Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  Rainbow couldn’t scratch Mary from her mind. She found Domi in his consulting room and told him what had happened. He was washing his hands and had his back to her.

  “She seems to be afraid of me,” Rainbow told him. “Why would she be scared?”

  He turned around and dried his hands. “Did you feel a sense of foreboding or light-headedness when you saw her?”

  “No. Just shivers down my spine. But I’ve had that before.”

  “Ah.”

  “I had the tingling with Nico too. There was nothing spiritual there.”

  “Was it exactly the same? Or did it lessen when you were with Nicolas?”

  She thought back to her first encounter with Nico. “You’re right. I felt the tingling when I saw him, but when he touched me it stopped.”

  “Hmm. A warning.”

  She perched on the edge of the couch, encouraged by his pensive expression. “So, what does it mean?”

  He sat down behind his desk and shuffled through one drawer after another. Eventually, he pulled out a dusty sheaf of papers bound with a faded red velvet ribbon and handed it to her. “You might find an answer in here.”

  “What is it?”

  “My mother’s notes on spiritualism. If you do find an answer, remember it’s just a possibility. It’s not necessarily the sole explanation.”

  She examined the yellowed papers, which were covered in tiny French handwriting. “Do I have to read all this? Can’t you just tell me?”

  “No. I don’t have any experience of this kind of situation. All I can tell you is that these are the writings of an honest clairvoyant. You may find a clue to help you. But it may also put you off wanting to meet the girl properly. In the end, only you can decide what to do.”

  She blew the dust off the pages and carried them up to her bedroom.

  Mary

  Mary can’t bring herself to face Katia, Fred and Corinne. She needs to be alone. At the farm entrance, she scribbles a note to Katia telling her not to worry if she doesn’t see her for a while. She drops it in the letterbox and then rides away from the roads she knows.

  She wants to stay on Christophe’s bike forever. If she keeps riding she’ll never have to face anything ever again. She cruises along lanes and through villages with names she’s seen on signposts but has never visited. From time to time she stops to sit on a bench or stretch her legs.

  She sees nothing and hears nothing other than the comforting purr of the engine. Hours of counting pass. Her mind processes possibilities but she refuses to examine them. She is cocooned in the warmth of the helmet, balanced in the void between the surface of her senses and the depths of her brain.

  Midnight chimes and she finds herself in Cognac, outside the motorbike shop. She still can’t imagine going back to the farm, but Christophe’s face hovers, gentle, in her mind. She won’t be able to rest until she’s asked him more about his palm-reader. She has to see his lips pronounce that name. She has to hear him say it.

  He’s waiting for her. He doesn’t ask about his bike. He simply makes her a mug of black tea and holds her while she cries.

  At last she finds the strength to speak.

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name’s Rainbow.”

  “Of course it is. I mean, who is she? Is she real? How can she possibly exist?”

  Christophe looks puzzled. “She’s as real as you are.”

  “Tell me about her. Everything you know. Begin at the beginning.”

  Christophe doesn’t ask why. He talks. After fifteen sentences, Mary knows it is impossible. It’s as impossible as her gift. She wants to understand. She has to understand. But to understand, she must face before. She can’t do it.

  Christophe continues speaking. She forces herself to listen. It’s like hearing a tale, one she knows by heart. He knows her story. Somehow, this changes things. She isn’t as alone as she thought. She listens more easily. The story isn’t quite the same. There’s a moment of difference, and then a world of difference. She listens and lets his reassuring voice slip into her mind and open the closed box of her memory. There it is, the critical moment when she was unconscious: a moment of shock, like diving into the ice-cold water of the Blue Lake. She slams the lid closed again.

  When Christophe asks her if she still wants his friend Rainbow to read her palm, she shrugs. She’s in control again. Numb, but in control. He tells her she’s not obliged, but he thinks it would help her. He strokes her cheek. She looks into his brown eyes. She agrees. There’s no need to tell anyone that she shared the trunk of her life with this girl. She’ll get her reading and then leave.

