by Ana Salote
‘I get it. I get beauty,’ I said to Charlie, but he didn’t hear. ‘I get beauty,’ I told Holly, but she wasn’t listening. Glorious, glorious, I thought; and surely, this alone is worth saving the humans for.
When Eva finished painting, and Charlie, too, came up for air, it was dusk.
‘Bye Ash,’ he said and climbed back up the chute.
‘Hi and bye - is that it? Is that all I get nowadays?’
I didn’t mean Charlie to hear this but he came back to the window and spoke in a muffled voice. ‘Don’t sulk, you know how important this is.’
I did know, and he shamed me. The garden didn’t end at the fence, it went on and on, and he wanted to save it all. Eva and her art, Charlie and his projects. Was it imagination, the feeling of a deep, deliberate scoring into my trunk? This is what I felt on the human side: IIIIIIIIII, on the vermin side, this: IIIIIIIII. I knew what I had to do.
Charlie put on his pyjamas, lit a candle and opened yet another book. When it was fully dark Eva came to check on him.
‘Time you were asleep,’ she said, ‘shall I take the book?’
‘Just a minute, just a minute,’ he said holding one hand up, ‘ah now I get it,’ and he scribbled a few notes. ‘OK, I’m ready,’ and he flopped back on his pillows, a boy again.
Eva looked at the book. ‘You’re really reading this?’
‘Mm, it’s alright for background, but I really need net access for the latest research.’
‘On postgraduate genetic engineering?’
‘Mum, it’s important.’
There are times, I’m learning, when odd things happen and somehow it’s best not to ask questions but just to go with the flow. Eva seemed to have one of those moments of faith.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, and blew softly on the candle.
That was enough of a signal for Wilfred. I swear he’d been waiting under the hedge all that time, sweating in his big woolly coat. He bustled out.
‘Well, have you decided?’
‘I’ve decided.’
He looked surprised. ‘What’s it to be then?’
‘I’ll do my best to spread gnosis in the plant world. I’m willing to teach them
how, but not what to think.’
‘Good Ash, others can…’
‘Wait. There’s one condition. My guess is that no one will speak for the humans at the first motion. I want you to put my point of view by proxy please.’
Wilfred listened and spluttered. ‘You know, you owe me. I wasn’t expecting conditions.’
‘I didn’t want to bring this up, but Charlie ended up saving you.’
‘That’s rubbish. I was just baiting Adolf. I would’ve made it.’
Underneath the swagger I heard it. Self-doubt. I had him, if I could just stand firm. Roots help in these circumstances. Legs make for haste and impatience I’ve found. Time was running out for Wilfred, while I was going nowhere, so at last he agreed. As I watched him dash away like a big furry hedgehog, I had a smug feeling that I’d got the best of the meeting.
With Wilfred gone and Charlie still possessed by his reading marathon, I was left to my own devices. I contemplated the weather, I watched the birds, the bees and the ever-changing sky, but I needed more. I needed human contact. I was, you could say, addicted.
Graham was out for much of the day so I sprouted more branches and found that I could look into the flat above, which belonged to Bob. Bob was retired and watched a lot of TV. He liked the history channel. I’m sure he never realised that the little twig, tapping at his window as he watched, was his companion. One day we were watching a programme about the Stone Age. Bob wasn’t paying much attention; he prefers war programmes. I, on the other hand, was most interested to see what these stone-agers were like, since Wilfred had approved of them. ‘The Stone Age,’ said the man on the screen, ‘spanned the period from 10,000 – 2000 BC.’
I was so startled that I whipped the window with my branches and Bob looked up from stirring his tea. ‘Impossible,’ I said to the man on the screen, who rudely carried on talking, ‘Wilfred can’t be more than two thousand years old.’
