Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Is there a problem?”

  In the minute that followed, the forest rang out with the sound of Major Krolo roaring eight times in succession.

  The first roar was when the heavy feather struck him on the feet.

  The second roar was when the Great Candle Bearer leaped on the feather, crushing Krolo’s toes still more.

  The third was roar when the Great Candle Bearer, fast as lightning, landed on Krolo’s shoulders, right on his wound.

  The fourth roar was when, hands diving under the poor Major’s coat, the Great Candle Bearer pulled his elastic suspenders and, in a flash, looped them over a log above him.

  And finally, Krolo let out four long shrieks of horror when he realized, as fast as his poor brain could register, that he was trapped.

  His feet were stuck on the ground beneath the feather and his suspenders, stretched toward the sky like archery bows, threatening to send him flying into space if he pulled them free of the log.

  He was catapult and cannonball at the same time. Especially the cannonball.

  A second later, Angel Feet landed softly on the ground. He picked up his lamp. A breeze gently drew his hood back from his forehead, and his face appeared in the lamplight.

  It wasn’t exactly the Great Candle Bearer’s bony head.

  They were the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the perfect oval face of a sixteen-year-old girl. You could say she was pretty, but in the Tree there are twenty-five pretty girls for every branch.

  No, she was more than pretty.

  “The prisoner . . .” breathed Krolo.

  It had only taken one minute for this nuisance to overpower the Great Candle Bearer in her Egg. She had stolen his clothes and left the prison in his place.

  The Major tried to raise the alarm, but the girl set her foot on the feather, the message clear: In one movement, she could roll away the weight that was keeping Krolo in contact with the ground and send him flying up into the air. The Major chose to keep quiet.

  The prisoner pulled the hood back over her face and turned her back on him.

  After taking a few steps into the White Forest, she stopped. She could feel fine water droplets left on her cheeks by the mist, the wind blowing across her feet. A few fronds of white feather were stuck to her cloak. She felt good.

  Freedom wasn’t far now. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  Ten times she had tried to escape. Maybe ten was her lucky number. She clenched her fists, her body filled with wild hope.

  A quiet rustling sounded in front of her. Then another, to her left.

  No, she thought, as all hope drained away. No . . .

  At first she didn’t dare open her eyes.

  Behind each of those feathers that disappeared into the mist, a soldier rose up. Dozens of armed men aimed their crossbows at her.

  In the candlelight, they saw her smile. A joyful, insolent smile that made those surrounding her tremble.

  Not one of them could see how, in the shadow of her hood, Elisha’s eyes, when she opened them, were glistening with tears.

  She was caught.

  “The boss says it’s too cold to go for a walk.”

  “I don’t have a boss,” said Elisha.

  The man talking to her was out in front. His hands were tucked inside his jacket pockets. He had blue eyes and looked quite old, with worn-out clothes that must have been colorful in their time. Tinges of red and orange were all that remained, and the cloth had grown so shiny from use, it looked almost like leather.

  “Follow us,” he said gently.

  This kindness was at odds with the thirty crossbows and wild glares that gleamed behind him in the night.

  “Where is he? Your boss, I mean,” asked Elisha.

  “Come along, miss.”

  “If I were to drop a handkerchief, I’d pick it up myself. So why can’t he come to find his runaway fiancée himself? Gentlemen, you have a sad boss.”

  Their answer was silence. She might have been small, but this girl was a force to be reckoned with. In that silence, a small flutey voice could be heard whimpering, “What about me? Can you do something about me?”

  It was Major Krolo, hanging by his suspenders in such a way that his pants were hitched painfully up into his bottom while his slippers were still trapped on the ground.

  The man with blue eyes continued as if he hadn’t heard anything.

  “Where have you put the Great Candle Bearer, miss?”

  “You’ll find him. I think he’s made a new friend. . . .”

  She had locked the hunchback in the glowworm’s cage that lit her Egg. And sure enough, they would find the Great Candle Bearer later on, unconscious, in his underwear, being embraced by the worm, which must have taken a liking to him.

