by Emma Carroll
Once, there was a weather witch whose heart broke. She loved someone, and they died. First she cried, so long and so hard that the clouds pitied her and cried with her. Together they churned the land to mud and swelled the streams to rivers, the lakes to oceans. Towns were washed away; cities sank underwater. The witch had not meant to cause the destruction, and it broke her heart to have harmed so many. Her own dying wish was that one day a green-hearted child would be born who would undo the harm she had done.
When her heart broke, it split into seven pieces, and from each piece grew a tree of a different sort: an apple tree, an oak, a birch, an ash, a walnut, a cedar and a willow. The trees took root in mud at the base of the great churning ocean of tears, spending their sapling years waving thinly as coral beneath the water. The salt, which would normally kill trees, made these seven grow strong and shining as crystal, with leaves as wide as sails. Though the ocean was very deep, the trees grew taller and taller every day, until at last they reached the surface.
When they emerged at the seven corners of the ocean, those people who had survived the flood sighted them. When they reached them, they each believed their tree to be the best, though the trees had more in common than was different.
In time, the people made streets of their boughs and beds of their blossom. They wove great nets from shredded twigs and caught shoals of tuna and swordfish. A few of the people had pocketfuls of dirt and seeds from their gardens – whatever they had saved before they were washed away. In the lowermost branches they grew mushrooms and other things that fed on the dark. At the top they made skygardens, carving hollow troughs in the tree with swordfish swords and planting seeds of lettuce and rhubarb, cabbage and asparagus.
The walnut tree grew walnuts as big as double beds that fed whole families for a week, and the cases could be waterproofed with wax from the bees that nested in the uppermost branches and made into nutcase boats with leaf sails. The apple tree-dwellers had smoked apples, with pips as dark and shiny as beetle eyes, which they split open to collect the poison for arrows, to catch the larger prey of the ocean. The birch and ash towns had ornate staircases weaving from branch to branch like wooden spiders’ webs. The cedar smelled so beautiful when burned that other treeple – as they came to call themselves – came from all around. The oak tree was the favourite of owls, and the inhabitants used their hoots like clocks. And those who lived in the willow wove great baskets to catch the rain and to sleep in.
Occasionally they traded, sailing in their basket boats or walnut cases to swap acorns for honey, cider for willow rope. Soil was valued above all: with soil, they could plant more food, and grow herbs and medicine. So much rain made people sick, even if they were kept dry beneath the canopies of leaves. The damp seeped under their skin, shrivelling them like raisins. Their lungs grew saltmould; their armpits lichen. But over time, they adapted.
And so did their history. At first there were still people who had once lived in towns and cities. They told their children about dry land, dirt and sand beneath their toes and the feeling of sun on their faces, lives lived on the horizontal rather than the vertical. But eventually these became myths, less and less remembered, less and less real. But all remembered the witch, and as one generation passed the stories on to the next, she grew monstrous and cruel, sending the rain on purpose. The origin of the trees was forgotten, her final sacrifice changed into the story of her slaying by a group of determined humans, known as seedkings, who were clever enough to plant the trees before they were flooded.
The clouds wept to see her slandered, and the rain grew harder and more wicked. By the seventieth generation, one thousand and four hundred years since the witch’s heart broke, the children had known only rain. Every sproutday, a new ring was drawn about their heart, so they could mark their growth the same way trees do. Their arms were long and strong for climbing, their skin thick against splinters. Their hair was thick, thatched with salt, their lashes long to keep out rain. The apple-tree children had small teeth, softened by eating so much sugar: those from the walnut towns could crack the hard cases between enamel slabs as strong as rock.
They spoke the same language as their parents, but for different purposes. No one talked about the weather, because the weather was always the same. The oak-dwellers worshipped owls, the cedar treeple had cedar-incense celebrations every quarter cloud, when the sea rose three clean feet, pulled by the unseen moon.
But while they each developed their own culture and customs, none of them could fail to notice that the trees were not growing as fast as the ocean was rising. Where once there had been five thousand feet of tree above the waterline, now there were three thousand. The more the treeple flourished, the less the space. Within another ten generations, they would have to abandon the trees.
This thought made the treeple afraid, and afraid people are often the most dangerous. They began blaming their neighbouring trees for the rising seas. A war, brief as a squall, broke out between oak and birch over fishing rights to the stretch of sea between them. Apple negotiated a peace, but the damage was done. Each of the trees stopped trading with each other, and the treelands descended into uneasy isolation at the seven corners of their shared ocean.
But the clouds remembered the witch’s promise, that one day a child would come along who would undo the harm the witch had unwittingly caused. And when the child was born, it was the clouds who recognised her. They knitted themselves tight as brows, drew darkness into their furrows and murmured in their low, rolling language, bringing evermore rain. And as droplets tapped their tentative warning through the trailing tendrils of the willow, the green-hearted girl took her first breath.