I started reckoning: if I had been alive for all that time I would be very fat indeed with two thousand rings in my trunk; I would be twice as big as the grand old yew in the churchyard, which needs iron bands to hold up it’s branches. ‘Your berries give long life,’ I remembered Charlie saying when he was researching Rowan legends. Hmm, Wilfred was quite greedy and possessive with my berries.
Oh, he was a wily one. And I’d been congratulating myself for getting the better of him; he must have seen straight through me. I worried that he would find a tricky way round my decision.
After a few weeks, Charlie ran out of reading material. Graham let Charlie use his laptop for research, and when he got stuck he e-mailed a man called Will Yates. He is the first human to have a chip put in his brain ( wood or potato I’m not sure), and for some reason this makes him very, very clever. People from all over the world ask him questions, but they don’t like his answers, so they say something is wrong with his chip. Charlie was very excited when Will Yates e-mailed back, and they kept up a little correspondence. Charlie also made wire models of cages and spirals with knobs on. He fiddled with these endlessly, talking to himself and to me as he worked.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I wanted to know.
‘It’s my job,’ said Charlie.
‘But, you’re only eleven; if you want a job you should get a paper round. And why is it all so urgent?’
‘Things are changing very fast, too fast for life to keep up. It’s all here in the rock,’ he spun the space rock in the vault of my branches, but to me it still looked unremarkable. ‘It’s up to science to fast track evolution. It’s our only hope Ash. So - that’s my job.’
Chapter 17 The Vote
It was blossom day; not for me; my peak is some weeks later, but for the cherries. Eva says this is her favourite day of the year because on blossom day all summer lies ahead. The cherry blossom is maxed out: full, heavy, dropping with blossom; and the trees are holding, holding their heavenliness. The ground plants are outclassed, as they are in autumn; everyone is looking upwards at blossom on blue. After that peak of loveliness the snowing starts. Petals drift down with a wedding feeling.
Up the dappled spring garden Wilfred walked, but how slowly, how unlike himself. Ponderous of paw he was, a gravity about him. Half a year since I’d seen him, yet I wished that Wilfred had not come because suddenly I feared for the day. My rustling leaves drooped quietly as Wilfred came into my shade. We dispensed with our usual greetings.
‘It’s all done then,’ I said.
‘Signed and sealed,’ said Wilfred. I tried to read in his eyes which way the vote had gone but I couldn’t. I sighed and thought of all the people I’d got to know on Overvale Road.
Few of them knew of me but I still thought of them as friends. We were all in it together you see. I had an urge sometimes, to stretch my branches out and shelter them all. None of them had any idea how their fate balanced on a stem just then. I wanted to put off knowing, to let them keep their world a little longer.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ I said to Wilfred, ‘start with the journey, you know how I like a tale.’
So he began his story in the glorious spring garden, though with more listeners than he knew.
‘I travelled courtesy of man to begin with; by train and ferry and fishing boat.
I’m well practised and pride myself that I can get anywhere in the planet within a week or two. Only once did I feel afraid and that was on the last lap. Gruichin Beach was my destination: as remote as you can imagine. For the last fifty miles I had to hitch a ride with a hawk. I have ridden with a hawk before, but that first time I was no volunteer, and as I felt the horrid familiar grip, all the terror of it came back to me.
I was a youngster again. The feel of the hawk’s grip, so firm; my frail ribs pinned by the bony talons; my breath stopped; the
good earth with all its hidey holes and cover, dropping away. So exposed, nothing but air below, feathers and talons above, nowhere to hide but the barred breast of my murderer. It dropped me, useless, on a rocky ledge. I looked into its yellow saucer eyes. Its greedy chicks like great downy boulders waited. One foot held me down and its beak descended for the first tear, then it turned its awful profile away and leapt flapping at a human child who was climbing down the cliffs hunting for eggs. It was the only time I’ve had cause to be grateful to a human. I went over the ledge, scrabbled vertically for some way, then fell, as the cliff receded, into some bushes.
