Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  “Maybe you should tell them.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Things are better like this.”

  “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

  He looked disappointed. Had Fraser told him that Mum was beautiful? Or was he sad because she wouldn’t explain herself? She pushed the maths paper away.

  “Look, if I tell Mum about us, she’ll feel guilty about not noticing I’ve been out. She’ll make a fuss and want to meet you. Then she’ll bewitch you, and you won’t be my secret anymore. You’ll be like all the others who come up to the house. You’ll end up being Mum and Bob’s friend instead of mine.”

  “Rainbow!”

  “Well, it’s true. You don’t know what she’s like.”

  “I think it would be normal for her to want to know who I am. I’d want to meet me, if I was your mum … or rather, your dad.”

  “Bob’s not my dad. He’s my stepdad.”

  “I know, you told me.”

  “Anyway, my dad’s dead, so he doesn’t care about meeting you. Nor does Bob.”

  “Dead? You didn’t tell me that.”

  She shrugged. “He died after he left us.”

  Michael picked up the maths sheet. He folded it in half, then in half again, and again.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Rainbow. “You really want me to tell Mum, don’t you?”

  Michael put the paper back down.

  “I think I’d better come to your house and tell her myself.”

  Fraser had ruined everything. Michael looked determined. Maybe he was right: if Fraser learnt she was friends with Michael and then told Bob, Bob would forbid her to come back.

  “In that case you must promise you’ll still be my friend and not theirs,” she said. “And that you won’t talk to them about my gift.”

  “Of course. Nothing will change that.”

  Michael smiled, but the twinkle didn’t reach his eyes.

  They bent over the homework together. An hour later, Rainbow ran home with the unlit torch in her hand. She didn’t want to see the threatening shadows at the edge of the light beam.

  The next day was dry and sunny, perfect for tree-growing. Rainbow was amazed how the weather could pass from one extreme to another overnight. This Monday evening had been stolen from September, stuffed into the last week of October and uncovered from between the layers of misty days. The sleepy sun was irresistible.

  Thoughts of the beech tree had riddled her all day and she’d spent her physics lesson sketching it from memory. On the way home from school she stopped in front of it. At last, the moment she’d been looking forward to had arrived. Her hands skimmed the beech tree’s bark. She wasn’t sure whether its warmth came from the late afternoon sun or the contact with her hands.

  These days her hands had a pachyderm’s skin and were always warm. They’d become less sensitive to everything other than trees, and she constantly dropped dishes and plates. It seemed that by developing this new sense she was slowly losing an old one.

  She found a handhold, pulled herself halfway up into the branches and wriggled her legs and torso until she was balanced between the triple trunks. Then she searched with hands and eyes until she discovered her next stopping place: a fork where a branch cut her view of the field below her into two. With each movement, a few more russet leaves danced to the ground and she rose higher above the lane, climbing up the beech’s face beneath its heavy fringe.

  When she reached its eye level, she stopped to rest. She was breathing heavily. In the hedge by the passing space lay her school bag, dusted by leaves; a reminder that she couldn’t stay too long. Had the beech been able to see, it would have had a good view of the tractors chuntering up the lane to decimate its trailing branches.

  Her breath returned to normal and she lowered herself until her pelvis fitted in the crook between two of the trunks. She wrapped her legs around the one in front of her and put her hands on a thick branch. Her cheek, laid against its skin, felt the tree’s chill. She began to massage the branch in her search for the right place. Only her hands could find these zones, and usually it took a few seconds, a dozen at the most, to find one.

  She spent a minute caressing the beech in vain. It wasn’t unwelcoming, like the horse chestnut had been on that wet day last week. She’d respected its unwillingness and left it until the weather was dry. No, the beech was as cold as a dead body: as cold as her cheeks when she’d fallen into the Blue Lake last spring. It needed warming up.

