Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

  “La, la, la, la.”

  Hestia shook her head. “Come on. We’ve got to work. Some birthday, huh?”

  “It’s not my birthday anymore. It’s transhumance.”

  It wasn’t a proper transhumance without Tintin to lead them, but Maman, Papa, Hestia and Darwie were still here. They’d follow the same routine. It would be fine.

  He slung his rucksack onto his back and put on his headphones. Darwie yelped in excitement and circled the pen, and Eole had to order him to calm down. Papa handed out the crooks and told Eole to walk in front of the sheep.

  The front was Tintin’s place.

  Eole hesitated, recalculating: he’d presumed Papa would lead. He couldn’t do it. Not without Tintin. Unless … His mind searched for a creative solution … Unless he pretended Tintin was beside him.

  There was a scrape of metal hurdle on stone and then a rush of bobbing heads charged towards him. He and Tintin held out their crooks and led the way. Maman and Papa followed the flock, shooing the sheep onwards and smacking them when they stopped to snatch at the long grass on the verges. Darwie ran in excited curves around the flock, his ears pricked, nipping at the sheep’s hocks to make them move faster. Hestia lagged behind, grumbling that she detested the stink of sheep, hated the mountains, and was missing the best party of the year.

  Several hours after leaving the farm they passed the cattle grid. The trees thinned and the pastures opened out before them in the twilight. Eole took off his headphones.

  “I’ll take them on from here,” he said, as Tintin had always done.

  “At last,” said Hestia. She turned around and started to walk home at twice her previous pace.

  “OK, darling. Have a nice evening and see you tomorrow for lunch,” said Maman.

  Papa patted Darwie and reminded Eole to put the sheep in the pen for tonight, and to check their feet before letting them out the next day.

  Eole watched his family fade into the darkness, Maman and Papa walking together and Hestia far in front. He liked knowing his family were in the valley below him, that he belonged with them but that he could belong here as well. They were like an anchor. He was a boat with an anchor, though the wind had died so he couldn’t set sail and leave.

  He, Darwie and an invisible Tintin folded the sheep into the pen, leaving Patou outside to guard them, and then he stretched out on the grass beside the hut and gazed at the night sky. It was good to have made a new transhumance routine without any sign of itch, shuffle and escape. Maman said it was important to be flexible about routines when you were grown up. Hestia said he should stop hanging off Maman’s every word and get himself a life, because he was perfectly capable if only he’d trust himself.

  He didn’t have to think about them or their advice now. He could relax and pretend Tintin was asleep in his bunk bed. Other flocks, streaked in different-coloured paints, roamed above him, but most farmers no longer stayed with their sheep. He was probably the only human here on the mountain. The sky of starry satellites stretched above him and he let Tintin and his mapopedia fill his mind.

  The morning dew had dried and Eole’s flock of fifty sheep were spread across the smooth flank of the mountain, free in the midday air. It was time for him and Darwie to return home.

  He shouldered his rucksack and whistled to Patou, who left the flock and came trotting to the outcrop of granite above them.

  “Darwie and I are off. We’ll be back for the summer as soon as we’ve finished fencing in the valley,” he said.

  Patou stood still, his tail lifted. Tintin had told Eole that animals understood human voices, even if they didn’t understand the actual words. Eole could see his point. He didn’t understand the words of the voices he heard, but there was an overriding tone and even a smell to them. He’d kept a mental catalogue of the smells for years in Paris, though he didn’t write them down. It wasn’t easy to find words to describe them.

  He put on his headphones and walked towards the valley with Darwie. When he glanced back, Patou was still watching them. Nothing would dare attack the sheep, apart from the Slovenian bears the government had brought here. But they were three valleys away.

  When he arrived home, the farmyard smelt and looked different. The goaty odour was thin without the woolly undertone of fifty fleeces, and Papa had made a pile of fencing tools and posts outside the barn. It would be good to use his hands again after all the studying. Brigitte had told him he could continue to tinker in Tintin’s laboratory, but he hadn’t managed to get any further than opening the door.

