18

“NO, I, UH, I KIND OF FELL ASLEEP,” I lied.

He nodded, and his mouth turned into a line of regret, as if he was very disappointed but not very surprised. He pulled his comb from his shirt pocket and brushed his hair straight back, as he always did. He put it back in his pocket. But then his calm demeanor snapped and he thrust his hand straight down. The muscles in his neck and shoulders bulged as his thick hand sent a crack through one of the boards he was sitting on, and the wood made a wrenching sound as it split.

“I am normally a very patient man. But this . . .” He stopped and shook his head back and forth. “This is very important. I thought you said you would do anything to bring her back. Anything.”

I put my hands on my duffel bag and clutched it to my side. “I would,” I said. “I mean, I will. I just—I have to go apologize to Abra. I think she could help us. She’s super smart. I think with her help we’d find it a lot faster. Honest, I do.”

Finally he turned and stared at me. He didn’t speak for a few moments as he scratched one of his eyebrows with his thumb. “She’s not going to help,” he said, as if trying to explain a confusing concept to a child. “She doesn’t believe. And even if she did believe, she doesn’t think you should do it. She thinks your mother should stay . . . there. Why would we want that girl on our side? Why would we be allies with that kind of thinking?”

He stood and, stepping over the broken step, came up onto the porch. He walked toward me, and suddenly I knew that the topic at hand was not Abra or my mom or even my willingness to help him find the Tree. We were talking about the box in my bag. He knew it. I knew it. And he was coming for it.

I put my hand on the screen door, prepared to run back into the house, but at that moment Mr. Tennin and my father came around the corner of the house.

“Hey there,” my father said. “Mr. Jinn. What can I do for you?”

Mr. Tennin looked surprised, almost alarmed. Mr. Jinn cleared his throat and took a step back, away from me.

“Oh, nothing much. Just coming by to say hello to the boy here. See how he’s doing after the funeral.”

“Very kind of you,” my father said, but he didn’t sound convinced. He stared at the broken step but, oddly enough, didn’t comment on it. Something looked different about him. His face appeared brighter, and the fog in his eyes had cleared. I looked over at Mr. Tennin and wondered if it was because of him. But he didn’t meet my gaze—he was staring at Mr. Jinn.

“Actually, Dad,” I said, “Mr. Jinn here wanted to hear the story of the old oak tree. The story you told Abra and me the other day? I told him you’d be back in a minute and that maybe you could tell him while you washed up for dinner. Please?”

It was a lame attempt, but I said “please?” with such desperation that my father stared at me for an extra moment and then nodded. I think he could tell something was wrong.

“Sure, boy. If that’s what you want.”

I nodded, my head moving up and down so fast it’s a wonder it didn’t fly right off.

“Well, now, that’s okay,” Mr. Jinn began, but Mr. Tennin interrupted him.

“Come on, Mr. Jinn. Join us! I’m making dinner to celebrate my first night here. We’ll pull up an extra chair.”

I ran past Mr. Jinn and stood on the other side of Mr. Tennin and my father.

“Actually, Mr. Jinn can have my seat,” I said as I continued walking away. “I’m going to Abra’s for dinner tonight.”

“Okay, boy,” my dad said. “But don’t stay too late. I’d like you to start helping with chores again tomorrow. We’ve gotten into a bad habit.”

Chores seemed so bland in the face of all that was happening. I was still determined to bring my mother back—I didn’t have time for feeding baby lambs and collecting eggs. But there was also something about the fact that my father wanted me to help him that made me think he must be getting better, back to his old self.

“Okay, okay,” I said. But as I turned to run, Mr. Jinn called out after me.

“You’d best watch your way on Kincade Road, Sam. People in town said they saw some nasty-looking dogs roaming between here and the fair. Probably the carnies’ dogs.”

I turned and walked backward for a few steps. Was he threatening me? He shrugged, not looking very worried, and walked into the house. I continued walking backward, away from the house, then turned and ran down the lane, each of my steps kicking up a cloud of dust, small clouds that disintegrated quickly in the stiff breeze coming down from the eastern mountains.

I tired out fast and my run turned into a walk. I had decided not to ride my bike because Mr. Tennin’s box was heavy in the duffel bag and I wasn’t sure of my ability to ride while balancing it. But walking was slow. Very slow.

The road south of our farm ran along Abra’s father’s fields, but they were barbed-wire-lined pastures filled with a few hundred dairy cows, their lazy tails swatting at flies, their jaws chewing, chewing, chewing. They never stopped working over their food, not even when they looked up at you through those deep black eyes.

Those cows knew me, and a few of them meandered over to the fence where it ran along the road. I walked over and stopped for a moment, holding my hand out over their heads as if I was blessing them. They tried to lick me, their massive tongues curling out toward my fingers. They made me laugh, those long tongues.

But laughing felt so foreign. I hadn’t laughed for days. And I remembered why. My mother had died because of me. Because I had insisted we stop and pick up Icarus.

I sighed and turned away from the cows, feeling torn. Should I continue on to Abra’s house, or should I go back and spend what was left of the day looking for the Tree? It felt like time was running out. It felt like, if I was going to bring my mom back, it had to happen soon, or some kind of doorway would close.

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.”