The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  They went on in a tense silence for a while. A brief rain fell out of the churning, restless sky and then quickly drew off, leaving a humid mist behind. The towers of the city loomed closer. Finally the woman seemed unable to contain herself, and she spoke to Rowen.

  “What’s your name, child?” she asked.

  Rowen glanced at Will, who gave a barely perceptible shrug.

  “I’m Rowen. I’m from a place called the Bourne. Have you heard of it?”

  “Rowen’s a pretty name,” the woman said. “How did you end up out here? Does your family know where you are?”

  “The friends we’re looking for are sometimes called the Fair Folk,” Rowen said. “Or the Tain Shee. Have you ever heard of them?”

  The woman gave the driver an odd glance, as if happily surprised, then she turned back to Rowen.

  “Fair Folk, yes,” she said with a strange smile.

  “You know them?” Rowen exclaimed.

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said with matching eagerness. “We’ve heard of them.”

  “We think they came this way, but we’re not sure,” Rowen went on. “We’re not really sure where we are at all. Nothing looks familiar to us. What do you call this country?”

  “We don’t call it anything,” the woman said. “We’re not from here, either. But if you’re looking for Fair Folk, you’re in luck. That’s us.”

  Rowen frowned. “You are not,” she said angrily. “You can’t be. We … we would know it. You would know us.”

  “We’re the Fair Folk,” the woman said firmly. “That’s what we’re called. Ain’t we, Vardo?”

  The red-haired giant, who had yet to say anything at all, nodded solemnly.

  “This caravan has seen better days, it’s true, but it was once part of the Great Travelling Circus of the Plains, and so were we,” the woman said importantly, confirming Will’s guess. “But nobody ever called us that other name you said. Tain …”

  “Tain Shee,” Rowen said. “They’re not circus folk.”

  The woman shrugged. “There are people from all over at the camp. Some are travelling performers like we was. Some ain’t. Some of them might be your Tain Shee, I suppose. But everyone calls our camp the Fair,” she went on, “because you can trade anything for anything there. And there’s music and magicians and rope walkers.” She shrugged. “So that makes us the Fair Folk, don’t it? Anyhow, you’ll see when we get there. You’ll see what it’s like, and maybe … maybe you’ll want to stay. That is, if she allows it.”

  “She?” Rowen asked.

  “The Witch,” the woman said, lowering her voice. “We didn’t tell you that before. Maybe we should have. But you needn’t be afraid. The Witch won’t do you no harm if you’re good and don’t do nobody no harm yourself. She watches over everyone in the camp and makes sure nothing bad gets in. She looks after us Fair Folk. She’s our protector.”

  “Or our keeper,” the driver muttered.

  “None of that now, Arn,” the woman snapped with a sideways scowl at the driver. “We’d be dead or scattered by now if it wasn’t for the Witch. That’s why you should come with us to the camp. It’s the only safe place to be around these parts. There’s bad folk wandering these roads. Robbers. Murderers. And worse things. The Witch will protect you, too, if she decides you can stay.”

  “We won’t be staying,” Rowen said.

  “Child,” the woman said, shaking her head. “You just don’t know yet. You don’t know how it is. There ain’t nowhere else to go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone you meet on these roads is lost. All of us was going someplace else and ended up here, instead. Sometimes a few try to find the way home again, but they always return to the camp. It’s like the roads never go nowhere except around in circles.”

  Rowen and Will shared a troubled glance.

  “Your families must be worried about the both of you,” the woman said. “Did you run away from home?”

  “We didn’t run away,” Rowen said. “We meant to come here, to find our friends. Tell us more about this Witch.”

  “She sees and knows more than anyone. Maybe she can tell you where your friends might be. If she’ll speak with you, that is. She don’t speak to almost no one. Least that I know of it.”

  “And that’s a good thing,” the driver said.

  “You shouldn’t be talking like that, Arn,” the woman said with an edge of fear in her voice. “You don’t know she can’t hear you.”

