Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

Rainbow fell silent. Something in the ash tree’s feelings reminded her of the silvery mycelium network and of Amrita. Was it referring to the last One Tree? Was the One Tree the last of the special mother trees, the sole survivor of the Tree Slayer’s gale? As she formed these thoughts, the ash shuddered in agreement and fear. Rainbow already knew she had to save the One Tree, but she mustn’t tell Eole and risk him passing the information onto the Tree Slayer. This, she would keep secret.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Eole.

  Eole was puzzled. “Why? The voices are still speaking. Now they’re saying ‘last’, ‘the One Tree,’ and ‘us’,” he said. “There’s hope in the last One Tree, and we’re somehow linked to it.”

  “We need to get a move on,” said Rainbow.

  Eole hesitated. Normally, Rainbow was keen to hear what the trees said. Other chords, already stocked in his treeopedia, rose up through the tree. “Wait!” he said. “Now the voices are saying ‘follow’ and ‘save’. We must follow the voices to Koad and save the last One Tree, in which there’s hope. I wonder what we must save it from – the Tree Slayer?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

  So much for keeping secrets from Eole. He knew everything now, which meant she’d lost her advantage over the Tree Slayer. How would it react? Would it force Eole to kill her? Or would it wait until they found the One Tree and then attack?

  As soon as Eole found the One Tree she would have to gag him, which should stop him raising a gale. Then the One Tree would explain what she had to do in order to save it and restore Amrita’s life force. Hopefully, once she’d done that, she could let Eole go again. She didn’t want to think what else she might have to do to him.

  She stroked the ash tree and bade it farewell. But the ash was irritated. She tried to calm her racing pulse and concentrate on the tree’s emotions. It would be so much easier if she could hear its voice.

  The ash disapproved because they were going too fast. They were wrong about there being hope in the One Tree. The hope was actually in her and Eole. But there wasn’t much. She swallowed. Another feeling was building up.

  Eole noticed a low vibration creeping over the warbling note, more of a disruption than a chord or a note. The vibration grew, overriding the Koad melody, and shook it apart. The Koad pattern distorted and disappeared.

  “Rainbow! What’s this one?”

  Rainbow’s voice came out as a croak. “That … is death.”

  Chapter 26

  For the first time since she’d learnt of her mission, Rainbow realised she might actually die.

  She let go of the holloway ash tree and sat down. She’d known from the moment she heard Amrita’s words that her life was at risk. But hearing it in a vision was one thing; having the trees remind her was quite another.

  “The voices are warning us about death so that we can avoid it,” said Eole, when Rainbow explained why she was sitting down. He told her that he was here to protect her from the Tree Slayer, so she needn’t be afraid, and that the detail they’d gleaned was good because they now knew they had a particular tree to find and save. They could focus on this. “We all die, in any case,” he added.

  Tintin had died. Their sheep and goats died all the time. Hestia’s baby was going to die before it was even born. Death was logical and the fact Rainbow was suddenly shocked was yet more proof of how being illogical was inferior to being logical.

  “Come on,” he said. “The voices are telling us to hurry.”

  She felt a heavy resistance to following him: Mary didn’t want to die for Amrita. The chances of saving the One Tree in secret were slim, now that Eole, and therefore the Tree Slayer, knew what she was looking for. But her trust in Amrita had been rewarded so far. The One Tree was a spiritual tree and would advise her once she found it. She dragged herself to her feet.

  Amrita had used her life force to heal the Rainbow-Mary split, and now it was RainbowMary’s turn to heal Amrita. She wouldn’t contemplate failing. Instead, she would focus on being reunited with Amrita. That was her destiny, not death at the hands of the Tree Slayer. She had to continue. She wanted to continue.

  To her surprise, no further resistance came from Mary. She seemed to accept Rainbow’s decision, even if she didn’t approve. Rainbow immediately felt more cheerful, and forced her aching legs to catch up with Eole.

  They continued northwest for the rest of Friday. Whenever Eole heard new strains in the voice chords, he hugged the tree and added vocabulary to his treeopedia. It was far more interesting than Spanish and German lessons at school.

