The Trees

by Ali Shaw

  ‘Don’t you remember? The one about the fairy queen?’

  He scratched his head. ‘Oh. You don’t mean a fairy story. You mean a play. That was A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘Hang on a second.’ Then she flopped back onto the earth and covered herself in one of Eoin’s jumpers, which he had left her for a blanket. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘comfy.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘That means I’m ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘My story, of course.’

  Adrien sighed. ‘Don’t you remember it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then close your eyes and picture it as hard as you can.’

  Nora snorted with derision. ‘That’s stupid. You’re not a storyteller.’

  ‘I never claimed to be.’

  ‘Daddy says that all teaching is storytelling.’

  ‘Adrien says that all sailing is talking out of your arse.’

  She giggled. ‘Daddy won’t like that.’

  ‘Please don’t tell him I said it.’

  ‘You swear more than the others.’

  ‘Someone’s got to swear the most.’

  ‘But why is it you?’

  Adrien stabbed at the blazing logs. They rolled and fountained sparks, and the smoke hissed and fumed towards the woodland. ‘I swear,’ said Adrien, meaning it, ‘because I must.’

  ‘You don’t must anything.’

  ‘That’s what you think. You wait until you’re my age.’

  She screwed up her nose. ‘I can’t even imagine it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘If you want,’ she said, ‘it could just be a real-life story. You have to know one of those.’

  And, quick as crackling wood, a story came to him. ‘You really want one of those, huh?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘You know the endings are different in real-life stories?’

  ‘Of course I know that.’

  ‘Well, then, it goes like this . . . It was the evening of our third wedding anniversary. Michelle had cooked me coq au vin, which is my favourite, and after we had eaten it she pushed a present towards me across the table.’

  ‘How had she wrapped it?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t remember. Red paper, maybe. Or maybe it was silver.’

  ‘Bow or no bow?’

  ‘No bow. How am I supposed to remember that? I tend to open presents quickly.’

  ‘I tend to do it very slowly. Carry on.’

  ‘For you, Michelle said. To say thank you for these three wonderful years. And may there be many more. I could tell from the shape and weight of the present that it was a book, but I hadn’t expected anything. I hadn’t even bought her a present.’

  ‘Shame on you.’

  ‘Thanks, Nora. Anyway, Michelle was very excited about giving it to me. Be careful when you unwrap it, she said. Don’t just tear in blindly. You don’t want to damage it. So . . . I peeled back the paper.’ Adrien sat up straight, the firelight playing across his face. ‘Yes! Yes, it did have a ribbon! It was in green paper with a golden bow! I don’t know how I’d forgotten.’

  Nora wriggled her feet.

  ‘When I pulled the book out of its wrappings it was very old. A faded brown cover and pages dry as sandpaper. But age had made it beautiful, I thought. Michelle was grinning from ear to ear. It’s what we watched on our honeymoon, she said, as if I needed a reminder.’

  He remembered tracing his fingers over the cover illustration. The antiquity of the binding had been so pleasant to the touch.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Nora, stifling a yawn.

  ‘It was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That was the book, the script of the play. I asked her how old it was, and where did she find it? One hundred years, she said. And in Edinburgh.’

  The cover had shown, in Art Nouveau’s pure winding lines, Titania the fairy queen caressing the cheek of Bottom the weaver, whose head had been transformed to that of an ass. In the queen’s hair and gown were leaves and twigs and flowers, so artfully incorporated that in places she seemed made out of the very forest itself. And as for Bottom, even though his expression was that of a stubborn beast, he looked very much in love.

  ‘A hundred years,’ said Nora softly, and the years turned into another yawn.

  ‘That’s right. A hundred years. And she’d gone all the way to Edinburgh to collect it.’

  ‘Edinburgh,’ she half-repeated, half-yawned.

  ‘Edinburgh. I asked her, When? She said Last weekend, when I told you I was away with work. She’d driven up there on Saturday and back on Sunday morning. Apparently the dealer refused flat out to post it, in case it got damaged.’

  The light was fading quickly now, and Nora breathed her first wispy snore. Adrien looked at her and smiled, then carried on regardless.

  ‘I opened the book,’ he said, ‘and turned one by one through the pages. I remember every delicious rustle. I remember the smell . . . Now and then there was a plate, with an illustration as beautiful as the cover’s. Michelle said Isn’t it perfect? And it was. All of it was. The present, the meal, the occasion.’

  He scowled at himself. Everything had been perfect except for one thing.

  Michelle had looked at him across the table and said, ‘You’re going to tell me there’s an except.’

  ‘No,’ he’d said, ‘it’s nothing.’

  ‘But there is. There always is, these days.’

  How wounded she had sounded, and rightfully so. He’d become suddenly nervous of bringing her to tears on their special day.

  ‘No. Honestly. Really it’s nothing.’

  ‘It’s something.’

  Then he’d pointed, timidly and with trembling finger, to the source of his consternation.

  ‘The candle? Are you serious?’

  It had been burning all through the meal and he had done his very best to ignore it. But although it was a small thing it begged his attention and he could no more put it out of his mind than he could a leech sucking on his vein. ‘You know I’ve always had trouble with candles,’ he said feebly. ‘They’re terribly unsafe.’

