Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

  Praise for Tree Magic

  ‘Very well-written and well-constructed … here is an author who has the skill of an accomplished novelist.’

  Curtis Bausse, author of One Green Bottle

  ‘Rainbow’s journey was a wonder to read; Tree Magic is utterly stunning from start to finish.’

  Rachel Bell, #SundayYA host

  ‘This book is full of emotions … a book that will be enjoyed by both young and older adult readers.’

  Jacqui Brown, blogger at The French Village Diaries

  ‘This is an original and complex story that kept me engaged. Highly recommended.’

  Susan Elizabeth Hale, author of Emma Oliver and the Song of Creation

  ‘The writing is poised and elegant with many moments of lyricism.’

  Atthys J. Gage, author of Spark

  Tree Slayer

  Harriet Springbett

  To Sally,

  whose idea sparked

  this story

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  I. Half

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  II. Two Halves

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  III. Whole

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  IV. Broken Halves

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  V. One

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Rainbow put down the phone and raced upstairs to her bedroom. Christophe had a surprise for her and he sounded excited about it.

  She pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, scraped her long brown hair into a ponytail and clattered back downstairs. She paused at the bathroom to brush her teeth. She didn’t want morning breath to interfere with kissing.

  Mum was in the kitchen, humming her new song as she made tea for the commune adults.

  “Can I borrow the Mini?” Rainbow asked. “I’m going over to Christophe’s.”

  Mum yawned. “I thought you were revising all weekend?”

  “I’ve got the rest of the day to revise. And tomorrow. I won’t be long.”

  Mum nodded, sat down with her tea and started scribbling musical notes on her manuscript. Rainbow dropped a kiss on her cheek, scooped up the keys and dashed outside into the sunny June morning.

  She hadn’t seen Christophe all week. He’d been training a new motorbike apprentice at work and persuaded Rainbow to spend the final evenings before her Baccalaureate exams revising instead of hanging out with him. So she had. She’d ignored the call of the woods and sat in her loft, her school books open, gazing out of the windows at the enticing leaves.

  Christophe. A smile spread across her face as she drove towards his flat in Cognac. They’d been together for nine months – the nine best months of her life. They’d also been the strangest, but that wasn’t because of Chris. It was because of Mary.

  When she and Mary hugged the silver maple tree last September, it had somehow absorbed Mary’s body. Rainbow absorbed Mary’s mind, which supposedly healed the split that should never have happened. All Mary’s memories and emotions, from the moment she and Mary split into two parallels, had lodged themselves inside Rainbow.

  Rainbow didn’t feel healed. Mary continued to live on: to think and react to everything in Rainbow’s life, making Rainbow feel overstuffed with bizarre feelings that conflicted with her own. Mary’s negativity and her rebelliousness, her irreverent humour, her courage and her uncertainties all battled with Rainbow’s own, simpler worldview. Mary was so strong, Rainbow could almost hear her voice, and she experienced yearnings for places she’d never seen and people she’d never known.

  After nine months, she still felt as if she’d swallowed Mary whole, like a dose of unpleasant medicine, and was unable to digest her. All she could do was to keep the thoughts and feelings that emerged from Mary in a separate part of her mind, a small part that didn’t interfere with her true self. Between her and Mary was a mental wall, a wall of bricks.

  The only good part of sharing her mind and body with Mary was the love for Christophe she’d brought with her. There was no keeping that behind the wall. It seeped through the gaps and filled her with a heady scent that made life more joyful than ever before.

  Luckily, Christophe understood her Mary problems. He understood everything about her – except, perhaps, that she didn’t like revising. Or her obsession with Amrita Devi.

  She parked Mum’s Mini in front of the motorbike shop in Cognac and jumped out, hoping the surprise wasn’t anything to do with motorbikes. Christophe’s flat was above the shop where he worked, though he didn’t work on Saturdays. She rang the doorbell to his flat and waited.

  Amrita Devi was the girl in the Bishnoi legend who had saved a tree and lived – or saved a tree and died, according to Mary. Rainbow firmly believed Amrita had lived.

  Although she hadn’t seen Amrita since her vision last September, she’d had incessant dreams about her. At the beginning, the dreams showed her and Amrita as the closest of sisters, running through woodland together, holding hands, sharing secrets and laughing. But the dreams were becoming darker. The last few times they’d been nightmares, with Amrita pleading for help and begging Rainbow to understand something that Rainbow could never grasp. When Rainbow told Christophe about her dreams, his brown eyes would begin to glaze and she’d have to tickle him until he listened properly.

  Christophe buzzed open the front door for her and waited at the top of the stairs. She looked at him carefully as she walked up, in case the surprise was something boring like a new haircut. His thick hair was standing up at odd angles, which was normal for the morning, and there were no signs of piercings or tattoos. He did look worried, though. She glided into his bear hug and he held her tight.

  “Is everything OK?” she asked.

  “I missed you this week.”