Alba Salix was a tiny thing, whippet thin and slightly green, like new wood. The clouds seemed to crowd lower over her woven crib, peering in and flashing their lightning grins as the chief midwife gave Alba a dot over her heart, around which all future rings would be drawn. Alba wailed, and the clouds wailed back as the midwives drew the leaf-wick curtains closed.
“A sickly podling,” muttered one midwife to another. “Must have some ash sap in her.”
“She may yet sprout,” chided the other. “Give her a quarter cloud.”
And sprout she did. Like all podlings, she was raised by the whole family tree, with many mothers and many fathers. Alba grew no wider, staying crown-thin as a pruned branch, but she was long as a root by her fifth sproutday, towering over her seedmates. The chief midwife did not even have to bend to draw the fifth ring around her heart. Over time, the greenish tinge retreated to her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, and though she suffered the usual ailments growing up – crop-croup, callus-colic, root-rythmia – she was otherwise healthy. Except…
Except there was a seed-small part of her heart that felt wrong. To begin with she hardly noticed it, other than as a shadow under each heartbeat, but as she learned more about the seven-cornered ocean and the treelands, about the evil witch and the good seedkings, the wrongness grew. By her eleventh sproutday, it felt so wrong she fancied that when she knocked her long-fingered fist on her chest it was as hollow as a dead trunk, as brittle as an abandoned bird’s nest.
If it had just been this feeling inside her, she might have been able to ignore it, because we are very good at ignoring ourselves, though we shouldn’t. It took other people saying something was wrong for her to believe it. And others said so, all the time, because just as they had on the first day of her life, the clouds followed her. Just wisps to begin with, indiscernible from breath on a cold day. But year on year, the wisps increased, catching behind her ears and between her toes. As her hollowness increased, so did the clouds.
When Alba reached school-going age, her seedmates insisted on a wax-proofed curtain between them and Alba, because the clouds drew themselves so close to her she was near-constantly enveloped, making her and those around her as damp as the lettuces in the skygarden.
“It’s because you’re so miserable,” her seedmates would tease. “You cry so much, the clouds th
ink you’re one of them.”
They didn’t stop to consider that perhaps it was their teasing that made Alba cry. In fact, Alba rather liked the clouds: it was as if they had chosen her as special to them.
Still, it was a definite inconvenience to constantly live in the damp even when she was inside. Her clothes rotted at the seams, her hair was more frizz than strand. The cloud-coming was especially bad when they studied Wistory: the history of the willow and how it was the first tree planted – though all the treeple claimed theirs was – and, of course, how the rain began. It was already a tricky concept for the pod to grasp: that rain was something that “began” and so perhaps used to “stop”, and some of Alba’s pod questioned the need to be taught it at all.
“It happened so long ago,” they moaned, which was, in essence, the definition of Wistory. “Who cares?”
But Alba cared. She was fascinated by the idea that people had once lived differently, that the ocean had a bottom, and that the sky went on above the clouds. And most of all, she was fascinated by the witch. Whenever the witch was mentioned, Alba felt the hollow in her chest fill a little, and the clouds seemed to swarm around her, making low sounds that could have been whispers if she did not know it was impossible for them to talk.
Except it wasn’t. Clouds talked all the time: rain was one of their languages. They also spoke in thunder and lightning. Sometimes they played charades, so well that before the rain, people cloudgazing could point and say “train” or “sheep”. But very few people could understand them, only weather witches. So Alba could not know what they were trying to say, until the night of her twelfth sproutday.
She always slept apart from the rest of her pod, close to the skygarden in a high-sided woven basket, unwaxed because there was no point in waterproofing it: the clouds seeped in to settle beside her anyway. Lately the clouds had got so thick about her she found that if she lay rigid and wafted her arms in and out, like she was floating, she could guide enough cloud beneath her to almost hover.
She pulled some of it across her eyes to soothe the slight headache that had been building all day. Alba never looked forward to her sproutday: while it was marked with the ring-giving, none of her seedmates came to watch.
“You will though, won’t you?” said Alba to the clouds. She felt a damp coolness press against her ear, like a wet kiss.
Yes.
Alba froze. It was perhaps not quite right that she’d heard the word “yes”. There was no sound like “y” or “e”, and only a slight “s” like the lifting of steam. But Alba understood that it meant “yes”, sure as a nod.
“Did … did you say something?”Alba did not feel silly speaking to the clouds. She always had. It was only that they had never spoken back before.
Yes.
Something swelled in her chest like she had never felt before. Alba felt tears prick at her eyelids and slide down her cheeks, only discernable from rain by their warmth. The clouds sent more water to chase them away, and it felt gentle as a fingertip.
Sorry it took so long to talk to you. We had to wait for you to be older, to be sure you were ready.
“Ready?”Alba wiped her face dry; more rain dampened it almost instantly, dripping off her long green lashes. “Ready for what?”
To fix the witch’s heart.
The warmth of her joy melted. This was definitely a dream.
“All right,” she said, louder this time. “Wake up now.”
We’re awake.
“Not you, me!” Alba pinched the back of her left hand.
She’s confused. The cloud spoke in one voice, but as though it were many.
