Although Mary was inside Rainbow, she felt distinctly separate. How could Rainbow possibly reconcile herself to Mary’s thoughts and treat them as her own when Mary was so alien and had lived such different experiences? Before she could express her doubts, Amrita continued:
“This oak tree’s death, along with many other One Trees’ deaths, has exhausted my life force. I am not of your world, as you know: I am of the trees and cannot intervene except to advise you, for a part of me lives in your heartwood.
“Now I wane and may guide you no more. But hear me while I still may speak: this evil wind has wreaked its vengeance and slain my trees, and I am diminished. You alone can restore my life force. To accomplish this, you must vanquish the Tree Slayer, who threatens us both. But you will need to learn patience and humility if you are to succeed.
“Seek your other half in the sheep pastures of High Azun, and bring home this shepherd who possesses a gift equal to your own. Thereupon will your other half lead you to Koad to rescue the last One Tree and thus restore the remnants of my life force.
“Succeed, and we shall spend halcyon days revelling, hand in hand, in the dappled sunlight of spring-green woodlands. Fail, and we shall all perish. Remember, you are Rainbow-Mary. Trust yourself, trust the trees, and learn to accept your other half.”
“But – I don’t understand.”
“You will, when the time comes. My strength fades and I cannot explain further. Go with haste.”
Amrita rippled like a reflection in water.
“Amrita! Don’t leave me!”
But Amrita was snatched by the wind and shredded into a thousand petals of red and pink.
“Amrita!”
Darkness closed around Rainbow. Where Amrita’s ethereal voice had prevailed, the triumphant wind now howled. Rainbow rubbed her throbbing head. Her hand came away sticky with blood.
Had she understood correctly? Amrita needed her to accomplish a mission. But it was all so vague. How could she, armed only with a gift for shaping branches and healing sick trees, vanquish this Tree Slayer and restore Amrita’s life force? Amrita was expecting too much. Rainbow hadn’t even managed to save the François I oak tree, so what help could she possibly be to a tree spirit who controlled parallel worlds?
Chapter 4
The snow on the mountain pass above Tintin’s hut had melted and the tiny stone building looked undamaged from the outside.
Eole unlocked it. On his way here from the church, he’d picked up the key and his photos of Tintin, and then he and Darwie had left before the rest of his family returned from the funeral. He’d have to go back home this evening because he had more exams tomorrow, but right now he needed to get as close to Tintin as he could. His family would know where he was. It was the only place he ever went alone, apart from the library.
Tintin’s grandfather had built the hut from mountain stone to make a shelter for the summer months, when he looked after the sheep. It stood above the treeline, beside a lake at the foot of the summer pastures. As soon as Tintin retired from Toulouse he’d continued his grandfather’s tradition with Patou, the young Pyrenean mountain dog who’d grown up with the flock. And he’d carried on when Eole’s parents bought the farm from him. Patou still lived with the flock and was as white as a sheep. Eole was convinced that Patou thought he was a special sheep.
Every summer, as soon as school finished, Eole would join Tintin here. Together, they’d milk the ewes and goats, check the flock’s feet for rot, treat injuries, and go for long walks. Empty mountains were the best places for thoughts about physics, but what Eole liked most were the conversations with Tintin. Winter was for inventions and experiments in Tintin’s laboratory in the valley, but summer was discussion time. While they cut brambles out of fleeces or sprayed antiseptic on maggot-infested cuts, Tintin explained scientific theories to him, such as the differences between level III and level IV parallel universes and how Schrödinger’s cat could be simultaneously alive and dead.
Apart from Eole’s family, Tintin had been the only person he could talk to without having to concentrate on saying the right things in the right order and making the right expressions with his face. In Paris, before he’d known Tintin, his world centred on Maman, Hestia and the library: they were still his nucleus but he needed something bigger. Tintin was bigger. But Tintin had gone.
