Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

  “Come on. We haven’t got all day,” she said.

  She didn’t wait for him, but leant forward into the wind and walked on.

  Eole puzzled over her words, knowing they had got all day. Hestia was grumpy when she was tired, so maybe that was Rainbow’s problem. He could help. He’d promised her he wouldn’t use his special skill to make a gale again, but she hadn’t forbidden him to use it. He stepped back from the tree, took a breath flavoured with conifer and pesticide, and blew gently towards the copse.

  Rainbow tripped forwards, her arms flailing in the suddenly still air. She regained her balance, turned around and saw Eole facing her. He stood like a singer, his lips pursed.

  “Hey! You almost made me fall over.”

  He closed his mouth and looked down at his feet.

  She sighed. Amrita had told her to be patient.

  “It’s all right,” she said to Eole. “Carry on blowing if you like. But next time warn me first, OK?”

  Eole nodded. She still looked grumpy, but if he helped her whenever he could, as well as protecting her one hundred per cent so she didn’t die on their mission, her sparkles would hopefully return.

  They continued walking, Rainbow in front of him, and he pushed her gently along with his stream of air. Each time a car came, Rainbow told him to hide, which he did, even though he knew it wasn’t Alexandra. Whenever they left a wood, the voices guided him from tree to tree – many of which, Rainbow pointed out, had been uprooted by his gale – until they reached the next copse or forest.

  He studied the map regularly and marked the places they passed. During each break, he added more words to his treeopedia, and then Rainbow healed some damaged trees while Eole shaped clouds. It wasn’t as satisfying as cloud art with Tintin in the mountains, because the clouds were further away. Tintin was further away too, but the mapopedia was still strong in Eole’s mind. And now he had the treeopedia to work on. As the hours passed and he untangled the threads of the voices, he felt less sick.

  At five o’clock Rainbow stopped at the far edge of a wood, shrugged off her rucksack, and declared she was too tired to continue. The terrain was flatter than the mountains, but their stopping and starting, coupled with the lack of sleep, made it a hundred times more exhausting.

  Eole looked at his map. They were still two kilometres from a village. Itch. They couldn’t stop walking. Not yet. Not until they found a telephone box.

  He reminded Rainbow that he’d promised to call Hestia, but Rainbow didn’t understand the importance of six o’clock, and lay spreadeagled on the dry grass, groaning. Shuffle.

  He explained that Alexandra would be home by now and would have told Hestia he’d ring, and that Hestia would be waiting beside the phone, and that he had to check she was all right, and if he promised to do something at a certain time he had to do it, and–

  Rainbow made the T-sign and sighed. “OK. We need to buy food and find somewhere to camp, anyway.”

  She’d only nibbled at the bread and cheese she’d taken from Le Logis kitchen, but Eole had already wolfed down everything, including the salad she’d brought for their evening meal. He ate even more than Christophe. She wondered whether Christophe was still angry with her, and decided to ring him after Eole had spoken to Hestia.

  She struggled to her sore feet. A massage would be bliss, but Eole was hardly going to touch her. He showed her the map and as she rubbed her shoulders she tried to visualise the way to the village.

  “Why don’t you just ask the trees to tell us the way?” she said. “Since you’re privy to their conversations.”

  “We haven’t got time.”

  His gift was wasted on him. If she heard the trees’ voices, she’d be deep in conversation with them by now – though of course Eole could hear them but not speak to them.

  “If I speak to them and you listen,” she said, “we’ll find the village between us.”

  She ran her hands over the trunk of a fir tree and found its communication spots. She emptied her mind and let its sap beat fill her, and then asked the way to the village. She understood nothing in reply, though she could feel the tree’s parched thirst and its discomfort, its dreams of mountain mists and cool nights. She stroked it and opened her eyes, hoping Eole had caught some sound or smell he could follow.

  He wasn’t touching the tree. She let go of the trunk and looked around. He was a hundred metres away, his headphones back on, walking towards a road.