  “All the way out here?”

  “Even if she can’t, she can tell what’s in someone’s heart. You know that.”

  “I do. I’ve seen it. She protects the camp, it’s true, but—”

  “But nothing,” the woman snapped. “There ain’t no more to say about it.”

  The man shook his head angrily but made no reply.

  The news that these people called themselves the Fair Folk gave Will and Rowen much to think about. Did it mean they had lost the Tain Shee entirely and were following a false trail that would lead them nowhere? It seemed there was only one thing to do: keep going and hope to get some answers.

  The road crossed a rusting metal bridge over a dried-up stream bed. On the far side the pavement gave way to an uneven track of sand and gravel. The caravan jolted and rocked as it trundled along, the wheels grinding on the rough surface. The noise kept the woman from speaking to Rowen and Will for the time being, though clearly she still wished to. Instead she began to croon a wordless melody that rose and fell along with the rhythmic creaking of the caravan’s wheels. The strongman grinned open-mouthed as she sang.

  They crossed a train yard, where the caravan juddered and bounced over rusty rail lines. Brown and dull green train cars decorated with colourful but unreadable graffiti sat here and there on some of the tracks. The air was smoky, metallic tasting. Not far off rose the skeletal silhouettes of what Will guessed were electrical transmission towers marching off into the distance. Faint but recognizable sounds came to him now, as well: the surf-like roar of traffic, the whoop and wail of sirens, other distant rumbles and hisses of machinery, all of it merging into the background noise of a city, a kind of mechanical breathing so familiar that once you were used to it you didn’t even hear it anymore. Familiar to him, anyhow. He glanced at Rowen and saw concern on her face, and realized that these distant noises were strange and alarming to her.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Where I come from that’s what a city sounds like.”

  Yet there were no vehicles on the road and no other people anywhere in sight. Will didn’t know what to make of that. If not for the distant noise of its life, he would have said the city was abandoned.

  On the far side of the train yard they came to a chain-link fence. One section had been dismantled or had fallen down, leaving a gap wide enough for the caravan to pass through.

  Beyond the fence lay a straight asphalt road lined with squat, windowless buildings. Warehouses or storage sheds of some kind, Will thought, though they looked more like mausoleums in a graveyard.

  “Where are all the people?” he wondered aloud to Rowen. “There should be people. Lots of them.”

  It was like a derelict neighbourhood in the cities of his own world, Will thought, except for the tall grass growing along the sides of the road. There were even a few stunted trees growing up right out of the pavement in places, as if the city and the natural world had somehow clashed here and neither had given way completely.

  By the side of the road ahead, half hidden in the tall grass, were what looked to Will at first like three large reddish-brown boulders lined up in a row. As he and the caravan got closer, he realized they were cars—or the remains of cars. They were badly rusted, the glass was gone from all the windows and most of their tires were gone. Will saw Rowen’s baffled look and as they passed, he quickly explained what they were.

  “They’re sort of like carriages,” he told her. “Like this caravan, except they don’t need a horse to pull them. They
have an engine inside that moves them.”

  “Engine,” Rowen echoed. “I’ve heard that word before but not for something like this. An engine is something used in war to break down gates or walls …”

  Her voice trailed off and a frightened look came into her eyes. Will guessed her thoughts had gone to the same place his had: what was happening in Fable? It was hard to say how much time had gone by while they’d been in the Weaving. For all they knew the armoured fetches were already at the gates of Rowen’s city. Yet here he and Rowen were, following these strange folk through this deserted, nameless land, seemingly no closer to finding the Fair Folk and the way to the Shadow Realm.

  The road ended at a high wooden fence plastered with faded posters for music concerts and theatre performances. Beyond the fence rose the abandoned shell of a building. Its windows were devoid of glass, and bits of yellow insulation and tangles of wiring hung from many of them. The road did not really end here, Will saw, but branched now to their left and right. Neither direction appeared any more inviting than the other.

