Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

  How long ago had he knocked on Gabin’s kitchen door? Surely not more than ten minutes? Any second now she would find him.

  Chapter 25

  Eole stumbled into a pot hole and fell over. Darkness on the plains was much harder to navigate than darkness in the mountains, and he wished he hadn’t taken the short cut along the track. Maps should show the conditions of tracks rather than perfect lines that looked so easy to follow.

  Ahead of him was a tunnel where tree branches met above the track. It was oppressive and smelt of leaf mould and brooding power. They’d found a passage like this earlier on and Rainbow had called it a ‘holloway’. Her eyes had sparkled and, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, she’d dropped her rucksack and done a row of untidy cartwheels down the centre. Then she’d had to go all the way back to pick up her rucksack, which had wasted time.

  He took out his torch and carried on towards the holloway. He wished he was following Tintin, or that Darwie was by his side. Although the voices were a manageable whisper at night, he didn’t like the dank smell of the close-knit community ahead. His headphones might be necessary.

  The voices in the holloway trees were muttering to each other like the chicken chatter in the battery house he’d once visited. He switched on his torch. Everything outside its circle immediately became darker and more menacing. He put on his headphones, leant forward into his rucksack straps and walked into the holloway.

  The voices paused. He reached down for the comfort of Darwie’s muzzle. But Darwie wasn’t there. The sheep weren’t there. Rainbow wasn’t there either. He was truly alone with the trees: trees that had suffered from his gale. He suddenly wondered whether Rainbow’s shining love for them protected him from their vengeance in the same way his special skill allowed him to protect Rainbow from the wind.

  He quickened his pace. Guilt for the storm he’d created rose up inside him like nausea. He wished he’d thought of the consequences up on that Brittany hill. But he wasn’t directly responsible. It was the Tree Slayer’s fault for taking advantage of the low pressure he’d created.

  He was nearly halfway through. The holloway pressed in on him from both sides and above. He broke into a lumbering run, shining his torch onto the stony track. In a few minutes he’d be out in the open and would be able to cut across the field to the safety of the road that led towards the train station.

  Something moved to his right. He stopped and swung the torch towards it. Everything was still. Then a toad jumped. It was crossing the track, one slow hop at a time.

  He pushed onwards, panting. The murmuring of the Koad pattern was louder. He tried to ignore the voices directing him back to Rainbow, but the soundwaves, imprisoned in the holloway, reverberated around him and hammered at his head. His headphones were useless here. The voices rose in intensity and another pattern came to the forefront. It was still Koad, but a new chord was harmonising with the main one. It was trying to attract his attention.

  Curiosity overcame his pain. He leant against one of the holloway’s bigger trunks, took off his headphones, and pressed his ear to its bark while he caught his breath. The pattern corresponded to the feeling of ‘solitary’ that Rainbow had given him earlier that afternoon: ‘solitary’ or ‘single’ or the number ‘one’. A different chord joined the Koad and One patterns. It was new, and he couldn’t place it in his treeopedia, not without Rainbow to help him.

  Another new chord jarred against the others. This one hurt. It grated on his teeth, like a fork scraping down a blackboard, sending spears through his brain. The voices were telling him to go back to Rainbow. But he had to get to Hestia. He tried to take a deep breath, but the voices had thickened the air. He couldn’t breathe.

  The new patterns screamed at him. He took his ear away and reached for his headphones, but he fumbled and they dropped to the ground. The voices shrieked. They jangled like the violins in Psycho. He slammed his hands to his ears. The torch fell onto a stone and cracked open, blinding him in darkness. He retched. He had to find his headphones. He bent down, his rucksack almost overbalancing him, and took a hand away from his ear to grope on the ground. He was sure they’d fallen right here. Why couldn’t he find them? He changed hands and retched again. It was no good. He couldn’t locate them. He knelt and pressed both hands to his ears. The voices were inside his head now. There was no escape. His head was throbbing. He couldn’t breathe. He vomited: once, twice, three times.

