28

“INNOCENT BLOOD?” Abra asked, sounding nervous.

The whole long Friday afternoon stretched in front of me, chore free. It had always been something my mother insisted on. My father could have me working hard on the farm all week, but on Friday afternoon I got a break. I was free. No work, no responsibilities. “Just time to be a kid,” she had said, messing up my hair and giving my dad those pretend pleading eyes.

“What does Mr. Tennin mean by innocent blood?” Abra asked.

“Innocent blood,” I said, as if the two words explained themselves.

The two of us sat there in the lightning tree, one week after my mother had died. The tree itself was definitely dying. Its leaves were still there but were dry and brittle. Some of the branches that had been nearer to the lightning strike were charred, and those leaves were brown.

We sat in the flat area where the cat had been hiding, the palm of the tree’s hand, the place I had been standing when my mother pulled herself up and told me to run inside. It might seem strange, but as I sat there with Abra on that Friday afternoon, it was the first time I realized how close I had come to death. I imagined the valley without me, Mom and Dad standing in the kitchen doing the dishes, my mom crying. My dad looked the same in my vision as he did in reality—tired and sad.

I wondered what Abra would be doing on that day if I had died in the tree. Would she be at her house, remembering me? Or would life already have gone on, seven days later? Time passes and people leave, and those of us who are left eventually move on in one way or another. Maybe that’s the saddest part of death, the knowledge that when we die, we will eventually be forgotten.

The sky was low and gray and looked like rain, or at least a shower or two. But it wasn’t stormy, and I didn’t expect any lightning or thunder.

“Maybe he knows someone named Innocent and we have to get her blood,” Abra said. “You know. Innocent blood.”

“Do you know anyone named Innocent?” I asked her, shaking my head.

“I was kidding,” she said. A breeze came through the lightning tree just for a moment, and all those dry leaves rustled against each other, a strange sort of shushing sound that made me eager for fall. Abra’s blonde hair blew up around her face and she pushed it away. Her blue eyes looked silver in the light.

“So what’s the most innocent blood we know about?” I asked.

“You’re not touching my little brother,” she said quietly.

“I wasn’t even thinking about him,” I said, which was completely untrue. Her baby brother was the first person who came to mind when I thought about innocent blood.

“What about your lamb?” she asked.

I didn’t know if that would be good enough. I shrugged. “That might work. Mr. Tennin didn’t say it had to be a person.”

I thought back over the seven days since Friday when the lightning struck, and I wished none of it had happened.

“Well, should we go try?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said, but she didn’t sound committed to it, and the more I thought about it, the less sure I became.

I reached my foot down for the ladder and climbed to the grass. Abra came scrambling down after me, and the two of us walked into the barn, back through the shadowy aisles, past the chickens, and into the farthest corner.

Something sprang from the dirty windowsill that let in filtered light, and I jumped. But it was just Icarus running away from us. I wondered where he was sleeping, what he was eating. I didn’t have the heart to chase him, though.

We got to the pen at the back of the barn, and the lamb looked up at us, its little tail wagging back and forth. I think it thought I was there to give it a bottle.

“So,” Abra said, “how do you get blood out of a lamb?”

The whole proposition had seemed so simple. All we needed was one tiny drop of lamb’s blood. But there in the barn with the white lamb staring up at us, well, Abra’s question was valid. How would we get blood out of the lamb? I didn’t want to hurt it.

“What will we use?” I asked. I looked around. There was a shovel, a broom, and a pitchfork leaning against the wall, back in the shadows. I thought I could find a screwdriver if I looked hard enough. I’d have to go back inside for a knife, but if I saw my dad along the way, who knows what he would say. How would I explain why I was carrying a kitchen knife to the barn?

Abra reached around behind her and pulled out the small sword. I didn’t even know she had it with her.

“We could try this,” she said.

It made me jealous, seeing her with that blade. I wanted to be the one to hold it, to be the one with a weapon. I had found it—I should be the one possessing it, protecting us. But there she was, holding it, not being burned by it.

“Can I see it?” I asked.

“Okay.”

I reached for it, and she grabbed it by the bottom of the blade, pointing the handle toward me. But as soon as I touched it, it burned me, and I dropped it. The sound it made as it hit the cement walkway was deep and heavy, as if it weighed ten times what it actually did. Abra reached down for it, and based on the sound it had made, I didn’t expect she’d be able to pick it up. But she lifted it as if nothing had changed.

“I guess you’d better keep it for now,” I said, rubbing my hands together, trying to get the burn out.

She held it in front of her and stared at the blade as if looking for hidden stories in its reflection. For a moment she didn’t look like herself. She looked like some visiting angel, preparing to protect the entire world from an enormous evil. I was scared of her in that moment, and I felt small. I was scared of what she could do.

“Should we try?” she asked.

