” he said. Daniel kissed Hanna and Ahmre on the top of their heads and then he and Emily stepped off the porch and onto the sand.
Once more, Ahmre leaned into Hanna’s shoulder to smell the scent of tea leaves from her sweater, to run her hand along Hanna’s wrist. “Is Clearhaven where my birth mother lived? Is that where she lives now?”
“I thought you were born from the ocean,” Hanna said.
That gleam returned to Ahmre’s eyes. She sat up straight, barely able to contain her excitement.
“Tell me again,” she said. “And please don’t leave anything out.”
Hanna smiled. Off in the sunrise, the pink, pristine color had dissolved, leaving the early-morning sky behind. Crimson and then indigo and crimson again. The beginning of blue. Hanna held Ahmre close. She ran her fingers through the girl’s hair one more time and began. “Once there was a beautiful girl, a kind girl, a brave girl who wasn’t born like everyone else. Instead, she swam out of the ocean...”
* * * * *
Author’s Note
Some books are written rather quickly, with the author typing up a manuscript over a few months, spending another year or so polishing it up and then hoping (and often praying) an agent and publisher will pick it up. The story behind Hanna
Who Fell from the Sky is slightly more complicated.
I first came up with the title for this novel the day I returned home from a trip to Europe in 2004. I reached into my suitcase and handed my then girlfriend (now wife) a hand-painted mask. She asked where I got it and—being playful and a little mischievous—I told her it was given to me by a little old man in a small antiques shop in Florence who refused to accept payment, so long as I gave the mask to someone I loved. “This is Hanna Who Fell from the Sky,” I said. “The old man told me she was an angel so beautiful that all the other angels grew jealous and cast her out of Heaven. That look on the mask is the sorrow, anguish and astonishment on Hanna’s face when she landed on Earth.”
My wife looked at me, mystified. “Really?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I bought it for $3 from a street vendor. But I bought it for you.”
She eventually forgave me and has since become wise to my stories. (Far too wise, I think.)
The name Hanna and the idea of an angel falling to Earth stuck with me and in summer 2005, during three intense, sleepless days, I wrote the very first draft of Hanna Who Fell from the Sky. As it stood, the story was far too short and much too rough for publication. Instead of revising my novella-sized manuscript, I set it aside to work on getting my short stories published in literary magazines.
In 2007, when my first daughter was born, we named her Hanna after the girl in the unpublished (and still largely unfinished) manuscript. This is how I have a child (born in 2007) who was named after the main character in this book (released in 2017). And how, as amazing as it would’ve been, time travel was not involved in naming her.
In the following years, I wrote three quirky and (what I hope are) funny novels that were released by an awesome small press in Canada. As much as I put my heart and soul into those books, something inside me kept telling me to return to the story of Hanna in Clearhaven. To retell it. To rewrite it with the perspective additional years and fatherhood had given me.
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