Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

by Timothee de Fombelle

  The smooth-skinned ganoderm is a crescent-shaped mushroom that grows on the bark of the Tree. It forms pleasant terraces with springy floors that put a bounce in your stride.

  A long time ago, children would go to the gandoderms to play funnyball on Sundays, lovers would have dates on them, and other people would go to them to dream about their childhood and lost loves.

  In Mushrooms and Ideas, a slim book you wouldn’t be able to get ahold of now, Sim Lolness revealed that each day, as the ganoderm is trampled underfoot, it scatters thousands of millions of billions of spores. The spores are like seeds, all of which should give birth to another mushroom. In theory, you could wake up each morning in a Tree covered in ganoderms. A thousand million billion mushrooms every day. After a week, you could make mushroom soup as thick and wide as the universe.

  And yet, strangely, these mushrooms remain rare. The spores get lost in nature. Sometimes it takes years for a ganoderm to produce a second mushroom.

  Sim Lolness concluded his book with that curious fact. He claimed that new ideas were a bit like mushrooms: very few of them reproduce.

  Nils Amen’s revolt could have served as an example for the professor. By being the first to rebel, Nils was changing the face of the Tree. He might sow the good seed of freedom all around him. But it would take a long time for a second person, lower down in the branches, someone who didn’t even know him, to take a step in the same direction.

  This second mushroom was Mo Asseldor. He was the second son on Seldor Farm.

  His story began on Christmas night, during a silent concert.

  Ever since they had been banned from playing music, the Asseldor family would gather from time to time in the main room, to play in silence. Each would take his or her instrument: drum, chime, clarinotty, and chelloh . . . Mr. Asseldor always set the rhythm by tapping his foot, and the concert would begin.

  The Asseldors knew the music so well, they didn’t need it to sound in order to hear it. The bow didn’t touch the strings of the chelloh. No air passed through Lila’s clarinotty. Mrs. Asseldor sang without making any noise. The words could be read on her lips.

  My homeland is a leaf that’s died,

  Carried off to a world unknown.

  Why stay to dance

  On a snowy bare branch?

  My homeland is a leaf that’s died. . . .

  The music was heartbreaking. Lila closed her eyes while she played, and tall Milo had tears down to his neck.

  The Asseldors played only tragic melodies now. No more dawn songs or lullabies, dances or serenades.

  Mo was suffocating under the weight of all this despair. He didn’t recognize his family anymore. Something had disappeared from this house that held so many happy memories.

  Mrs. Asseldor continued mouthing the words of the song. There was another couplet that was even sadder, comparing their branch to the gallows. Not exactly a barrel of laughs.

  Mo’s rebellion began with a silent false note.

  Father Asseldor interrupted the orchestra.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Even when it was silent, a false note played in his presence made him feel out of sorts.

  “I’m asking you, what’s going on!”

  “Sorry, Father,” said Mo.

  “All right . . . Let’s pick up again. . . .”

  They started playing, but after a few seconds, Mo came unstuck once more.

  “Stop playing if you’re tired.”

  “Yes, I am tired.”

  Suddenly Mo took his chelloh and broke it in two.

  His brother, his sister, his mother and father all looked at him.

  “Do you know what we look like?” asked Mo. “Ghosts. This isn’t a farm anymore; it’s a haunted house. No noise, no light . . .”

  “But if it means that we can stay alive . . .” said his father.

  “Alive? Who’s alive here?”

  Mo pointed to the fireplace, which poor Mano was hiding behind, only coming out twice a day.

  “You’ve even buried one of us alive.”

  Milo, the eldest son, rushed over to his brother and knocked him down.

  Lila tried to separate the fighters.

  “Stop!” ordered Mrs. Asseldor.

  The two boys broke it off. They had bloody noses.

  “What else do you want us to do, Mo? You’re speaking selfishly, only for yourself. But what do you want to do? You know the situation very well.”

