by Ana Salote
I set the border trees on twenty-four hour watch and they reported some strange goings on. First were the cracks of light seen at Sperrin’s windows long after the rest of the town was folded into darkness and sleep. Odder than this was the figure seen creeping around Sperrin’s garden. The man tried the doors of the outbuildings and shone a torch through the windows. Probably a burglar I thought. This was something but it wasn’t enough.
Next I asked for Morwen’s help. Morwen owes Charlie a favour. When the treehouse was first built she was very upset. She had four chicks at the time and, although her nest was well up in my higher branches, she was suspicious of Charlie and his treehouse. At night she would tire herself out, spitefully pulling bits off it. Then disaster happened: one of her chicks fell out of the nest.
Now I am very fond of birds, especially the young ones. They bring out my nurturing side. During the breeding season I love to chick-sit while the parents are off hunting for food. Picture this: let your eyes get used to the shade and have a look; you can just make out their funny yellow clown-mouths and scrawny necks. Not pretty, till the feathers come, but their mothers love them.
Why then, don’t birds build the sides of the nest higher? When chicks topple out I do my best to break the fall but mostly it’s no use. It’s a sad thing to see the little blind and naked birds littering the ground. I have suggested to Morwen that she build her nest higher. She cocks her head, agrees vaguely, then makes her nest the way she always has. On this occasion Morwen’s chick was saved by Charlie’s cushion on the treehouse platform, only to face a greater danger. I had just tuned in to a terrible conversation between Adolf and his friend Zak. The cats were saying how they love a chick, light and fluffy on the outside with a crunch in the middle. Believe it. Then Adolf started to pad towards me. He put a testing paw up against my trunk and unsheathed his claws.
One of my tricks for teaching imagination is this: I get the student plant to imagine the sun twice as big and twice as strong as it really is, and shining from a different direction. If they do it well they can make their leaves or branches move towards the imaginary sun. This is because plants always grow towards the light. I practised this myself until I could move my branches at will – slowly it’s true, but I was getting better at it.
I felt Adolf leap and knew that I had to act quickly. I imagined the strongest, whitest, light of twenty suns, streaming from the heart of the nestling. It worked. My branches swung and drew close about the tiny chick; a spray of leaves lay gently over it.
Cats bother me; they only have two ways of being. They ripple around the garden, or bask in the best spot, so laid back they’re falling off the horizon, yet full of controlled menace; or there’s the fully alert state, every nerve a needle; ‘get ready to die,’ they are saying, and mostly it happens just like that.
With one scrabbling leap Adolf was on the treehouse platform with his nose in the air, letting the smell of nestling stream by his nostrils. I bashed a branch against Charlie’s bedroom window and ‘shouted’ to him in shrill panic. Charlie looked up and dived down the chute at the same time as Morwen arrived back with a beak full of grubs. She saw three where there had been four, dropped the grubs on their heads, took in the cat and Charlie below, and flapped frantically down on them both. Charlie shooed Adolf away. Adolf stood his ground, stared coolly as if to say ‘I’ll be back,’ then bounded unhurriedly downwards.
Charlie was on his knees asking, ‘Where is it Ash?’ while Morwen continued flapping hysterically at his head.
‘On the cushion,’ I told him, swishing my leaves aside.
He lifted the cushion carefully. The chick kept gaping around as though it was still in the nest.
I shouted at Morwen. ‘Calm down now. He won’t hurt it.’
‘It’s alright,’ Charlie said to Morwen, ‘it’s all safe,’ and he climbed up where I had to brace myself to support him, and returned the little bird to safety.
So Morwen owed Charlie a favour. Living so close to me and scoffing hundreds of my berries every summer she had soaked up some gnosis over the years; still it wasn’t easy to get across what I wanted her to do. I didn’t want her to take any risks with Adolf and Zak around but I asked her if she could get a look through Sperrin’s windows. Could she spot anything unusual?
