“I can’t understand how the forecasters didn’t see the gale coming,” said Thierry. “They should study the clouds instead of their computers. Still, the clearing up will be good for business. I might even be able to give you a job after your exams.”
“Really? I’d love that. Though let’s hope there’s not enough damage to warrant it.”
Thierry grunted. “Are you seeing Christophe this evening? I can drop you off in town if you like.”
She hesitated. She wanted to see Apple and Acorn, but she was wet and dirty. And Christophe had planned to help the new apprentice with paperwork this evening. She loved Christophe’s kindness, and wasn’t surprised that, as a sucker for lost causes, he was keen to help the boy. Rainbow had been busy revising since the apprentice’s arrival, so she hadn’t met him. When she’d pressed Christophe to talk about him, he described him as “young, shy and a natural with motorbike engines”, and she wondered how it was possible to be ‘natural’ with something as unnatural as machinery.
“Rainbow?”
“Sorry,” she said. “No, he’s busy. Can you drop me off at the commune?”
“Sure.”
They bumped along the track to Le Logis de Châtres. Her mum had brought her here from Dorset five years ago, to consult her friend Domi about Rainbow’s gift. Domi had become her tree guru, and when he and Mum had got together, Le Logis became Rainbow’s home.
“Mind that half-dead Acer Saccharinum doesn’t blow down on you,” Thierry said, when they arrived. “You really should fell it.”
“No way. It means far too much to me,” said Rainbow. She kissed his cheek and braced herself to face the gale.
“And stay indoors tonight. That wind is still rising!” he shouted as she slammed the van door.
Rainbow bent forwards and walked towards the house. Dusk was falling early, camouflaging the racing black clouds in darkness and silhouetting the swaying branches in the wood around Le Logis. The roar from the wind rushing through millions of leaves sounded like anger.
Her special tree, the silver maple, was still standing. “Acer Saccharinum,” she murmured. She’d have to learn the Latin names for trees if Thierry gave her a job. It was half-dead, though there was beauty in the rough nudity of Mary’s leafless branch. She wouldn’t cut it off until she really had to.
No! What was she thinking? Mary’s indignant voice rose like nausea inside her: she mustn’t ever cut it off.
But Rainbow was in charge, not Mary, and she alone would decide if and when the tree needed attention. She hugged it and breathed in its familiar woody scent. It was trembling. Silver maples weren’t an indigenous species, and few grew in the Charente. She wished she could ask it questions and receive clear answers, but her communication with trees only ever amounted to understanding their feelings and weaknesses. The one exception had been the oak tree beside the Drunken House in Dorset. When she’d asked it to shrink so that she could climb into Michael’s garden and retrieve a keepsake, it had spoken to her in images and filled her with tree history.
The maple shivered violently under her hands. Like Madame Poulain’s walnut tree, it was afraid of the gale. The second reiki course she’d recently completed had improved her technique for gathering universal energy, and as she stroked the maple’s bark, she channelled this energy through her hands to calm it.
The maple wouldn’t absorb her energy. A deep feeling was emerging from further than the maple’s roots. She pressed her ear harder against the trunk. Was it Amrita? Rainbow had been hugging this very tree when Amrita had spoken to her in a vision last September: “Rest for now and be ready. Our future lies together,” she’d said – though the only signs of Amrita since that moment had been the dreams.
The wind dropped momentarily. Amrita didn’t appear, but Rainbow sensed that an ancient, motherly oak tree in the king’s forest needed her help.
Mary’s disapproval swelled inside her: it would be crazy to enter a forest in conditions like this. For once, Rainbow agreed with Mary. She didn’t have the power to help a tree in a gale. She would think about the meaning of the message and find the motherly oak tree tomorrow. Could it be the oak tree in François I park? Domi would say that if her intuition suggested this, she must trust it.
There was a sudden loud crack: the sound of a splitting trunk. A gust balled into her, knocking her sideways. She dug in her heels and strained her eyes towards the noise.
The beech tree in the garden toppled to the ground in slow motion, snapping the swing’s ropes and taking a chunk of earth with it.