  “Can someone help me?” Krolo screeched.

  Responding to a sign from their chief, two soldiers went over to the Major. They were about to remove the feather that held him to the ground.

  “No!” he roared. “Don’t do that!”

  So they got out their long knives and prepared to slice his suspenders.

  “Noooooo! Not that either . . .”

  What was going on in Krolo’s head set a new record in stupidity. He was afraid that without his suspenders his previous identity would be revealed: W. C. Rolok, the horrible Chief Weevil Rearer, formerly known as Pinhead.

  Rolok had met with a bad end. He had become an object of derision —“Thing” to his fellow men — and had only escaped by a miracle. By slipping the last letter of his name to the beginning, he figured he could start again from scratch. Good-bye, Rolok; hello, Krolo.

  If all it took to have more brains or more heart was moving a letter in your name, there’d be a lot more people doing just that. But Krolo was just the same as W. C. Rolok. Just as stupid, just as nasty.

  The soldiers looked questioningly at their chief. He shrugged, annoyed. He couldn’t care less about the Major.

  Elisha started walking, and everybody followed. The first glimmer of light was rising over the three Eggs.

  For Major Krolo, abandoned there and hanging from his suspenders, the day was getting off to a bad start.

  What would I do? I’d tip my head back in the rain, with my mouth and eyes open wide. What would I do? I’d stick my hands into honeypots. . . .

  Several hours had gone by. Elisha was lying on her yellow mattress in the middle of the Egg. Her body felt empty; her mind was hovering above her. It was siesta time. She was lying on her back, wearing a green dress. A sheet covered the top of her head. She was looking up at the great curve of the Egg. The stormy weather had calmed at dawn. Now it was like a summer’s day that had strayed into the beginning of winter. The sunlight made the wall of the Egg radiant. This was a golden prison, a windowless palace.

  Elisha was thinking about what she would do if she found freedom again.

  I’d rub my back against the buds. I’d run on the first leaves of spring. I’d swim in my lake. I’d hang hammocks from the top branches to watch the clouds go by. . . .

  They had offered to furnish her Egg, to make it an abode fit for a princess, but she had sent the furniture men away and just put a yellow mattress at the bottom of the shell. It was enough for her. The rest of the South Egg was empty. She had been living there, in captivity, for a long time.

  I’d climb through the moss forests. . . .

  Elisha stopped daydreaming and thought back to her escape attempt the night before. She couldn’t understand how it had gone wrong. Who had tipped off the soldiers? Who had known how to read the plan written only in her mind?

  Elisha was still staring at the high dome of the Egg. The air was warm; the shell smelled like a bread oven with a leaf cake waiting inside it for dessert.

  The Shadow. Again.

  The Shadow of the Treetop.

  Elisha had been secretly waiting for it, and it appeared just at that moment.

  Thanks to the sunlight, Elisha could see it from inside as it made its way along the grainy wall. I
t stood out against the dome of the Egg. She felt her heart quicken. These last few days, the fog had deprived her of this apparition, but for several weeks now the Shadow had assumed an important place in Elisha’s life.

  Where did it come from, this being that braved the dizzying heights and came to visit her every day without revealing itself?

  In this high-security fortress, a bit of mystery had managed to slip in. Courage, the element of surprise, and dreams: the Shadow summed up everything Elisha was missing. And her one wish, above all, was that this Shadow might be able to help her.

  The Shadow stopped at the top of the Egg, where a hole had been cut out. The Egg had been emptied through the hole at the time of the Great Works. When it rained, Elisha would watch the cool water fall through the gap.

  That was where the Shadow positioned itself.

  It was the same game each time. Elisha knew she was being watched. She opened her eyes wide and stayed lying down. The Shadow didn’t move. It was unsettling. Neither of them said anything.

  There was a noise at the door. The Shadow glided across the length of the shell and disappeared.