Morwen has every reason to dislike Sperrin. Her clan’s territory was cleared to make room for his house leaving many homeless, so she wanted to help, but she’s a nervy type and has a special fear of Adolf. However, she did her best and reported back.
‘Looks like any other house to me,’ she said, ‘there are square spaces inside, full of mostly dead things.’
‘That’s furniture,’ I said patiently, ‘think carefully, did you see anything else?’
‘Only when I landed on the kitchen window sill.’ She puffed out her feathers
and withdrew her head into them as though she wanted to hide. ‘He was bending to his food and I must have caught his eye because he lifted his head and looked straight at me with those yellow lamps. I froze and he came bursting out of the hole in the door.’
‘You mean Adolf,’ I said, ‘he came out through the cat flap.’
She nodded, ‘I can’t go back.’
‘No, no. Of course not Morwen, but thanks.’
I needed a better, bolder observer to spy for me, someone who was used to human ways, who might spot if something was out of the ordinary.
Something made me turn towards the vegetable plot where a cabbage leaf appeared to walk by itself up the garden. As it came towards me I saw that the holes in its leaves glinted and that it had a tail.
‘Wilfred!’ I called happily. ‘You’re alive.’
‘Of course I’m alive, whatever made you think otherwise?’
He dropped the leaf but still stood cautiously close to cover. I told him about the visit of the magpies and what they had seen.
‘Oh yes the Pica, Pica sapiens. It’s true what they saw; I did allow myself to get into some difficulties. Men can’t trick me with traps and poisons; I’ve long been wise to all that. My own pride caught me out this time. You’d think I’d know better at my age. I was flushed with the success of my latest venture. It’s the first mass protest I’ve managed to organise. More and more animals are coming on board. My cousins, the hamsters, are very keen. You can always rely on the rodents: small bodies but hearts like lions.’
‘All that on the news, about animals behaving oddly – that was all your doing?’
‘Let’s say I sowed the seed. I’ve grown impatient with the council – decided to branch out on my own, whip up a bit of action. Anyway, as I said, my success made me bold; I stopped hiding, thought I was invulnerable and got whopped with a garden spade – broke a few bones, but I lay low, ate the right roots and it’s all mended. What else did the Pica want? They didn’t come just to tell you about my little mishap did they?’
I showed him the Pica’s message and he pondered long on it, his eyes rolling trance-like.
‘What’s it about?’ I asked.
‘The last piece, the trigger. Now it will roll on till the end,’ he murmured as he came out of his trance. Certain now that it was all beyond me, I asked no more questions. I had other problems to deal with. I put into practice something I had learned from Brooke Farm – deviousness.
‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ I said, ‘but I can see it’s not a good time. You’ll be feeling nervous around humans for a while yet.’
‘Nervous,’ he laughed. ‘Not me – I just forgot my common sense. Humans are slow but they’re also big and strong and they often have weapons to hand. But I have no fear of them.’
Then with the world’s worst timing Charlie came out of the house.
‘Hello little fella, would you like a crisp?’
Charlie was leaning towards Wilfred, holding out a cone of home-made crisps wrapped in bread paper.
Wilfred seemed to think he was still in a trance state. Slowly it dawned on him that it was a real human in f
ront of him. Usually when humans see Wilfred they scream. What they never do is offer him a crisp. Wilfred was confused, befuddled and as he looked into Charlie’s leaf-lit green eyes, almost charmed. Then all his prejudices came back, he ran at Charlie and attacked his shoe. Charlie watched him without fear. He stretched his leg out and Wilfred dangled foolishly from his shoe lace. Charlie laughed and Wilfred scampered off in a huff. I watched his tail snake through the hedge and looked forward to our next meeting.
Charlie climbed up to the treehouse eating his crisps and got out his plans again. I jumped in and told him all I knew.
‘It’s worth investigating further then.’
‘No, no; not worth it at all. That’s all there is; there’s nothing else to see. All the trees down there have been watching for weeks, and let me tell you, if there’s one thing trees are good at, it’s watching.’
