The Climbers

by Keith Gray

  For Clara, Marc and Ludwig –

  cousins and friends

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PART 1: Twisted Sister

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART 2: Spider Trap

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART 3: Crazy Ash Bastard

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART 4: Double Trunker

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART 5: The Last Tree

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART 6: The Reach

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Copyright

  PART 1

  Corkscrew Willow (Salix matsudana)

  Deciduous – China – 16 metres

  CHAPTER 1

  The sun was in my eyes. I had to squint to see the new kid clinging on. He was high up among the branches of the tree we called Twisted Sister. It was a corkscrew willow tree and its name had been well chosen. It was a crooked and tangled maze of brown and green above me. The new kid had his arms wrapped around its trunk over halfway up.

  Down on the ground, five of us had our necks cricked back to watch him climb. I stood next to Mish. She was wearing the leaf earrings I’d got her last Christmas and her favourite black T-shirt. She pushed up the fringe of her curly hair and held her hand like she was giving a salute, shading her eyes to see.

  “I told you he was a good climber,” Mish said. She’d been the one to call me and I’d raced to the park on my bike.

  It was Friday afternoon. Zoe was there too, standing on the other side of the tree with her boyfriend Marvin and his twin brother Harvey. Zoe had told Mish at school that there was a new climber hanging around.

  The five of us stared up at the new kid. He was at least seven metres above us. He sat on a branch with his legs dangling down each side. He looked out of breath to me. He looked stuck too. I didn’t think he was going to make it any further.

  “What’s his name?” I asked Zoe.

  “He said to call him Nottingham,” she told me. “He said it’s where he comes from and that’s what everybody calls him.”

  Zoe was in the same class as me and Mish. Marvin and Harvey were in the year above us. Zoe was lanky, skinny and fearless. She was a better climber than her boyfriend and his brother put together. She was the only one out of those three who’d ever made it to the top of Twisted Sister before.

  “How long’s he been up there?” I asked.

  “Not even ten minutes,” Zoe replied. “He climbed two of the smaller trees first.”

  “He’s fast,” Marvin said.

  “Real fast,” Harvey agreed.

  They might have been twins, but they were opposites in loads of ways. Harvey’s brain was bigger than his muscles. He was the only person I’d ever met who got excited about taking exams and he often went into a sulk if he didn’t get top marks. Marvin’s muscles were bigger than his brain. He never got top marks in class but didn’t really care. He was a short, chunky rugby player. When he held hands with Zoe, he looked like a brick that was in love with a golf club.

  “Maybe this new kid’s faster than you,” Zoe said to me.

  Mish glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

  I shrugged, not wanting to admit just how fast Nottingham must be if he’d already made it halfway up Twisted Sister. It wasn’t the tallest tree in the park, but that didn’t mean it was an easy climb. There were plenty of us who had tried and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed. And failing mostly meant falling.

  We watched as Nottingham searched for a way up in the brown and green maze. He shuffled his backside this way and that. The branch beneath him shuddered. Flutters of leaves fell.

  Nottingham was wearing a black baseball cap and a green sweatshirt. Both of these things were good for climbing. The cap helped keep flies out of your eyes – or falling bits of twig and bark dust. Green clothing stopped too many leaf stains from showing, and that meant parents wouldn’t always spot how filthy you were when you went home. But Nottingham was also wearing cargo shorts and that was a big mistake. His shins and ankles could get ripped to shreds by thorns and jagged branches. Hungry insects could chow down like he was KFC. I wished I could see what kind of trainers he had on.

  “I bet you he makes it,” Marvin said. “All the way up.”

  Harvey nodded.

  Mish looked at me to see if I agreed.

  “He’s the wrong side of the trunk,” I said to Mish. But I spoke loudly so Zoe and the twins would hear too. “If he was on the other side of the trunk, he could go for better branches.” I pointed to show where I meant. “See there? The branches on this side are too tight to climb in between.”

  I was the youngest climber ever to make it to the top of Twisted Sister. I’d done it last summer when I was fourteen. But I’d fallen seven times before I’d made it. Could New Kid Nottingham really reach the top in one go?

  I hoped he fell.

  CHAPTER 2

  I’d read this book once which said corkscrew willows were Chinese trees. So how the hell one had ended up in our park in our village was anyone’s guess. They were also sometimes called “tortured” willows because their branches looked like they were twisted up in agony. Without its leaves in winter, Twisted Sister looked like it was screaming. But in summer it was a lush green explosion.

  I’d also read that they should only grow as high as ten or twelve metres. Twisted Sister clearly didn’t give a damn about what a book said, as it stabbed the sky at sixteen metres tall.

  There were two massive problems when trying to climb a corkscrew willow. The first was all those branches. You’d think a tree with so many branches would be easy to climb. But they were coiled and tangled together like wooden snakes. You had to squeeze in between the branches, but the gaps could be too narrow. You could get yourself trapped. We’d all heard the story about little Lola Jones from Year 7. Lola had got wedged in Twisted Sister so damn tight that her dad had had to fetch a ladder and a chainsaw. She’d never climbed again.