  A man walked into the Egg — it was the old, blue-eyed chief. He had taken off his long coat. He wore a vest made from moss felt, and a hornet stinger in a scabbard hung from his belt. She liked his quirky elegance, his flared pants, and his old blue scarves, but the man himself scared her.

  His name was Arbayan. He was likable and merciless in equal measure.

  “I entered without asking. I’m sorry, miss. But you do the same thing when you leave.”

  “What else is there to do in prison, apart from escape?”

  “You’re not in prison.”

  “Ah, yes,” Elisha answered. “That’s what your boss says. . . . He should try finding better jokes.”

  She was still lying down, and when she finally sat up, the sheet slipped from her head.

  Arbayan couldn’t get used to the sight of Elisha’s painfully short hair.

  For a while, her head had been completely shaved. It was enough to bring tears to one’s eyes. Elisha’s features were so strong and so strange that her face evoked fear and amazement.

  Some months before, Arbayan had seen her arriving in the Nest with her long hair tied back. One morning, he had discovered her with a shaved head. She had committed the crime alone in the night. She had flung her braid in the boss’s face. She was counting on him not marrying her while she looked like a convict. He would wait a bit, to save face.

  And sure enough, he waited.

  Arbayan took a step toward the girl.

  “The boss is going to leave. He would like to speak with you.”

  “I don’t have a boss.”

  “Your fiancé.”

  Elisha started laughing.

  “My boss, my fiancé . . . what else does he want to be? My cook, my pet, my brother, my butler, my gardener?”

  Arbayan answered with a whisper, “Perhaps, miss, he would like to be all of those things to you.”

  Elisha stopped laughing. Arbayan was highly intelligent. She made a weary gesture with her hand.

  “Well, tell all of them — the cook, the pet, and all the others — that I’m not receiving guests today. Tell them to come back next year.”

  It was a clever answer, but Elisha knew she wasn’t up to his level. Arbayan was talking about love. He spoke eloquently on the subject. His boss was in love with Elisha. His boss would have turned himself into a flea or a gnat in order to get close to her. He would have turned himself into the flask of water next to her mattress.

  “He will come to speak with you,” said Arbayan. “You don’t have to listen, but he will come.”

  Elisha didn’t say anything. She took the water and brought it close to her lips. It was a soft flask made from a ladybug’s egg.

  “Don’t they give you a bowl?”

  “A bowl has a sharp edge,” said Elisha between sips. “Your soldiers are wary of my talents as a hairdresser.”

  Her hair was growing again at last. She mustn’t be allowed to try again.

  “Good-bye,” said Arbayan.

  As a farewell, he kept his head lowered for a long time, in a pleasantly old-fashioned way.

  He withdrew toward the door.

  Elisha called him back.

  “Who alerted you to my escape?”

  Arbayan smiled.

  “I was just told to position myself in the White Forest with thirty soldiers.”

  “By whom?”

  “I have only one boss. He’s the one who gives the orders. He knows everything.”

  Arbayan left. Silence settled again in the Egg. All that could be heard was the wind brushing against the shell. Elisha was thinking about the dead leaves that travel and fly through the air. She envied their freedom.

  Elisha stood up.

  Having made sure that she was all alone, she suddenly started running. She was heading for the wall of the Egg. She should have been able to smash it, but its curved incline made her run up its side instead. Elisha ran as fast as she could until she was almost upside down. Then she did a backward flip and landed on her feet. Right away, she ran in another direction, starting all over again.

  This was her training. Freedom lies in movement. As long as her body and her spirit could move, Elisha was still a tiny bit free.

  Someone who was decidedly less free was Rolok. His mind had never been very lively, and this time his body wasn’t responding either. He didn’t dare make the slightest movement in his suspenders. The afternoon was getting on. He was still stretched between two feathers.

  When he saw Clot pass by, a few paces away, he finally had an idea worthy of a Krolo or a Rolok. He was going to ask Clot to cut his suspenders. If the soldier recognized him as Rolok the Chief Weevil Rearer, as soon as he was freed, Rolok would wring his neck and throw him down a hole.

