The Day the Angels Fell Read online

  I walked the short distance to a small pool that formed off the side of the river and washed my hands in it. The water seemed louder and louder every time we returned. Either the rainwater was finally making its way down from the mountains, or nature itself was beginning to roar at the thought of what we were bringing into being. The Tree of Life.

  We were close. We were getting so close.

  Abra and I walked back to the house. It still wasn’t time for supper. The sun was well over the western mountains and the vultures were nowhere to be seen.

  Something about the whole situation felt wrong. Even though I knew what I was doing and I wanted to do it, I still felt like I was being set up. But by whom?

  Abra? What did she care about the whole thing, other than the fact that she thought it was wrong to bring my mom back?

  Mr. Jinn? More likely. Now that I knew I was alone, taking care of my own interests myself, I realized I didn’t trust that man for anything. Him and that Amarok of his. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything he did, good or evil, heroic or heinous. Actually, that’s not true. If he did anything heroic, that would have surprised me.

  Mr. Tennin? He had started off being such a nice guy, so soft-spoken and polite. But each time I talked to him he seemed to grow sharper around the edges, as if some fake self was wearing away, revealing a harder core.

  I said good-bye to Abra and she started walking home, the handle of the sword still bulging slightly from the middle of her back. She walked quickly, on the verge of a run, and even though we had both agreed she would be safe in the daylight, especially once she got to her property, I think we were both less than convinced. I took a deep breath as she disappeared down the road. I hoped she would be okay.

  The rain had never arrived that day, and I wandered over to the lightning tree and followed the long, ivory scar running down it. I didn’t know the exact nature of lightning, its power or its speed. Would my dad cut down the tree now that it was dead? Would we even stay here on the farm, with all the memories of my mother, or would we leave?

  I didn’t want to leave.

  “Sam!” Mr. Tennin shouted from the barn. His voice contained an edge of panic. “Sam, where are you!”

  “Over here, by the tree,” I yelled back.

  He came running as fast as he could, and he could run fast. I was surprised. Mostly I had taken him for a middle-aged balding man who knew how to work and wear boots but who didn’t have much in the way of athleticism. But his stride was long and strong, and even in work boots his feet were light.

  “Sam,” he said, bending over and catching his breath. Perhaps his endurance wasn’t so great. “It’s the lamb.”

  I ran past him toward the barn. I thought maybe my dad had found the lamb and now I was going to be in big trouble. Huge trouble. I ran through the dark doorway and into the barn. I slid around the corner and ran the long straightaway to the back, past the chickens and the cows in their pens, to the lamb’s stall. My dad was inside, squatting down beside the animal.

  He looked over his shoulder at me as I climbed the bars and swung my leg over. I dropped down into the pen beside him.

  “Dad, I’m so sorry,” I began, but he interrupted me.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” he said. “We found him too late.”

  What?

  I looked around him and then looked away. Could all of that blood have come from Abra’s small cut? I didn’t want to, but I looked closer. I had to see what had left that huge pool of blood around the soles of my father’s work boots.

  29

  MY LAMB WAS DEAD.

  My father’s hands rested on the lamb’s head, and his large, calloused fingers looked soft against the white wool. I noticed his wedding ring. He still had his wedding ring on, and for the briefest moment I comprehended the pain he must have felt when my mother died, the loss, perhaps even greater than mine. Yet he was moving on with his life. He was trying to survive without her. I felt selfish and small for wanting to bring her back.

  He looked over at me.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” he said again.

  I looked down at the lamb’s leg, afraid of what I might see, afraid that Abra’s cut had somehow opened up into a gaping wound. But what I saw immediately removed that fear and introduced a new one. The lamb’s entire back half was gone, ripped off.

  “What was it?” I asked. My voice came out in a hushed whisper, because I knew what it was. The Amarok.

  My dad shook his head, pushed the ball cap back on his head, and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said. “Might be the same thing that made the tracks Mr. Miller saw a few days ago along the woods. Maybe some kind of crazy coyote, but the bite looks way too big for that. And the tracks they found by the Millers’ farm, well, that wasn’t a coyote. Too big even for a wolf, which we don’t have around here anyway.”

  He pointed to a large arc that ran along the lamb’s hindquarters, and I could tell he knew it wasn’t a coyote. But we always try to fit the things we see into the world we understand, the world we can comprehend. Anything that doesn’t fit into our tidy understanding brings fear.

  “See that? That’s a bite that didn’t hold. Part of a bite.” He looked at me. “That’s a big bite,” he said in a serious voice. “Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t want you wandering around anywhere from now on. You hear me? Not anywhere. At least not by yourself.”

  I nodded.

  “You hear me?” he asked again, as if he wasn’t convinced that I had actually committed to following his instructions.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  And because he understood the wild heart of children and the ways they will convince themselves to disobey, he said it again. “I’m serious, boy. I don’t want to find you like this.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said again.

  He sighed a heavy sigh that had more than a lamb’s death in it. There was a tree and a lightning strike and a wife gone as well, and the fear that he might lose the only thing he had left. He stood slowly, the weight of it all trying to hold him down. He put his hand on the top bar and pulled himself over in one smooth movement.