  Looking up, I thought New Kid Nottingham had got himself stuck. Not trapped, just at a dead end in the towering maze. But he surprised me.

  More leaves shook free as he got down flat on his belly, the branch underneath him bending, bending. He slid himself along the branch away from the trunk and squeezed under two curling branches that twisted over his head. It looked dangerous. He had to let go with both hands. But he could then reach out to grab the branches higher up. He wriggled and forced himself into the gap. No one had ever tried a move like that on Twisted Sister before.

  The five of us watching below him were impressed. But I pretended not to be.

  “He’s going to make it,” Harvey said. He was taking photos with his phone. “First try.”

  But, like I said, there were two massive problems when trying to climb a corkscrew willow. The second was that they grew fast. Too fast. It meant they didn’t always grow strong. The bark would split and the branches could be brittle.

  New Kid Nottingham had no idea he’d pulled himself onto a brittle branch. He was still on his belly and the branch below him bent too far. He was looking down at us head-first. His cap slipped off as he tried to clamber backwards. But the branch broke. We heard the crack, as loud as a gunshot in a movie. We heard Nottingham’s yell as he fell.

  He tumbled and bounced, branches thwacking him, whapping him. He grabbed at thin
air. Bark cracked and leaves exploded. Nottingham yelped and swore and grunted. He came down fast.

  We jumped backwards away from the tree.

  Nottingham hit the ground with a thud.

  The branch he’d snapped came down after him. He rolled to one side and the branch missed him by centimetres.

  Harvey still had his phone out and I wondered if he was going to call an ambulance. He took more photos of Nottingham on the ground instead.

  And Nottingham had been lucky anyway – he didn’t need an ambulance. He moved like a creaky robot, but he managed to get to his feet. He was groaning and pulling faces like he’d just been in a fight and lost. To me he had. He’d been in a fight with Twisted Sister. I knew that if he lifted up his green sweatshirt, he’d be scratched and battered and have bruises blacker than bats’ wings. Even so, he managed to grin at us all standing there.

  We often told the same old joke to each other: “Who are the best climbers? The ones who bounce back.” But it was more serious than funny.

  Nottingham was a bit taller than me and had thicker shoulders too, stretching his sweatshirt tight. His hair was dark, short and messy. He had a round, flat face. I wondered if it was so flat because he landed on it every time he fell from a tree. Across his right cheek was a thin worm-like scar. It went from underneath his nose all the way to his ear. Maybe he’d been slashed by a sharp branch when he was younger? I couldn’t decide if the scar made him look ugly or cool.

  I also checked out his trainers. A pair of old-school Adidas Swift Runs that had once been white. They were the best climbing shoes because they were brilliant at jamming into small gaps with their narrow pointy toes that had extra grip. And the pair Nottingham was wearing looked exactly the same as the pair I had on.

  Of course part of me was glad he’d fallen. But part of me felt guilty for feeling glad that he’d fallen.

  Nottingham touched the top of his head, then looked all the way back up to the spot from where he’d just dropped and crashed.

  “Bloody tree stole my cap,” Nottingham said. It was true – his black baseball cap hung on a twig high up there.

  “I’ll get it for you,” I said.

  Nottingham frowned and got in between me and the tree. “It’s my cap,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said as I tried to push past him. “I can do it, easy.”

  He got chest to chest with me. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  “I’m Sully,” I said.

  “OK, Sully, and why the hell d’you think I need your help?” he asked.

  “Because I’m the best climber in the village,” I said.

  Nottingham looked me up and down, still frowning. But then he grinned.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  He turned his back on me, stepped up to Twisted Sister and started climbing again.

  CHAPTER 3

  New Kid Nottingham had learned from his mistakes. He didn’t get himself trapped on the wrong side of the trunk on his second climb. He went slower too. No showing off this time. Instead he looked three branches ahead, checking for the best handholds. He was like a chess player working out his best move.

  “How many falls did you have before you got to the top?” I asked Zoe.

  “Ten,” she replied. “What about you?”

  “Seven,” I said. We called any failed attempt a “fall”, even if you only got stuck and climbed back down safely.

  “Twelve for me,” Marvin said. “So far …”

  “I reckon this new kid’s gonna make it after just one,” Harvey said. “He’s got monkey blood or something. Hey, Sully, you should challenge him to a competition.”

  “Yeah,” Marvin agreed. “You should have a race up Double Trunker.”

  “Sully would win. Easy,” Mish said, defending me.

  “Maybe,” Zoe said. “But this new kid’s got reach. Look at him!”

  We looked. Telling a climber they had reach was the biggest compliment you could give them. It was like telling an athlete they’d won an Olympic medal. But also like someone beautiful saying you were a good kisser.

  We watched Nottingham pluck his cap from the end of the twig that had caught it. He waved the cap at us before putting it on again.