‘That adventure had been no more than a pinprick of a distant memory, but it swelled and filled my mind like yesterday as we flew, and all the time I wondered if my carrier might not think better of the proceedings and veer off to some ledge where her hungry chicks awaited. But at last she dropped me at Gruichin Beach, and I stumbled on shaking legs to the gathering. I was late. In the blue-black ocean, fins of all sizes broke the surface with flashes of grey and silver and blue. A whale spouted in the bay; seabirds and seals massed on the rocks.
I was escorted to an outcrop, which hung over the ocean and from there I put the questions to the gathering. Penguins swam around the bay and bustled among the rocks collecting votes. At last all the votes were in and the reps filed or swooped past me with the results. Things were going well; every vote was against man, and I was pleased with the good sense being shown by these truly wild animals; then a very large penguin stepped up carrying the vote of the dolphins. The dolphins, as I told you before, are the only animals, apart from man, where the entire species has gnosis, so their block vote is very large.
‘What say the dolphins?’ I asked.
‘The dolphins vote for man,’ said the penguin. They also send you this message: ‘Wilfred, in your heart you will be asking why we have voted this way. The humans want to be our friends but as yet they have not learned wisdom. Their own terrible mistakes are now so great that wisdom will be forced upon them. Even now they are turning and twisting away from it, but nature has them by the scruff and will open their eyes. We must give them a chance to learn that lesson.’
Wilfred sighed and shook his head. ‘The council once asked the dolphins to take leadership of the animal kingdom but they refused. Power does not attract them. They are generous creatures, and I’m afraid, quite blind to evil. But they are entitled to their views, so I recited the messenger’s oath:
‘I promise that all votes entrusted to me, be they yea or nay, shall be faithfully delivered to council.’
‘I left my tail print in the mud where it will not be disturbed until it becomes a fossil and I turned away from the dolphins playing so joyously as the sea turned milky in the sunset.
‘Their backing for man was a blow, but the balance swung back my way as I journeyed South towards the Black Forest, collecting votes as I went. As I made my final run, following a stream that ran down into the forest, I was already imagining a world without vermin. My hopes were high as I trotted into camp, but they soared far higher when I saw what lay before me.
‘The gathering was greater and more impressive than I had imagined. Creatures were there from every continent: bright-plumed exotics, swivel-eyed lizards, stripes, spots and scales; and the more I looked the more I saw; leaves became insects, logs stood up and walked; all the secret clearing seethed with life. What intrepid and ingenious travellers these animals were. Sighted miles from their own lands, they were presumed to have escaped from zoos. Zoos, bah!’ he spat in disgust. ‘Others left only fearsome signs: giant paw prints in farmyards - the seeds of legends, if there is time enough left now for legend-making.
‘I was proud as I looked at them: this, I hoped, was the future; these would be the mothers and fathers of a new order, the Kingdom of animals, creatures with the knowing of humans but without their worst flaws: greed, vanity and cruelty. That was my dream.
‘There were lots of fringe meetings that night and, as I ran around eavesdropping, I grew more and more encouraged.
‘With the first light of day we were all up and busy. The Pica took up her position in the clearing, perched on a tree which had fallen across two others, forming a kind of bridge. Her first task was to receive the signs.
‘The animals came forward and laid their signs at her feet for the reading: a branch from Belize, a root from Siberia; some simply bore witness. Then we waited. The Pica studied the signs and listened to the tales for 12 days. At last she spoke: of the fate of the planet, of the fauna and flora, and of the humans.
‘Ash, we escape the worst – for now, and so do they. They must be the luckiest creatures in creation. The oil wars have saved them from the scorching, the fiery waters and the final flood.’
‘But I thought war was a bad thing.’
‘And so it is, a terrible thing, but you see, without oil they cannot wreck the earth so quickly, so we are all saved from the worst end. But there is still great change to come, great heat and floods. Much life will suffer and die.
