The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  Faith tiptoed her father’s room, fairly confident that she was now unlikely to be interrupted in the ‘haunted’ chamber. There she found a case holding her father’s field kit. It contained his little brass field microscope, corked jars for trapping insects, a tin box or ‘vasculum’ for botanic samples, bottles of different acids for testing rocks, a little compass clinometer, a goniometer and calipers. Another box held a niche where his pistol should have been, some lead shot, a bag of copper percussion caps, a dismounting key and small powder flask. She also scavenged a small metal ruler, a battered old pocket watch and a folding knife.

  Low tide was an hour later than it had been two days before. She made her compromise with the light and tide, heading a little later than before, but not the full hour, for she did not dare face the journey in the full dark.

  It was in the darker twilight that she crept out of the house in her ruined funeral clothes, flitted between the outhouses and hastened down the path to the beach.

  The current was stronger than it had been on Faith’s last little voyage, but for now it was with her. Her aggrieved muscles were grateful for this as they strained at the oars.

  The strange boom of the breakers echoing within the cliff was welcoming to her, like the deep-throated bark of a guard dog that knew her. This time the lurching wave that drove her boat into the cave mouth filled her with a fizz of excitement instead of fear.

  She tethered the boat and clambered back to the Lie Tree’s cavern, taking care not to jolt her lantern or the field case. The split seams around her shoulders let her move her arms more freely, making it easier to climb.

  Before entering the cavern with the Tree, she stopped to drape her shawl over the lantern. Too much radiance would injure the plant, but her father had succeeded in sketching it, so it must be able to endure some light. The lantern now gave off a much duller glow, but just enough to light her way.

  As Faith entered the cavern, she thought she heard a welcoming rush of sighs, a susurration of recognition. She could just make out the outline of the Tree, a blot of blackness that seemed larger than before.

  ‘I have returned,’ Faith whispered to it, then stopped herself. She was talking to botanic specimens again.

  As she drew closer, her eyes adjusting to the dark, she could no longer delude herself. It was not a trick of the shadows. The plant had grown.

  Reaching out, she could feel that its bristling creeper-like tendrils were now spilling over the side of the pot. She followed them by touch as they splayed out across the stone shelf like octopus tentacles, some drooping down over the edge towards the cavern floor. Beneath the leaves the undulating vine was thick and woody, as if it had been growing for some time.

  ‘That is impossible’, breathed Faith. She had never seen a plant grow so fast, let alone without sunlight. ‘That . . . is not obeying the laws.’

  Her voice sounded absurd even to her. Was she expecting the plant to apologize and become obediently rational?

  She swallowed and took out her father’s folding knife. ‘I am sorry about this,’ she whispered, ‘but I am here to study you.’

  While the soft cacophony of wave-roars and rock-sighs billowed about her ears, Faith began examining the plant. There was too little light for her to take measurements with her ruler and calipers, but she managed to take rubbings of the leaf veins using pencil and paper. She cut samples of forked leaves, spines and pieces of bark, then scraped away a blob of oozing sap, putting each specimen into a separate jar. It was an unnerving task, and Faith felt as though she were trimming the toenails of a dragon. She even waved the compass around the Tree, squinting at the dial to see whether she could detect magnetic fields.

  All the while, as she stroked her fingers through the leaves, she was searching for a flower, a bud, anything. In her father’s sketches the flowers had been white, so she hoped they might show up even in the darkness. She squinted at the plant from all sides, at first slowly and methodically, then with increasingly desperation.

  There was nothing. Perhaps there never could be anything. Perhaps the Lie Tree was itself a lie.

  She felt utterly crushed and foolish. Only now did she realize how certain she had been that the plant would not betray her, and that she would find something.

  Then, as she gave the foliage one more despairing pat, something small and round fell from one of the tendrils. It bounced off the rim of the pot, landed on her skirt and rolled down the slope of the fabric.

  Faith gave a squawk of panic. She snatched at it, and was just fast enough to catch it between two of her knuckles. She let out a long breath. If it had bounced away into the darkness, she would probably never have found it again.