  Maman waved at him from the window and gestured to him to come indoors. She was back early from church. In the kitchen, the spicy smell of chilli emanated from the slow cooker. The clock ticked. A goat bleated on the far side of the yard. Maman and Papa were sitting at the table, unusually silent. An orange folder lay in front of them.

  Eole reached out for Darwie, who slid his wet nose into his cupped hand.

  “It’s all right, darling,” said Maman in a not-all-right voice. “Come and sit down.”

  Eole stepped back to the door.

  “It’s OK. Everything’s fine. We’ve got something to tell you, but it won’t change anything,” said Maman. “It’s like I told you yesterday about being eighteen: there’s no actual difference, it’s just a piece of paper.”

  Papa pulled out Eole’s chair and pushed Scatty Cat off it. Eole crossed the room and sat down. Darwie put his head on his lap. The fridge broke into a menacing hum. A tractor rumbled closer.

  “You know how we go to Brittany in the holidays to see Aunt Isabelle?” said Maman. “Well, when Papa and I were younger, we spent a lot of time there–”

  “Just tell him, Alexandra,” said Papa.

  Maman frowned at him. “I’m doing this my way.”

  “Tell me what?” Eole couldn’t see any link between the orange folder, Aunt Isabelle and himself.

  “It was before you came along,” continued Maman, “and God hadn’t yet decided to give us a baby.”

  Papa muttered, but Maman ignored him.

  “We learnt that a baby from a village in Brittany was looking for a home,” she said. “We prayed–”

  “You prayed,” said Papa.

  “And God told me it was his will for us to adopt this baby,” said Maman.

  Eole looked at her face and then down at the document she was holding. “So?”

  “So we adopted him.”

  “We adopted you,” said Papa. “You were the baby, and now you’re eighteen Alexandra thought it was time to tell you.”

  “Do you understand, darling? We’re still your parents – we’ll always be your parents – and we love you. Now you’re an adult you should know the truth because the truth is important, even if it doesn’t change anything.”

  She said his name and made her love-hug sign.

  The words flew at him but they wouldn’t enter his brain. They raced over and under his head like the diagram of the air flowing around the cross-section of the aeroplane wing on the cover of his new book.

  “Darling?”

  He nodded, because when Maman used her worried voice, Hestia said it was because he was looking blank and forgetting to use facial expressions.

  “We don’t know who your biological parents were,” said Papa. “All we know is that you came from a village near Paimpont in Brittany. If you want to know more, you’re allowed to investigate.”

  Eole put his hands over his ears. There was too much information. Out of all the words they were speaking, only one would stick: adopted. Adopted. ADOPTED. Where did it fit on his scale from minor modification to major change? The scale wasn’t big enough anymore.

  He was adopted. Itch.

  Therefore, Maman and Papa weren’t his parents.

  Therefore, Hestia wasn’t his sister.

  They weren’t his real family.

  He didn’t belong with them. Shuffle.

  So where did he belong?

  A black hole opened up in his mind and h
e was falling into it. More words attacked him. Hands reached for him. Maman was crying. But she wasn’t Maman anymore.

  And escape. He fought off the hands, burst out of the house, and let his feet take him away.

  Chapter 9

  Rainbow had seen photos of the craggy Pyrenees mountains in library books: snowy winter ski slopes; spring prairies dotted with pink, blue and yellow wildflowers; dour villages with houses that were all slate roof and no walls. In a television documentary she’d seen marmots and she’d heard the roar of waterfalls, the cries of raptors in the silent sky and the tinkling of cow bells. She’d even tasted Pyrenean tome cheese bought from a little man in a black beret at Cognac market.

  None of this, however, prepared her for the reality of the mountains.

  She first saw their hazy outlines on the horizon when she reached the heights of a plateau in the Gers countryside, where she mistook them for clouds. Gradually, the shapes became more solid. Her misery at the battered woodlands she’d driven past all afternoon turned into fascination for what lay ahead until, just before Lourdes, she was struck by the startling enormity of the rocky, snow-capped mass.