  Rainbow

  Rainbow found her answer in the wad of notes. She didn’t read the whole pack. She was too excited by what she discovered to finish reading. How could it be possible? And if this were possible, how many other things in life that were deemed impossible actually existed?

  She read another passage and then stopped to speculate. She compared the revelation in the notes with her own life, and then tried to imagine Mary’s. She couldn’t understand Mary’s name. Surely they should bear the same name. How did it happen? And when? She had no memory of the tearing-apart sensation Domi’s mother had recorded. And what could she mean about coexistence only lasting as long as it was necessary?

  She was still reading through the important snippets at four in the morning, when Christophe called. Mary had returned to his flat. He told Rainbow she’d better come over.

  It only took her a few minutes to find the object she hadn’t set her eyes on for years. It would prove the link between herself and Mary. She jumped on her moped and rode to Christophe’s flat.

  Rainbow and Mary

  Christophe introduced them: “Mary, Rainbow; Rainbow, Mary.”

  Rainbow stared into Mary’s distrustful green eyes. Mary showed no shock this time. It was like looking into a mirror, except there was no sign of the excitement she could feel gleaming in her own eyes. Despite a day astride a motorbike, Mary looked smart in black jeans and a body-hugging green polo-neck jumper with a short, sequinned jacket. Rainbow glanced down at her old jumper and baggy trousers. She wanted to touch Mary’s hands but they were hidden behind her back. She smoothed away the strands of hair straggling from her ponytail.

  “Come and sit down,” said Christophe.

  He led them to his sofa and armchair. Rainbow and Mary sat face to face, the coffee table between them. Christophe settled beside Mary on the sofa.

  Rainbow leant back and sat on her hands. She couldn’t risk endangering them both by reaching out to touch Mary.

  “Can you tell me who you are?” she asked.

  “You’re the palm-reader. Ask yourself,” replies Mary.

  “Are you right or left-handed?”

  Mary glares at her, and then decides the question is pertinent. “Left.”

  “Me too. Let me see your right palm.”

  “Why not the left?”

  “If you’re left-handed, the left shows your conscious self. It represents your public face and what you make of your life. The right is your subconscious, inner self.”

  “Then I’m only interested in the left hand,” says Mary. She holds it out.

  Rainbow clenched her hands behind her back to control them. Mary’s hand was only slightly rough, like a gardener’s. It was nothing like her own, scarred palm. She swallowed. She couldn’t get any vibes from Mary. Looking at Mary’s hand wasn’t enough to tell her anything.

  “Well?” says Mary.

  She refuses to feel any curiosity about this impossible embodiment of her former self. She just wants to get her palm read so she can decide whether to go to Paris or stay with Christophe. Then she’ll shove this unnerving impossibility to the depths of her mind and forget it.

  Rainbow could sense nothing from Mary’s hand, but her resistance to Rainbow’s presence was like a solid wall. Rainbow knew she’d have to touch her, even though she had no idea what would happen with the touch. Would Domi’s mother�
�s dire predictions of absorption prove true? Did she risk disappearing? She released her hands and let them cradle each other in her lap. Maybe there was another way.

  “Do you really want me to read your palm?” she asked. “Aren’t you more interested in finding out why we look so much alike?”

  “Everyone’s got a double. There’s nothing special about that,” says Mary.

  “I think it is special,” said Rainbow.

  Mary was hiding something. She should have looked surprised at their identical appearances and asked questions. Perhaps she’d always known she had a parallel. Perhaps she knew when and why it had happened. Perhaps–

  “I don’t care what you think,” says Mary. “Are you going to read my palm or shall I find a more cooperative palm-reader?”

  “You’ll have to let me see your right hand too.”

  “No. Only my left.”

  Mary thrusts her left palm into Rainbow’s hands.