  The driver took the caravan to the left and at last they reached a gap in the high fence.

  “Here it is,” the woman said. “The Fair.”

  Beyond the fence lay an open space, a large square field across which were scattered a motley collection of patched and faded tents, lean-tos and shelters, most made of unmatched scraps of wood and topped with canvas or plastic tarpaulins. There were many people milling about the camp, though, engaged in all sorts of activity: some were tending cooking fires, some hanging washing on lines, others putting up or repairing some of the shelters. A gang of small shrieking children were kicking a ball around on a flat patch of dusty bare earth. There was a garden patch to one side, and geese and chickens in pens, and they could hear the bleating of sheep and the barking of dogs. Around the entire camp ran a fence like the one they had just been following.

  Despite the strangeness of the surroundings, Will recognized almost at once what he was seeing. The news at home in his world often showed such places. The Fair was a refugee camp.

  But as they passed through the opening in the fence, Will noticed other things that made this unlike any refugee camp he had seen: banners; colourful decorations hung from posts and tent poles; and the way that many of the people were dressed, in bright clothes and hats, as if they were getting ready for some kind of celebration.

  At the far end of the camp stood a long platform of painted wood, really the bed of a wagon, Will saw after a moment’s examination, with its wheels removed and replaced by wooden piles. The platform was topped with a curtained wooden frame and at the back hung a dark blue cloth painted with stars. A stage, Will realized.

  Beyond the stage and the fence rose a tall building that Will immediately thought would have been an old-fashioned grand hotel in his world, with its stone facade, peaked green roof and gabled windows. The appearance of such a building here was so unexpected that Will could only think the hotel had been uprooted from some elegant street in another place and time and dropped here by accident.

  When the caravan passed through the entrance, a young boy standing nearby shouted what might have been a warning or a greeting, in a language Will didn’t know, and ran off. Other people came out of the tents to see what was going on. At the sight of Will, Rowen and Shade, the people gawked, especially at Shade.

  The boy returned with a tall grey-bearded man wearing a sheepskin coat and leading a large black mastiff on a leash. The boy halted some way off from the caravan, but the man strode right up. A knot of smaller children gathered around the boy and curiously eyed the newcomers.

  “Who have you brought with you, Arn?” the tall man demanded. The mastiff strained against the leash and growled when it saw Shade.

  “It’s all right, Holt,” the driver said. “They’re just looking for friends of theirs.”

  “What about the …” the man began. He was apparently about to say dog, then he had a closer look at Shade, his eyes narrowing, and he shook his head. “That animal isn’t coming in here.”

  “He won’t hurt no one, Holt,” the woman said, rising from the seat. “And you know she’ll have them out of here if there’s any trouble. No need to worry yourself. Go back to your workbench.”

  The man named Holt studied Will, Rowen and Shade for a long moment, then shrugged.

  “Very well,” he said, “but Arn, you’re responsible for them. Don’t forget that.”

  He tugged the mastiff’s leash sharply and marched off without another word. The crowd began to clear away and go back to their own business as Arn brought the caravan to a halt not far from the gate. He and the others climbed down, while Will, Rowen and Shade waited nearby. Some of the children had gone off with the man called Holt, but a few were still milling around, interested more in Shade than anything else. Arn had begun to unhitch the horse, then he paused and shouted at the children to clear off and they finally wandered away.

  “These are friends, Hulda,” the woman said to a frightened, ancient-looking face peeping through the flap of the nearest tent.

  “Thank you for letting us come with you,” Rowen said. “We’ll leave you be now and go search for our friends.”

  The woman turned to Rowen with a beseeching look.

  “We’ll be having our dinner soon,” she said. “You should stay. Have something to eat, I mean.” She gestured to a nearby firepit surrounded by crude benches made of split logs. “You can sit there.”