“No!” she screamed.
There was another bang. This time it came from the house, and Mum appeared, holding her flailing black hair tight to her head with both hands. “Rainbow! It’s no weather to be tree-hugging.”
“Look! The swing beech!” she cried.
“It’s Armageddon out here. Come indoors.”
Rainbow willed the silver maple to stay strong and, wishing her gift allowed her to bring trees back to life, followed Mum inside.
The silence was deafening after the racket outside. She showered and then went down to the kitchen. It was full of visiting children and their parents, on the point of leaving. They were the clients that Domi – convinced he could save the world by healing one child at a time – had invited to his ‘Listen to Your Inner Voice’ workshop.
Rainbow took a plateful of pasta into the sitting room, where Sandrine was doing her primary-school homework. She looked up as Rainbow entered.
“So, here it is,” she said.
“Here what is?” asked Rainbow.
“The gale I saw in my daydream. Don’t you remember?”
The hairs on Rainbow’s neck and arms rose. Domi had told her about Sandrine’s clairvoyant prediction on the day she’d discovered that Michael, the friend in Dorset she’d accidentally killed, had actually been her father. The prediction had seemed insignificant beside the shocking revelation, and she’d forgotten Sandrine’s words. Until now.
“You mentioned something about a gale,” she said. “But it was on the eve of the year 2000, not in 1996.”
“If you’re a tree, you live such a long time that 1996 is the eve of 2000,” said Sandrine.
“You think this is it? Remind me what you predicted.”
“The gale will be the start of your destiny,” said Sandrine. “A new life. With English tree friends.” She bent back over her homework.
One of Mary’s memories permeated Rainbow’s mind: Mary’s best friend, Trish Bellamy, had lived in trees with a group of protesting ecologists. But Mary’s memories came from a different world: some kind of parallel world. Rainbow had no idea how parallel worlds worked.
“Can you remember any more?” she asked Sandrine. “Like a clue about what I’m supposed to do?”
Sandrine shook her head.
Rainbow finished her meal. The problem with clairvoyants – if you could count an eleven-year-old as a clairvoyant – was that they were so vague. She didn’t want to return to the dissatisfaction that came from wondering about her destiny. Christophe was the centre of her life now, Mary reminded her. She intended to train with Thierry to become the best tree surgeon in the world, not to chase a spiritual destiny. Anyway, there were gales every year.
On the other hand, Amrita had told her to be ready.
No. She banished her childish fantasy of a starring role in a tree revolution that would save the planet. What mattered was her life here.
A particularly strong gust buffeted the shutters. She hummed Mum’s new melody to block out the sound of the wind tumbling gardening tools, buckets and chairs around the garden.
“Shut up!” said Sandrine. “I can’t concentrate with your tuneless droning.”
Rainbow stuck out her tongue at Sandrine and took her empty plate into the kitchen. Outside, the gusts were sporadic lulls and shrieks, like an ogre taking deep breaths and then blowing out. She was safe indoors. As Thierry said, it would be stupid to risk her life, even for an ancient o
ak tree.
It was no good. She couldn’t settle until she’d had a look.
Chapter 3
Rainbow suppressed Mary’s protests and brushed off Mum’s objection to her driving in such dangerous weather. The meteorologists had named the gale ‘Martin’. It seemed strange to name storms: surely by naming something, you give it more power?
She stepped into the night and forged her way to Mum’s Mini. It was too dark to make out the silhouette of the woods and she couldn’t see her silver maple properly, though she could hear the frantic rustle of its leaves.
Keep strong, she willed, holding her hand against its trunk as she passed.
There were no cars on the road to Cognac, though she saw plenty of airborne traffic: plastic bags pulsed like flying jellyfish and a piece of cardboard wheeled and flapped. She drove slowly, looking into roadside copses at the fallen trees. It was too dark to see the full scope of the damage, but if the glimpses she caught were anything to go by, Martin was one hell of a storm.