  Rainbow looked down at her three hands. Her soul lifted out of her body. Then, like a predator’s jaws snapping closed on a victim’s neck, her hands clamped Mary’s palm. She crashed back into her body. A blinding sadness overwhelmed her. There was an unbearable weight of guilt and a cold, hard fossil of defiance. The honesty of Mary’s pain gripped her. She couldn’t let go.

  For a second, time stopped.

  Chapter 44

  Rainbow and Mary

  And then started again.

  Mary’s eyes spring wide open. Green innocence invades her. The flow of soothing calm is stronger than any drug she has tried. It’s peace: a deep pool of soothing rightness. She wants to drown herself in the pool, even though it is deadly stagnant.

  Gradually, the feeling of peace ebbs away. Oh, the cruelty of it! To have tasted this and be denied it. She tugs on her hand to free herself. She is sobbing. Christophe helps wrench their hands apart. He holds her close to his chest and strokes her.

  The hurt bottled up inside her surges to the surface. It’s time. This Rainbow must know the truth. She’ll have to open the door to before and speak the words she has never been able to say.

  Rainbow fell back into her chair. She hadn’t disappeared; neither had Mary. She held her burning hands to her forehead in an attempt to calm the dizziness that was spinning her into unknown fields. They were dark fields: burnt, treeless, raped of nature, barren. Something was wrong. Badly wrong.

  “We’re connected,” said Rainbow. “And it’s wrong. I need you to help me understand what happened.”

  She pulled a scroll of paper from a cardboard tube in her bag and unrolled it onto the coffee table. First, she revealed her own corner, the corner she’d started drawing in when she was thirteen years old. She’d sketched up to the centre of the paper during her art lessons at the Drunken House.

  Mary watches her drawing reveal itself, little by little, as Rainbow stretches it out. All those years ago it represented her vision of the future. The joint project had been Michael’s idea: they’d each started in a diagonally opposed corner and drawn how they saw the future, without looking at each other’s work. She never saw Michael’s side. On their last evening together they did her maths homework instead of finishing the drawing. Mary leans closer, her heart thumping, to see what he had drawn.

  Rainbow spread the drawing out and held down the corners so Mary could study it. Rainbow had examined it years ago. She was more interested in Mary’s reaction. She watched Mary’s fingers trace Michael’s sketch lines, from seeds to tiny saplings to the power of the dominating baobab in the centre: a future of healing trees, going from strength to strength.

  “He was so wrong,” sighs Mary.

  “We were almost right,” said Rainbow.

  She looked down at the lines her own hand had pencilled. There were trees, of course. And a badly drawn version of Amrita arm in arm with Michael under an eternally sunny sky.

  Mary feels Christophe looking over her shoulder at the drawing.

  “Can someone explain this to me?” he asks.

  Rainbow looked at Mary.

  Mary looks at Christophe.

  Christophe turned to Rainbow.

  “It could be like this,” said Rainbow. “A girl grows up and discovers she has a gift for healing trees. She meets a man called Michael who helps her develop this talent. Unfortunately, during her experiments, the girl breaks the branch of a tree and causes an accident.” She stopped. Keeping it factual helped, but the pain was still present.

  Mary grips the sides of her thighs. Her fingernails dig into her skin. She’s trembling. She counts the syllables in each of Rainbow’s words as Rainbow continues.

  “The girl loses consciousness. When she wakes up, she learns she killed Michael in the accident. After a few months of avoiding trees because of her guilt, she decides Michael would have wanted her to carry on healing trees. She breaks into his house, looking for a keepsake, and finds the last drawing they worked on together. This drawing. It shows his view of the future and confirms her belief that trees are her destiny. Her mother finds her a guru in France. She spends the rest of her life wondering what the hell she’s supposed to do in answer to her calling.” Rainbow smiled ruefully at Christophe. “You knew most of that. So let’s hear Mary’s version.”

  Mary looks up at the expectant faces. Can she do it? She doesn’t understand how the impossible could have happened, but somehow it did. They must have split into two parallel beings the millisecond before Mother’s confession. She feels Christophe’s hand on her shoulder and takes a four-second breath. This is it.