  He had to get out of the holloway and fill his lungs with clear air. Which way had he come from? He struggled to his feet. Stars burst in handfuls before his eyes. He staggered backwards, tripped, and fell into oblivion.

  Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes, and Rainbow had still seen no sign of Eole. At least the night air was calm: but for how much longer, if he was upset? She doubled back along the road and jogged in the other direction.

  She’d lost him.

  She hurried back to the farm. There were no lights on in the house. She paused at the solitary oak and reached out to it. She might as well try, though she doubted it would tell her where Eole was.

  In stark contrast to earlier on, the oak was agitated. Or maybe it was her own agitation she was transmitting. She turned off her torch, settled her mind and concentrated on the earth, the roots, the woody warmth of the bark.

  The tree was definitely agitated. She pressed her need to find Eole through her hands, and the agitation increased. The tree was agitated about Eole. Could it detect that Eole was on the point of being taken over by the Tree Slayer? She willed an image to appear, to show her where he was.

  Nothing happened. It wasn’t a special tree like the François I oak.

  There was no alternative: she had to get help. She rang Gabin’s doorbell. He answered in his pyjamas and agreed to drive her. Wasting no time in getting dressed, he slid into his flip-flops and picked up his keys. They hurried outside and climbed into his 2CV.

  “If he’s heading to the station, he may have taken the track,” said Gabin.

  They advanced slowly, bouncing into ruts, and entered a holloway. The night air coming through the open windows cooled Rainbow as she peered into the darkness, searching for Eole’s blond head.

  A dark lump lay on the ground ahead. It wasn’t moving.

  The 2CV was too slow. She jumped out of the car and raced towards the shape. It was Eole. He was still breathing. She unclipped his rucksack.

  Gabin joined her.

  “Should we call an ambulance?” she asked him.

  “Let’s get him into the recovery position first.”

  They pushed him onto his side, away from the splashes of vomit. Gabin held his thumb over Eole’s wrist pulse. His headphones were on the ground, and Rainbow put them over his ears while Gabin counted.

  “It’s slow. Too slow,” he said.

  A sound came from Eole’s mouth.

  “Eole!” cried Rainbow.

  His face, ghostly white, twisted in pain.

  He opened his eyes, pulled his hand from Gabin’s grasp and put it over his ear, on top of the headphones.

  “Hestia,” he moaned.

  “Let’s get you into the car,” said Gabin.

  Rainbow said she’d help him up if Gabin could deal with his rucksack. Gabin hesitated, then picked it up and lugged it to the 2CV.

  “Shall I help you sit up?” asked Rainbow.

  Eole nodded, and Rainbow eased him into a sitting position.

  “I’ve got to see Hestia,” he said.

  “We’ll call her from Gabin’s phone,” said Rainbow.

  Gabin came back and tried to help her support Eole while he stood, but Eole shrugged him off and staggered to the car with a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. He slumped into the front seat.

  “Can we shut the windows?” he asked Rainbow.

  Rainbow closed them all and Eole’s shoulders relaxed. Gabin told him he needed to rest and that he should tell his young lady what was going on in his head instead of just upping and leaving.

  “Tell him you�
��re my soulmate, not my young lady,” he said to Rainbow.

  “Even more reason to confide in her,” said Gabin.

  Eole didn’t reply. Back at the farm, Gabin opened the barn door, pointed to a pile of loose hay, and told Eole he could sleep there to save pitching his tent again.

  “If I were you, I’d stay with him,” Gabin muttered to Rainbow.

  She thanked him and asked if they could borrow his phone the next day.

  “Of course. As long as it’s not a long-distance call. I’ll be at market but I’ll leave the kitchen door unlocked.”

  Rainbow thanked him again and he flip-flopped out of the barn.

  Eole sat on the hay and drank from the water bottle Rainbow passed him. The barn smelt almost like home. Now he was indoors the voices had stopped, but his head ached as if he’d had an episode. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to lie down on the hay and sleep and sleep and never have to make any decisions.