  “Eole!” she yelled. It was maddening to have to rely on him.

  He didn’t turn around.

  She swore and trudged after him.

  Chapter 24

  Eole waited for Rainbow on the outskirts of the village. She scowled at him as she took the lead and he followed her past the houses and into the centre, keeping his eyes fixed on a swinging strap on the back of her rucksack.

  They arrived at a telephone box just before six o’clock. A single shop served as a bar, newsagent, tobacconist and supermarket, and while Eole dumped his rucksack outside the telephone box, Rainbow went inside to buy some tins of ravioli and to ask if there was a campsite nearby.

  Eole opened the telephone box door. The telephone didn’t take coins. He had no phone card. Itch. It was five to six. His feet started to shuffle and he forced them to take him towards the shop rather than back the way they’d come. He hovered outside, looking through the window at Rainbow laughing with a woman at the counter. She hadn’t laughed with him all day. He willed her to turn around and see him. Four minutes to six. Three minutes. He banged on the door.

  Rainbow heard a thud, turned around and saw an agitated Eole outside. She sighed. What was his problem now? He was even more demanding than the commune kids, and she was enjoying a much-needed social chat with the shopkeeper. She excused herself and opened the door. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Eole’s face. He shoved a twenty-franc note into her hand and asked her to buy him a phone card.

  “Do it yourself,” she said. That would teach him to ignore her suggestion to ask the trees for directions.

  “I can’t.” Two minutes to six. “I don’t know the shop or the shopkeeper, and I don’t have time to work out what I would say and what she might say and what she might mean and how I would reply in each case and what I would do if she doesn’t have the twenty-franc card and–”

  She made the T-sign. “Jesus, Eole! It’s not exactly hard.” She went back inside.

  One minute left. The shop door open ed. He snatched one of the cards in her hand and raced over to the phone box. He had twenty seconds’ advance. He watched the numbers on his watch count down and then, three seconds before the hour, punched in Hestia’s number.

  Alexandra answered the phone. She didn’t even wait for him to introduce himself, as she’d taught him to do, but ranted about being worried about him and angry about Rainbow’s deceit. His brain listened, but in his mind he wondered how she had known it would be him on the phone and what she would have done if it had been someone else. Phoning was easy, if he closed his eyes, because there were no distractions. But it meant he had to concentrate hard to pick up extra signals in people’s voices.

  When she’d finished ranting she asked where he was. Rainbow had warned him about this question, and he replied that he was safe and well but couldn’t tell her and that he wanted to speak to Hestia because he didn’t have much money and he couldn’t give her his number or she may work out where he was. Alexandra started to make excuses about Hestia not feeling well, but then her voice faded out. There were some muffled bangs.

  “Hey, big bro,” said Hestia.

  Eole smiled and smiled and then realised she couldn’t see him smiling and he said, “Hey, little sis,” and then his brain pointed out that she wasn’t actually his little sister anymore and his mind unrolled all the unsettling thoughts tied to the word ‘adopted’ instead of listening to her.

  When he caught up with her speech, she was telling him about how Alexandra had tried to set Darwie on Eole’s tracks to find
him but that he’d been useless and was now sitting looking sorry for himself in his basket. Her voice got gradually quieter and then she said that she missed him, and stopped talking. She didn’t say ‘over’ like she normally did when it was his turn to speak, but he’d had so much conversation practice with Rainbow that he knew it was his turn. His mind projected an image of Darwie rounding up the sheep instead of sitting in his basket, which made him feel better, and he asked Hestia why Alexandra had said she was ill.

  Hestia told him to wait a minute. Her voice started to judder, which meant she was walking. He heard a door slam, followed by the beeps that signalled the phone card was running out. Her voice was breathy in his ear.

  “Actually, there’s a bit of a situation here,” she said.

  This was Hestia’s way of saying there was a big problem, because she was totally illogical with her choice of expressions. He opened his mouth to tell her to hurry up, but she was already speaking again.