  The Tree had not let her down after all. The tiny fruit was half an inch across, and wore some cream-coloured, papery tatters that looked like the dried-out remains of a flower. It was perfectly round and textured like lemon peel. She could just make out pale streaks against its dark hide.

  Faith could only hope that it was ripe. She could scarcely glue it back on to the Tree.

  She hesitated. It was tempting to take the fruit back to her own room, so that she could eat it in relative safety. At Bull Cove, however, she would run the risk of being discovered semiconscious and yellow-eyed. Here at least she had privacy.

  Her mind was made up. She would eat the fruit here and now, in the cave.

  Everything needed to be observed properly and methodically, including her own reactions.

  Faith found a ‘seat’ in the entrance cave where the boat was tied. Here she could sit with her back against a stone pillar where a stalagmite and stalactite had melded into one. She removed the lantern’s coverings to give herself more light. Her little hand mirror she propped on a ledge, so that she could see her own face reflected. Using the battered pocket watch she timed her own pulse. It was rapid, and she realized that she was frightened.

  She sat down, and lashed herself to the stone pillar using a damp rope from the boat. She did not know sailor’s knots, but she hoped it would be enough to stop her wandering into the sea in a drugged daze.

  Faith made a note of the time on the clock. She laid her notebook and pens on a stone shelf within reach. Then she took her knife and very carefully cut the Lie fruit in half.

  Instantly the cold smell became so intense that she winced. Blinking as her eyes stung, she held up the fruit to examine it more closely. The flesh seemed to be made up of dozens of tiny juice-filled cells, like that of a lemon, but a deep, rich red.

  A dribble of juice ran down Faith’s hand on to her wrist, and reflexively she raised her hand to her mouth and licked it off. The taste was searingly bitter, worm-juice and rotten walnuts. Her tongue went numb. Pins and needles spread through the skin of her mouth.

  Faith did not give her resolve a chance to falter. With her thumbnail she eased the red flesh of the fruit free from the peel. It came away trailing downy white strands like spider web. Bracing herself, she pushed the red pulp into her mouth.

  She tasted bitter ice, and her throat tightened. Only by covering her mouth with both hands did she stop herself gagging and spitting the fruit out again. She struggled to swallow, and briefly the pulp was a clinging sour mass at the base of her tongue. Then she forced it down, shuddering and grimacing.

  It was done. She had eaten the fruit. It was too late to turn back. Almost immediately her fears set upon her.

  She could feel the cooling slither of the fruit flesh down her throat, then a numb tingling started to spread through her chest. Faith drew in breath after hasty breath, and each was a little harder than the last. It felt like somebody was stealthily drawing in the laces of her corset, a little at a time, cutting off her air.

  There was a sound in her ears that she hardly recognized as her own heartbeat, a whump, whump, whump like a carpet being beaten. Her tongue and throat were paper dry. Before her eyes, colours deepened, darkened and crawled with motion. It came to her that the world was a tapestry, and she was watching it being e
aten by black beetles.

  She was in a tunnel, racing ever faster into darkness, while great black wheels spun and hummed on either side of her, and the world shook with a heartbeat quake . . .

  She was fighting it, fighting the darkness and drum of it, the helpless swoop and fall of it, and the fight was terror. She fought to keep the light, her wits, her control, and screamed inside as she felt all of these things pulled away from her like petals . . .

  . . . and then they were gone, and there was no more panic. Only a deep and silent soul-fear rolling on like unheard thunder, too strange and strong for her to really feel it.

  Faith walked through a midnight forest. The trees were pure white, and rose high above her head, disappearing into a blue-black darkness. There was no wind, and yet the snow-white leaves shivered and whispered.

  She raised one hand to push aside low-hanging foliage, and felt her fingertips brush paper. The trees were flat and pale. The ragged-torn ferns stroked the skin of her hands, paper-cutting her, slyly cruel.

  She was not alone.

  Beside her walked a figure, warmly familiar. She could hear the crunch of foliage under heavy boots. Then there was a snuffled exhalation that she recognized.

  ‘Uncle Miles,’ she said aloud. ‘Uncle Miles, why are we here?’