  Rainbow was apologising for being jealous of his ability to hear the trees. She told him he was important and that she would never find Koad without him. If they didn’t find Koad, their mission would fail, and she, Amrita and perhaps he himself would die.

  She wanted him to talk, so he told her about the phone call and then continued with the detail of his ‘Hestia v. Rainbow’ calculations and she didn’t stop him with the T-sign, but she did make a hand-turning sign which meant he didn’t have to go into all the calculation details, so he skipped them and instead told her about the holloway.

  At the end of his speech she said it wasn’t an either-or situation. He could call Hestia every day and talk to her, and still continue with the treeopedia and guide Rainbow to Koad and protect her one hundred per cent. He wished he’d talked to Rainbow straightaway, and he wondered why it seemed so simple for her and yet so complicated for himself.

  While he was wondering, she took out his sleeping bag, threw it onto the hay and made him get inside it, and then she got her own sleeping bag from her tent, and after that she switched off the barn light and settled down to sleep. He came to the end of his wondering and he concluded that being together with Rainbow was as good as being with Tintin and the sheep in the summer pastures, and that he’d like to carry on being her soulmate/guide/protector and he hoped their mission would last for a long, long time.

  The next morning Rainbow’s muscles had turned into concrete. She attempted to stretch in the hay, winced, and then hobbled outside and packed while she waited for Eole to wake up. Domi’s envelope was at the bottom of her rucksack. Inside, she found a wad of bank notes and a familiar sheaf of ancient papers, tied with a faded red ribbon. They were his mother’s memoir notes on spiritualism and her experience of parallel worlds. Rainbow had read some of them last September, when Mary had arrived in Cognac, but she hadn’t finished. Domi obviously thought she’d have time to read during her journey. She was thankful for the money, but wished she’d left the memoir notes at home. She could hardly dump them to lighten her load.

  Once Eole was up, she took him into the empty house to use the phone, and then sat at the table to write and draw in her travel log. Christophe would be at work so she’d have to call him from a phone box later on.

  Eole phoned Hestia and explained that his phone card units had run out yesterday. He told her he would call her every evening until he came home, and she interrupted and said it didn’t matter if it wasn’t exactly six o’clock. She understood about yesterday and said she felt better today and that she’d actually talked to Papa after Eole’s call because she had to talk to someone – and Papa had listened, would you believe it? – and he’d made an appointment for her to talk to a doctor at the clinic. He wasn’t fussing like Maman, and was actually taking her side in wanting an abortion. The only problem now was that Maman had resorted to muttering in Greek and buying candles and spending half the day at church with Père Laurent. Hestia even had to do the milking, which was disgusting and made her want to puke, but she was being mega-conciliatory.

  Eole hadn’t considered she might want an abortion. They didn’t abort the sheep or goats when they were pregnant. If she had an abortion, would the problem go away, like one of her hangovers? In any case, it no longer sounded as if she needed him, which made him feel as airy as a cirrus cloud.

  He ate the croissants and strawberry jam Grandad Flip-Flop had left for them. It was difficult to imagine that life in Arras-en-Lavedan could carry on without him. It would be the same if he and Rainbow failed their mission and died, which made him feel sad but also a little bit lighter, because if Patrick had talked to Hestia, then perhaps his burnout was over. Eole’s former family seemed to be binding itself together perfectly well without him. If he was going to die, it made more sense to be with his soulmate than with a family that didn’t belong to him anymore. And if he died, he would discover what happened after death, though of course he wouldn’t be able to publish a scientific paper on his experience. He may even see Tintin again.

  While Eole finished all the croissants and ate a whole baguette, Rainbow phoned Domi. She told him everything was fine, thanked him for the cash and brushed off his suggestion to finish reading his mother’s memoir.

  “Have you seen Christophe?”

  Domi hesitated. “He popped in yesterday evening to see his mum.”

  Rainbow curled the twisted telephone cord around her fingers. “How was he? Did he say anything about me?”