  Yes, he knew. He knew that their family had been caught in a terrible trap. The house could be searched at any moment of the night and day, which meant that Mano risked being found. As for poor Lila, she was the victim of the worst blackmail ever. Garric, the Garrison Commander, had found out about Mano and was abusing this knowledge to secure meetings with the beautiful Lila. The day before, he had kissed her hand, and she had come back into the house trembling all over.

  “There are times when you have to risk everything,” said Mo.

  He was trying to knock some shape back into his hat after the fight.

  “Look, if I stake my hat in a bet, I know I risk losing it. If I lose it, I’ll be rather sad because I’m fond of my old hat. But for all of us here, what’s at stake is our unhappiness. We’ve got nothing to lose. If we win, we’ll be happy. If we don’t, all we have to lose is our unhappiness. We have to try to get out of here.”

  The family had listened attentively to Mo’s reasoning. It was true they had nothing left to lose other than their unhappy life of recent years. But they couldn’t help remembering the joyous feasts they had held at Seldor, the hunting season in autumn, the dress competitions between sisters and mother, the honey harvest, concerts in the snow, and everything else. They were still afraid of losing all of that, even though it had already been lost, long ago. There’s nothing we defend as valiantly as that which we’ve already lost.

  “Lola has left with Lex. Some of us will be able to join them. We have to try to get away. It’s not the old bark walls that make Seldor what it is, but joy and freedom. And there’s none of that left.”

  “What about Mano?” his mother asked him.

  “Mano will leave too. Just give me a few days.”

  The next day Mo repaired his chelloh. It was a handsome eight-stringed chelloh, which had belonged to his grandfather.

  Two more nights went by. Mo’s parents thought their son had forgotten about his small rebellion. Both of them told themselves it was better that way. But they couldn’t banish a certain disappointment from their hearts. They had secretly hoped that Mo would get them out of there. . . .

  One evening, as he passed by the fireplace, Mo heard whimpering sounds. He found his sister crying on the banquette that doubled as her bed.

  “It’s tomorrow morning,” she told him, wiping her face with the sheet. “Tomorrow, before sunrise. Don’t tell our parents.”

  “What?”

  “I have to give him my answer. . . . Garric wants to take me with him. I have to tell him if I’ll accept.”

  “Is he crazy?”

  “No. He knows I’m going to say yes.”

  Mo smiled.

  “Mrs. Lila Garric. I’d like to see that — with lots of little Garrics all around, chewing your socks. The happy family!”

  “Don’t laugh! It’s terrible.”

  “A house full of little mites, all crying ‘Mom,’ all looking like their dad. . . .”

  “Stop it, Mo! Stop it!”

  She burst into fresh tears. Mo went up close to his sister’s ear.

  “You’re not going to say yes to him,” he whispered. “I promise.”

  “If I refuse, he’ll denounce Mano and hand us all over to Joe Mitch.”

  “You won’t need to say no.”

  “Well, what am I going to say? Mo, don’t tease me.”

  “You won’t say yes or no, Lila,” Mo insisted calmly. “You won’t be at the meeting.”

  “I won’t?”

  “No, you’ll already be far away.�
�

  “What about Mano?”

  “He’ll be with you. Just like Milo, Mom, and Dad.”

  “But what about you?”

  Mo’s smile became a bit more shadowy.

  “You mustn’t worry about me. I’ll get by. Promise me that you’ll take them with you and not think about me. I’ll manage on my own. Mom’s right, I am a bit selfish, so I’m good at coping by myself. Promise me.”

  Lila looked at her brother.

  “We’re not leaving without you,” she said.

  Mo took his sister’s fist in his hands.

  “Do our parents know about this?” she asked him.

  “No, nobody knows. Except you . . .”

  “And?”

  “Mano. I’ve told him all my plans. Otherwise he’d already be dead in his hole.”

  They heard three knocks behind the fireplace. Mano was listening. This signal made Lila take heart again. They couldn’t destroy the hope that was keeping Mano alive.

  “Promise me,” Mo said again.