Alba squeezed her eyes shut. “Dreaming. I’m dreaming.”
When Alba opened her eyes again, the clouds had grouped close to her head, like a concerned pod over a sick child.
You’re the green-hearted child she said would come.
“Green-hearted?”
Good, kind, strong, but still bendable enough to believe. Green.
“I’m not strong.” Alba flexed her sapling-thin arm to show the cloud. “See?”
Green, though. A wisp traced her eyebrows, flowed through her hair. We saw you when you were born. Your heart glowed green right through you. You are the one the witch said would come.
“The witch? The evil witch who caused all this?”
The clouds darkened. Its voice was thundery, rattling Alba’s mind. She meant no harm. She was young and too powerful. She could not undo what she did in her lifetime. But she made the trees, and she made you.
“I’m not witch-made!” said Alba, startled. “And the treelands were planted by the seedkings.”
The clouds rumbled a laugh that blew cold wind up Alba’s nose. She is the trees.
Alba had had enough. She wanted to wake up now. Before she could think better of it she rolled sharply to her left, over and out of her bed basket.
Instantly she realised her mistake. She was not waking up – she was still falling. Her stomach was left behind as she plummeted, the long tendrils of the willow whipping past her. She looked up to the rain-sodden sky, knowing that below her the swirling sea was rushing up to meet her—
And then the clouds were plunging in a great wave, scooping underneath her back and flooding between her grabbing fingers. Thinner, wind-whipped wisps grasped at her hair while more and more cloud funnelled down from the sky until she stopped completely. Then, they began to lift her.
Now do you believe you’re awake?
Alba could only gasp and nod.
Then let us tell you about the witch.
She was flying. They lifted her to the uppermost boughs of the willow and carried her in a slow, drifting circle. The rain fell lightly and soft, like feathers, as the cloud spoke of a good but broken-hearted witch who cried Alba’s world into being, and who promised the world a chance to return to how it was.
And here you are. Just in time, too. The ocean rises yearly.
“Can’t you just stop raining?”
We can no more stop raining than you can stop breathing. She holds us here; her sorrow keeps us.
“Why me? What can I do?”
You can fix her heart.
“How?”
You need to go to the other trees and tell them the truth. To fix her heart, you must make them remember.
Alba finally understood. She had to change people’s minds about the witch. More than that, she had to change their hearts.
Alba sat carefully up on the cloud. “All right. Where first?”
Ash is closest. The cloud seemed to shimmer with gladness. Hold on.
Cloud flying was the scariest thing Alba had ever known. It was not the height – no treeple were scared of heights – but the speed. It peeled back her lips from her teeth and her eyelids from her eyes and made whiplashes of the rain. They went so fast the cloud tore itself to pieces and was constantly having to re-form beneath her. It would dissolve under her hands like applefloss and she would begin a slow-motion plummet until it reassembled thickly enough to support her again.
But cloud flying was also the most startlingly wonderful thing Alba had ever known. The clouds carried her so high she fancied she could almost see their end and the moon beyond. She saw the great far-off masts of the other treelands, spiking along the horizon like points on an uneven sundial.
They reached Ash three raincycles after Alba’s twelfth sproutday. The cloud deposited her gently on the midbough, and Alba’s legs had forgotten how to stand. She collapsed forward through a thick wall of leaves, face-first into an Ash-woman’s seedsoup.
“Great Mulch!” cried a woman’s voice. When Alba blinked up at her, green eyelashes dripping, she saw that she looked like Willowfolk, not monstrous as her teachers taught them. Only their clothes were different: Alba’s were woven, but the Ash-woman’s were a series of interlocking discs of wafer-thin wood.
“Where in rain’s name did you come from?” said the woman, recovering herself and helping Alba to her unsteady feet.
“How on tree did you get here?” said the woman, parting the thick wall of leaves and peering out. The clouds seeped in through the gap and swirled into Alba’s ears.
Tell her the truth.
So Alba did. “The clouds brought me.”
The woman blinked slowly, and then smiled a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Did you fall, dear? Did you bang your head?”
“No, they really did!” said Alba, about to go on when the clouds in her ears said No. She’s not the heart. Find someone who believes.
Alba steadied herself just in time, turning to look back at the Ash-woman. She looked back with suspicious eyes, as though Alba was dangerous. She knew what the clouds meant: the woman did not seem the sort of person who would believe in the witch’s tale.
“You’re right,” said Alba. “Sorry, just a little dazed.” She edged past the woman.
She felt the woman’s eyes on her until she reached the trunk and, not seeing that she had a choice, began climbing. The ash’s branches were spaced a lot further apart than the willow’s, but with Alba’s long arms it wasn’t too much of a problem. She climbed and climbed until she reached the top of the ash. To her great surprise she found a skygarden there, though the Willowfolk were taught from podlings that they were a Willow invention. She plucked a small lettuce leaf from the nearest plot and was just about to munch it down when something landed in her lap.
A seed, said the clouds. An ash seed.
“But how did it fall up?” asked Alba.