The Day the Angels Fell by Shawn Smucker

Author:Shawn Smucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction;YAF051030;YAF011000;YAF001000;Mothers and sons—Fiction;Mothers—Death—Fiction;Tree of life—Fiction;Psychological fiction;Christian fiction
ISBN: 9781493411078
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-06-29T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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