Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  “You can work in my tree house if you like.”

  “I’ll never make it up the ladder. I’ll be fine in my workroom.”

  Rainbow took her bowl to the sink, scowling at Bob as she passed. He’d cleared up the rest of the spilt milk and was organising the disarray of papers, unnoticed by Mum, who carried her mug of tea into her workroom. Tidying up was Bob’s way of preparing for a fight.

  Rainbow had to get out of the house. She couldn’t go to Patti’s home yet because Patti was out this morning. She knew what she would do. Upstairs, she picked up her rucksack and then went out to her tree house.

  Sitting cross-legged in her den, she studied the tree limbs that framed the walls around her. Nothing else needed growing. She stood up, leant out of the doorway and searched for a branch to stretch. Dozens arched above her. If she could climb onto the roof, they would be accessible. She dragged her wooden box to the entrance and pulled herself up, kicking against the trunk and twisting herself into the fork of the roof branch. Once there, she looked across the garden and the woods, towards the village in the valley below. The Drunken House was hidden in shadow.

  To one side of her, a thin branch split away from a larger one. She laid her hands on it, shifting them slightly higher until they felt comfortable. Then she closed her eyes and concentrated.

  At first it was an effort not to open her eyes and look; not to think about something else. It was like when she tried to see behind her eyelids: to begin with, her eyelids would flicker and she’d only see darkness. Then, gradually, shapes in hues of orange would start to appear.

  After a few seconds her hands seemed to pass through the superficial layer of bark and touch an element more intimate to the tree. It was the closeness of a heart-to-heart conversation, without the heart and without speaking. The word ‘soul’ came into her mind. There was something comforting and natural about the feel of the tree in her hands, and she remembered the reassurance she’d felt as a young child when she’d hugged trees with Mum.

  When she’d stopped travelling through the bark and could feel the calmness of the tree’s soul, she started to imagine it stretching. Her fingers moulded around the branch, squeezing slightly. She felt it glide lengthwise and opened her eyes. The branch was young and impressionable: growing it took little effort.

  The next branch she tried was even smaller. This time, as she felt it move, she exerted more pressure with one hand and created a slight bend in the branch. She giggled at the result: this was fun! She could make a spaghetti tree. Were there other tree-stretchers she could share this magic with? She would have to find out more about trees and tree-shapers.

  Before she could experiment further, she heard the kitchen door slam. It was too hard for Mum. It had to be Bob. She slithered out of the fork, swung herself back down into her den and watched him stride along the drive. He looked like a bull, snorting in rage, bursting for a fight. She hoped he hadn’t attacked Mum. What would it take to calm him down this time?

  “Rainbow!” he roared.

  She decided to try her ‘innocent’ face. She poked her head out of the doorway.

  “What?”

  “Get down here.”

  “Why?”

  He swore at her. “Get down here this instant and I’ll tell you why,” he snarled.

  It was one of his worse moods – he didn’t usually swear until she retaliated – so she stayed in the safety of her shelter. The innocent approach was pointless.

  “Come up here if it’s so important.”

  “Cut the cheek! You and your mother, you’re dirty swine, the pair of you, leaving your trash all over the place. I’m fed up with being the only one who tidies the house. D’you hear me?”

  “Sorry, Bob. What trash?”

  “Apple cores, clothes, papers.…”

  “That was me, not Mum,” she lied.

  “Well, you’re a disgusting pig.”

  Rainbow nodded and cast her eyes down. Did she need to do a bit of crying? Probably not – he seemed to have run out of puff already. She would have to remember that the ‘sorry’ technique finished him off more quickly than the ‘speaking back’ one.

  He was still staring when she raised her face with the ‘shamed’ expression. “What have you done to your tree house?” he asked.

  He must be referring to the gap between the walls and the roof. He’d be angry if she mentioned the word ‘magic’ and she didn’t want him forbidding her to grow branches.

  “Oh, you mean the roof?” She coughed to gain time. “I took the top planks off to make a window.”