  His warm lips met hers, and she responded to the softness of a kiss that was theirs and theirs alone. The colony of butterflies that had alighted in her belly last September awoke and fluttered around her whole body.

  Rainbow ended the kiss and looked over his shoulder. He’d shut his flat door, which was unusual, so she couldn’t see any enticing packages.

  “What’s all this about a surprise?” she asked.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve got a present for you. Kind of. I hope I haven’t done something stupid. You will tell me, won’t you, if you think it’s a mistake?”

  “It won’t be a mistake. You know I love your presents. Well, most of them.”

  She still hadn’t learnt to ride the motorbike he’d given her for her eighteenth birthday – partly because Mary sent pangs of longing through her body whenever she saw it. Rainbow didn’t see why Mary’s wishes should take precedence over her own. Anyway, life was too busy for motorbike lessons. At weekends they partied with Christophe’s friends, raced to the
sea or jumped on a train and visited Bordeaux, Toulouse, Poitiers or La Rochelle. She’d never laughed as much or felt as light-hearted as she had done since September. Life was easy and fun – apart from schoolwork, Mary and the Amrita nightmares.

  Christophe held her hand and carefully pushed open his door.

  The flat smelt acrid, different from the usual mix of coffee and engine oil. She looked around. There was no wrapped present on his table.

  He was grinning. She followed his gaze to the old velvet sofa they’d heaved upstairs from the shop reception together. He stepped behind it and crouched down.

  A head appeared from under the sofa: a small, black head with white patches on its pointed ears.

  “Ohhh!” She dropped to her knees and held out her hands.

  The kitten disappeared back under the sofa. She pursed her lips and made a squeaky call. The velvet edging lifted. She saw a pink nose, whiskers, and then another head. This one was tabby.

  “Chris! They’re gorgeous. How many are there?”

  She scratched on the rug, and the two kittens crept out to investigate the noise. The black one batted her fingers while the tabby one hung back and watched with wide green eyes.

  “Just the two of them,” he said. “Though last night it sounded as if they’d multiplied by ten.”

  “Last night? How long have they been here?”

  “I picked them up from the rescue centre yesterday evening. The new apprentice does voluntary work there and told me about them. I only meant to get you one, but they looked so sad in the cage that I couldn’t help taking them both.”

  “You big softie!”

  “I’d have brought home all the animals if I could,” he said.

  He sat down on the floor and leant against the sofa. The tabby kitten bounded onto his lap and pressed itself against his belly. Rainbow watched him stroke the length of its back and then tickle its ears. The way his hands moved as they caressed the kitten was bewitching. She almost felt jealous. As if reading her thoughts, the purring kitten turned and looked at her with love-drugged eyes, claiming Christophe for itself.

  “Do you like them?” Christophe asked. “Is it a good present?”

  “Are you kidding? I love them.”

  “Cool! I remember how much you missed Acrobat when you arrived at the commune, and how Domi would never let you get another cat in case his clients were allergic. We’ll have to keep the kittens here, but they’ll still be yours.”

  “They’re ours,” she said. “What shall we call them?”

  “How about Apple and Acorn?” said Christophe.

  Rainbow spoke the names out loud and watched the kittens’ ears twitch in response. “Perfect!” she said.

  The black one found a cork ball from Christophe’s table football collection and chased it across the floor. The tabby one leapt from Christophe’s lap and joined it in a mad scatter of paws and tails. Rainbow laughed, and when she glanced at Christophe she saw he was smiling: at her, not at the kittens. She slithered across the floor into his arms and kissed him.

  Later – once Rainbow had coaxed Apple and Acorn into her lap and they’d fallen asleep there – Christophe suggested she bring her revision to the flat. Delighted with the idea, she was attempting to slide the kittens into their basket without waking them when the phone rang. The kittens woke and stretched.

  Christophe held out the phone receiver.

  “It’s Thierry for you,” he said.

  She sat up straight and took the phone.

  Thierry was Christophe’s motorbiking friend and, more importantly, a tree surgeon. Last October, Christophe had introduced them to each other in the hope Thierry would employ her. None of the other tree surgeons she’d contacted would give her work, not once they’d seen her use her gift to shape branches rather than cut them off.

  Thierry had agreed to give her a week’s work experience during the Christmas holidays, and then he’d employed her in the February and Easter holidays too. As long as his clients didn’t see her using her gift, he didn’t mind.

  The Mary part of her wanted to fight for her right to be different from other people. She wanted Rainbow to ignore people’s prejudices and defy them by demonstrating her gift. Rainbow was able to keep Mary’s thoughts in check, because although Mary was strong in her mind, she couldn’t enforce anything. And Rainbow disagreed with her. She would never talk about her gift or show it to anyone, even though she continued to use it, because being different was more of a hindrance than a help. She longed to work full-time with Thierry, who gave her so much more than payment. No way would she risk upsetting him.