  Look! she wanted to say. But there was no one in the passenger seat to hear her.

  She couldn’t think about Christophe. She’d closed his name into a box since yesterday lunchtime at the restaurant, thanks to Mary’s suggestion: Mary had kept a before box sealed for years.

  The only thing that mattered now was her mission. Mary agreed, since staying at home in safety with Christophe was no longer an option. Her assent had eased the pressure on the internal wall inside Rainbow’s head. Somewhere, squeezed between two crags, was a pasture, and in that pasture was her soulmate. He – or she, Rainbow conceded to Mary, given her stupidity over presuming Christophe’s apprentice was a boy – would help her vanquish the Tree Slayer. She had to believe in this. There was nothing else left.

  The Val d’Azun was a few kilometres up a snaky road beyond the market town of Argelès-Gazost. A tourist road sign announced it and then, around the corner, a wide, green valley appeared. She’d done it! If someone had told her before yesterday’s catastrophe that she would drive to the Pyrenees on her own, she’d never have believed it.

  Yesterday, she’d raced home from the restaurant and sobbed her anguish about Christophe into Mum’s shoulder. Mary’s anger with him subsided into silence, which, unexpectedly, made Rainbow feel lonely. She couldn’t face driving to the Pyrenees alone. But Mum encouraged her to follow her spiritual calling, and Domi planned the car journey with her. Though they helped enormously, she’d navigated the journey alone.

  The Val d’Azun was long and U-shaped, with wooded slopes leading up to rounded hilltops in the foreground and rocky peaks behind. Tiny villages dotted the valley bottom and sides. The view, in the golden light of the Saturday evening sun, was worthy of a picture postcard. But the valley was much bigger than she’d imagined.

  She passed several villages – Arras-en-Lavedan, Arcizans, Aucun – and snatched glances at the acres of pastureland, pretty in long grass and wild flowers, as she drove. There were no sheep or shepherds in sight. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d anticipated.

  She stopped at the first campsite she spotted, in a village called Arrens-Marsous. This was the bit she was dreading. Christophe normally did the talking when they went out. She must trust Amrita’s belief in her and take one step at a time.

  The owner was in his office, and she checked in without getting any sideways looks or questions about why a young girl was camping alone. She wanted to pitch her tent and hide in it before she said something weird, but Mary reassured her she was doing fine. She compelled Rainbow to focus on her goals, so Rainbow asked the owner where she could find the sheep pastures of High Azun.

  He stared at her and she lowered her eyes. She could just leave.

  “Oh, you mean the summer pastures?” he said.

  “Maybe. Where are they?”

  “It depends. Each village has its own pastures up on the heights.” He took out a tourist map of the Val d’Azun and circled a series of plateaux and passes along both sides of the valley. “But if it’s the transhumance you’re after, you’ve missed it,” he added.

  “Transhumance?” she asked. The word sounded like a gender identity, or the name for a human who had changed into something else. But the campsite owner explained it was the annual movement of sheep and cattle up to the summer pastures and back. It was an occasion for celebration, and attracted journalists and tourists from all over western France.

  “Are all the shepherds up there?” she asked.

  “There aren’t many shepherds left, these days. Are you a trainee journalist or something?” He nodded towards her sketch pad, which she’d taken out of her bag while she scrabbled for her proof of identity.

  She knew better than to talk about soulmates and tree gifts to strangers. “It’s for school. I’m doing a project on shepherds,” she said.

  She’d made a good start, and the talking was easier than she’d expected, thanks to Mary’s encouragement to forget the past and concentrate on looking to the future. She was almost enjoying her conversation with the man, who accepted everything she said without surprise. It made her feel like a true adult rather than the skinny weirdo from the spiritual commune.

  “If I were you, I’d start at the pastures above Arras-en-Lavedan,” the owner continued. “There used to be an old shepherd there all summer. Keep an eye out for bears, though.”