She stopped in François I park. The wind channelled along the river valley and had already ripped up a line of poplars from the timber plantation on the opposite bank. She could see them in her headlights, lying in disarray like a giant’s box of emptied matches. She turned off the lights and got out. The gale howled, louder than ever, and a branch crashed to the ground behind her. She spun around. It blocked the road. She pushed all thoughts of home to the back of her mind, fixed her torch to her head, and hurried along the path to the old oak tree in the middle of the wood.
The wind was quieter among the trees. Twigs and leaves whirled in eddies, but she could see no fallen trunks. At the foot of the oak tree, she stopped and examined its lower branches, which were all she could see in the torchlight. It appeared to be solid and in no need of any help. Perhaps the silver maple hadn’t been referring to this oak. Or perhaps she’d imagined the message. There was only one way to find out. She stepped over the brambles and laid her hands on its trunk.
She’d never touched this kingly tree, and couldn’t find its communication spots. She stretched her arms as high as possible and groped for a sign of sensitivity, cursing herself for her shortness. Still nothing. She hauled herself onto the lowest branch and eventually found a way in. She emptied her mind, ready to be saturated by the tree’s feelings.
An image of herself, clinging to its trunk, rippled into her mind. No tree, apart from the Drunken House oak, had ever communicated in such a way. But this oak tree’s images were weak. She understood that it was a mother tree, a sentinel, protector of the forest and guardian of the trees’ history. She could see roots pumping knowledge through underground networks of silver filaments. And it was spiritually linked to something higher, like a church is linked to God. It was linked to Amrita.
If only she’d known how special this tree was, she could have come and made contact with Amrita every day. Was this what her nightmares were telling her?
She concentrated on the images, trying to understand. But the pictures of saplings, acorns, snow-lined branches and landslides were vague and disjointed. She couldn’t perceive an overall message. It reminded her of Arlette, Domi’s Alzheimer’s client, whose sentences jumped from one subject to another with no apparent logic.
Can’t – hold – on.
The words were there, suddenly, in her mind. The oak tree’s words. She hugged the trunk, sending encouragement.
The trunk twitched. Something was moving inside it.
It was the wind. Stormy air rattled within the oak’s heartwood like an angry child shut in a box and banging to get out. No wonder the oak had no energy to spare for communicating with her: it was absorbing the wind to protect the trees around it.
HelpUsRainbowMary.
The oak’s pronunciation of her name was a mournful song, an unwelcome reminder that she was no longer just Rainbow, but Mary as well. She wasn’t sure she wanted to share her name with Mary. Mary, equally insulted, urged Rainbow to return to safety.
Rainbow willed her to shut up. The oak needed her: she couldn’t abandon it. She grasped the trunk and let the wind enter her too, sharing the blows and pushing them down through the oak’s trunk to its roots, where they dissipated deep in the earth.
Her effort helped stabilise the shuddering branches. Gradually, murmurs of thanks, like prayers, filtered up from beyond the oak’s roots. She was inside the oak. She was the oak, and the murmurs were emanating from a silver web that connected the roots of all the trees in the forest. She was part of a huge network of tree thoughts. It was magical!
But the wind’s force was still rising. She pressed hard against the trunk, her arms circling it, the fingers of each hand wedged into a bark wrinkle to hold her tight in place. Mary seethed with frustration, her desire to escape undermining Rainbow’s efforts.
Don’t – let – go, said François I oak.
Mary’s objection was almost as strong as the wind, which was edging down Rainbow’s chest and trying to peel her from the trunk. Rainbow’s fingers lost their grip and slipped by a few bark wrinkles. She was no match for the gale, not with Mary fighting her within. She berated Mary for weakening her.
Mary raged in protest. She expanded in Rainbow’s mind, pushed at the mental wall separating them, and screamed at Rainbow to flee. The pressure was unbearable. Rainbow’s head was going to explode. She had to release Mary’s frustration. She drew a breath deep into her lungs and threw back her head.
“Maaaartinnnn! STOP!” she screamed. “I. HATE. YOU!”
There was a lull. Maybe it was a good idea to name a gale, after all. Her stiff fingers regained the bark wrinkles they’d lost. Then a ferocious gust, stronger than any before, bowled into the oak tree. Rainbow gasped. What had she done?