  “I’ve got a problem,” said Thierry on the phone. “Can you come and help me with some tree work?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. The radio has forecast gale warnings in the west of France. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the announcement and I can’t deal with all the requests alone.”

  “Well …” She watched Christophe stroking the kittens. Mary projected an enticing image of herself lounging in Christophe’s flat all afternoon while he helped her revise and the kittens played around them.

  “Please, Rainbow? It’s an emergency.”

  She pictured the trees in his clients’ gardens, unbalanced, their lives put at risk by the people who’d pruned them badly. Many of his clients had built their houses too close to trees, and wanted him to hack off the branches that threatened their precious homes. They blamed the trees for growing too close to their houses. But it wasn’t the trees’ fault. No one ever defended trees. If she didn’t help them, who would?

  “OK,” she said. “I’ll have to change my clothes though. Can you pick me up at the commune?”

  Thierry agreed. She hung up and faced Christophe. He had tabby Acorn in his hands and was cradling her like a baby, tickling her tummy. He smiled at Rainbow, though his brown eyes were sad.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ve got my hands full here. Thierry needs you. And they say last-minute revision is useless anyway. Go on.”

  She petted Apple and Acorn one last time, kissed Christophe and thanked him. There was no doubt he was the best boyfriend in the world.

  Part I

  Half

  Chapter 1

  Eole stood on his front door step and undid his muddy walking boots, making sure the lace ends were the same length. It was June, but the field behind the barn was always muddy until the sheep left on their transhumance to the summer pastures.

  Eole didn’t mind the mud, but it belonged outside the house. He, Maman, Papa and Hestia belonged inside. In a Venn diagram of what belonged inside and outside, there would be an intersection of the two sets. This intersection was the hall, where everyone left their muddy boots.

  He opened the front door and took off his headphones. Darwie followed him into the hall, shook himself, and then nosed open the kitchen door and checked his dog bowl. A cocktail whiffed through the goat-cheesy air: lemon, sugar, crusty pastry, strawberry and mould. The first three smells meant Maman had baked lemon meringue pie, which had been Tintin’s favourite tart. But Eole couldn’t identify the mouldy smell, despite the power of his olfactory receptors. He followed Darwie into the kitchen. The lemon pie was cooling on the worktop and he traced the mould to an open jar of jam.

  Maman looked up from wrapping sandwiches. She was wearing black trousers and a black jacket under her apron, which was right. Her blouse was green, which wasn’t right.

  “Bang on time,” she said. “Has Papa finished mending the fence?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, has he finished for the morning?”

  “Yes. He said he’d come indoors to change in two minutes.” Eole looked at his watch. “In thirty seconds’ time.”

  “Good. You’d better change too. Dark colours, remember.”

  “I know. You already said.”

  Sometimes Maman treated him as if he were cognitively impaired; as if he were Paul Coutances, his classmate who couldn’t even un
derstand the maths questions in their Baccalaureate practice papers, let alone find the answers. Not that Maman would use the term ‘cognitively impaired’. Her favourite word was ‘special’. Eole was special: his physics marks were the highest the lycée in Argelès-Gazost had ever seen. But Maman used ‘special’ in a way that was starting to strangle him, which was strange because when he was younger the same word used to feel as comforting as a hot water bottle.

  In any case, her word was wrong. He was logical, not special. Most people he knew were illogical, including Maman. For example, what was the point of making Tintin’s favourite dessert when he wouldn’t even be there to eat it? She should have made Brigitte’s favourite chocolate cake, since Brigitte was Tintin’s wife. Or quiz cake, which was Eole’s own favourite, since he would miss Tintin more than anyone else.

  Their farm, which used to belong to Tintin and Brigitte, lay in the Val d’Azun part of the Pyrenees mountains, above the village of Arras-en-Lavedan. Eole remembered arriving at the farm from Paris, nearly seven years ago, when he was eleven. He remembered the way Maman had driven relentlessly upwards and how happy (and wrong) he’d been to think they were going to live on top of a mountain.

  He and his family walked down the track, like four black beetles (one with a green chest). They were going to say goodbye to Tintin, even though it was too late to say goodbye because he was dead – and even though Eole should be revising for his remaining Baccalaureate exams tomorrow and on Friday. At the bottom of the track was the lane; at the end of the lane was the street; after the street was the main road and, beyond that, at the end of Rue du Clocher, was the church.

  Although it was Wednesday and not Sunday, the whole village would be waiting there.

  Dozens of eyes would look and not-look at him.

  He blocked the picture from his mind and thought about ups and downs instead. He definitely preferred ups. The way the communities got smaller as they went upwards was logical. It was like the mountains themselves: from their wide bottoms, full of people bustling to and fro, to their pointed peaks, which were empty of human life. The vegetation was the same: big trees (assassins) surrounded the farm, but the woods thinned out as the mountains rose in altitude, and there were only the smallest mosses and lichens growing on their bare tops.