  She searched his face for signs that the bears were a joke. But he was serious, and told her about the recent introduction of two wild brown bears into the mountains. Christophe would have known how to handle a bear. The prospect of facing one alone made her feel vulnerable again, and she quickly left to pitch her tent.

  She settled in the far corner of the campsite, beside a comforting oak tree. Then she studied the map and its promising circles before preparing for bed. Tomorrow she would find the old shepherd, who may well be her soulmate. Together, they’d get revenge on the Tree Slayer for all the trees it had killed, and for hurting the One Tree she must heal in order to save Amrita.

  Part II

  Two Halves

  Chapter 10

  Tintin’s hut was far below Eole. He had walked upwards without stopping in the hours since Maman Alexandra had told him he was adopted, and now he was balanced on the ridge. He couldn’t go any higher. There was a steep drop on both sides, and in the distance he could see Mount Balaïtous and the permanent glacier on Vignemale.

  He knew exactly where he stood in the physical world, but the physical world and his mental world were now two different places. Where once they’d matched and meshed, like gear wheels, their relation to each other had now shifted. It was as if one of Newton’s laws of physics had been proved wrong and all the ensuing scientific theories were built on a false foundation. They’d crashed to the ground and tumbled down the mountainside into the valley below.

  He didn’t belong with his family.

  Why hadn’t Patrick and Alexandra told him sooner?

  He took a deep breath. Darwie whined and sidled towards him. Darwie never came right to the edge of the drop and was uncomfortable when Eole stood like this, one step from death. Normally Eole came here to practise his special cloud skill. But today it was too dangerous to practise. He’d learnt his lesson last time he’d been unsettled, and now he knew he must divert his thoughts. He reached out and stroked Darwie’s head. He must fix his mind on something solid while he let his brain recalculate the eighteen years of his life.

  His mapopedia held parts of his physical and mental world together. Here, on the height of the ridge, Tintin had explained how glaciation worked. Eole concentrated. He imagined Tintin beside him and sculpted the words ‘firn’, ‘calving’, ‘moraines’ and ‘ablation’ into the curve of the ridge. With each mapopedia entry, his bewilderment subsided a little. At last, he sat down on the rocky ridge, studied the clouds, and allowed himself to pra
ctise his art a little. It was fine. He was back in control.

  His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t had the chance to eat any of the lunchtime chilli. In Tintin’s hut there were emergency rations of dried sausage, savoury biscuits and fruit-and-nut mix. He made his way down towards the food, stopping from time to time to add to his mapopedia.

  Rainbow slept late on Sunday. After lunch she parked in Arras-en-Lavedan, put on her walking boots, and set off from the village towards the forest that cloaked the mountain’s rocky shoulders. Luckily, the campsite owner had given her directions: she’d never have found the path from the map. To her relief, his directions matched the terrain around her. She was doing this alone – and succeeding!

  While she kept her eyes open for shepherds with golden auras, she absorbed the atmosphere of the trees. They seemed tougher than those in the Charente, from the deciduous trees on the valley floor to the multi-trunked mountain pines clinging to the steep slopes. The mountain pines reminded her of Thierry. During their work breaks, he’d talked about those in Massane forest, and how walking in woodland – which he called ‘forest bathing’ – could increase or decrease your blood pressure, according to whether the trees were suffering or not. Her blood pressure was definitely high. Her heart was beating fast, though that may have been because of the steep climb. Or the prospect of meeting her soulmate. Or the bears.

  She wasn’t in a hurry. There was no longer anything to go home for. She’d ruined her whole future with Thierry when she left the restaurant without any explanation. He wouldn’t appreciate her behaviour, even though the Mary side of her insisted it was Christophe’s fault rather than hers. It was one more reason why she had to accomplish her mission. The lid of the box in her mind opened and she shoved Thierry inside with Christophe. Instead of thinking about them, she concentrated on her surroundings.