  She closed her eyes. Her hands hovered. The heat from her body dissipated through the papery bark, and the coolness of the branch seeped up through the crevasses in her palms. She was surprised. There was normally an exchange of heat. She concentrated on sucking up the cold into the pores of her skin and searched for the willingness that was so slow to surface. It was as if the beech were asleep.

  There was still no response. She opened her eyes and lifted her cheek. She was as tired as the beech: cold and heavy and tired. She fidgeted and started to shiver. Either she’d lost her gift or it didn’t work on beech trees. Perhaps this particular branch didn’t want to be stretched. She changed position and sat on another branch, her back to the trunk. This one was slimmer and grew straight across the lane. It would have been perfect for a swing.

  She let her hands dangle, shook them and opened and closed her fists to bring back the warmth. Once they were warm again, she trickled her fingers over the bark and then placed her palms flat against it. Right here. This was the niche. She relaxed. Warmth crawled through the fibres. Contact. She recognised the phase of mutual recognition. This always preceded the easing out of fibres, which she would then guide into shape with her hands.

  The beech was extraordinary! She could feel no movement, no creaking or sighing, no aroma of green dust. It was a silent, invisible mover.

  Or was it refusing to move?

  She opened her eyes. Her hands were in the same place. The branch was unchanged. She had asked and the tree had refused.

  Part of her wanted to stop, to leave the tree alone. It was clear that it didn’t want to grow. Or was it testing her? Her resolve strengthened into stubbornness. She wanted it to grow. She wanted to see whether she could force it despite its reluctance. She wanted to master it.

  She laid her hands back in place and pressed harder. The beech quivered deep in its internal cells. She insisted. Waves of determination flowed through her hands and urged the branch to stretch. She dominated its resistance. She was powerful enough. She would overcome its laziness.

  At last, the branch’s fibres began to draw apart. She began to smile in triumph – but the smile quickly froze on her face. Where was the normal vibrancy? Instead, there was a twanging sensation, as if the fibres were ligaments she was over-stretching to snapping point.

  This wasn’t right.

  As the thought hit her, she felt the fibres twitch under her hands. This was wrong. All wrong. She stared at the branch, expecting to see it ripping apart. Nothing showed. She put her hands back, to feel what was happening. Fibres were still twanging. And she could hear a strange, growling crescendo. The twanging accelerated. She pressed her hands down and tried to calm the vibrations under her palms. She stroked her hands towards the trunk, trying to ease the ligaments back to their original position.

  A flash of red broke her concentration. She glanced down into the lane. A car was approaching. She realised that the strange growling noise was its engine, not the tree. It was Fraser’s Porsche. Fraser. He was coming to her house to ridicule her in front of Mum.

  The beech! She’d stopped concentrating for a split second. Under her palms the twanging heightened to a groan and then a silent screech. She had to stop the branch. She didn’t want it to break. She forced all her energy through her palms. The branch teetered on the edge of catastrophe; hovering, waiting. All it needed was a little more effort to draw it back.

  And then she had an idea.

  It was a terrible, murdero
us thought. She pushed it away and willed the fibres back into place. But her hesitation had been fatal. The branch’s fibres edged further apart. She redoubled her efforts. The red Porsche was still approaching. She held on. If she could pump enough energy into the branch, the car would be through, out of danger. She concentrated with all her strength.

  The car slowed down. What was Fraser doing? Go on, go on!

  It stopped beneath her. The passing place. Get out of there, Fraser! Yellow car coming the other way. It was too much for her. Fibres screamed. The branch cracked. She couldn’t hold on any longer.

  Golden leaves flew around her. She was falling. There was an explosion of red. Screams. Under her broken body she could feel the cold, cold branch. And under the branch, pressed against her nose, she saw squashed, blood-red metal.

  More screams. Slamming doors. Mum’s voice, howling. But under her, under the splinters of metal and wood, there were no sounds.

  Then she heard Fraser swear.

  He was alive.

  Mum’s voice came closer. She could let go. Sounds mixed, danced together, entwined, danced away. She was part of the branch. She was drifting elsewhere, dead bark and drying sap imprinted on her cheek.

