Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

  He planned to live near the top of the mountains once he’d learnt everything Toulouse university could teach him about meteorology. He would build an extension to Tintin’s hut up on the summer pastures, equip it with a scientific laboratory and workshop, and live in it with Darwie. Tintin had taught him everything he needed to know about survival in the mountains. He would only come down once a month, on a Thursday, to visit the library, buy provisions and sell his inventions.

  He knew his plan wasn’t realistic: it was an ambition. It was good to plan ambitions. Papa hadn’t planned his ambition properly, and had burnt out. He’d stayed in bed for a year and then changed from a city trader into a farmer. Eole didn’t know if it was Papa’s ambition to talk only a strict minimum with him and Hestia, or whether it was the fault of the burnout. In any case, Eole’s ambition was all ready. Tintin had said it was a good one. Girls liked boys to have ambitions, he’d told him, so Eole was fully equipped for the moment a girlfriend appeared.

  When they reached the bottom of the track, where it joined the lane, Eole stopped at the chestnut tree stump and kicked it. Hestia left Papa’s side, hawked up a noisy mouthful of snot and spat it onto the stump, where it lay, a shining jewel on the wood chippings left by the villagers’ chainsaws.

  “Hestia! That’s disgusting,” said Maman.

  “I’m hardly going to ruin my new shoes by kicking it, am I?”

  “It wasn’t the tree’s fault. It was God’s will,” said Maman. “Poor Tintin.”

  She made Eole the love-hug sign: starting with both hands in the middle of her chest, she traced a heart shape over her breasts and down to her navel.

  He turned away before she’d finished.

  Hestia caught and held his gaze. When she did that, it meant she was on his side. He nodded back to show he’d understood her sign. God had nothing to do with it. They both knew it was the chestnut tree’s fault.

  The boys at the lycée complained about their sisters but Eole never joined in. Although Hestia was only in her first year and he was in his third and final year, everyone knew her. She was always in the right place at the right time, a moment before everyone else arrived. They called her a ringleader. He’d heard people call them Beauty and the Beast, too, which was illogical because Beauty and the Beast weren’t brother and sister. And Maman and Hestia both said he wasn’t ugly: he was tall, broad and fair, like Papa’s side of the family, whereas Hestia was short and dark, like Maman. In any case, since Hestia had arrived at the lycée, life was much easier because the others left him alone.

  They crossed the main road and walked along Rue du Clocher. If he and his family were black beetles (one with a green chest), then the people swarming around the church were black bees. Despite the shield of his headphones, the volume of their buzzing increased as Eole approached. His legs slowed down. He usually took off his headphones once he was safely inside buildings, but today they felt like a protection from bee stings.

  His fingers fiddled with the folded-up paper in his pocket. He’d prepared his words for Tintin during yesterday’s exam, but now he was here he didn’t think he could speak in front of the whole congregation. Maybe he would wait until everyone had left and then say the words to Tintin’s coffin. It was pointless, in any case, since Tintin wouldn’t hear them. It would be far more logical to give euologies while people were alive instead of waiting until they were dead.

  When they reached the crowd, Eole hung back. Hestia slipped through the side gateway into the churchyard and Papa stopped to greet Monsieur Delage. Eole never knew what to say to people, even though Maman had helped him practise. He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk about science or the sheep or Darwie or himself. He was supposed to comment on the weather, agree with whatever the person said, and get into an alternating rhythm with one line of conversation each. “Think of it like the instruments in that classical music you’re always listening to,” Maman had explained. “Don’t they take it in turns to play the melody?” But her metaphor wasn’t very good. A duet would be a better metaphor, though it still didn’t help him master the art of conversation with anyone outside his entourage.

  He couldn’t handle conversation today, not with all the buzzing. He fixed his eyes on an ‘S’ of white thread stuck to the back of Maman’s jacket and followed it.