  She folded her arms. ‘You’re not going to blow it out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not going to let you blow it out. It will do you good to keep it burning.’

  ‘But it’s so dangerous! It could burn the house down.’

  She held her hands to her head. ‘Great! That’s exactly what I want to happen.’

  ‘Are you crazy? If you’re proposing some sort of insurance stunt I really don’t think—’

  ‘Jesus, Adrien, it was a metaphor. I thought those were your thing.’

  He stared at her blankly.

  ‘When I met you,’ she said, gasping back tears, ‘I was sure we could make just the biggest inferno. But every time I get even so much as a candle burning, you suffer it for a while in silence and then . . . and then you lean right down and you puff it out.’

  Adrien groaned and flopped onto his back, watching the smoke of the campfire swarm into the darkening sky. Before crossing the water, his plan to go home and wait for Michelle had excused him from fearing what he most feared now. If his marriage was a bay of candles, he could remember days when they had all shone brightly with a steady amber light. How many had he snuffed out since then? Tonight his marriage seemed all shadows, but if Michelle had found her way back to him in England it would have proved that at least one was still burning. Were he to find her stopped here in Ireland, wouldn’t that prove just the opposite? Wouldn’t that mean that there was no light left to draw her home? Then what an unwanted arrival he would be.

  Adrien shut his eyes and held himself very tight. Not far inland the trees creaked and strained. He dreaded stepping back under them, in part because of wolves and whisperers and the creature he’d seen on the beach, in part because of what he’d have to face up to if he ever found Michelle.

  10

  Unicorn

  Hannah walked
alongside Eoin, who followed the curve of the bay to look for rocks to hang his fishing lines from. Drifts of black cloud stretched out above the water, and a quavering light on the horizon was all that was left of their sailing day.

  ‘Here,’ said Eoin, ‘before I forget.’ He handed her a piece of paper, drawn with flowing lines, circled milestones and the names of landmarks. ‘That’s as best a map as I can draw. Do you know about this place you’re headed to? This Caisleán Hotel?’

  ‘Not really. I suppose it’s just a conference hotel like any other.’

  He shook his head. ‘Mrs Thomas has a very generous employer, to send her and her colleagues there. It’s almost a castle, that place. That’s what caisleán means. It’s not as old as a real castle, mind you, but it’s all towers and balconies and so on. It was built by some English lord or other with big ideas about himself, and when he went bust he sold it to become a hotel. It’s very overblown. Very fancy.’

  She was surprised. ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Been past it. You can’t really miss it. It’s a bit of a local landmark. Or an eyesore.’

  ‘From the way Adrien described it, I thought it was just some place beside a motorway.’

  Eoin laughed. ‘Even he thought so until he told me the name. He said he’d never asked Michelle much about it. He told me it makes him jealous to think of his wife abroad, because of some fella who’s there with her . . . I forget his name.’

  ‘Roland. He’s worried Michelle is having an affair.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ve never met her. But I suspect . . . I know Adrien has a tendency to expect the worst in everything.’

  ‘That’s too true. For my part, I hope he finds her. I hope they can work things out.’

  Hannah tried to catch Eoin’s eye, but he was still scanning the coast for a fishing spot. ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘People should try to work things out.’

  She rolled up the map he had drawn her and held it between both hands like a precious scroll. ‘Thanks for camping with us tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing to thank me for. I couldn’t row another stroke this evening.’

  ‘I suppose I just imagined that we’d go our separate ways as soon as we came ashore . . .’

  Eoin quickened his steps. The sea tossed and turned, rolling in its crumpled sheets. And now there were smooth rocks up ahead, a long chain of them running flat-topped into the shallows.

  ‘Those are just the sort we’re looking for,’ he said.

  ‘What I’m trying to tell you,’ said Hannah, speeding up to match his turn of pace, ‘is that I think it’s such a shame that we’re going in different directions.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘that it is.’

  ‘I wish we had a bit more time.’

  He stopped and turned to look at her. The sand and the black sea framed him tall against them. ‘We have a bit more time now.’

  ‘Do we? I mean, you’ll be gone in the morning.’

  He started walking again, and when he reached the rocks bounded onto them and began unravelling his fishing lines, not once looking back down to where she stood on the sand.

  ‘Eoin,’ began Hannah. ‘Have I said something wrong?’

  The sailor sighed. ‘I only wish you’d been able to tell me. Then we might have found a way past it together.’

  He moved along the rock to wedge another line in, and Hannah’s forefinger began to tap of its own accord. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.

  At last Eoin looked at her. ‘It’s eating away at you. You need to open up about it.’

  ‘If you knew what I’d done you’d—’

  ‘Seb told me. A few nights ago while the rest of you were asleep.’

  Hannah’s jaw dropped open, but Eoin raised a hand. ‘Don’t blame him. And I didn’t ask him to tell me, by the way. He’s worried about you. Same goes for me. But, just like him, I don’t blame you for doing it.’

  ‘You . . . you . . . Seb told you?’

  Eoin extended a hand to her, offering to help her up onto the stones. After a pause Hannah accepted it, and his arm was as strong as a spring, hauling her up alongside him.