  ‘It is all for the best,’ came the answer. ‘The very best.’ His voice sounded strange. It was droning and slack, like that of a sleepwalker.

  ‘I know this place!’ Faith felt a gnawing sense of familiarity, but it brought unease, not reassurance. ‘We do not belong here! Why did you bring us here?’ Out of the corner of her eye she could just make out the plum-coloured cloth of her uncle’s coat. The moonlight fell unevenly, and he was only visible in fits and starts.

  ‘They promised me . . .’ murmured Uncle Miles.

  ‘Who? What did they promise you?’ Faith turned to face her uncle, and found that she could hardly see him. He was flat, perfectly flat, and from the side she could see only a paper-thin edge.

  ‘The fellows at the Royal Academy laugh at me,’ moaned the flattened shape. ‘I hear them. At the clubs. Old Miles – he never gets his name on a paper, never gives a lecture, never names a species. Follows his brother-in-law around like a dog. I needed to bring him here. They asked me . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gripped by apprehension, Faith seized her uncle’s arm and pulled him around to face her.

  His eyes were crude splotches of Indian ink, his mouth a smiling smear. The broken moonlight glimmered on his clumsy, sausage-like hands and the rough spirals that patterned his waistcoat. From top to toe he was a childish drawing, but one that narrowed its blot-eyes and leaned forward to peer into her face.

  ‘They wanted Erasmus,’ said the ink mouth, flexing and undulating. ‘They only ever want Erasmus . . .’

  ‘Who? What do you mean?’ Faith gripped her uncle’s arm more tightly, and to her horror felt it crumple under her grip. She released it and stepped back, but her uncle was emitting a thin hiss. His long, papery arms reached for her, one now deformed and creased.

  ‘Tell me!’ Faith struck out in a rage born of terror. Her slap caught his arm, and ripped it from his shoulder. The great paper head lurched towards her, and she lashed out, ripping a great tear in it, through one eye and down his cheek.

  ‘Always Erasmus,’ he hissed. ‘So I brought him to them.’

  And he was so horrible, so misshapen, swaying there before her, that Faith struck out again and again, tearing and ripping and rending. Fragments of Uncle Miles drifted on the air like snowflakes and streamers. At last all that was left was a paper mouth, fluttering like a butterfly, still shaping doleful, slack words. She caught it between her fingers, pinching it cruelly and stretching it almost to tearing point.

  ‘What have you done?’ she demanded.

  ‘They promised that I could take part in the excavation,’ whined the mouth. ‘My name would appear on their paper. Recognition, at last! But only if I could persuade Erasmus to come too. He had already turned them down. It was hard to convince him . . . but then there was the scandal. I saw my chance. Vane is my chance.’

  You used us!’ exclaimed Faith. ‘You brought us here to help yourself! You just wanted to join the excavation! Why did they ask for father? Why?’

  But she tugged too hard on his grimacing mouth, and it tore.

  Looking desperately around, Faith saw another familiar figure in the distance. The sight of it filled her with a hot, welling sorrow, and she could not for that moment remember why.

  ‘Father!’ she called, and ran through the paper forest after the receding shape.

  The figure moved away from her faster than she could run. It seemed to glide, and she had the uncanny feeling that its legs were not moving.

  ‘Father, wait for me! There is something wrong! We are not supposed to be here!’

  She thought he might slow. She thought he might turn. Neither of these things happened. Instead there was a disturbance in the foliage above, a scattering of paper leaves, and then a great shadow hand reached down into the woodland.

  Faith screamed out a warning. The sound of the scream went on and on, even when she had no more breath to give it. Her father’s head was crushed between a great finger and thumb. For a moment she saw him, staggering, half of his head a mangled mess. Then the hand closed into a fist around him, and dragged him upward out of view.

  ‘No!’ Faith sprinted forward. ‘Bring him back!’ And then, as she heard sounds of rending from above, ‘I will kill you! I will kill you!’

  There was a pause. Craning upward, Faith could just make out a huge dark shape amid the tree cover, silhouetted against the star-freckled sky. Above her, foliage rustled, boughs creaked and thwacked. Dry white leaves fell on to her upturned face. The hand was coming down again.

