Tree Slayer

by Harriet Springbett

  She approached the remaining oak, beech and ash trees humbly, ready to bow to each. But none – even the ancient, stumpy Guillotin’s Oak – responded to her touch with images and wisdom.

  She stared out of the window at the hundreds of thousands of trees as Serge drove her back towards his office in Argoad. How would she ever find the One Tree? If she had to hug every single tree, she’d be a hundred years old before she found it. Was this what Amrita intended her destiny to be?

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so quick to ditch Eole. What if the Koad trees were waiting for her and Eole to prove their good intentions before speaking to them?

  How stupid of her! If the precious last One Tree grew in Brocéliande, it was unlikely to publicise its existence, especially to the person who hosted the Tree Slayer. It would want to be sure they were honourable before revealing itself. She’d already noticed that the Brocéliande trees were restrained, and didn’t communicate their feelings. Was it the One Tree’s influence? Now that the Tree Slayer had gone – and if she proved she was worthy of them – they might confide in her.

  Serge’s voice broke into Rainbow’s thoughts: “This is the part of the forest the council is felling for the golf course,” he said. “They should have started this week, but the contractors only arrive tomorrow. They’ll probably begin on Monday. Such a shame.”

  Rainbow looked to where he was pointing.

  “But isn’t Druid Oak over there?”

  “Sure is. They won’t cut it down, though. They’re going to keep it in the centre of the car park and make a feature of it. The oak is on its last legs, anyway.”

  “Why can’t they make their stupid golf course in the fields?”

  Serge parked beside the agency office. “The farmers won’t have it. Anyway, I told you: nobody’s interested in trees. Originally, the council bought the land to protect Druid Oak. But then Hugues Barateau – he’s Argoad’s mayor – persuaded the council to accept a company’s proposal to build a golf course on it. The course will be good for the tourists who come here for the Arthurian legends. Our office is close by. We can offer them woodland activities and raise their environmental awareness.”

  “But you should be fighting for the trees!”

  He pulled up the handbrake sharply. “Easy to say. Have you ever tried to fight a council’s plans?”

  “Well … no.”

  Even as she said it, she could feel Mary nagging: Mary’s best friend Trish had fought for trees. She’d lived in one with an ecologist group for six weeks and stopped a whole wood being felled. Rainbow had often felt Mary’s yearnings for Trish. Now she was remembering Trish’s laugh and she could smell the perfume that had filled her flat when Trish moved in with her temporarily. Trish would know what to do.

  Rainbow shook herself, disorientated. These were Mary’s memories, not hers.

  “Take my word for it,” said Serge. “You can’t win. Money’s more important to politicians than the planet.”

  “You should try, at least.”

  He gave her a long, condescending look. “We have. We did our best. If you’re so upset about it, why don’t you do something?”

  Campaigning would be the perfect way to demonstrate her good intentions to the One Tree. If she managed to save this part of the forest, the One Tree might instruct its trees to communicate their feelings more freely. By hugging them, and through trial and error, she might eventually locate it. Fighting to save this part of the forest was the right thing to do. At the moment it was the only thing she could do.

  “Right. I will.”

  He laughed. “Sure. And how will a slip of a girl persuade the Argoad council to change its plans where Forest Friends has failed? The contractors are on their way as we speak.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  If it were possible to enter Mary’s parallel world, she would do so and ask Trish for advice. But it wasn’t. Mary’s arrival in Rainbow’s world had been engineered by Amrita, who was too weak to help her now. Eole had read about merging paths in his multiverse book, but he was such a slow reader that he still hadn’t finished the book when she’d left him. All she knew about parallel worlds was what she’d read in Domi’s mother’s memoir notes.

  Was the answer in the part she hadn’t read yet? Was that why Domi had given her the memoir and nagged her to read it? She hadn’t seen the brown envelope for days, and hoped it hadn’t got wet in the bottom of her rucksack. She would check it as soon as she returned to her tent, even though she doubted it would help: the idea of popping into a different world was absurd. She must make a more plausible plan, since the contractors would start felling in four days’ time.

