19

SHE GRABBED MY SLEEVE, then my hand, and jogged toward the house, dragging me along behind her. The duffel bag strap dug into my shoulder, and the bag itself banged against my leg as we ran.

“Wait, wait,” I complained. “Not so fast. This bag is heavy.”

She dropped my hand. “What do you have in there anyway?”

“I brought a surprise of my own. I’ve been busy too,” I said, not wanting to be outdone by her.

“I think you’re really going to like this,” she said. “I think it’s a sign.”

Her house was similar to mine, with a large front porch attached to an expansive farmhouse. But their house was made up of two dwellings, and they often rented the other side out. That summer the other side was empty. We would often sneak into the empty half and pretend it was haunted. We would run from window to window, breathless with fear or excitement, until we’d hear her mother’s voice calling out that supper was ready.

We walked quickly into the house. I heard Mrs. Miller putting the dishes away, the ceramic plates making loud sounds as they crash-landed into the appropriate cupboards. Her mom was always moving, always busy, and you could tell where she was in the house just by listening.

“Mom, Sam’s here,” Abra said as we passed the kitchen.

“Hi, Sam,” she called out.

“Hi, Mrs. Miller,” I said, but Abra pulled me in the opposite direction, into the dining room with its wood floor and echoing, high ceiling.

“I have ice cream if you want,” her mom called after us.

“Okay, Mom, in a minute,” Abra said.

At the far side of the dining room was the door that led to the empty side of the house. An old-fashioned key was in the lock, the huge kind with oversized teeth on the end. Abra turned the key and the lock clicked. She cringed, and I hoped her mother hadn’t heard—her parents didn’t really like when we played on that side of the house. We both froze in place, waiting for a voice telling us not to go over there. When none came, she turned the knob and pulled the door open, and we vanished into the other side of the house.

She closed the door behind us and picked up a flashlight. It always seemed so still in the empty side of the house. It felt like we had traveled to another time, another place, where we were the only two people alive. Who knew what kind of world we would find waiting for us if we dared to venture outside? Maybe everyone else had disappeared. Maybe everything was starting over again.

“I kept this here in case you came,” she whispered. Light from the dusk outside drifted through the windows, but it wasn’t much, and it left the rooms coated in a kind of blue darkness that was difficult to navigate. The flashlight pointed the way, a round circle of light with a dim inner core.

She led us up the stairs. My shoulder was weary from carrying the bag, so I changed it to the other side. We got to the top of the steps and doubled back to the landing to the front bedroom, the one that had a window that looked out over the lane.

“Here, hold this,” Abra said.

I dropped my duffel bag and took the flashlight.

“Point it into the closet,” she said, so I did.

She walked into the shadows and came out carrying a chunk of log that was almost too heavy for her, about a foot in diameter. She had to carry it with two hands and kind of leaned back as she bore its weight. She carried it tenderly, as if it might break, and placed it on the floor in front of me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

She looked up at me, her blue eyes large and expectant. “It’s a piece of log from your tree.” Her voice came faster now. “The lightning must have blown that branch to bits, because this piece was all the way in our pasture. I saw it when I was walking back from your house.”

“Wow,” I said, but I wasn’t that impressed. I’d seen similar chunks of wood littering our farm after the lightning strike. She treated the branch as if it was holy, as if it was some kind of a sign, but I just didn’t get it.

“Look on this side,” she said, pointing to the thick end of the log facing her.

I walked around, and then I understood.

First of all, I saw how she could carry such a thick piece of wood. It was hollow. Or at least part of it was hollow. I shone the light into the hollowed-out place of the thick branch, and that’s where it was.

A small green thing, no more than three inches tall. It looked like a miniature tree in the winter, without any leaves, except even the trunk and branches were bright, shiny green. And while it didn’t have any leaves, there were three white flowers, each the size of a pea, hanging on the tree, heavy and ripe. The branches those flowers hung on were weighed down and looked like they might break at any moment.

“That’s . . . that’s . . .” I said, unable to speak further.

“Isn’t it amazing?” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I think it’s a sign, Sam. I think it’s a sign that your mother, she’s okay, right? I mean, this is a chunk of the tree where she died, and somehow there’s this flower, this beautiful flower inside it, protected? I think it’s just beautiful.”