  Instead of waiting at the edge of the swarm, she headed straight towards the centre. He’d made a bad choice: the church was the other place where Maman belonged, along with the barn, cheese room and house. It was too late to change his mind. He followed the white thread as it weaved a path through the people towards the entrance, where Brigitte stood in a black cardigan, bent over her walking stick. She looked strange without her blue-and-white apron, like an older sister of the Brigitte who helped Maman make cheese. She didn’t blow him her usual kiss.

  The bells began to chime. He took his eyes off the white thread to listen to the series of dongs. It was the funeral death knell. “Birth, life, death,” the bells seemed to chant.

  When he looked for the white thread again, it had gone.

  He was alone in the middle of a surge of bees squeezing into their hive. He must remain calm. He was one of them. A bee, not a beetle. Bees didn’t have feet, so his own feet couldn’t itch, start to shuffle and then walk him away. There was nothing to panic about.

  “Bzzz,” he said.

  No, that wasn’t right. The people were only bees in his mind. He had to concentrate on the reality, not on the metaphors his mind tricked him with. He hunched his shoulders against the movement and reached down for Darwie’s muzzle.

  No, that wasn’t right either. Maman never let him bring Darwie to church. It didn’t matter. He was a human like the other bees. They wouldn’t sting him.

  He ignored the itch at the bottom of his legs and searched the bees’ backs for Maman’s white thread. She had dematerialised. Spontaneously combusted. Ascended, like Jesus.

  “Bzzz. Bzzz.” His voice sounded higher than normal. Where was she?

  He looked at the faces, searching for hers. The faces looked back at him. Their buzzing stopped. He arranged his features to reflect theirs, like in the mirror expressions game Maman made him play. They looked away.

  He spotted her black hair and then her face, a few steps in front of him. The white thread had fallen off. She was talking with Père Laurent, the priest.

  “Maman!”

  She turned around. Her mouth made an ‘O’ shape. She pushed out her arms, excusing herself to the buzzing faces, and made an empty space between him and her. It was her crowd ruse, the one she used for opening time at the science museum in Paris. The crowd parted and, like Moses, he stepped into the gap. He looked at the ground, which was safe. His black trainers edged forward over the worn stone slabs at the same rate as her black lace-ups until they turned their noses towards him, and Maman said he could sit down.

  They were inside the church. He sat at the end of their pew, the one nearest the exit, and watched Maman’s shoes go towards the altar. He’d done it! Sweat had gathered in his armpits and the cold cotton of his shirt clung to them. His feet hadn’t betrayed him with their itch, shuffle and escape. He eased off his headphones and put them in his jacket pocket.

  “Budge up,” came Hestia’s voice. She smelt of cigarette smoke.

  “No. This is my place.”

  “Let me through then.” She squeezed past and sat in her place, next to the wall, where she used to carve blasphemies into the stone while everyone else was praying. That was before Eole had deduced God’s non-existence and they’d stopped coming to church.

  The crowd ordered itself into lines of people’s backs, which was far better than milling bodies. Eole raised his eyes higher. Nothing had changed in the church. It used to be one of his favourite places because it was easy: it smelt of damp stone and wood polish, was full of cool air and had sparse decoration. If he only heard the voices inside church he might have thought, like Maman, that they belonged to God. But they didn’t talk to him her
e. It was a pity. He’d like to have been a Believer, like Maman, because she had an answer for everything.

  Instead, he’d found Darwin. Now he was one-hundred-per-cent sure God didn’t exist and, like Darwin, he looked to science for answers. Darwin had used empirical science to prove evolution by natural selection. Eole tried to explain this to Maman, but she stuck to her belief that God had created everything, which was illogical. She called Charles Darwin “the source of today’s evil”. Eole hadn’t known this until after Hestia had named their puppy. If he’d known, he’d never have agreed to her suggestion. He’d quickly nicknamed him Darwie, but Hestia liked to use Darwie’s full name, especially when she and Maman were going through a stormy, cumulonimbus phase.

  Here, in the church today, it didn’t matter that he believed in Darwin’s theory and not in God, because they weren’t here for God. They were here for Tintin, even though he was no more present than God.