Eole opened the hut door. It smelt damp but there were no puddles. The silence inside wasn’t right. It should be filled with Tintin’s snores from the bottom bunk. He shook the silence out of his head and fixed the photos to the wall, following Hestia’s decoration rules for putting them at different heights and angles.
Hestia had avoided the hut since last summer, when she’d had the vodka vomit experience. She’d just split up with one of her boyfriends, and had hitched a lift to the car park a few hundred feet below so she could tell Eole how much she hated the boy – even though she’d declared she loved him only the day before. She hadn’t brought anything sensible with her, like a sleeping bag or food, but inside her jacket she’d secreted an opened bottle of vodka. She’d tried to share it with him, but he refused, explaining she was killing her neurones with each sip, and that she would end up as cognitively impaired as Paul Coutances. As usual, she’d ignored his advice and finished the bottle. He had to help her down the path, stopping for her to be sick several times. Some trekkers insisted on giving them a lift, which Maman had said was lucky. Eole wasn’t sure it was lucky to have his silence clouding the car and Hestia’s vomit all over the back seat.
He finished attaching the photos, left the hut and walked up to the pass, where he sat in his favourite patch of heather. Here, he was free from people and all the sensory complications of the valley. And free of the voices. The macro-silence was complete. The micro-silence of water, insects and wild animals wove together with mountain aromas of flora and fauna like the threads in a familiar blanket.
He’d had a blanket, years ago in Paris. Lying in the heather was the closest he could get to the comfort he’d felt from that tatty rag with silk edges and red embroidered lumps. He belonged here, like Maman belonged in church, even if Tintin wasn’t beside him. The only movement around him came from Darwie and the birds of prey above. And the clouds, of course. He was alone with his cloud secret now. Only Tintin had known about his special skill. They’d pored over books together in the library, and talked about it right here. The mountains were full of Tintin memories. On top of the ridge, Tintin taught him about glaciation. Beside the lake, he’d demonstrated wave theory.
Tintin’s face wouldn’t form properly in Eole’s mind. When he tried to focus on a detail, it blurred. Was he forgetting him? He didn’t want to forget him. He must find a way to remember him and his scientific theories forever. He needed to map everything and make an encyclopedia of it.
He lay down and let his mind think about maps and encyclopedias. He would cross-reference each part of the mountain with the scientific concept Tintin had explained to him in that spot. He would call the result a mapopedia, and store it in the section of his brain that illogical people used for remembering pointless data like song lyrics and fashions.
He would begin right now.
He sat up. Darwie raised his head and wagged his tail. Eole looked around, searching for a good place to begin.
Someone was sitting in Maman’s place on the stone bench that ran along the side of the hut, though he couldn’t see who it was. He took a deep breath and analysed the smells with his olfactory receptors. It was useful to have such a sensitive nose, and he quickly detected a familiar lilac-goaty smell.
The person was Maman.
He felt lighter now he had his mapopedia plan. It wasn’t as good as being with Tintin, but it was the closest he could get. He would begin on Saturday, right after his exams, and stay here all summer making his mapopedia and reading while he tended the sheep and goats.
He whistled Darwie to heel and walked down to meet Maman. She made the love-hug sign, fussed over him, and
said everyone had missed him at the funeral wake. He told her he’d needed to get as far away as possible from the not-Tintin in church.
“God is everywhere,” she replied. “But it’s true that the higher we go, the closer we feel to Him.”
She linked everything to God. He decided not to tell her about his mapopedia. It would be another secret, like his special skill.
“If God exists, why did he kill Tintin and make us all unhappy?” he said.
“It’s not our place to question His decisions. But if you pray hard, He may make his designs known to you.”
She was talking about the voices. As a kid in Paris, he’d presumed everyone heard the voices. It was only when he’d mentioned how he preferred being indoors to outdoors because of the voices that Maman had told him it was unusual. She thought it was God speaking to him, of course. For years he’d thought this was what made him special.
“You know I don’t hear the voices up here,” said Eole, as Maman passed him a slice of lemon meringue pie. “Which is more evidence that they’re not him. Anyway, if it was him, he’d be intelligent enough to let me understand what they say.”