  ‘Why didn’t you say that you knew?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted you to be the one to bring it up.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a thing to expect of someone. We’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I might have been able to help.’

  Hannah shook her head tearfully. ‘Have you ever shot someone, Eoin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then there’s not much helping you can do.’

  ‘If you think like that, then you’ll never find help. Unless it’s from another man like him. Is that what you want?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘He isn’t with you any more, Hannah. There’s a sea between you and him now.’

  ‘I know that. I know.’ But she did not quite believe it. It didn’t matter where the gunman’s body lay. He would have decomposed by now, far quicker than Zach or properly buried things. He would have broken up in a matter of days, dragged apart by beasts, his flesh becoming theirs. What was left of him would be immersed in the soil, drunk by roots and turned to seeds and fruits. The wind would disperse them. The flights of the birds would wing him far and wide.

  ‘You’ve already helped me,’ said Hannah quietly. ‘By giving me an escape from him. I never knew how beautiful the sea was, until I met you.’

  Eoin smiled, but Hannah wasn’t sure he really understood. ‘A shark is a shark,’ he said. ‘Remember that.’

  She wiped her face and looked away from him, at the sea spread out beyond them, night-black and endless.

  ‘It feels too late to open up about this now.’

  ‘If you say it is, then I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘I shot him in the head,’ she gasped. ‘I tied him up and kicked him to the ground and I killed him. I did to him what he’d done to Zach, and I wish like crazy that I hadn’t, and then, and then . . .’ She thought of the stump she had mistaken for the gunman, and the ferocity with which she’d marched on it to ensure that he was dead. She wiped her eyes. ‘Other times,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  Eoin stepped closer to her, as if all of that could be shut out, as if they could make the forest vanish and be alone on a pared-back shore.

  ‘Things can be simpler,’ he said, ‘if you let them be.’

  She lifted her hand and touched her trigger-finger to his cheek. To begin with it jittered faintly against the coarse hairs of his beard, but he didn’t move a muscle and, after a minute, it stilled. She shuffled closer. Their bodies were touching. Eoin smelled of salt and rockpools.

  If Hannah closed her eyes, even if she blinked, the memory of what she’d done was a fly buzzing around in her mind. She tried not to close them. When they kissed, she watched the sailor’s grey irises until she was nearly dizzy, and only then did she let her eyelids slip. Then she concentrated solely on the movements of his lips, the brine of his saliva. His breathing was the breaking of the waves.

  ‘Come with me,’ said Eoin, resting his forehead against hers when the kiss was over. ‘It’s not so far from here to Michelle’s hotel, and Adrien will find his way sure enough. You’ve done so much for him already. Come with me. We can sail towards Dungarvan together.’

  Her heart jumped into her throat. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She held him tighter. ‘I’d . . . I’d love that.’

  ‘If that man is in the soil, put the soil behind you. You don’t need it any more. Come with me. I’ll teach you watercraft.’

  ‘But there’s Seb to think of. Hiroko, too, I suppose.’

  ‘They can come with us. We can build a place together. It’s beautiful along this coast.’

  He stroked her cheekbone. She rested her fingertips against his jaw. She could picture herself gazing out to sea every morning and night, held in
Eoin’s arms like this. Letting the waves silence all thought of the gunman. Away to her left the forest looked like the silhouette of some vast, serrated blade, sawing away at the stars and the open night. A vixen called out in the wood, and something else screeched as it died, and the branches shook as if elated by such sounds. The forest was all tangled shadow and treachery, while to the other side of her the sea was a steady pouring rhythm. It might be salt-harsh and deep cold, but you could have faith in that.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to Seb.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘But, Eoin . . . I want to stay with you.’

  ‘And me with you.’

  Her face filled with gratitude. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’ll be my pleasure.’

  She laid her head against his collar and breathed deep of the air against his chest. His heartbeat was as strong and steady as a rowing song.

  Something bellowed in the woods.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ asked Eoin, drawing away and stepping forward protectively.

  The near part of the woodfringe shook. Sticks cracked and leaves crunched. Hannah tensed and wished she’d brought her foraging knife with her. Then a branch reached out from the forest. It was a twigless and leafless spar, ending in a sharpened point. When a snout followed it, then a cumbersome head, Hannah realised it was no branch, but a horn.

  The moonlight glinted off the mucus in the kirin’s wide nostrils, and picked out its eyes beneath their leathery lids. It was another bull, barging out of the undergrowth to plod onto the sand, its fur chestnut and missing in patches where fighting scars had rent it. Its mouth hung open wide, grunting with every breath. It plodded towards Hannah and Eoin on huge flat feet, and every footstep threw up a dust cloud of sand.

  ‘Back off the rocks and into the shallows,’ urged Eoin, holding an arm out to shield Hannah. ‘If we have to we can swim for safety.’

  Hannah began to back away, but as soon as she’d scrambled down onto the damp sand the kirin shook its head and she saw something that froze her. The foam of the breakers tugged at her ankles, but she did not retreat alongside it. The kirin raised its nose and snorted, and there was a flash of diamond-white fur beneath its chin.