  “Tennin,” he said. He had taken to calling Mr. Tennin by his last name only. “I’m going to go get some stuff to clean up this mess. You mind digging a hole in the corner of the garden? There’s already a groundhog there. Might as well turn it into our own small graveyard.”

  He looked sad, sadder than he had been since the funeral, and I knew he was thinking of a different graveyard. He walked past Mr. Tennin, who grabbed a shovel from the wall and turned to follow him. But then Mr. Tennin stopped by the corner and turned back toward me.

  “You’d better come with me, Sam. None of us should be alone, not for now.”

  Mr. Tennin asked if I wanted to dig a few shovelfuls, so I took the shovel from him and with my twelve-year-old strength dug some feeble bites from the summer earth. He took the shovel and clawed a little deeper. A small mound of earth built up there at the edge of the grass and the garden. Earthworms flailed as they were exposed in broken clods of dirt. The deep brown stood in contrast to the sharp green, and everything smelled alive and rich.

  Above us, above the lightning tree, the vultures circled, perhaps drawn by the death of the lamb. Or maybe they were sent by Mr. Jinn to watch and report back. Whatever the case, their presence felt ominous. Their naked, pink heads looked greedy, and I wanted them gone.

  “So where do I find the sunlight?” I asked.

  “You got the water already?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you put it in the center of the stone?”

  “Yeah.”

  He frowned and stuck the shovel in the earth. He looked at me, his head cocked to the side. “You’re serious about making this happen, aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you?” I asked.

  He stared at me, and his stare evolved into a subtle nod, a determined yes. “Yeah,” he said. “I am. I always have been. I just wasn’t sure
if that”—he nodded toward the barn and the dead lamb—“would make you change your mind.”

  I shook my head. “If I can bring my mom back, nothing will change my mind.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. He looked around. “I thought it was going to rain today. Guess it’s going to hold off now.”

  I looked up, but I was looking at the lightning tree and at the vultures high above us. Finally I scanned the clouds on the horizon. They were breaking up, and it looked like we might get a little bit of a sunset under the rim of those slate-colored clouds.

  “Your father isn’t going to be happy if you’re off traipsing around the valley. Not after this. Not until they find that Amarok.”

  “Can they find it?” I asked. “Is that even possible?”

  He looked at me, and I could tell he didn’t understand what I meant.

  “I mean, is it really real?” I asked. “Is it something you can see and hunt and kill?”

  “Sam, what do you mean by real?”

  He waited while I thought about that. Then he continued.

  “All the myths you’ve ever heard, they’re real in some sense. All the mythical creatures you’ve ever read about, they’re out there, or at least they were at one time, in some form or another. This Amarok, of course it can be killed.”

  His words swirled around me, new and exciting. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think.

  “But beasts are mythical for a reason, usually because there’s an aspect of them that you don’t understand, something that doesn’t fit with the rest of what you know about the world. The Amarok, it’s part shadow. As real as you or me, but part of it lives in darkness.”

  I thought I understood.

  “So, for someone to kill the Amarok, the Amarok—and there is only one, thank God—that person would have to figure out how to enter the shadow, at least partly, and hunt it there. And that may never happen.”

  “So it’s old?” I asked.

  “The Amarok? It’s older than you even know how to imagine.”

  Mr. Tennin looked toward the house, and I looked back over my shoulder. My dad came through the door and walked down the porch steps. He didn’t see us there at the edge of the garden, not right away, maybe because the light was dimming, or maybe his mind was elsewhere. Maybe it was because he was staring up at the lightning tree, searching for something. Someone.

  My dad saw us then, so he changed direction and crossed the yard.

  “The sunshine,” Mr. Tennin said quickly under his breath, “is simply the light from a hot fire burning at night. It can’t be too close to the Tree, and it can’t be too far away. But once the Tree is in the stone on top of the water, and the fire is at the right distance, you’ll know, because the blossoms will fall off and the Tree will begin to grow. Visibly.”

  He said that last word at the same time as he looked up and greeted my father. “Mr. Chambers,” he said. “This look big enough?”

  He gestured down toward the hole in the ground. It was dark, and for a second it reminded me of the cave holding the stone and the water.

  My father nodded. “That’ll do.” He held up a host of old towels and rags and cloths. “You boys ready to do some cleaning up?”

  We both nodded, and the three of us headed for the barn, but Mr. Tennin stayed back a little ways, held on to my arm, and kept me walking at his own slow pace. My father vanished into the barn ahead of us, and Mr. Tennin turned to me with serious eyes.

  “Don’t forget our deal,” he said. “Don’t forget.”

  I walk out of my room through moonlight that casts shadows all around me. I walk over to the fresh grave where Mr. Tennin and I buried the lamb just that night. I sit down beside it for some reason, and the grass is wet underneath me, I guess from the dew.

  The dirt starts to move over the grave. I slide back, my eyes wide. First it crumbles, then it shakes, and soon it is being pushed away. Something isn’t dead. Something is crawling out. I expect to see the lamb, and I’m terrified. A hand comes out. An arm reaches its way up out of the earth.

  It’s my mother.