  “What do I need to know about the project?” she asked Serge.

  He paused, jeep keys in his hand, and studied her face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “You bet I am,” she said.

  “Then you’d better come into the office and see what you’re up against.”

  She followed Serge indoors, imagining Druid Oak in the centre of a car park, surrounded by tarmac and isolated from the other trees. Thierry said trees survived better in forests because built-up areas were too warm at night. They needed the cool of other trees around them, not hot concrete. He’d also told her that the packed soil under tarmac stopped trees spreading their roots and receiving mesages. Druid Oak would surely die more quickly in isolation.

  She would prove her worth to the One Tree, wherever it may be, by launching herself into this campaign and saving the trees from being felled.

  Chapter 31

  Early on Thursday afternoon Eole finished in the Cazenave workshop. He’d made some rabbit traps, improvised a stand for his gas cooker and designed a belt to hold up his trousers, which had become loose.

  He could have stayed in the workshop all afternoon and experimented with the electronic equipment and soldering iron, but he had to get back to his search for Rainbow. She’d have found the One Tree by now. It would be easy to spot her camp, even if it was more difficult to smell her woody-mossy odour here in the forest.

  The photos on the workshop wall showed two adults and a teenage daughter, so he left a note addressed to the Cazenave family and one hundred francs for the materials he’d taken. Then he put the workshop key back under the gnome and set his rabbit traps by the burrows on the edge of the forest.

  Since arriving in Brocéliande, his brain had found it easier to make plans. It was as if help came from something external. Was it the oxygen-rich air? In any case, it had cleared the muddy waters of his mind and was helping his brain make decisions. Hestia would be proud of him. At this rate, he’d even manage Toulouse University.

  The sun came out and he ate two apples before cycling to Hindrés Oak. The tree was easy to find and much less impressive than Guillotin’s Oak and Druid Oak. He looked up the straight trunk and into the high branches. It was tall, strong and special, like him. If he were a tree, he thought he might be this one. He put his arms around the trunk and laid his ear against it.

  He could just make out a voice in its depths, but it was muffled, unlike the former rich music of the voices. He didn’t know if his ears or the voices were the problem. He tried the other ear. It was the same. The voice was on the lower limit of the frequency he could hear, and when he let go of the tree, he could hear no voices at all.

  Before he arrived in Koad the voices had been friendly and guided him. As soon as he’d reached Koad, they turned their backs on him. What had he done wrong? Had the Brittany voices recognised him as the source of the gale? He thought back to Tintin and that moment up on the hill when he’d begun blowing. He’d been filled with hate for the chestnut tree that had killed Tintin. Later, when he’d understood the extent of the damage the wind had caused, he’d been … well, pleased. Proud, even.

  The sweat on his back felt cold and clammy. How could he have been proud of such a terrible thing? Apart from hating assassin trees because of Tintin, he’d never really thought about them. They we
re simply there, like mountains and houses and streets. Even when he’d seen Rainbow shape branches, he’d only thought how good it was to find someone else with a secret special skill.

  He stroked Hindrés Oak like he stroked Darwie. The bark wasn’t soft, but it was reassuring. It was solid and dependable. It was alive. Why shouldn’t it have a voice?

  Suddenly he knew that the voices weren’t something speaking through the trees: they were the trees themselves. His mind knew it, even though it was totally unscientific because his brain didn’t have any proof. A picture of Maman-A kneeling in church appeared to him. Maybe her irrational conviction that God existed felt like this.

  He looked around the woods. Every tree now demanded his attention. Before, they’d been a mass of vegetation; now they were individuals, like people. They were a crowd of individuals with voices. He mustn’t think of them as a crowd, or he’d get itch, shuffle and escape and never find his way out of the forest. They were a single entity, a symphony of different notes. That was better. They’d all spoken together, in harmony – and they’d spoken to him. To think he’d been able to hear and understand the trees’ words! It seemed incredible, now he’d lost the power to do so.