  Lila put her arm around her brother’s neck, and they pressed their foreheads together. Her eyes were welling up again.

  “I promise you,” she said.

  Mo nodded.

  “Tell our parents and Milo that I’ll join you. Now, go back to sleep. Don’t worry about anything.”

  “When are we going to leave?”

  “You’ll see. . . . Or rather, you’ll hear. When the time comes, don’t waste a second, get Mano out, and take all the others with you. The path will be clear.”

  That night, the Garrison Commander at Seldor was sleeping badly. Garric kept tossing and turning in his bed. He was feeling impatient, and sweating as a result. At dawn, he would have the young woman all to himself. He would put her in his kitchen like a hunting trophy. She would serve him pints of frothing moss and wash his clothes. She would be called Mrs. Garric, and all the other soldiers would be jealous; they’d have drinking songs about her.

  He was happy. She had no choice — she would be his.

  Garric remembered his first fly; at sixteen, he had killed it in midflight. This was a similar kind of basic pleasure.

  Garric had reached this point in his romantic fantasy when he heard an unusual noise. He sat up in his bed.

  It wasn’t a noise. It was a waltz.

  Garric leaped to his feet and ran over to the window.

  A waltz. Somebody was playing a waltz in the barracks.

  Playing music in the Tree was currently about as permissible as frying an omelet on Joe Mitch’s head. It wasn’t a small misdemeanor. It was a crime.

  If Mitch got wind of the fact that Seldor had been the theater of an extraordinary nocturnal concert, Garric would end his days dancing the waltz in a hole full of vermin. He leaped into his boots and went out. A crowd of soldiers was running across the farmyard from every direction.

  “It’s over there, by the aviary,” somebody called out to him.

  “I want to see all men over by the aviary. Stop this nutcase for me!”

  There was already a crowd gathering around the cage. The last convict had just been sent off to the Crater, so the cages were empty. The soldiers rummaged in every nook and cranny in their attempt to get to the bottom of where the music was coming from.

  This bustling spectacle made for a rather charming ballet by flame light, as the flares came and went to the rhythm of the waltz. From far off it looked like one of the grand illuminated parties the Alnorell family used to give in the Treetop, in days gone by. But close-up, it was no party atmosphere.

  “Stop him!” barked Garric.

  The musician remained invisible, but his music glided everywhere. It danced in the night, taunting the bars of the aviary and the soldiers’ shouts. Music fears nobody. And it refuses to be caged.

  Finally, somebody had the bright idea of using a special kind of flare, made of fine cloth rolled up into a ball. They set fire to it before sending it flying into the air using a catapult. It unfurled and glided back down again. The flare was one of the inventions that Sim Lolness had been forced to surrender, along with the feathered wagon and a few others, in order to fend off Joe Mitch, who was holding out for Balina’s Secret.

  The flare rose high in the night air, lighting up the entire branch. The whole garrison could at last see where the haunting music was coming from.

  Pink cheeked and wearing his old hat, Mo Asseldor was sitting, perched at the top of the aviary.

  On his knees was his grandfather’s chelloh, which he was stroking with his bow. His frozen hands were wrapped in dishtowels. His feet and chest were icy cold, but he wasn’t shivering. Nor was he playing any old waltz. It was “Little Sister,” the melody he’d composed years earlier for Lola, when she had fallen sick with melancholy. He hadn’t played it again since his little sister had left with Lex Olmech. And as he rediscovered these notes, perched on top of the aviary, he wondered if he would ever hear her voice again.

  Indeed, Garric had just decided that the young prodigy in the hat would end up hanging from a hook in his cellar, among his sausages and hams.

  “Get him!”

  The soldiers started climbing the aviary. Everyone had left their guard posts, and a few stragglers were still arriving.

  None of them saw five figures in the night. Five figures who flanked the front of the old house and headed into the undergrowth. Mano was holding his sister’s hand as he breathed in great lungfuls of the cold night air. He kept on asking Lila, “Are we leaving? Are we really leaving?”