She was nearly in tears, and then I remembered. She hadn’t heard Mr. Jinn’s description of the Tree of Life—what it looked like or where I might find it or what it would need to survive and grow. She had already left before he told me those things. But this was it, for sure.

This was the Tree of Life.

“Amazing,” I said, and with that one word I decided I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her what I knew, at least not right away. I couldn’t show her what was in the duffel bag. I couldn’t tell her about the three dogs or the flaming sword, because who knew how she would respond? She might laugh at me or try to convince me not to use the Tree to bring back my mother. She might even hide the Tree, or kill it.

I took in a sharp breath.

She might kill the Tree. I looked at it again. It was so fragile. It wouldn’t take much to kill it. Just a deliberate movement of the hand. A swift kick. So much could be destroyed so quickly.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

I felt evil again. I felt like she was good and I was keeping things from her, so surely that made me evil, right? Darkness spread in me, I could sense it, but I felt powerless to stop it. The only way I could stop it would be to give up on my mother, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t.

I would do anything to bring her back.

Right?

Anything?

“Thanks for showing this to me.”

She put it back in the closet. “We can keep it here for now,” she said. “Maybe your dad can come and get it in the car. It’s kind of heavy.”

“I can’t believe you carried it all the way here,” I said.

“I know! But I really wanted you to see it,” she said, suddenly bashful. “So, what do you have in there?”

My mind darted here and there. “You know what? Nothing compared to that,” I said, motioning toward the closet. “Nothing at all.”

“But I’m curious now!” she protested, laughing. “You can’t do that.”

“Honest, it’s nothing. Just a few old things I found in the barn.”

“Whatever it is, it looks heavy,” she said, and I was relieved that she seemed content to let it go, to move on. “You should leave it here. I could even lock the closet. When you and your dad come for that log, you can get your bag.”

At first I panicked. I thought she was trying to steal it from me, to separate me from the blade and the atlas and the articles. But I calmed myself quickly. She didn’t know. She was only trying to be nice.

“Do you think if we locked it in there tonight, I could take the key with me?”

She looked confused. “Sure, I guess. Why? Do you think I’m going to steal it?” She looked bothered, as if she had stubbed her toe on something in the dark, something strange, something she couldn’t identify.

“’Course not.” I forced a laugh, but it came out sounding hollow. “I just, you know, I really like it. I’d like the idea of knowing that little plant is mine. That the sign is mine and no one else can get to it.”

“Okay . . . weirdo,” she said, smiling.

We both laughed, and that time I laughed for real. It felt good. There is something about laughing that pushes back against the darkness, even if only for a moment.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I was hoping you would.”

I smiled, and it was genuine, because I had missed her too.

“What are friends for?” I asked, but those words made me feel worse, as if cementing my betrayal.

I clutched the closet door key tightly in my pocket as I got into the car with Mrs. Miller. She had agreed to give me a ride home since it was already dark and I didn’t have my bike. They had one of those old station wagons with the fake wood panel that ran down the side. It always smelled like a pine forest in there, thanks to the little green tree hanging from the rearview mirror. It felt strange sitting in the passenger seat with only Mrs. Miller and me in the car.

“How is your father doing?” she asked.

“He’s okay,” I said.

“And how are you?”

“I’m okay, I guess.”

“The funeral was beautiful this morning,” she said, wiping her eyes. She glanced over at me while she drove. “You know, it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay if you cry from time to time.”

Silence. Only the sound of the tires spitting out muddy rocks and the clattering they made on the underside of the car.

I nodded and turned away, looking out the passenger-side window. It was strange how talking about crying made me want to cry. It sounded like something my own mother would have told me, if she hadn’t died. But I didn’t believe Mrs. Miller. Adults rarely cried. I hadn’t once seen my father cry, not in my entire life, not even since the funeral, though sometimes when I came into a room unannounced or unexpected, his eyes were red-rimmed and tired.

No, what she said wasn’t true. We weren’t supposed to cry. I didn’t know why she was trying to tell me any different.

That’s when I saw it—a deeper shadow moving against the night. A blackness within a blackness. It stood on the eastern side of the road toward the river, in a clump of trees that led up into the mountain. At first I thought it was only a strange shadow, a trick of the early night. But after we passed it, and just before it went out of my view, it gathered itself, sprang out of the glade of trees, and ran alongside the car.