  “No.”

  “Was he … alone?”

  “No, he brought his apprentice friend.”

  Rainbow hung up. She tore a page from the travel log and started drawing with quick, heavy strokes. She’d known Emilie was a risk, but she hadn’t really thought Christophe would console himself with her, not after all he’d said about Emilie not feeling ‘right’ and about being in love with Rainbow. Well, he’d made his choice. There would be no romantic holiday together, after all. She’d put him back in her mental box and shut the lid. It no longer mattered if her mission took forever to accomplish.

  She screwed up the page and started drawing on another.

  Twenty minutes later, Eole was ready to leave. Rainbow stuck her thank-you caricature of Gabin in his 2CV onto his fridge and they locked up, slid the key under the stone and started walking.

  “I hope we’re not going via the holloway,” said Eole.

  “What do the trees say?” Rainbow studied Eole’s white face and noticed the shadows under his eyes. Was this the effect of the Tree Slayer, devouring him from inside? She must look after him better.

  Eole listened to the voices. He could hear a murmur from the holloway trees, but it was too far away to understand if there was a Koad pattern or not. He had an idea, and warned Rainbow to shelter behind the barn. Then he faced the distant holloway and took in a deep breath. With it came the voices. He breathed out more gently, directing his face to the cloudless sky.

  “We have to go through the holloway,” he said. “Can I walk behind you?”

  Rainbow agreed. Last night she’d been too worried about Eole to pay any attention to the holloway, but now, as they approached it, she admired its shape. She imagined the roots intertwining under the earth, sharing secrets. It was magical. She could feel the power of it, drawing her in. It was inviting her to join its family, to interlace her arms with theirs and dig her toes into the earth beside them. She would sketch it in her travel log when they stopped for a break.

  Inside, the light was dim. Eole looked around. The atmosphere had changed and the trees were no longer screaming at him, but the new chords were still there: chanting and urgent, harmonising with the Koad pattern like a family conversation around a dinner table. He showed Rainbow the tree he’d hugged the previous night.

  They were in the middle of the tunnel. An oval of light at the far end reminded Rainbow that she mustn’t stay too long: that, contrary to her growing desire to stay here forever, they must move onwards. She stroked the trunk of the ash tree Eole indicated. She didn’t have to search for the usual secret p
laces to communicate with it, because its whole bark was receptive. Her heart thumped. Perhaps the holloway was Koad, and this was the tree she had to save. She threw off her rucksack and hugged its trunk.

  It was a mother tree, but it wasn’t special like the François I and Drunken House oaks. She knew because it was filling her with emotion rather than using images and words. Yet its feelings were clear and forceful, as if it were almost a special tree.

  It communicated ‘family’: a bonded family with internal conflict, yet unified against outside forces. Without opening her eyes, she said “family” to Eole. The ash was strong. It was as if she were hugging all the holloway trees through this one. She longed to be part of their family. In response to her longing she sensed a ripple of acceptance, and then the ash’s emotions stilled, as if it were taking a deep breath.

  She braced herself and told Eole something new was coming.

  Eole brushed away an ant and pressed his ear to the trunk. The jarring Psycho violin sound from last night broke into the Koad pattern.

  “Jesus! There’s a forest of fear here,” said Rainbow. “The trees are terrified.”

  Eole noted ‘fear’ in his treeopedia and continued listening, dreading a return of last night’s pain. But nothing hurt, now he was with Rainbow. The Koad pattern crescendoed and he heard the strain of the chord Rainbow had already translated as One or Solitary.

  “There’s a little hope too,” continued Rainbow. “Can you hear it?”

  Eole could. It was the first word in his treeopedia.

  “And now it’s referring to you and me,” she continued.

  Eole stocked the chord from last night in his treeopedia, a little disappointed that the voices were so illogical. ‘He and Rainbow’ should be two intertwined notes, one for him and one for Rainbow, but for some reason it was a single, pure note: one that warbled, hesitant like an untrained singer’s voice at the end of a breath.