  “Yes, Mano,” she whispered over and over again, but still he couldn’t quite believe it. Milo was listening to his brother’s music. He had understood right away when he heard the waltz in the middle of the night. He’d let himself be talked into leaving.

  Mr. and Mrs. Asseldor were walking huddled against each other. They were thinking of the son they were leaving behind. But not once did they turn around to look at Seldor Farm.

  The house didn’t hold it against them. It watched them leave with the self-effacing manner of old buildings.

  The waltz stopped abruptly.

  What had they done to Mo?

  Lila tugged at Mano’s hand a bit more forcefully. Milo started singing the tune of “Little Sister.” The others joined him, humming. The lichen forest bowed to let them pass. They had just left the Low Branches.

  “Are we leaving?” Mano asked again. “Are we really leaving?”

  Three days later and numerous branches away, little Snow found a walnut in a hole in the bark. She wasn’t sure whether to tell her parents about this extraordinary discovery. The walnut was thirty times bigger than she was.

  Snow had no idea what this giant ball of wood could be, wrinkled as Grandfather Olmech.

  Age three, Snow was forbidden to go far from the house. In any case, what’s the point of going far if you can find marvelous dangers close at hand? Which is how she managed to risk her life every day with the most familiar objects and places. Her parents remembered the cooking pot that she had gone to sleep inside, after putting the lid back on. Lex Olmech was about to light the fire beneath it when he had found her.

  She also liked to roll down the snowy slope of the roof to make a bigger and bigger ball around her that would smash open down below. Snow would let out gleeful shrieks and start all over again.

  This time she had found something better. A walnut balanced in a hole, ready to fall on top of her at the first movement. A walnut as tall as thirty little girls with their arms in the air. Bliss.

  Snow noticed that the strange object was made up of two sections gently pulling apart. This created a slit through which one might be able to see the inside of the ball — enough to arouse the curiosity of the little girl who was getting ready to climb up. She put her foot on the first vein of the walnut. And this tiny person, lighter than a speck of dust, made the shell wobble right away. Snow had no idea that the ball of wood was about to roll on top of her and crush her. She kept on climbing.

 
; The walnut tipped slowly. This globe, one hundred footsteps high, started moving soundlessly. . . .

  At the point where Snow was about to disappear, a hand grabbed her by the collar and pulled her sharply back. The walnut completed its rotation and came to a standstill.

  The little girl looked up at the person who had caught her. It was an old man. He hugged her in his arms. Snow looked at him reproachfully. There was always somebody trying to stop her from having fun.

  “What are you doing here, little one?” asked the man.

  Snow would have liked to ask him the same question.

  They heard a whistle outside the hole. The man answered and two women appeared, followed by two young people, one of whom was very pale.

  “Have you found something?”

  “This!” the man answered, pointing to the little girl.

  The Asseldors looked at Snow as if they’d never seen a three-year-old before. They looked intimidated. Mrs. Asseldor ended up stepping forward, emotionally, and touching the little girl’s cheek as she said, “I think you can tell us where Lex Olmech’s house is, miss.”

  Father Asseldor glanced disapprovingly at his wife. When you’re a fugitive and you’re looking for the house of other fugitives, you don’t ask just anybody the way.

  Snow smiled and did a twirl, at the end of which she found herself on Mr. Asseldor’s shoulders. She wasn’t just anybody. She gave a tiny kick to invite her mount to start walking. They exited the hole.

  The journey lasted five minutes, but this short trip changed a lot of things for old Mr. Asseldor. Feeling this bundle of gentleness on his shoulders, he realized there was nothing else he wanted but this. That his children would have children and that he would have the right to look after them.

  As for everything else, he had given a lot. Work, challenges, he’d had enough. . . . He wanted rest and grandchildren who clambered all over him.

  Sometimes he could feel Snow’s hands in his hair. He was jealous of the grandfather who could be with her every day, introducing her to things just for fun: log cabins, never-ending stories, and music . . .

  The family members were walking one behind the other and only left a single line of tracks.