“God works in mysterious ways, darling. Now, are you ready to come home? You should get back to your revision.”
He locked the hut and they walked down towards the trekkers’ car park, where Maman always left the pickup.
“Papa’s going to need your help now Tintin’s with God,” she said. “You’ll have to stay at the farm this summer instead of coming up here. We’re going to keep the goats in the valley so it’s easy to milk them and only bring up the ewes once they’re out of milk.”
Eole stopped walking. “I can’t.”
“The sheep won’t need milking up here, darling. And Patou will keep them safe.”
“But I have a project to do here. For Tintin,” he added.
Maman sighed. “I see.”
She made another love-hug sign and they continued down to the pickup. She understood. He wasn’t so sure that Papa would.
Back at the house, Maman took Papa into the kitchen and sent Eole to prepare the goats for milking. He and Darwie gathered the goats on the runway that led to the milking room, then he unwound the swiss-roll bale of hay along the feeder platform. Once the water troughs were full, he went to get Maman.
She was coming out of the kitchen with an orange folder under her arm. The orange folders were out of bounds to Eole and Hestia, though Hestia had told him they contained boring bills and accounts.
“Papa says he’ll manage while you do your project,” Maman told him. “But before you go, we’d like you to refence the field beside the house.”
He loved fencing, and he’d finish the field in a few days. After that, he’d have all summer to work on his mapopedia.
“OK. Are you going to employ a farm hand to help Papa?” he asked, pointing at the orange folder.
Maman snapped the elastic over its corners. “We’ll see. Now, go and catch up on your revision.”
At dinner that evening Papa announced they would do the transhumance on Saturday, in three days’ time.
“We can’t,” said Eole. “It’s my birthday.”
“We can, and we will,” said Papa. “The sheep need fresh grass and I need everyone’s help to get them up to the summer pastures now Tintin is gone. Ours is the last flock still in the valley.”
Eole’s birthday meant a visit to a museum of his choice and then home for quiz cake and the measure. He tugged at his lip and started to recalculate this change: would that mean no quiz cake, or would they have it before or after the transhumance, and how would Maman have time to cook it if it was after, and if it was before, he’d have to get up early to leave the house so that he didn’t accidentally smell the ingredients and cheat, and how would they fit a museum visit into the day, and …?
“We’ll have a late birthday tea and do the measure afterwards, and then we can take the sheep up,” said Maman. “It’ll be cooler for them in the evening. You can stay the night at the hut, darling, to make sure Patou and the sheep settle, then come down on Sunday morning to begin the fencing. We’ll visit a museum the weekend after.”
Eole nodded. Papa nodded. Hestia burped. Maman told her off, then smiled at everyone and said grace.
Chapter 5
In François I park, the gale was stronger than ever. Rainbow got back into the Mini, fighting the wind to close the door. Her whole body ached from the fall, especially her bleeding head, and she wanted to go home to treat her injuries.
An overwhelming desire arose from Mary, urging her to seek comfort in Christophe’s arms. Amrita had said that Rainbow must accommodate Mary in order to become truly whole. And, anyway, a fallen branch blocked the road back to Le Logis. She set off towards Christophe’s flat, driving slowly. He’d have finished with the apprentice and would be feeding Apple and Acorn before going to bed. He’d help her decide what to do about the mission.
Amrita had made a serious misjudgement. Discontent radiated from Mary, who wanted to stay at home with Christophe. Rainbow wasn’t keen on the idea of facing this Tree Slayer, whatever it was, either. She had no idea how to vanquish it or restore Amrita’s life force. She replayed Amrita’s words in her mind. High Azun sounded mountainous, and the closest mountain ranges were hours away from Cognac. She couldn’t exactly pop into High Azun on her way home from school. And what about her exams, the kittens, Christophe? She couldn’t simply leave everything and drive to the mountains alone.
But neither could she forget what had just happened. Amrita needed her. She was the only one who could help. She was important.