‘I just want to see for myself. There might be some clues they missed.’
‘Doubt it, doubt it very much.’
‘Ash, I can read you like a book; there’s nothing to worry about. I just want to see for myself, alright?’
And off he went. Every night he went down to the fence, climbed Sycamore, watched and scribbled notes.
After a week of this he took his notebook into the house and reported to Eva what he’d seen.
‘Monday 7:14 pm – Sperrin leaves house with big envelope. Returns 7:39.
Tuesday 8:06pm: power cut. Lights stay on
Thurs 6:15pm – man comes to house, doesn’t look friendly. Sperrin swaps something on doorstep, tells him not to come to house again in daylight.’Charlie emphasized this last point slowly.
Fri: Sperrin using floodlights to trim his soldiers.
Sat: 11.47am Sperrin tells his wife off because she hasn’t folded the rotary washing line away.12.05pm: Sperrin calls his wife again - ‘Oona, come and take a letter’ – just like she’s his secretary.’
‘She used to be,’ said Eva.
‘To sum up: doorstep dealings - possibly dodgy; lights on in a power cut, reckless energy use.’
‘Not really much to go on, love.’
Charlie chewed his pencil. ‘It points though; it points to… something. Any more hassle at work?’
‘I haven’t seen Sperrin this week; he’s leaving me alone pretty much.’
Charlie looked up into Eva’s face. ‘And?’
‘How do you do that? OK - Jules, his secretary, gave me a warning: ‘I’m not mentioning any names,’ she said, ‘but watch your back.’
‘You need to get friendly; groom her, get her to grass.’
‘Hold on, where did grass come into this,’ I interrupted. I do hate to lose the thread of a story.
Through the window Charlie rolled his eyes at me.
A few days later Charlie went to Eva again.
‘It’s all coming together,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Guess what the Sperrin’s have
got in their second garage.’
‘Don’t tell me, a machine for mashing up kids.’
‘Ha-ha. Actually, it’s a generator. And – he takes his gas guzzler to work every day.’
‘No he doesn’t. The car park’s practically empty. I’d notice if his car was there every day. He might take it in once or twice a month, but that’s no more than some others.’
‘He parks in the side streets using different spots. Now why would he do that?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘Also, he clocked 328miles last weekend.’
‘How do you know all this? I’ve told you not to go near Sperrin.’
‘I didn’t. It was one of my associates.’
‘You’ve got associates. Who?’
‘I’m not allowed to say.’
It was fortunate for Charlie that just then, the phone rang. But he still had me to answer to.
‘Like to put names to your associates?’ I said, trying to sound strict and teacherish.
‘There’s only one actually. Let’s just call him ‘the burglar.’’
Chapter 13 My History
I had never known Charlie to give up on anything. I could think of only one way to put him off Sperrin’s trail and that was to give him a new interest.
The answer came to me as I noticed a seedling of Holly’s, not much more than a twig in the ground with perfect spiny leaves. I tried to remember when I was the same size, and I fell to wondering about my parent tree and my grandparent.
‘Who am I?’ I murmured listlessly.
‘What did you say Ash?’
‘Who am I really? Where did I come from?’
‘Well, your seeds are spread by birds. They eat your berries; the berries pass through their digestive system and get spread in their droppings, sometimes miles from the parent tree.’
‘You humans are lucky. You’ve got so much history, so many stories. I’ve got weather history of course, but I’d like some stories of my own.’
And that was all it took. You have to be careful about asking Charlie a question, because he can never rest until he’s answered it, and answered it thoroughly.
For several weeks Charlie disappeared into town every Saturday morning. He went to the library, and he also attended some lectures on ‘The Wisdom of Trees,’ at a place called the Rainbow Café, which sounded fascinating. It turns out that my family was once very important and famous.
‘The Mountain Ash or Rowan,’ Charlie said, ‘in winter, when frosted like stars, was topped by the pagans with a special star. The star-clad Rowan was the first Christmas tree. It stood for light returning to the world of darkness.’