  “I’m coming up.”

  He struggled up the rope ladder, grunting with each step. She checked that nothing stolen was visible and then sat down on the box.

  “It’s bigger than I remember,” he said.

  “You haven’t been up here for years.”

  He examined the gap. Rainbow tapped her foot on the floor and rehearsed her lie in her head.

  He scratched his chin. “How did you manage to do such a clean job?”

  “I guess I’ve got workman’s hands.”

  He glared at her. “Well, you’d better not have left my tools lying around.”

  He took a last suspicious look at the gap and then groped his way back down the ladder. Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief. She would have to be more careful in future.

  Chapter 5

  The thought of her magic hands filled Rainbow with a sense of power. At the same time, she was reluctant to tell anyone. She could already feel the weight of people’s stares and hear echoes of them referring to her as a weirdo. It was time to find other people who could shape trees and to learn more about her skill. She didn’t even know what it was officially called.

  She spent the rest of the morning searching for information. There was nothing about it in Bob’s gardening or biology books, and nothing in Mum’s secret stash of books about spiritual magic either. What she really needed was a specialist tree book. No doubt Patti’s family had one – they had as many bookshelves as there was wall space. She would look when she went to pick up her kitten that afternoon.

  Lunch was a strange affair. Mum was caught up in her song-writing. She didn’t notice when Rainbow tipped the remains of the home-made soup down the petal-holes of the drain and heated up a tin of the tomato soup she’d bought at the shop. Bob looked even more distracted. Several times, Rainbow turned to see him stroking his chin and staring at her.

  “What did you do with the wood you took off?” he asked at last, having fidgeted all the way through the meal.

  “Off what?”

  “Your tree house.”

  “I chucked it onto the woodpile,” she said, and escaped outside to fetch her kitten before he could ask any more questions.

  She had thought she’d choose the black one, but when Patti opened the shed door, Rainbow saw a new cat. It was mostly ginger, tainted from perfection by one white leg, and lay on its side in a cardboard box.

  “Where’s that cat come from? It wasn’t here yesterday.”

  It was smaller than the other cats but bigger than the kittens.

  “It was Mr Landing’s. You know, our neighbour. He moved house yesterday. Mam couldn’t bear the idea of the cat being abandoned, so she said we’d have it. It’s divvy; completely brain-damaged.”

  They approached. It was concentrating on something in a corner of the ceiling. Rainbow looked up to see what had caught its attention, and saw a cobweb trampolining under the weight of a trapped wasp. Patti wriggled her fingers and tried to divert the cat, but it ignored her. She pulled aside the stack of discarded wellies and captured her favourite black kitten instead.

  Rainbow dangled her fingers over the ginger cat’s head. It rolled over and tried to catch them with its front paws, kicking against her arm with the hind ones. Rainbow slipped her other hand under its back and picked it up. It stretched over backwards as she cradled it, arching the knobbles of its spine, and reached lazily for the ground with its front legs.
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  “Look, he’s an acrobat!” she said, holding him out to show Patti.

  “A failed one,” Patti replied, hissing her contempt as the cat overstretched, lost its balance and tumbled onto the floor.

  “He didn’t even land on his feet,” said Rainbow. “He’s the one I want.”

  “Won’t you take the black one? Otherwise they’ll drown him.”

  “Rubbish. Your mum would never drown a kitten and your dad wouldn’t know how to. Anyway, he’s too busy working. Your older brothers might, but they’re away. That leaves little Jimmy, and he’s too nice to drown anything. Come on, let’s tell your mum I’ve chosen Acrobat.”

  They burst into the kitchen. Patti’s mum was washing runner beans from the garden. Rainbow showed her Acrobat and then asked if she could borrow a book about trees for Bob. Mrs Bellamy dried her hands and helped Rainbow choose the thickest one.

  “What do you want the book for?” Patti asked, once they were outside again.