  He wanted to tell Rainbow.

  He had to find her.

  He breathed in. There was a mossy-woody smell like Rainbow’s personal odour, but it was richer, more concentrated, and probably came from the trees. He searched the surrounding undergrowth, looking for her tent.

  He found nothing, which meant she wasn’t here, which meant Hindrés Oak wasn’t the One Tree. He picked up his bike and cycled towards the giant ash tree in Trudeau.

  Inside the Forest Friends’ office, a whole shelf had been allocated to fighting the golf course. Rainbow softened a little towards Serge. He’d spoken the truth when he said they’d done their best. She picked up a thick file. It was dusty.

  “The decision was made months ago,” said Serge.

  She flicked through meeting minutes, reports on soil, flora and fauna, through designs of octagonal buildings and bird’s-eye views of car parks, golfing greens and fountains. Serge picked up a colourful plan of the club house and explained how it would use geothermal heating.

  “We persuaded them to use solar panels too,” he said proudly.

  Rainbow closed the file and flicked through the next one: more meeting minutes. More reports. There were plenty of words, but she couldn’t find anything that mentioned the action they’d taken to save the trees. She didn’t intend to waste time on the whole shelf of files. When she asked Serge which one held the details of their publicity campaign to defend the forest, he pulled a small folder and a handful of crumpled leaflets from the back of a drawer.

  “On recycled paper, of course,” he said.

  It wasn’t only the leaflet paper that was recycled. The slogan ‘Save our Forest’ had been recycled hundreds of times too, and the statistics listed below the title were uninspiring. The colours were dreary beiges and dark greens, as if the designer was already defeated. Rainbow sorted through the publicity documents in the folder and eventually found the words ‘Protest Group’ jotted on a piece of paper, with a name and address beside it: Druana Cazenave. It was an evocative first name, one that made her think of Celts, druids and oak trees – and she lived right here in Argoad, so it didn’t matter that there was no telephone number. Rainbow could go and see her.

  She continued to study the files of reports, noting all the negative effects the deforestation would have on the forest’s biodiversity and asking Serge to explain the technical words. After an hour, she’d filled four pages with notes. She pocketed them and told Serge she was ready for the battle. He glanced up from the forestry magazine he was reading and smirked. “Off you run, then,” he said.

  She’d been about to explain her plan to find Druana, who, she hoped, would help her get the protest group back together so they could demonstrate against the council. But it was obvious he didn’t think she could achieve anything. She said goodbye and turned to leave.

  “Hey!” he said. “Don’t go doing anything stupid like chaining yourself to a tree or hijacking the contractors’ equipment. We don’t want any bad press. Talking of which, you might find this useful.” He passed her a document and explained it contained their media contacts. “The local newspaper office will be closed now, but you can call from here tomorrow if you like.”

  She thanked him and accepted his offer to take away a file to study in her tent that evening. The information she’d gathered was important, but the key to saving the forest was action. She needed Druana and her protestors.

  Eole didn’t find any sign of Rainbow at Trudeau either, so he knew by deduction that he would find her at the last tree in the circuit.

  He didn’t want to scare her, and he needed to make sure she would listen to him and not fob him off with another excuse. As he cycled along the road under the trees, his brain planned how he would get her to listen. The most effective way would be to tie her up, but he was sure Hestia wouldn’t approve of that. Hestia was bound to find out: she always did. He would start by facing Rainbow and maybe holding onto her shoulders so she wouldn’t turn away, like he’d done for the kiss. He’d only tie her up as a last resort.

  He left his bike on the roadside and walked along the track to Gelée Beech. She wasn’t hugging it, but she couldn’t hug it all the time. She would be nearby, watching over it.