The oak tree groaned. Branches began to splinter. Rainbow held on tight, begging the oak tree to forgive her outburst. But before the oak could respond, the wind wrenched her from the trunk and dashed her to the ground.
She lay, stunned, her torch broken, the scent of decaying leaves heavy in her nose. The darkness was full of dim, swaying shapes, and a deluge of woody fibres hailed down on her. She covered her face with her arms while she stretched each leg in turn. Her body still worked.
Her head was thumping from Mary’s demands to crawl away. But she couldn’t abandon the oak. This was her fault. She shouldn’t have yielded to Mary. She crawled back towards the tree.
The ground beneath her started to shudder. No! The oak mustn’t give up. She’d only just found it. It couldn’t die. The earth crumbled and began to lift. The tree teetered, a branch cracked and she felt the wrenching of roots under her knees.
She pushed herself backwards, struggled to her feet and stumbled away.
The oak fell with a crash. Another tree slumped onto it. Without the mother oak, the trees were deprived of their strength. Like a pack of unruly dominos, they toppled onto one another, taking brothers and sisters with them as they fell. Beneath Rainbow’s feet, the underground web of silver that connected the trees’ roots must be ripping to shreds.
Rainbow groped forwards. Her path was blocked. She heard a whimper and realised it came from herself. She turned around and floundered between diagonal branches, trying to keep her memory of the forest paths clear in her head. But the paths had gone. She tripped on a bramble bush and fell to her knees. Her head knocked against familiar bark. The oak tree. Horizontal. Dead. Sobbing, she pulled herself up and hugged its trunk.
Amrita appeared.
Rainbow blinked and rubbed the tears from her eyes. It was dark, but she could see Amrita in the same sari of pinks and reds she always wore, her long black hair untouched by the wind. This time she was real. She was actually here, sitting on the oak’s trunk, a few metres away. Unlike the Amrita in Rainbow’s nightmares, she was calm, her smile benevolent.
“The wind–” Rainbow started to say.
“Come.” Amrita reached out and took Rainbow’s hand. Her touch was misty damp.
A series of imag
es flashed through Rainbow’s mind: Amrita was speaking in the same way as the Drunken House and François I oaks. First came a picture of hundreds of bubbles: different worlds hanging in space. Then her view zoomed onto one bubble. She was thirteen years old and in hospital. Mum sat beside her bed. There was a flash of white light and the bubble split into two. The two new bubbles spun, close together, cupped between Amrita’s hands. In one, she could see herself. In the other, she saw Mary.
Amrita’s image focused onto a cedar tree in one bubble, the Eiffel Tower in the other. Christophe filled both bubbles. There was a momentary collision, like a kiss, then a rebound. She saw Christophe, Mary and herself in the same bubble. Her and Mary, hugging the silver maple – and then she and Mary blurred together, and the two bubbles wafted apart.
Amrita let go of Rainbow’s hand and floated down from the trunk.
“I have given my life force to reunite you as RainbowMary, and now I am weak in your world. Yet while a little strength remains, I must guide you. Come.”
Rainbow stumbled after her, along an invisible path that twisted between the trembling trees, and tried to understand exactly what Amrita was. More than a tree spirit, she seemed to control parallel worlds – at least, her and Mary’s worlds. It was crazy to think that an external being could control whole worlds – as crazy as believing in God. Did scientists have theories to explain parallel worlds and how they worked? It was too big an idea to absorb, and she had more immediate worries. She concentrated on keeping up with Amrita.
All around, trunks creaked and crashed – but Amrita glided through a tunnel in the wind, her fingers caressing each tree she passed. Within minutes they arrived at the Mini. Rainbow pushed the lashing ends of her ponytail out of her eyes and faced Amrita.
“I failed the oak tree,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let Mary provoke me. I’m so, so sorry.”
“No longer are you Two, RainbowMary. You are One. You must recognise this and accommodate each other if you are to become truly whole and help me.”
Tree Slayer Page 3