It would have to wait for the holidays. She didn’t have anything planned for the summer, other than mouldering in the commune giving reiki and reading palms. Perhaps Christophe would go with her – except that he’d be at work until mid-July. Amrita had told her to be quick. She might be dead by July. If Rainbow was to help her in time, she’d have to go straight after her exams. On her own.
She couldn’t do it. Not alone.
She wished she could ignore her vision: it wasn’t as if Amrita was real. If she did nothing and let Amrita die, perhaps her nightmares would stop.
She drove along the deserted Cognac streets towards the motorbike shop. A dustbin overturned. She swerved as the wind rolled it into the road and tin cans rattled out.
It had been difficult enough to forget Amrita even before this mission. The Tree Slayer was daunting, but the shepherd ‘other half’ with a gift like hers sounded intriguing, even if it didn’t make sense. She’d thought that Mary was supposed to be her other half, since two halves make a whole. Amrita must mean that RainbowMary had another half, a kind of guide, someone who’d know more about this Koad place and how to vanquish the Tree Slayer. Someone who was as close to trees as herself. It sounded as if she and Mary had a soulmate.
She wondered whether her soulmate was male or female. She liked the idea of him being big and strong, able to fight the Tree Slayer. Disgust permeated her mental wall: Mary disapproved of her stereotyped assumption that her soulmate must be a man, in order to fight the Tree Slayer. How was Rainbow supposed to integrate Mary when everything she thought and felt opposed her?
She ignored Mary’s disapproval and imagined her soulmate as a wise shepherd with a staff, like in the photo Michael had once shown her of his great-grandfather. The old man would know what to do and where to go, and he’d be dead efficient. Perhaps her whole mission could be accomplished in a weekend. Yes! Christophe would be free at the weekends. Everything would be easier if he were with her – though it might be more tactful to refer to her soulmate as a shepherd. The last thing she wanted was to alienate Christophe.
Her priority was to help Amrita, despite Mary’s unwillingness to leave home and the fact that she and Mary were supposed to unify. It was Mary’s turn to adapt. Rainbow would find High Azun on a map and then she and Christophe would look for the shepherd next weekend, after her exams. It would be a first step, even if they
had to return the weekend after to vanquish the Tree Slayer and bring home her shepherd.
When she arrived in Christophe’s street, she saw him pacing up and down under a flickering street light, running his fingers through his hair.
He opened her car door. “At last! Your mum phoned and told me you’d dashed off in a frenzy. I was about to come looking for you.”
She climbed out and crumpled into his arms.
“Merde! You’re hurt,” he said, touching her sticky hair. “Shall I take you to Casualty?”
“I think it’s only cuts and bruises. How are Apple and Acorn?”
They went upstairs to his flat, where he sprayed antiseptic onto her head while she petted the kittens. She tried to call Le Logis to tell Mum she was safe, but the number was unobtainable. The gale must have blown down the telephone lines. She lay on the sofa with an ice pack on the bump and Acorn on her belly, and told Christophe about her encounter with Amrita.
He looked more concerned than excited, even though she was careful to use the word ‘shepherd’.
“How far did you fall?” he asked.
“A couple of metres. Why?”
“You’re always talking about those weird Amrita dreams. That bump on your head is pretty big. Maybe you blacked out and imagined her.”
“What? Imagined her?”
“Maybe. Isn’t that what happens with concussion?”
Had it all been a hallucination? Surely not. It was too vivid. Christophe shouldn’t doubt her: he’d been present when Mary had disappeared into the silver maple.
“I didn’t imagine her. She was real.”
“If you say so.”
She glared at him. He wouldn’t come to High Azun if he didn’t believe her. But now she’d made up her mind, she wanted to go. She owed it to Amrita to atone for her error with the oak tree. If Christophe wouldn’t support her, she’d find someone who would. Her soulmate, for example. She’d go on her own and find her shepherd and together they’d vanquish the Tree Slayer. Then Christophe would have to believe her.
Tree Slayer Page 4