  Her tent wasn’t here. How could she possibly save the One Tree if she didn’t sleep beside it? He turned in a slow circle, breathing in to see if he could distinguish her woody-mossy odour.

  He couldn’t.

  He hadn’t smelt it since she’d left him at the bus.

  Was it really her he’d seen in the taxi?

  If she wasn’t here, he had no reason to be here. Itch. What was he doing? What was his plan?

  He tried to put down roots, but the trees’ roots were taking up all the earth under his feet and there was no room. He hugged Gelée Beech. Without the voices there was no comfort. Shuffle. He had to move, but where? Where could he go? He belonged with Rainbow but he didn’t know where she was, and he wanted to go home to Darwie but he was hundreds of miles from home and in any case he didn’t belong there either.

  He breathed in and willed his brain to calm the long, panicky strings of thoughts in his mind. If he let go, his feet would take him away and lose him in the forest. He needed help.

  A thought came to his rescue and nudged his brain into action. It reminded him that Rainbow may have gone, but he did have a secondary plan. He’d been born in Paimpont. This was his home. He belonged here, whether Rainbow was in the forest or not.

  He let his breath escape upwards and watched it forge a fluttering path through the canopy of leaves, up to the cloudy sky. Yes. His secondary plan. He would stay and look up his biological family. Tomorrow he would go to the library, as Mademoiselle Henri had suggested. He hadn’t been inside a library for weeks, hadn’t smelled the fusty, friendly fragrance of plastic covers, carpets and ageing paper.

  His feet calmed. First, he must plan tonight’s meal. If his traps had worked, he might be able to eat rabbit stew. He walked back along the path towards his bike.

  Footsteps were coming the other way. Rainbow!

  He stopped walking and breathed in. It wasn’t Rainbow. The smell was familiar, though. It was lilac, but without the goaty notes, and it felt like pointed knives but also like bedtime stories. For a second he was confused, suspended between past and present. His olfactory receptors were playing games with his brain. He stepped off the path and hid behind a leafy bush. It couldn’t be Maman-A. She didn’t know he was here.

  It was Maman-A.

  She continued walking towards him. His mind calculated probabilities and sought explanations as he watched her approach, and he settled for a ninety-five-per-cent chance that Rainbow had rung her.

  He felt drawn to her. He could step out and surprise her and she would make a bleaty cry and the crease
between her eyebrows would disappear and she’d smile and say “Thank you God for delivering my Eole safely,” and make her love-hug sign, and then she’d take him back to her bed-and-breakfast because she had a passion for bed-and-breakfasts and was bound to be staying in one, and she’d order him a proper meal and let him close his eyes and guess what was on the plate before he ate it, and then she’d drive him home and Darwie would race out to meet him, his tail wagging so hard that it would look as if he was dancing, and they’d hike up to the summer pastures and check on Patou and the sheep, and he would lie back in the grass with his books and make cloud art and think about Tintin and science, and Hestia would stomp up and interrupt his thoughts and tell him off and then she would tease him and they’d laugh about something Papa-A had done and everything would be simple again.

  Maman-A paused, as if she could sense him.

  Yes, everything would be simple again, but only for a while, because then he would think about Rainbow instead of physics and meteorology, and every time there was a storm he’d counteract it and wonder about the Tree Slayer and the One Tree and he would never know whether Maman-B and Papa-B would have wanted him and whether he belonged better with them than with his adoptive parents in the mountains.

  His brain told him to stay behind the bush. He would call Hestia tomorrow, as planned, and she would give him Maman-A’s bed-and-breakfast address and, once he’d located his biological family, he would go and visit her and tell her all about them.

  Maman-A walked on again.

  His hands were shaking when he stepped onto the path. He didn’t stop trembling until he was back at Druid Oak, dealing with the buck rabbit that had strangled itself in one of his traps.

  Rainbow left Forest Friends and stopped a dog walker to ask for directions to the Cazenaves’ house. He explained it was opposite the village bar, and she cycled along the street towards it.