  Harvey waved back. Then he began fiddling with his phone.

  “Who’re you texting?” Marvin asked him.

  “Everyone!” Harvey said. “They’ve gotta come see this, right?”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Nottingham. He let both feet dangle in thin air as he tested the strength of a branch above him. It must have felt safe, because he pulled himself up. Higher. He stepped around the trunk like he was on solid ground. He had no fear. He squirmed between the corkscrewing brown and green branches. Higher. Ten metres, twelve metres.

  Other climbers arrived to watch. I knew them all. They were out of breath because they’d raced all the way here to see it. Some on foot and some on bikes like me. Soon there was a crowd of kids in green T-shirts and Swift Runs around the bottom of Twisted Sister. We all jostled to get a good view of Nottingham past the leaves and branches.

  Marvin’s mouth gaped wide. “He’s only gone and done it,” he said.

  We were all amazed.

  No one had ever climbed Twisted Sister after only one fall. None of the older kids. Not even the first climber who’d given the tree its name.

  Nottingham swayed a bit as he clung to the thinnest branches at the very top of the tree. With the sun behind him he was just a dark patch among the leaves, but we could see him waving. The twins started clapping him and whooping, and others in the crowd joined in.

  I stayed silent. Mish tried to squeeze my hand, but I wouldn’t let her.

  Zoe looked at me. “Admit it, Sully,” she said. She pointed up at Nottingham. “Maybe you’re not the best climber in the village any more.”

  PART 2

  Larch (Larix decidua)

  Deciduous – Northern Hemisphere – 19 metres

  CHAPTER 4

  There were trees here, there and everywhere in our village. Maybe more trees than houses. And we climbed them all. But it was the ones in the park that were totally legendary. We called them the “Big Five”.

  The Big Five trees stood like guards along the back edge of the park, which was also the back edge of the village. Beyond the Big Five were just flat fields, going way off into the distance. The view from the top of the Big Five trees was stunning.

  From shortest to tallest they were Twisted Sister, Spider Trap, Crazy Ash Bastard and Double Trunker.

  But that was only four, right? That was because the biggest, tallest, most difficult tree to climb didn’t have a name.

  Not yet.

  Around here we had a climbers’ code. Everyone knew that whoever was the first to climb a tree got to name it. And so far no one had got to the top of the last of the Big Five.

  Not yet.

  The unnamed biggest of the Big Five stood in the furthest corner of the park, on the opposite side to the play area with its swings and slide. It was boss, chief, master, elder of all the trees. I reckoned the view from the top would be mind-blowing. This tree was so big and tall it was like a massive pin sticking the park in place. I sometimes imagined a giant coming along and yanking the tree out of the ground, and our village simply floating away.

  I was the best climber in the village. Chris Sullivan, but my mates all called me Sully. I had reach. And I’d made up my mind that this summer I was going to be the first to climb the last of the Big Five.

  I was going to conquer the unnamed tree. I’d be famous and remembered for ever because I’d choose its name.

  I was going to call it Sullivan’s Skystabber.

  CHAPTER 5

  I’d thought I was going to be the first to climb that biggest tree, but that was before I met Nottingham.

  He made it back down to the ground after climbing Twisted Sister. I saw he had leaves and bark dust stuck to the sweat on
his cheeks and forehead. The long thin scar on his face was shiny pink. I knew the palms of his hands would be scraped red and stinging. He probably had jagged splinters in his fingertips too. But Nottingham was grinning like he’d just saved a drowning puppy, or maybe defeated a raging dragon. You know, like he was a hero.

  The problem was, everybody who’d crowded around the bottom of Twisted Sister acted like Nottingham really was a hero. They all wanted to tell him how great and brilliant and amazing he was. Harvey even slung his arm around Nottingham and took a selfie. Then everybody wanted a selfie with him. I felt myself getting pushed towards the back of the crowd as they elbowed me out of the way.

  I tried to pretend I didn’t care. But I cared so damn much! What if this new kid was a better climber than me?

  I was shocked when I saw Mish also had her phone out. She was my best friend. We’d been friends since we were eight, when she hadn’t grassed me up for stealing some stamps from the Post Office. So Mish wanting a selfie with Nottingham stabbed me like a million burning splinters. But instead she held her phone up above everyone’s head.

  “He’s not as fast as Sully,” Mish shouted. She pointed at her phone so the other climbers could see it. “I timed him. Nottingham took twenty-two minutes and forty seconds to make it to the top. See? Sully can make it up in twenty minutes flat.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes as if Mish was just being annoying. But Mish always stuck up for me. She wasn’t a climber, but we said she was like my coach and my trainer. The best climber in the village needed a support crew, right?

  “Good try,” I said, feeling relieved. I pushed my way towards Nottingham past the small crowd of kids who were meant to be my friends, not his. “But some of the trees around here are real hard climbs. Maybe a lot harder than the trees where you come from. At least you got your cap back.”