  Part II

  Cambium

  1990

  Chapter 8

  Phloem and Xylem

  Phloem

  Rainbow woke up in a hospital bed. Pain throbbed in her right leg. She opened her eyes and looked along her shrouded body to her feet. Her right leg was swollen with a plaster cast, making the left one seem shrunken. She wiggled the toes of her left foot and saw the sheet bow like a puppet in response. Her body was fine.

  There was an empty space in her mind between landing on the roof of Fraser’s car and opening her eyes in the hospital ward. Empty, except for the fleeting scent of Amrita. She had seen Amrita. She had seen another Rainbow. Amrita had tried to give her a message about healing, about splitting into two. But that wasn’t the proper legend about Amrita. The proper legend was of a girl who had sacrificed herself to save a tree.

  The end of the legend troubled her. Had Amrita died in her attempt to save the tree, or had she lived and saved it? She was sure that Amrita had lived and saved the tree, but she couldn’t understand why this suddenly seemed so important. Nor why she felt as if part of herself had died.

  “Rainbow?”

  She looked up. Mum came into the room and rushed to the bed. There were tears in her eyes. The reality of the accident chased away Rainbow’s thoughts about Amrita.

  “Mum!”

  Mum kissed her, straightened her pillow, stroked her hair, squeezed her hand. Rainbow felt a gleam of joy: Mum was fussing over her. But she looked sad. Rainbow swallowed.

  “Fraser?” she asked.

  “Fraser’s fine. But I’m afraid there’s some bad news, love.”

  Rainbow’s delight slithered into the sheets. She wished Mum had saved the bad news for later.

  “There was a man in the car with Fraser,” continued Mum. “A man from the village. I’m afraid he died in the accident.”

  Her throat seized up. Only a whisper could escape: “Who?”

  “No one you knew. And it wasn’t your fault, love.”

  “But what was his name?”

  Mum’s eyes shifted slightly to the left. “Knowing his name won’t help you get better. It was an accident. You must try to forget it.”

  “I need to know his name!”

  Mum hesitated. “Well, if you’re sure. He was called Michael Jallet.”

  Rainbow’s eyes closed before her mum finished saying his name. She willed herself back towards the spinning leaves of unconsciousness. But it was no good. She couldn’t escape from reality, from the horror of what she’d done.

  She reached out for Mum, who gathered her into a hug. Even the reassurance of Mum’s arms didn’t lessen the pain inside. She had killed her best friend.

  Xylem

  Rainbow wakes up in a hospital bed. Pain throbs in her right leg. She opens her eyes and looks along her shrouded body to her feet. Her right leg is swollen with a plaster cast, making the left one seem shrunken. She wiggles the toes of her left foot and sees the sheet bow like a puppet in response. Her body is fine.

  Her mind flicks back to Amrita, the tree protector. She knows now that Amrita died in vain. This revelation came to her while she was unconscious. She remembers the moment of icy shock, like the time she’d fallen into the freezing water of the Blue Lake. First there was the warm hospital bed and the reassuring beep of machines as she struggled through spinning leaves. Then came Mum’s voice.

  There was an Arctic flash. Separation. Shock.

  Then she’d seen her old self and Amrita hugging a dying tree. She was outraged at them both; furious at them for not knowing.

  Now, though, she can’t remember exactly what it is they don’t know. The moment has frozen and won’t thaw into sense. The idea of trees sickens her. She doesn’t want anything to do with trees anymore, nor with Amrita. She knows with all her heart that Amrita died without saving the tree. She doesn’t know why she’s so sure, but she’s certain that it doesn’t matter now.

  Pain spreads up from her right leg and she forgets about Amrita. Mum arrives and peers anxiously at her through smudged eyes. She says her name, kisses her, straightens her pillow, strokes her hair. But the sound of her low, throaty voice puzzles Rainbow. Something isn’t right. Her subconscious nudges her towards a haze she can’t quite remember.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  “There was an accident, love. You were climbing trees and a branch broke under you. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. Fraser’s all right though, isn’t he? I heard you tell me while I slept.”