  The treeopedia became more complex, allowing him to join the gaps between the words and ideas, and his ear developed more sensitivity. The odours associated with the voices didn’t change much, and he suspected their role was simply to catch his attention. Once he understood the main melody, he could concentrate on the sub-melodies and the sub-sub-melodies. The more he understood, the less the voices jarred and hurt his head. They were like his five other senses, all jostling with new information whenever he changed environment. He’d learnt to control his five senses most of the time, and now he was learning to control the effect of the voices on his body. On Saturday he left his headphones in his pocket.

  Rainbow stored her travel log and pencils in the front pocket of her rucksack. They kept her sane in her role as worthless follower. Recording the disfigured trees they passed was soul-destroying, so she began to draw other details of their journey: the deer they surprised into leaping graceful arcs early on Saturday morning; the lookout rabbit thumping the dry earth and causing a scurry of white bobtails; the plop and ripple of frogs beside a river. Whenever she saw a particularly sick or damaged tree, she paused to heal or rebalance it while Eole lay back and exercised his lungs with cloud art. Then she urged him onwards. The longer they took, the weaker Amrita was becoming.

  Eole liked sleeping in the wild, which they did every night after leaving Gabin. It was good practice for his ambition to live in Tintin’s hut on the summer pastures with Rainbow. They washed in cold streams, foraged for free food and bought essential supplies from village shops. Then, on the fifth day of travelling, they stopped at a campsite. Eole argued that camping rough was better, but Rainbow wanted to have a hot shower, wash her clothes and talk to people.

  They’d almost reached the edge of Rainbow’s map, so Eole asked her to buy one of the west of France. While she was at the village shops, he pitched both their tents and unrolled their sleeping mats and bags. Then he took out his multiverse book, as he’d done every evening, and tried not to superimpose Tintin’s face on the pages. It was still impossible to concentrate, and the words refused to transform into concepts. He gave up and went to the campsite phone box from where, at six o’clock, he rang Hestia.

  Alexandra was always beside the phone when he rang, even though he told her his daily call was for Hestia. She tried to trick him into saying where he was, but he only answered her questions about whether he was drinking enough water and looking after his feet and eating balanced meals and sleeping properly. He spoke to Darwie too. Darwie whined and sometimes barked when he told him about the rabbits or sheep they’d seen. Eole’s favourite part of the call was hearing Hestia’s voice. She didn’t bother saying ‘over’ at the end of her turn anymore because she said he’d mastered the art of conversation. He felt proud until she added “at long last”.

  “So, have you snogged her yet?” Hestia asked.

  “Who?”

  “Rainbow, you dork.”

  “No, and I don’t intend to,” he replied. He’d already told her that their relationship wasn’t like hers with Mathieu Legrand.

  “Well, maybe you should. Then you could get rid of one of your tents, and your rucksacks would be lighter.”

  She was being logical, for once. He tucked away her suggestion and asked if she’d made an appointment to abort the baby yet. She went quiet and he had to repeat her name to make sure she was still there, and when she said ‘Y
es’ her voice had changed to the childish voice in the camcorder films from their Paris days.

  “When is it?”

  “Next week. The psychologist says I need to think about it, but I don’t want to think. I just want to get it done and go back to the way things were before – though not with Papa. I want him to stay like this, always. He’s been almost human. He took me to the library and we looked at some books together and now he’s found a girl the same age as me in Lourdes who kept her baby and I think he’s going to take me to see her, even though it’s pointless. He says I need to consider both options so I can make an informed decision. It’s like he’s had a knock on the head or something. I wish Maman would get knocked on the head.”

  “Yes, me too. She keeps asking where I am.”

  “Where are you?”

  He opened his mouth to reply. Then he remembered the times he’d seen Hestia and Alexandra in the kitchen, heads close together, laughing, and closed it again. Instead, he told her about the voices and the day’s additions to his treeopedia, and she yawned and said she hoped Rainbow appreciated everything he was doing for her and would let him snog her at some point, and then she said she missed him and that it would be nice if he could come with her to the clinic next week and he didn’t reply because he didn’t want his mission to end that soon and he didn’t want to have to make another decision, so he said he’d call her tomorrow and then hung up.