Wow, I hadn’t been expecting anything like that. Star-clad trees. I imagined my ancestors gracing ancient hillsides at the dawn of the world, glittering with frost, and some pagan child, a child like Charlie, fixing his own star to the tree with wonder in his green eyes.
‘Your berries heal, protect and give long life,’ he went on, ‘and here it says your red berries and green leaves inspired Scottish tartan.’
That was just the start; there were many more tales of magic and mystery. There was a terrible battle between an eagle and demons, and wherever a feather or a drop of blood fell to earth, a Rowan grew. That’s why we have red berries and feathery leaves. I also have an ancestor who saved the god Thor from drowning. The stories were wonderful but what I really appreciated was the respect we once had. I think,’ I said, ‘that trees were important to people once. But now, they don’t see us any more do they, not really?’
‘I see you Ash,’ Charlie said.
After one of his trips to the library he asked: ‘Would you mind if I borrowed some of your twigs?’
‘Go ahead.’
He snapped off two twigs, and taking some red wool from his pocket, boundthe twigs together into a cross.
‘It’s a Rowan cross,’ he explained ‘– used for protection.’
My plan had worked far better than I had hoped. Perhaps when he was done with Rowans he would start on the histories of the other trees. I thought I was getting pretty skilled at handling humans, and foolishly, I relaxed.
Christmas came, and there was light. Well before dawn the windows started to glow. Little beacons shone wherever there were children. The government had said there would be cheap power for a full twenty-four hours. Steam drifted from heating vents.Charlie’s present was an old book which Eva had unearthed at a garden sale: Field and Forest Lore. It was so old that the words and spellings came from another time. Charlie couldn’t have been more pleased.
‘It’s full of forgotten knowledge,’ he said, ‘and look at this picture.’
‘Junglus slaterii.’
‘Yes. Inktop it was called. For liver complaints. Purifies the blood. Thank goodness I saved it.’
Charlie studied every page of the book and spent the darkest days of January adding to his notes.
After a humid, cloying winter with barely a frost, the garden was confused.We looked to the weather as conductor, but she would jab with her baton one day an
d the next let her arm trail listlessly. I said we should go by the calendar but only a few were strong enough to stay with me. The rest were dragged into bud and flower far too early. Spring was sucked out of us unearned by hardship and chills.
The post had been interrupted for weeks because of a new crisis in petrol supplies. It had started up again but there was only one delivery per week. Charlie brought a pile of letters into the kitchen and placed it silently on the table in front of Eva. Bills of course, plus one other letter. They both knew what it was. Eva sighed and opened it resignedly. Her eyes skimmed it, then she read in a dead-sounding voice: ‘New Year is a time for resolutions. Want to know mine? Learn it from the pantomime – look out he’s behind you.’
Charlie picked up the card and studied it closely. He ran the card absently under his nose and looked puzzled.
‘He’s unhinged,’ Eva said. ‘You’d better not go anywhere alone for a while.’
‘He doesn’t scare me.’
‘Better be on the safe side.’
Later that day my spirits sank as Charlie got out his spying plan and traced over the little red dashes with a pencil. It was time to speak to Wilfred again. I knew he wouldn’t do anything to help humans. I would have to offer him something in return.
‘Find out what’s going on down there and I promise I’ll pay you back. I’ll do anything you ask so long as no one is harmed by it.’
His paws moved over his nose in an automatic washing motion, not quite hiding a wily grin.‘Done,’ he said, pressing a cool paw against my trunk by way of sealing the bargain. ‘Life’s been quiet lately, I could use a bit of adventure to keep me sharp, a bit of stim-u-lation.’
‘Wilfred,’ I said, as he trotted off, ‘be careful.’
‘This is no more than a stroll in the sewer to me,’ he scoffed.
And that was the last I saw of him. For two days and nights I waited. I quizzed the border trees. I grilled Morwen, but it was the third night before news reached me.