I moved toward the pen and the lamb came to the bars, trying to stick its head through. I stroked its soft wool. It felt like a great betrayal, what we were about to do.

“Where should I . . . you know?” Abra asked.

I wasn’t sure. Lambs are all soft and white, but their legs and hooves are bony and hard, their skulls miniature boulders.

“Maybe on the leg?” I said. “There’s not a lot of flesh. Maybe it would just feel like it was banging its shin on something.”

She got down on her knees beside me.

“Wait!” I said. “What will we put it in?” We didn’t have any containers with us, nothing for keeping the blood.

“Maybe if we get it on the blade, we can carry it to the bowl and scrape it in.”

“Okay.”

She reached the blade through the bars. Where it almost touched my arm, I could feel its heat.

“Watch it,” I said. “That’s hot.”

I wondered if it would feel hot to the lamb, but when she propped the blade up against the lamb’s leg, it didn’t move. It didn’t even seem to notice. It moved closer to me, and I held it tight so it wouldn’t jump away.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Go.”

She grimaced and slid the blade slowly along the lamb’s leg.

Blood poured out.

“Whoa!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

She screamed and there was fear in her voice, and horror. She inched backward, away from the lamb, and her eyes opened up wide and alarmed.

“I didn’t try it,” she kept saying over and over. “I didn’t try it. It’s just so sharp.”

The lamb jumped away from us and ran to the back of the pen. It huddled there in the shadows, quivering, and I could see its leg was bleeding badly.

“We have to do something,” I said.

Abra stared at the blade. It was wet with blood.

“Keep that flat,” I said. “Don’t let it run off.”

She placed the sword on the floor and helped me climb over the bars into the pen. I took off one of my boots, then took off my sock and put my boot back on.

I crawled in close to the lamb, through the hay, talking to it all the time. “It’s okay, little guy. You’re going to be fine.”

Its ears were limp on the side of its head. Its eyes were jumpy.

“Wow, it’s really bleeding,” I said.

Abra couldn’t keep her own cries quiet anymore. She sobbed right there in the barn. I remember her sobs, and now I know they were the cries of someone who has lost their innocence in one way or another, the cries of someone who has realized not only that there is pain in the world but also that they can cause it, that they will cause it. We all will.

I tried to wrap my sock around the lamb’s wound. Abra had cut it on the back of its hoof, right where its heel would have been if it had one. It reminded me of my dream and how Mr. Jinn had chased me up the tree, burning or slicing my foot. For a moment I felt that same panic of trying to climb faster than him, of looking for that next branch. But that was just a dream.

I focused on the lamb. I kept trying to tie the sock on, but the crazy animal jumped and ran away from me.

“Come here, you.” I reached for the lamb, but it kept running. “Abra, I need you to hold it still. I can’t hold it and tie the sock at the same time.”

By now my own hands were covered in blood and straw and dust. Abra came over the bars and got down there in the dirt with me, wiping the tears from her eyes and sniffing loudly.

“Here you go, little lamb,” she whispered, and the lamb calmed. She walked toward it and got down on her knees. “It’s okay.” She reached out her hands. It walked slowly to her, and she held it tight. She put her face on its back, and I could tell she was crying into its wool.

I crawled over to where they were. “Hold tight. Here goes.”

I reached down and wrapped the sock around the still-bleeding cut. The lamb trembled, but Abra held it tight. I tied the sock in a tight knot and hoped it would stay.

“We’ll have to clean it up later.” I hoped my dad wouldn’t see the state of the poor lamb. That would be a hard one to explain.

Abra nodded quietly, wiping her eyes again. We both climbed out of the pen and she picked up the small sword, always holding it flat. The blood sat in a straight line, one long run. And that’s how we walked all the way from the barn, through the woods, and to the cave—carefully, eyes always on the lamb’s blood.

“You’ll have to put the drop in the bowl,” I said. “I can’t hold the knife. It’ll burn my hand off.”

She nodded, and she went inside and didn’t seem scared, not at all. When she came out she looked somber, as if she had just come from another funeral.

“It’s done.” She bent down and wiped the blade on the grass, cleaning off the rest of the blood.

“Was there enough to go into the bowl?”

Her face crinkled up and she started to cry again, I guess at the thought of all the blood she had let out of the lamb. She nodded, leaned the hilt up against the rock, and put her face in her hands. I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. We both took a deep breath.

“Only one thing left to find.” I hoped that was the worst of it.

But Abra went back to a small patch of grass in the forest just beyond the cemetery, and she kept wiping the bloody blade on the green blades, as if removing every last stain would somehow mean she hadn’t cut the lamb. A clean sword would somehow mean that none of this had happened.

I watched her, and I wished there was something I could clean that would take away what had happened to my mom. I stared into the cave. It looked like a wound, and the darkness that seeped out was an infection, the same one I had inside me, the same one driving me forward, propelling me to do anything to bring her back.

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.