  “A girl grows up and discovers she has a gift for healing trees. She meets a man called Michael who helps her. Then the girl forces a beech tree branch to grow against its will. It falls and kills Michael.”

  Rainbow nodded.

  Mary continues. “While the girl is unconscious, she hears her mother make a confession.”

  Rainbow sat up straight. This must be it. The split. She had no recollection of any confession. “What did she say?”

  “You killed your father,” whispers Mary.

  Her voice refuses to continue. Years of suppressed anguish spill out as sobs. There is no longer any anger. Now she’s spoken them, her mother’s words seem to fade out of earshot. She takes a deep breath, blows her nose and looks at Rainbow.

  Rainbow froze at Mary’s whispered words. Michael? Her father? Michael. Her father. She tried to link the concept of ‘father’ and ‘Michael’ to become one single idea. Something in her resisted. If she placed this last stepping stone into the river she’d have no choice but to step onto the far bank. She’d have to face the desecrated fields she’d sensed on touching Mary’s hand.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” Mary says.

  Rainbow shook her head.

  “That’s why you were able to carry on,” says Mary.

  Rainbow shook her head again. No way. Not Michael. She couldn’t take that last step.

  “What happened next?” she whispered.

  “When she recovers from her accident, the girl blames her mother for lying to her. But she hates herself for killing her father, too. She rejects her gift. She rejects everything, in fact. She renames herself Mary – the name she finds on her birth certificate; the name Michael must have given her – and she tries to make herself into a new person to replace the guilty person she can’t bear to be.” A long, shuddering sigh escapes her. “That’s my story,” she says.

  She is washed-out. She clutches Christophe’s warm hand and leans back into his arms. Poor Rainbow. It’s her turn to deal with the truth.

  Rainbow felt as stiff as a wooden doll. She struggled to her feet. It was one thing to find out you had a parallel being. She could cope with that. But it was another to discover your life had been based on a lie.

  “I’ve got to talk to Mum,” she said.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” asked Christophe.

  Rainbow shook her head. “Stay with Mary.”

  “I’m not leaving you on your own
to deal with this,” says Mary.

  “This isn’t your story. It’s mine. I must face it alone.”

  Mary wants to support Rainbow, but the idea of seeing a different version of her mother makes her hesitate. “Okay. We’re here if you need us,” she says.

  Rainbow

  Rainbow arrived at the commune at six in the morning. Her shock had turned into anger towards Mum for her lies, and then into despair. She couldn’t understand why she felt so strongly. Surely she’d recovered from the guilt of killing Michael? It had happened five years ago. So why was she in denial?

  She parked in front of Le Logis. Suppose Mary was lying. Or suppose she’d misunderstood Mum’s words when she’d been unconscious. She hadn’t thought to ask Mary if Mum had confirmed her confession afterwards. If Mary was like her – and surely she must be – she may have believed what she’d misheard without questioning it. Like Rainbow had done when she’d believed Domi was her father. This must be the explanation. If Michael had been her father, he would have told her so. Relief swept over her and her pity for Mary doubled.

  She tapped on Domi and Mum’s bedroom door. A residue of anxiety sweated through her palms. Please, please don’t let it be true. Please don’t let me have killed my own father.

  There were a few groans and then Domi told her to enter. She tiptoed in. The importance of knowing the truth outweighed her regret at waking them so early.

  Domi sat up, pulling the quilt with him. Mum didn’t move.

  “Mum! Wake up. Sorry, but it’s really important.”

  Domi rubbed his eyes. “Did you meet your double?”

  “Yes. Are you awake, Mum?”

  Domi shook Mum. She turned over, squinted at Rainbow and yawned. “Can’t it wait until the morning, love?”

  It would be easy to hate her. For a second, she sympathised with Mary. “Mum, I need some answers about my father. Who was he?”