  When Rainbow returned with the map and food, Eole said he had a suggestion to lighten their loads. Rainbow rubbed her sore shoulders. She’d already discarded a jumper, a pair of jeans, and most of her toilet bag contents.

  “Go on. I’m game. Anything to stop me feeling as stiff as a hundred-year-old.”

  Eole leant towards her. She stepped back, so he held onto her shoulders to stop her escaping and kissed her on the mouth. A snog was longer than a kiss, but he didn’t manage to hold his lips to hers for very long because she twisted out of his grip and pushed him backwards.

  Her mouth was in an ‘O’ shape.

  “Does that count as a snog?” he asked. “Because if it does, we can share my tent and leave yours here at the campsite and you can ask them to look after it and then pick it up on your way home, and I’ll carry the poles and inner while you carry the pegs and outer, and that way our rucksacks will be lighter.” He smiled at her, pleased with Hestia’s idea.

  Rainbow closed her mouth, still shocked. His kiss had been brusque, yet sweet. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might want to develop their platonic friendship. She liked him, but she didn’t want more, even if Christophe was with Emilie now. She couldn’t imagine ever wanting to kiss anyone other than Christophe. But she wasn’t supposed to be thinking of him. He was in the box with Thierry.

  “Let’s get this straight, Eole. We’re not girlfriend and boyfriend, which means we’re not going to start kissing each other. And I’m not sleeping in your tent with you, even if it would make our loads lighter. OK?”

  His smile faded and he nodded. She hadn’t understood the snogging idea. But it was true that squeezing two people into a one-man tent would have made nights uncomfortable. She wasn’t Darwie, though she was so small she’d only take up a little more room than him. And snogging wasn’t as much fun as Hestia said it was, either. He would tell Hestia that her plan was theoretically sound but impractical.

  “Good. Here’s your map,” said Rainbow.

  He laid it out on the grass in front of their tents and drew a line from Le Logis through their route to their current position. It was more or less straight. Using the side of his sleeping mat, he extended the line right to the edge of France. It finished beside the town of St Brieuc, on the northern coast of Brittany.

  “I hope we don’t have to walk that far. It’ll take forever,” said Rainbow.

  “At our current rate it’ll take twenty-two more days.”

  “That is forever.”

  Eole ran his finger along the pencilled line. They were almost at Fontenay-le-Comte. Most of the line ran through countryside, with the exception of Nantes. If they ended up having to cross the city, which would be stuffed full of people, he would breathe in deeply to bring the voices from forests on the far side towards him, then skirt it.

  The map showed several forests after Nantes. One was called Paimpont.

  Paimpont. The name sent an electrical impulse into his memory. It was the village where he’d been born. The word he’d hardly thought about since they’d left the Pyrenees flashed into his mind: ADOPTED.

  He took a deep breath.

  Rainbow flung out her arms to steady herself in the sudden gust. Eole’s nostrils were flared. The old couple on the next pitch clung onto their sun hats.

  “Eole! Stop!” cried Rainbow.

  She watched his eyes come back into focus. He tipped back his head and pursed his lips. She couldn’t see any air, but the gentle puff of white cloud above them was sliced in two. And in two again. And again.

  She had to stop him before the Tree Slayer took control.

  “What’s the matter? Talk to me,” she said.

  He clamped his mouth shut, grabbed his multiverse book, and slid his sleeping mat inside his tent. Then he wriggled inside and zipped up the entrance.

  She sighed. Was it a delayed reaction to her rejection of his kiss? She hoped she wouldn’t have to pretend to be in love with him in order to stop him getting upset. She wasn’t sure she could do it.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” she said to his tent. “I didn’t mean to. I really like you, but we don’t need to kiss in order to be the best of friends. Please talk to me.”

  There was no reply.

  “I’m going to eat sausage and chips at the bar and find some people to chat with,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me?”

  There was still no answer from him. Could she safely leave him?