  Tintin’s coffin rode up the aisle on the shoulders of men who weren’t from the village. They must be his professor colleagues from Toulouse University. Eole watched the wooden box pass. Tintin’s death didn’t seem real. Ever since they’d heard the news on Saturday in Brittany, he’d been expecting someone to tell him it was a mistake. He hadn’t cried like Maman, Hestia and Papa. They’d cut short their visit to Aunt Isabelle, who was ill, and had rushed home early on Sunday because Brigitte couldn’t feed and milk the sheep and goats on her own.

  Much as he tried, he couldn’t associate the wooden coffin with his mental image of Tintin. There was a compatibility problem. How could Tintin be in that box?

  Eole was glad he had a mind for dealing with compatibility problems, as well as a brain. His brain dealt with logical thinking, whereas his mind came up with metaphors and creative solutions to problems. This was a typical situation where he needed his mind, and it soon presented him with a solution: Tintin wasn’t in the box. He was up on the summer pastures, beside the hut, studying cloud formations and examining insects. Eole could easily visualise him there. Compatibility problem solved.

  Maman and Papa came and sat between him and Hestia, and then Père Laurent began to talk about Tintin. It was easy to concentrate because it was the only big aural event in the church. The sniffs, coughs and murmurs around him were little aural events.

  He listened to the details of Tintin’s career as a physicist and university lecturer. Unfortunately, Père Laurent skimmed over the interesting parts and began describing the peace Tintin had felt when he’d returned to his roots here in Arrasen-Lavedan. It was boring compared to his career. Eole wanted to put up his hand and ask questions about Tintin’s work, like at school, but questions weren’t allowed in church.

  He stopped listening and visualised Tintin in the summer pastures, milking the goats and placing the churns in the carved hollows beside the stream, where Papa would drive up on the quad and collect them. That’s where Tintin was now: the ewes were still in the valley, but Tintin had gone up to the pastures to prepare the hut for summer. That’s why he wasn’t here. Any minute now he would arrive and ask what all the fuss was about. Maybe he was already waiting outside. The congregation would leave and then Eole would smell Tintin’s billy-goat odour and know he’d arrived. Tintin would come and sit beside him and they’d discuss quantum entanglement or Aristotle’s treatise on Meteorologica.

  “… his later years. And that’s when he met young Eole, who brightened his retirement and allowed him to share his passion for physics. Now, I hear Eole has prepared a few words to share with us. Would you like to come forward, Eole?”

  Eole had the usual shiver-shock when he heard his name being spoken by an official person in front of an audience. It sounded wrong. The Virgin Mary, Noah, Adam and Eve: they were right. Eole was wrong. And now people were turning to look at him. He must stand up, walk to the front, stop at the lectern, take out his paper and read the words.

  He couldn’t do it.

  If he couldn’t talk in front of the villagers, how would he ever manage university, where there were amphitheatres full of strangers? Tintin had promised he’d help, that he’d introduce him to his colleagues before term started. But Tintin had gone. Now the idea of university loomed like a black hole. It attracted him but maybe it would destroy him too. He couldn’t think about it. Not yet.

  “Eole?” whispered Maman. “Your speech.”

  The congregation started buzzing again. Itch. He fingered the paper in his pocket.

  “The words are for Tintin,” he said.

  “I’m sure Tintin would have wanted you to be brave and share them. Shall I come with you?”

  Eole shook his head. Maman wouldn’t be able to come with him once he was in Toulouse. In any case, she was wrong about Tintin. He would have understood. He’d have seen Eole’s feet start to shuffle. He’d have let him go and then followed him up, up, up – until Eole’s feet stopped at the top of the ridge. Then he’d have sat beside him and talked about scientific theories until everything felt safe and logical again.

  But Tintin wasn’t here. God wasn’t here. What was Eole doing here? Shuffle.

  “Eole–”

  “Maman, leave him alone,” said Hestia, her voice a ferocious whisper.

  She pushed past Maman and Papa, fixed Eole with her look, and then stepped into the aisle and walked towards Père Laurent. The congregation’s eyes unlatched from Eole and followed her instead. She didn’t have any paper in her hands.