  “I told you. It’s for Bob. I’ve got to go now. See you at school tomorrow.”

  She stuffed the book into her rucksack, gathered Acrobat into her arms and pushed the gate shut with her knee.

  When she reached the deserted playground, she released Acrobat into the grass. She plumped down beside him and took out the book. In the section entitled ‘Topiary: Shaping Your Trees’, there were no pictures of people bending branches with their bare hands. The section didn’t mention specialists who could change the shape of trees either. Tree-hugging was shown in the part called ‘Trees through the Ages’, but she couldn’t find anything about alternative growing techniques.

  Acrobat pounced around her. Either he was playing with insects that were too small for her to see, or he had some cat form of invisible friend. She shut the book, shoved it back into her rucksack and tickled Acrobat’s tummy. Then she scooped him up onto her shoulder and continued her journey home. She would have to resort to asking somebody.

  Acrobat seemed to like his form of transport, although he dug in his claws when she tried to run. They came to the Drunken House and Acrobat made a wild jump for the hedgerow. He must have sensed the horror emanating from it, even though Rainbow could no longer feel the invisible eyes. She scrambled up the bank to retrieve him and then turned to slither down.

  Michael stood on the opposite side of the road, leaning on his door frame.

  “Hi, Rainbow. What’s that you’ve got?”

  “Hi. It’s Acrobat, my new cat.” She jumped down onto the road. “Isn’t he cute?”

  She held him out to show Michael, who limped across the lane and took him into his hands.

  “A ginger tom. You know gingers are always male?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s just a fact. I know lots of useless trivia.”

  Rainbow thought about the lack of information in the tree book.

  “Do you know anything about growing things?”

  “A bit. Why? Do you want to grow some more vegetables to sell?”

  Acrobat fidgeted in Michael’s hands. Rainbow took him back. He clawed up to her shoulder and settled himself like a scarf around her neck.

  “No. It’s about trees.”

  “I might be able to help you, then. My father ran a tree nursery. What do you want to know?”

  “How they grow.”

  Michael shifted his weight from his good to his bad leg and then back again.

  “Trees are plants, Rainbow. You plant a seed – an acorn, for example – then you water it and let it grow.” He paused. “Is that what you mean?”

  Rainbow nodded.

  “Why don’t you come inside? I need to sit down.”

  They crossed the road, Rainbow’s hands on Acrobat’s head and rump, and entered the gloomy house.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I can’t stay long. So trees grow like plants. How else?”

  Acrobat scrambled down from her shoulders and skittered across the table, then dived to the floor and padded towards the kitchen. Rainbow took off her rucksack. Could he smell ghosts?

  Michael scraped up a chair, lowered himself into it and stretched out his scarred leg. He started to massage it.

  “What else do you want to know? How to graft them? How to treat them against diseases? How long they live?”

  Rainbow hesitated.

  Fraser had ruined everything the day Rainbow had invited Rebecca home for the first time. When he’d come to their house to pick Rebecca up, Rainbow had hugged him as usual and started to tell him about Rebecca falling off the rope ladder.

  Then Mum had appeared. Fraser had stopped listening. Rainbow had pulled on his sleeve, but he’d ignored her. She’d left him to Mum and gone up to her bedroom to continue the mosaic she was making with Rebecca.

  When she came back down ten minutes later, to ask if Rebecca could stay a bit longer, she overheard him say her name. She crept closer. He was recounting the secret she’d told him about Mrs Jones – and laughing at her. Mum was laughing, too. The more Mum laughed, the more detail Fraser went into. He made Rainbow sound ridiculous.

  She’d never felt such a glut of tearing hate before: Fraser had promised he wouldn’t tell anyone how she knew Mrs Jones was an alien. She’d run back upstairs, told Rebecca that Fraser was in a hurry to leave and dashed to the toilet so she wouldn’t have to face him. She’d avoided him ever since.

  Standing in Michael’s front room, she wondered if Michael would betray her too.