  “Maman told me not to tell you, but she hasn’t got a clue about important stuff, and Papa, well, he’s Papa, so I can’t talk to him. It’s just that, well, I seem to be pregnant. Over.”

  An image of Dizzy with a swollen belly hanging down, bleating plaintively, came into Eole’s mind. He couldn’t match this picture with Hestia. There was a compatibility problem.

  “Pregnant with a baby?” he said.

  “Of course! What else would I be pregnant with? Eole? Are you still there? Over.”

  The beeps cut in again.

  “Eole! Say something. I need to talk to someone who’s not going to get all Catholic on me. Do you think I’m a slut? It was an accident. I think it happened at Caroline’s party. Someone put vodka–”

  The line went dead. The deadness of it filled his ear and he didn’t know if he was relieved or frustrated that the phone units had all gone, and he didn’t know if he should buy another card and call her back or not, and he didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Hestia was pregnant, but he did know that she was on her own with her parents and that even if he wasn’t her brother, he was her brother and she needed him and Darwie missed him and he wasn’t there. But Rainbow needed him too and he was here and it was complicated and his whole body felt as if it were going to split in two directions and he didn’t know which part to jump into and he didn’t know, he just didn’t know.

  Rainbow stuffed the ravioli tins into her rucksack outside the shop and was strapping a baguette to the top of it when she heard a bang from the telephone box. She saw Eole push open the cabin door, leaving the telephone handset swinging on the end of its cable.

  “Eole?”

  He walked away in a straight line along the middle of the road. She grabbed his rucksack, dropped it beside hers, and asked the shopkeeper to look after them. Without waiting for an answer, she sprinted after Eole.

  He stopped at the far end of the street, which was a T-junction, and stood in the centre of the road without turning either way.

  She was nearly there. But a rumble of an engine was coming from around the corner ahead.

  “Eole! Car!”

  He didn’t move.

  “Eole! Get on the pavement!” she shouted.

  There was no reaction from Eole. The driver wouldn’t see him until it was too late. She would never reach him in time.

  The car rounded the bend. She forced a final acceleration from her legs and pushed Eole towards the pavement. He stumbled and fell into the gutter, and she tumbled over him. The car screeched to a stop.

  She rolled onto her side, panting, and rubbed her knees.

  Eole sat up, and then stood. He looked around at the houses and street he’d never seen, and at the purple 2CV parked at an angle across the road. He turned over his hurting hands and smelt grit and blood on the palms, mixed with burnt rubber in the air. His head hurt, but it was a thinking pain rather than a bruise. He asked Rainbow what had happened.

  “I should be the one asking that question,” she said.

  An old man in flip-flops climbed out of the 2CV and asked them if they were all right. Rainbow reassured him, and he apologised and helped her up before returning to his car and parking safely.

  Rainbow turned back to Eole and asked what was going on, but he refused to answer.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. He didn’t even thank her for saving his life. The sooner they reached Koad and she could be rid of him, the better.

  The driver returned, commented on how he’d never seen them in the village before, and asked if they were travellers and needed a lift anywhere. The twinkle in his eyes as he said the word ‘travellers’ encouraged Rainbow to explain they were on a walking holiday and were looking for somewhere to camp. The shopkeeper had told her there were no campsites until the next town, which was too far to reach today.

  “Come and camp at my farm. It’s the least I can do after nearly running you over.”

  Rainbow didn’t bother to consult Eole, who was staring at his feet. She accepted, and the man, who introduced himself as Gabin, took them back to the shop for their rucksacks and then on to his farm a few kilometres away.

  Eole was silent in the back seat the whole way. Gabin invited them to eat with him, and although Eole shook his head, Rainbow accepted. Why should she deprive herself of company just because Eole was locked in his head? They set up camp in silence, and then Eole zipped himself inside his tent.

  Rainbow looked at the solitary oak tree in the middle of their field and wondered if she should persuade Eole to talk to her. She asked him a few questions through the tent about his phone call, but he didn’t answer. If something was bothering him, he should tell her, not brood on his own.