  “Please don’t disappear again,” she said. “If you want to talk, come and get me, or wait until I get back. There’s a packet of curry and rice here, if you don’t want to be sociable. And don’t forget your gale promise.” She picked up her purse and travel log, and went to try the campsite chips.

  Eole lay on his back, his eyes following a fly as it battered its head against the tent seams. His brain registered the fly while his mind pulled apart the jigsaw it had made of the mission with Rainbow. Had he misinterpreted everything? The voices seemed to be leading him in a direct line to Paimpont. They must want him to be reconciled with his biological family. His true family. The place he belonged. Perhaps Koad was a way of saying ‘home’ and Rainbow’s mission with the One Tree was irrelevant.

  His brain monitored the fly’s attempts to escape, tracking its flight path with imaginary lines. It would be so much easier if he had just a brain and no mind. His mind confused everything, making muddy water of situations. His brain was cool and clear.

  It was wrong to let his mind sidetrack him into a search for the place he belonged. He and Rainbow were on a mission together. They were soulmates. He had to protect and guide her so they could save the One Tree. If by chance the voices led them directly to Paimpont, well, that would just be a coincidence.

  Chapter 27

  Rainbow didn’t like crowds, but she welcomed the busy campsite bar after five days with such limited human contact.

  She was completing some sketches when a young woman dressed in hippie clothes asked if she could sit beside her. Rainbow accepted, and learnt that Melanie Brown was English but lived in Brittany and was on holiday here in the Marais Poitevin.

  Rainbow felt an affinity for the girl, perhaps because she reminded her of her commune family. She was a freelance journalist and nature lover and, when Rainbow showed her the travel log, she seemed enthralled by it. They talked about trees and biodiversity, and the better Rainbow got to know her, the more impressed she became. They had so much in common. Could she be the English friend Sandrine had predicted she’d work with? This meeting was a sign. She could imagine saving forests along
side Melanie and learning from her enthusiastic efficiency.

  She told Melanie about the commune and, after a couple of hours, it felt natural to mention her gift and explain that she and Eole were actually following the trees’ voices. Melanie’s attitude didn’t change. She didn’t look at her with sideways glances or move to another table, and Rainbow wondered if she was being oversensitive about keeping her gift so secret.

  When Melanie left to go to bed, she told Rainbow to keep up the travel log, adding that the journey would make a good feature in the nature magazine she edited. Rainbow considered inviting Melanie to join her and Eole, but decided she ought to keep her mission as quiet as possible. She took Melanie’s business card, placed it carefully in her purse, and said a reluctant goodbye.

  The next morning Eole’s strange mood had passed. Rainbow asked if he missed being with Darwie and his sheep in the mountains, and he nodded. The map must have reminded him of home. And Tintin. She remembered how much she’d ached after Michael’s death, and wanted to hug Eole. But he’d hate that. When she’d missed Michael, she concentrated on dedicating herself to trees in his memory. And Mary’s advice in the Pyrenees – to look forward to the future rather than dwelling on Christophe and the past – had really helped too. She suggested Eole should focus on the future and dedicate his scientific work to Tintin. He didn’t make any comment, only looked up at the cloudy sky for a long time.

  Over the next few days, she watched him closely but didn’t see any more signs of his strange mood. She monitored the weather carefully too, dreading the arrival of a storm that the Tree Slayer might use to blow down the One Tree before she could arrive to protect it. Most days the sun shone; sometimes it was misty and occasionally it rained a little, but the air remained calm.

  Every day she expected to arrive at Koad. And every evening she was disappointed when Eole announced cheerfully that they must continue the next day. They had a break on day thirteen – when they rang home and discovered they’d both passed their exams. They spent the afternoon lazing by a river south of Nantes and bought cakes to celebrate. Rainbow munched solidly through her chocolate éclair, trying to enjoy it and not think about Christophe, who would be on holiday in the Pyrenees right now, perhaps with Emilie. Eole couldn’t celebrate properly because he kept thinking of Hestia, who would be going to the clinic in a few days, without him. They were both glad to get back to their mission and put thoughts of home behind them.