  “I just need to know whether you can force them to grow,” she said.

  “You mean by putting them in a greenhouse or using fertiliser?”

  “No, by stretching them with your hands.”

  Michael stopped rubbing his leg. She waited for him to make a joke. He stared out of the front window.

  “I’ve never seen it done,” he said, slowly, turning back to face her. “But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Why do you want to know?”

  “It’s for my school project.”

  “We could look in a book.”

  “I’ve looked. There’s nothing in Patti’s tree book. Have you got any books?”

  Michael nodded at the piles of boxes.

  “Buried somewhere in there. Who’s Patti?”

  “My friend. Can we look at them?”

  “If there’s nothing in a specialist tree book, I’d say you couldn’t stretch them. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I s’pose so.”

  “So if someone found a tree that stretched, I should think it would be quite exciting. Extraordinary. I’d like to see a tree like that.”

  Rainbow frowned. Her hands were magic, not the tree, weren’t they? She jumped up from the table.

  “Let’s do an experiment.”

  “An experiment? You mean, try to force a tree to stretch?”

  Rainbow nodded. She led the way out to his garden and pointed across the weeds. A young tree shaded the corner between the workshop and the boundary wall. Its branches were low enough for Rainbow to reach.

  “That one.”

  “The ash?”

  “Whatever it is; the one by the wall.”

  She stood against the lowest branch and felt it grate her forehead. She would try to grow the trunk below this branch, which would allow her to walk underneath it afterwards.

  Michael was watching her, his arms folded.

  “So how shall we start?” he asked.

  “If you look the other way, I’ll try to stretch the trunk.”

  He turned his back. Rainbow laid her hands and cheek against the crevasses of the trunk. Closing her eyes, she let her fingers crawl over the ash’s skin. She felt as though she were a great distance away, looking down onto a never-ending mountain range of ridges and valleys. One part of the bark felt right. She let her hands rest there. The bark nestled into her palms until it and her hands were one. She pressed slowly. Her fingers stretched out and her hands flattened into the bark. She willed the ash to stretch. She coaxed it to
taste the pleasure of stretching after a long sleep.

  The sap pulsed upwards from the heart of its trunk to the extremities of its twigs. Then the ash settled back down into its meditative peace. Rainbow opened her eyes and released her hands. Her arms were heavy and her palms were marked with the imprints of the tree’s ridges. It was as if there had been an exchange. She understood that the tree would keep the mark of her growth and she would keep a shadow of its imprint.

  She didn’t need to try to walk underneath the branch to know that she could. Her instinct told her the ash had responded. She dropped her arms, stood back from it and admired its shape and solidity. How strange that she hadn’t noticed the beauty of its near-symmetry, the music of its leaves caressing each other in the slight breeze. It had so much character. She wanted to grow with it, to live the season changes with it, to breathe its greenness as it changed to brownness and withdrew into slumber.

  “Rainbow, are you all right?” Michael shook her shoulders. “Rainbow?”

  The force of Michael’s concern hit her. She struggled to wrench her eyes from the ash and blinked several times.

  “Oh! Yes, I’m fine. It’s so powerful.”

  “Sit down for a minute. You’ve gone white.”

  She dropped onto the grass. Michael hurried away to fetch a glass of water. So it was her that was special – her hands – not simply her weeping willow.

  He came back and passed her the glass.

  “Does this happen often?”

  “No. Yesterday was the first time,” she said.

  Michael glanced at the tree and then lowered himself to the grass beside her. “I meant the trances.”

  “Oh! So did I,” she lied. She tipped up the glass to hide her face.

  “It grew, didn’t it?” he said.

  “No, nothing happened.”

  “Let’s have a look.” He limped to the trunk and studied it. “I can’t see anything. Come and stand against this branch again.”

  Reluctantly, she stood up and walked towards the ash. Michael had his hand on the branch and his eyes fixed on her. There was no escape, unless … she took the last two steps awkwardly and touched the branch with her forehead.