  Rowen shook her head. “We really have to go now. It’s a big camp and—”

  “Bigger than it appears from here,” the woman agreed quickly. “And you’re both tired from the road. Sit and rest and I’ll get Vardo to fetch the Scholar.” She said the word importantly, like a title. “That’s who you need to see. The Scholar keeps a record of everyone who comes to the camp. He’ll know if your friends are here. Better than wandering around asking everyone questions. Go ahead now. Sit.”

  With a droop of her shoulders Rowen gave in and sat down on one of the benches. Will was relieved. He was worn out from the long walk and he knew Rowen was about to drop from weariness, though she was trying not to show it. She met his eyes and he nodded his agreement and sat down beside her. Shade hunkered down close to them.

  The woman smiled and spoke to Vardo, who lumbered off down the main thoroughfare of the camp. Then, with another intense look at Rowen, she climbed into the caravan. The driver brought a bundle of thin sticks to the firepit and soon had a crackling fire going. He set a small iron kettle on the grate over the firepit. Shade, as they had agreed when they first met the caravan, sat silently nearby like an obedient dog, ignoring the man’s many nervous glances.

  Will had noticed that ever since they’d entered the camp, Rowen had become quiet and withdrawn. Now he saw that she was shaking her head slowly as if to drive away some troubling thought.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “They were here,” Rowen said. “The Fair Folk.”

  “You’ve seen that?”

  “I’m seeing it right now,” Rowen said desperately. “They were here. But it was somewhere else. Or this place was different. I don’t understand.”

  “What do you see?”

  Before Rowen could answer, the woman reappeared, carrying a big cast-iron pot, which she set beside the kettle on the grate.

  “It’s only leftover stew from yesterday,” she said apologetically, “but it’ll fill you up.”

  “So you don’t know what this country is called?” Rowen asked her.

  “Like I said, if it has a name, we don’t know it. But I don’t think it does, because the Scholar says it’s between places. Or it’s bits and pieces of many different places, all sort of jumbled together somehow. Like a lot of voices all speaking at the same time so you can’t understand what anyone’s saying. It’s a kind of … what does the Scholar call it, Arn?”

  “Limbo,” Arn said.

  “Yes, limbo,” the woman echoed. “And if there’s a
way out, no one’s found it yet.”

  “You said you were on your way somewhere else when you ended up here. Where were you going?”

  “Away,” the woman said, and now a look of immense sadness fell over her lined features. She seemed suddenly bowed by a great weight.

  “Away?” Rowen echoed quietly.

  The woman slowly stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. It seemed she wasn’t going to answer Rowen’s question, then finally she spoke.

  “Folk never trusted us where we’re from. Never. Oh, they came to our shows, all right, and bought our potions and remedies, but they never trusted us or let us stay for long in their towns. They called us thieves and sorcerers. Then the weather changed. Lots of storms. Too much rain. The crops rotted in the fields and folk went hungry. Some started blaming us, the travelling folk, for what was happening, and that idea caught on quick. One night they came with torches to burn the caravans. Only a few of us got away. Only a few.”

  She looked searchingly at Rowen.

  “My Hana,” she said. “She had long hair. Not like yours, no. It was dark, dark hair. In curls. Beautiful curls, like mine used to be. But she was about your age, maybe a bit younger. And she was a sharp one. She spoke her mind like you. Didn’t she, Arn?”

  The driver, busy brushing down the horse, gave a short, mirthless laugh.

  “What happened to her?” Rowen asked.

  The woman stared into the fire.

  “The ones that came to burn our caravans—they took young girls. They took my Hana.”

  “We don’t know that, Mother,” Arn said, and in his voice they heard a very old argument. “She might’ve got away. She could have escaped.”

  “She could have escaped,” the woman echoed without conviction. “But she didn’t leave with us and now we can’t find the way back. We can’t look for her. She might be out there looking for us, too. And we’re here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rowen said.