  She suddenly felt as solitary as the oak tree. Eole was sulking and she hadn’t detected any feelings from her Mary side all day, not since Chopin’s Funeral March. This wasn’t how she’d envisaged finding Koad by her soulmate’s side.

  She hugged her loneliness into the oak tree’s trunk, pushing imaginary roots into the ground between the real roots. She let the aches in her shoulders and the soreness in her feet flow down into the earth, and drew in the oak’s reassurance. It seemed to hug her back. Thank goodness for trees. Humans were fickle, but you could always trust a tree to be there when you needed it.

  When she felt strong again, she washed in the cobwebby barn sink and then went indoors to help Gabin prepare their evening meal.

  After serving dinner in his 1970s orange and yellow kitchen, Gabin wiped the waxed tablecloth and took one of many spiral-bound notebooks from a shelf. He’d been a traveller before settling down, alone, in his smallholding, and these were his travel logs.

  Rainbow sat beside him, turned over the pages and studied the ink sketches and perfect French lettering. Each picture, though basic, was a story in itself, and she listened, fascinated, as he opened his other logbooks and described his trips to Iceland, Indonesia and South America.

  While Rainbow was stepping inside a groaning glacier in the Torres del Paine National Park and gazing at the bright blue ice above her, there was a bang outside the back door. Gabin stopped talking and hobbled towards it, bringing Rainbow back to France with a jolt. Had the shopkeeper told Alexandra where they were? She looked for a place to hide.

  When Gabin opened the door, there was no one outside. He bent down with difficulty and picked up an empty plate from the doorstep. The noise must have been Eole: he’d refused to come and eat with them, and she’d left his plate of duck breast and sauté potatoes outside his tent.

  “He’s rather shy, your young man.”

  “I’d better check he’s all right.” Rainbow took the plate from Gabin and washed it up, along with the other dishes. “Thanks for showing me your travel logs. They’re beautiful.”

  Gabin stacked them carefully back on the shelf. “Are you keeping a record of your trip?”

  “No. Ours is nothing like as exciting as yours.”

  “Well, I think you should, especially as you’re an artist. It’ll help make
your surroundings more interesting as you walk. Then you can share your entries with the people who lodge you on the way. And when you’re old, like me, you’ll be able to look back and remember moments you’d forgotten.”

  Rainbow dried her hands. It was a good idea. She may only fill two pages of her sketch pad, but it would give her something to do while Eole pored over the map.

  “Here, take this,” Gabin said, and handed her an empty log book. “My travels stopped before I could use this one. If you ever come back this way, call in and tell me about your trip.”

  Rainbow thanked him and said goodnight. It was only when she’d shut the door behind her that she realised she’d forgotten to call Christophe. She’d find a phone box tomorrow – by which time he’d surely have calmed down.

  It was cool and hardly dark, thanks to the moon. She rubbed her goose-pimply arms and walked around the corner of the barn towards the tents.

  There was only one tent.

  Eole had packed up and gone.

  Rainbow gasped. Hestia and Alexandra would kill her. This was her fault. She had left him alone all evening, knowing something was wrong. Had she been secretly glad he was suffering? She must stop envying him for being able to hear the trees talking. He may be more powerful, but he was hopeless alone. He relied on her for their decisions. And he was all she’d got.

  She tossed Gabin’s notebook into her tent, scrabbled around for her head torch and jogged down the drive. Her legs were stiff and she slowed down to a limping walk, looking left and right into the fields and clumps of trees.

  Thierry had talked about trees helping each other to survive, calling forests ‘symbiotic communities’. He’d also said she was too much of a loner and could learn from the way trees worked together. She and Eole were symbiotic, like two trees. They should be a team. What had she been thinking, letting him stew alone in his tent all evening? Her jealousy had blinded her to the danger of him getting upset. She had to find him before he raised a storm and allowed the Tree Slayer to kill the One Tree.