  Nobody was looking at Eole anymore. He stood up.

  “That’s my boy,” said Maman. “Go and join your sister.”

  Eole scrunched up the paper in his pocket. There was no point saying any words at all, neither here nor anywhere. His feet retraced the path out of the church.

  And escape. He was going to join Tintin.

  Chapter 2

  Rainbow had never experienced such a wind. It was freaky for June. She squinted at the thrashing canopies of leaves around Madame Poulain’s house, searching for Thierry.

  He was gliding down his rope from the top of a creaking sycamore tree. He shouted at her, his chainsaw held aloft in one hand, but the wind ripped his words away and scattered them into an incoherent jumble of urgent voice. She held out her arms for protection from whirling debris and stumbled towards him. Amputated branches littered the foot of the sycamore tree. She stepped carefully around them, wishing she could transmit her gift to him and prevent this massacre.

  “It’s too dangerous to continue!” he shouted.

  “But we haven’t finished. The walnut will blow down if we don’t do something.”

  “Not a priority. It’s nowhere near the house.”

  He undid his harness and they threw the tree surgery equipment into the back of his van. Then he told her to get in while he fetched Madame Poulain’s cheque.

  Rainbow watched him stride towards the house, his grey overalls filled with air like a dirty version of the Michelin Man. Mary hated being told what to do, and although Rainbow didn’t mind following Thierry’s instructions, she couldn’t bear to see the walnut tree suffering. As soon as he’d gone inside, she scrambled into its whipping branches. Placing her hands on its communication spots, she reassured the shivering tree that she’d help it find its balance again. Then, using her energy and the tree’s knowledge, she shaped the branches outwards, like a tightrope walker’s arms.

  The tree wouldn’t relax into its new shape. It was brimming with fear. She laid her ear against its trunk and emptied her mind so she could better absorb its feelings. It was terrified: not for itself, but for an old oak tree.

  The gale howled, breaking her concentration. The walnut tree’s feelings were jumbled from its fear of the wind and it didn’t make sense. She patted the trunk and jumped down, bidding the tree to hold strong.

  The wind should have propelled her back to the van, but now it pushed in the opposite direction, like the suck and drag of waves on a beach. Thierry hadn’t returned with his payment yet. She opened the van door, holding tigh
t with both hands to stop it blowing off its hinges, and collapsed inside. Gusts whistled around the contours of the van, jostling it, and she willed Thierry to hurry so they could save as many trees as possible before dark.

  She picked up the clipboard to see where the final job of the day was scheduled, thinking about all the oak trees she knew and wondering which one the walnut tree had meant. The oldest was in François I park, in Cognac. It was tall and strong, capable of withstanding any storm.

  While she waited for Thierry, she took out her sketch pad and started to draw the painful angles of the sycamore tree’s tortured branches. At last, the driver’s door swung open. The papers on the clipboard rattled and thrashed, and Thierry thumped into the driver’s seat.

  “Holy Moses! It’s worse than ever. That wind isn’t far off the hundred mark.”

  “Maybe it’s the end of the world,” said Rainbow. “Like those crazy people are predicting for the year 2000, except it’s four years early.”

  Thierry shot her a sideways look as he reversed out of Madame Poulain’s drive. She grinned back at him. He was still nervous about her spiritual commune home and its influence on her. She put her sketch pad away and asked if they could stop at François I park before the next job on the schedule.

  “Forget the schedule,” he said. “It’s late and we’re going home to safety.”

  “But we can’t abandon the trees!”

  “Haven’t I taught you anything? We won’t be able to help any trees if we’re injured. Or dead. That wind is lethal.”

  Rainbow reluctantly agreed, and Thierry drove back towards Cognac through a rain of whirling twigs and small branches. Beside the River Charente, a row of half-uprooted ash trees raised their branches to the sky like prayers for mercy. Empathetic pain washed along Rainbow’s arms. She would come back tomorrow and try to heal them.