  Mum nods and opens her mouth to speak again, but Rainbow interrupts.

  “What happened while I was asleep?”

  Mum shifts in the plastic chair, uncoils her long legs and reaches into her bag. “Nothing. I sat beside you and the nurses looked after you.”

  “Oh.” Rainbow frowns and searches for the source of the strangeness she can feel inside her. “You said something while I was asleep; something important.”

  Mum riffles through her bag. “It must have been a dream.”

  “No, I’m sure it was real.”

  Rainbow struggles to sit up and looks at her mum properly. There’s a desperate look in Mum’s eyes, like in Patti’s pony’s eyes on windy days when he gallops from one end of the field to the other without respite.

  “I said lots of things, love. I was worried.”

  Mum does look worried. Rainbow summons up her courage: “Didn’t you mention Dad?”

  “No, of course not. Why would I do that?”

  Mum’s voice is devoid of the usual Dad anger. She must be really worried about something. She clears her throat, perches on the edge of the bed and takes Rainbow’s hands in her own.

  “There is something I must tell you about the accident. There was a passenger in the car. He wasn’t as lucky as Fraser. I’m afraid he passed away.”

  Rainbow squeezes her eyes shut.

  “Who was it?”

  As Mum’s mouth closes over Michael’s name, Rainbow’s stomach begins to cramp. She turns away from Mum, retches and then digs her fingers into her hair and starts to scream.

  It isn’t the cramps that make her scream. It’s the recollection of that glacial flash. She’s just remembered what Mum confessed while she was unconscious.

  Phloem

  Hours seemed to pass before Rainbow found the strength to release herself from the safety of Mum’s arms. The knowledge of what she’d done lay heavy in her head, like a bandage she couldn’t think through. Michael was dead. She’d killed him with her stupid antics in trees. If only she’d listened to the beech. If only she could go back in time and change what she’d done.

  Mum smoothed back Rainbow’s hair. She looked whiter than ever and her eyes wore their worried wrinkles. She would have been the last person to see Michae
l alive: her and Fraser. Maybe Mum had got everything wrong.

  “Are you sure he …?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “Yes, love. I’m sure. Try not to think about him. It was an accident. You must concentrate on getting better now. How’s that leg?”

  It was easy for Mum: she hadn’t known Michael. She was probably glad that it hadn’t been Fraser. If only.…

  “Rainbow? I knew I shouldn’t have given you a name to focus on. It wasn’t your fault. Now, how’s your leg?”

  Her leg hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain of knowing she’d killed her best friend. She bit her lip, tasted salt and buried her face in her pillow. Of course it was her fault. She shouldn’t have forced the beech, but she couldn’t tell Mum. Her gift was a curse. She’d never use it again, never mention it to anyone else. Never, ever share the secret she’d shared with Michael.

  Xylem

  When Rainbow stops screaming and opens her eyes, the world has changed.

  Nurses cluck around them, ethereal as ghosts. Mum is sitting on the hospital bed beside her, leaning over to stop Rainbow wrenching out her hair. Rainbow lets her hands drop, shakes off Mum’s hands and stares at her. Although she looks exactly the same, she’s not the Mum Rainbow thought she knew.

  “Rainbow! What is it?”

  Rainbow’s mouth is full of acid. It’s the taste of hate spiced with guilt and self-disgust. It’s too much to take. She can’t swallow this on her own.

  She searches Mum’s eyes for help in dissipating the poisonous cocktail that’s threatening to burn her from inside. She can forgive Mum for lying, if only Mum will admit the truth and help her deal with it.

  “I killed him,” she whispers.

  “No, love. It was an accident.”

  “I killed him,” she insists.

  “You mustn’t say that. It was an accident.”

  “Mum–” The word tastes foreign in her mouth.