  “Hey, soldier!”

  Clot looked up to find out where the voice was coming from. With exaggerated movements, he looked in the wrong direction, his hand shielding his eyes, as if peering into the distance. Then, as if he hadn’t seen anything, he went on his way, whistling.

  It was like a piece of bad theater.

  “Soldier!” Rolok roared again.

  If a bunch of toddlers had been asked to mime surprise, they would have acted it out better than Clot.

  He turned his head toward Rolok, his neck jutting out and his eyes bulging, and made “Oh!” and “Ah!” noises. Then he held his face in both hands in dismay, raised his arms to the sky, put them on his heart, knelt down, got up again, and did all this several times over, with the gestures of a clown or a hammy actor.

  Any old idiot would have realized that Clot was plotting something. But Rolok wasn’t any old idiot. He was a champion, an artist, an ace when it came to being a nitwit. He didn’t suspect a thing.

  “Goodneth gwaciouth!” Clot exclaimed. “Cwikey! Who could pothibly be hanging like that?”

  “It’s me,” Rolok answered miserably.

  Clot stuck out his right foot out and kept waving his hand as he exclaimed each time.

  “What! Leth thee! O my goodneth! The Major — can it be? What Wath hath thtwuck to detherve thith bad luck?”

  He had heard the word wrath somewhere and thought it was a kind of monster with hairy legs and a big club.

  “Come and help me, Clot!” shouted Rolok.

  “I’m coming, I’m flying, I’m wunning! I will thave the Major.”

  Clot was still performing all the flourishes that go with such lines while he leaped like a cricket in love and landed at Rolok’s feet. There he pulled up short.

  Time for the big emotional scene. Clot wiped his eyes, made his lips tremble, and, looking at the place where the Major’s feet were trapped, said, “What do I notithe here? May the Wath pwetherve me. Yet again, the emothionth are more than detherve me. They had gone away, but now you found my thlippertieth. At latht! I am theeing them, here on your feethieth . . .”

  “
No,” whimpered Rolok, “don’t touch . . . Not on that end! Cut the suspenders for me!”

  Clot stayed bent over Rolok’s feet, his hands slowly drawing near, as if discovering treasure.

  “Stop it! Clot! For pity’s sake!”

  “Where had you gone? Now I can thay ‘phew!’ Coth you’re on the Major, looking so beauteeefew . . . !”

  In one movement, Clot rolled the feather away and grabbed his slippers. Rolok’s feet skidded. The catapult effect worked perfectly. Rolok went flying into the air with giddy speed.

  Clot stared at the blue sky for a long time.

  He felt relieved.

  For years, Clot had been this “different” character: nobody took him seriously, and everybody teased him a little. He had tolerated this semi-comfortable, slightly weak role. Now, for the first time, he had been able to change the world by ridding it of someone harmful. He thought about the birds and the insects that would see this strange projectile passing by.

  Well, at least he’ll make the butterflies laugh, he thought.

  Clot put his slippers back on with relish and set off.

  The guards at the South Egg were waiting.

  Arbayan had told them to be ready for the boss’s visit. Four of them were standing at attention, lined up next to each other. The fifth was having a little fun, marching up and down like an army inspector.

  “Look how scared you are. He’s terrorizing you. You’ve been waiting for him for the last two hours, and you’re still behaving like teacher’s pets!”

  The fifth guard was eating grub cheese with a thick crust. Now and then he drank from a small gourd.

  “You’re hilarious, the four of you. Want to know what I’ve got to say to the boss?”

  He thrust his head down to the ground, displaying his bottom. Except that, his head between his legs, he suddenly discovered someone standing behind him. He stopped dead.

  “I’m all ears,” said the man. “What would you say to him?”

  “I’d say . . . Hello, Boss.”

  With his head upside down and his mouth full of cheese, the guard was having a hard time expressing himself clearly.