  I run to her and she hugs me tight.

  Lightning strikes.

  I wake up.

  I looked at the small clock beside my bed. Just after midnight. I lay there for a moment and listened, but my dad had gone to bed long before and the television was turned off. I heard Mr. Tennin snoring in the neighboring bedroom. Outside my open window, an entire chorus of crickets and nighttime bugs chirped and screeched and hummed. I pushed my blankets down and got up.

  In the backpack under my bed I had already packed a flashlight, matches, some newspaper, and an old pocketknife. I had also hidden a change of clothes down there, so I pulled those out and slipped into them as quietly as I could. My breathing felt way too loud. Every time my bed creaked under my weight, I held my breath, waited for the inevitable sound of footsteps in the hall.

  But they never came. All was quiet in the house.

  I crept across the room, and as I passed through the doorway I realized this was it. I would grow the Tree. I would finally see my mother again. There was no turning back from here.

  30

  I GUIDED THE SCREEN DOOR until it came to a quiet stop against the door frame and slid out into the warm, still air. It felt like I was the only moving thing on earth. I walked gingerly, as if the grass under my feet might explode into sound at any careless step, and I headed for the bright streetlight at the corner of the church. It was working again. I tried not to think about the night the light had gone out, the night the Amarok stood on the road and growled at Abra and me. I looked over my shoulder one more time to make sure no one had followed me from the house. I wondered where the Amarok was, which shadow it was clinging to. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  Somewhere between my house and the beginning of the Road to Nowhere, the Amarok ran past me, and I felt my insides turn cold. I knew it had devoured the lamb, and I knew it could have devoured me in that moment, but that’s not what sent a shiver through my body. I grew cold because I realized there was a reason it kept me alive. It wanted me to grow the Tree so it could feed on it. Nothing that anyone could have told me would have dissuaded me from moving ahead with my plan to bring my mother back, but knowing that I was somehow on the same side as the Amarok made me feel lost.

  Before bed that night, I had told myself I would go get Abra first. I had convinced myself that this was something we should do together—start the fire, grow the Tree, take off a piece of the fruit. But as soon as I woke in the middle of that Friday night turning to Saturday, I knew I had only been kidding myself. From here on out, I would have to do it alone. No Mr. Jinn, who might steal the Tree. No Mr. Tennin, who might destroy it. No Abra.

  Only me.

  My jog slowed to a walk, both because I was out of breath and because I didn’t know what to do. I had told Mr. Jinn I would bring him Abra and the Tree. I had told Mr. Tennin the Tree would be his if he helped me find the stone, the water, and the sunshine. I knew I had to keep my word, but I didn’t know how to do that when I had promised the Tree to each of them. What would they do to me if they found out?

  But you can’t tell them yet, I convinced myself. Not yet. First I have to keep the Tree alive.

  I eventually passed Mr. Jinn’s lane. I kept expecting the Amarok to double back and devour me, but when I looked into the shadows of my mind I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t anywhere close. So I disappeared into the shadows under the trees, down the Road to Nowhere. I walked through the dark toward the sound of the river and arrived at the old graveyard in the middle of the woods. I turned on my flashlight.

  I didn’t waste any time moving to my mother’s grave site and gently prying the Tree from the earth with my pocketknife. The ground was soft and warm. My knife scratched against a few small pebbles in the ground, but most of the dirt was rich and clean. I picked up the Tree and stared at it in the darkness. I held it, and it felt like it was mine. I looked at the ho
le I had left in the loose dirt, and I thought, if I planted a piece of fruit directly over her grave, right there in that small hole, would that be enough to bring her back?

  I walked over to the cave and looked into the shadows cast by the stones on that moonlit night, and I wondered what my mother would think of all this. It didn’t take me long to come to a conclusion. I knew she would think I was being selfish, that I wasn’t making a good decision. It hurt me to think she wouldn’t be happy with me, but I still walked on. I didn’t look back. I knew I could change her mind if I could simply have her there in front of me, with me.

  I shone my narrow beam on the bowl where it sat at the back of the cave, and I placed the limp Tree inside, its tired roots barely held together by the dirt I had managed to dig up. I thought about the few drops of lamb’s blood beneath it. The Tree looked pitiful there, sagging to one side.

  It’s nothing but a dying plant, I thought. It’s nothing but a hope that will never happen.

  And I laughed at myself. Why did I think this would change anything? Why did I believe?

  But I did believe, no matter how silly the whole thing seemed. There was something spectacular about the small white blossoms that still clung to the tired green of the Tree. There was a smell about it, something that had come into the air when I dug up the roots. There was hope there, the kind of hope that makes anything seem possible.

  I went to work making a fire, the sunlight Mr. Tennin had told me about. I gathered small twigs and leaves and pulled some paper out of my backpack. I peered into the shadows. I jumped at every sound, wondering if I had been found out.

  I lit the match. A wind kicked up out of nowhere and blew it out. A small wisp of smoke twisted from the dead end of it, up through the narrow beam of my flashlight. I sighed and tried again. Match after match sputtered to life, only to be blown out. I was down to three matches when the flame managed to survive the transfer.