‘The Pica called the animals back in turn so that she could tell them where to go in order to survive the changes. A few were given wide lands, some must seek out tiny regions where they will still struggle. When it was my turn I was told that I could remain here, but I would need all my wits to survive, or I could move higher and more northerly and have an easier time of it. I believe I will stay. I always did like a challenge. After me the gopi hopped up, a cousin of mine, so shy they are not even known to man. The Pica’s sharp eyes turned soft, ‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘there is nowhere for you to go.’
‘Nowhere,’ said the gopi, ‘in all the planet, no place for us.’
‘I am sorry,’ said the Pica again.
The gopi turned and walked sadly away. She was not alone. Many others started their walk, saw the Pica shaking her head in sorrow, and turned away.
One in fifty, Ash; only one in fifty species will survive the changes. She expects the plants to suffer equal losses.’
Just then a noise I’d never heard before came from behind the coop, something between a sneeze and a hiccup.
‘Come out,’ said Wilfred, ‘you’re safe here.’
Another strange noise, a snuffly squeak.
In the shadows behind the coop I could see a sort of rat bunny with round amber eyes; it was twice the size of Wilfred.
‘It’s my cousin, the gopi. She’s too shy to come out. I brought her home to try her luck with me. If we go down, we go down together.’
Another shy hiccup.
‘This is the Teacher tree I have spoken of.’
Two golden saucer eyes gleamed up at me.
‘Anyway,’ Wilfred went on, ‘the Pica began the list of those not present who would also be lost from the earth forever: the majestic polar bear, exquisite rain forest butterflies, and on and on. Fish and fowl will soon spawn and soar for the last time. Flowers will open to the sun for the last time. Then I was angry. I tore around the forest, throwing up earth, shredding leaves and branches. I do believe if I had met a man then, I would have killed him, small as I am. I returned to the gathering. All around me there was anger and sorrow as we prepared to vote. I had no doubts at all then which way it would go.
The Pica read the motion.
‘Who speaks against man?’ she said. It took a long time for so many to file past. I hailed my friend the parrot from Senegal; he repaid me in full with his scathing speech. My speech against was probably the longest and received the most rousing cheer.
‘Now, who speaks for?’ the Pica said.
A ruffled sparrow flew into the clearing and perched on the log.
‘Sparrow, England. I speak for the humans. They feed us in winter.’
Weak, I thought. ‘Who took your food in the first place?’ I muttered.
A cat strolled into the circle. She licked her lips at the sparrow, who fluttered nervously away; then she spoke unhurriedly.
‘Cat, France. I speak for. No other species b
ut man is foolish enough to feed and house another for no return. We cats have learned to use that foolishness to our advantage; others could do the same.’
Next up was a dog.
‘Dog, Germany. I speak for. Humans make good leaders. They provide well for their pack.’
Laughable. Then there was silence.
‘Are there any other speakers?’
I walked into the circle. Rustles, flutters and all manner of animal sounds ran around the gathering.
‘I am charged with delivering a proxy speech for Tree, England.’
At this, another flurry of surprise and questioning looks.
‘Tree sends these words:
‘I speak for. What do humans bring to the world? Without them who would swoon at sunsets? Who would make art and music? Who would seek beyond appearances? Who would question? Who would laugh?’
‘The words were choking me but I pressed on.
‘Human science is born of questions, and science might yet save us all. Man has found a way to help life adapt and survive the changes ahead. Through science there is hope for all.’
You might like to know that there was a storm of reaction to your speech. I walked round the circle listening.
‘What are these things: art, laughter, music?’ I heard them ask, ‘and what does the sunset gain from being swooned at?’ But louder than this I heard voices lifted in hope: ‘man is clever; man will help us survive.’
Of course I tried to put them right on this, but the damage was done.
‘You have had many months to consider the issues,’ the Pica said, ‘my advice would be: do not consider what you do not understand. Look around you, use the evidence of your own senses, and vote.’