  Then, and only then, did black terror consume Faith. She looked down, and for the first time saw her own body properly, a ragged girl-dress outline criss-crossed with wild black scribbles. She was paper. She could be ripped apart with ease. She had made a terrible mistake.

  She dropped to the dark ground and wriggled under the white ferns, wincing as she felt herself crumple and slightly tear. She lay there stiller than still, while the great hand felt its way blindly through the forest. Looking for the source of the screamed threat. Looking for her.

  Seconds drew themselves out to breaking point. Faith’s heartbeat seemed to be slowing too but getting louder, sending vibrations through the ground. The pallor of the trees was trembling and fading, the shadows encroaching. Then somewhere above, the moon guttered and went out, and all was darkness.

  CHAPTER 21:

  SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION

  Roar and hiss. Roar and hiss. Faith did not know where she was, except that she was somewhere cold and painful. There was a clammy ache in her limbs and neck.

  She opened her eyes a slit, and blinked at a blurred vista of shadowy stone. After a few blinks the pale blobs became stalagmites, and the dark smudges became openings to other caverns. Faith was still slumped against the pillar, the rope digging into her waist.

  Faith was shivering. Everything ached. Her mouth was dry and tasted of lime and bile. Even her eyes felt dry, and her lids rubbed awkwardly when she blinked. However, she had survived.

  Her dream was still a shadow in her mind. She blinked as her fuddled thoughts tried to disentangle reality from the strands of phantasm.

  Faith remembered tearing Uncle Miles to pieces . . . but that had not happened, she realized with unutterable relief. She was not in a paper wood, and a giant hand was not looking for her. She had not seen her father die. Then she remembered that he really was dead, however, and felt a tumbling sense of loss.

  She pressed her fists against her temple, trying to squeeze thoughts from her numb brain. A great hand reaching down into a bone-white forest . . . there was something familiar about that image. It had been eerie because it should have been comforting, harmless, comical . . .

  ‘Howa
rd’s theatre,’ she whispered, as realization struck. ‘I was in the forest of Howard’s toy theatre.’

  Faith’s lantern had burned itself out, and yet she could still make out her surroundings. Pale light was seeping in through cave’s seaward entrance. She fumbled for her pocket watch. To her horror, it was five in the morning.

  She needed to leave! If she was not back soon, she would be missed and asked a thousand questions to which there were no good answers. Then she remembered the Tree. She could not leave until she had fed it another lie.

  With numb, trembling hands she managed to unpick the knots in the rope and struggled free. When she hauled herself to her feet, the cavern danced ring-a-roses for a moment. Steadying herself with one hand against the wall, Faith tottered to the entrance of the larger cavern and gazed into the darkness. She could just make out the inky outline of the Tree.

  What could she say? Her vision had not identified her father’s murderer. What had she learned?

  Until now, she had assumed that the killer must be somebody her father had angered since arriving in Vane – a frustrated cockler, a friend or relation of the boy maimed in the gin-trap or somebody angered by the treatment of Jeanne. If her vision had shown her the truth, however, somebody had planned to kill her father long before the Sunderly family arrived on the island. Whoever they were, they had persuaded Uncle Miles to bring his brother-in-law to Vane, and into a trap. They had played on Uncle Miles’s ambition, and he had snapped up the bait.

  If this was true, then one thing was certain. The murderer had to be somebody involved with the excavation. Who else could have bribed Uncle Miles with the offer of an invitation? Perhaps the incident with the malfunctioning basket had not been an accident at all. After all, who could have guessed that Faith and Howard would be ones to ride in it, rather than their esteemed father?

  There were three keen natural scientists involved in the excavation – Lambent, Clay and Dr Jacklers.

  Faith weighed each of them in her mind. Lambent seemed too boisterous and uncontrolled for cold-blooded assassination. Then she remembered the neat precision of his curiosity cabinet, the immaculate labels, the pristine evidence of an ordered mind. There was more to him than met the eye then. His bluster might be sheath to a dangerous knife.