Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

by Timothee de Fombelle

  Jalam talked about when he was a young man. Toby listened. Lulls sometimes followed the violent thrashing of the brambles, but they never lasted.

  At dawn on the second day, helped by being so tired, Jalam began to broach more intimate subjects — his childhood, his loves, his first courtship with the girl who went on to become his wife. . . .

  “A nettle!” he explained, laughing. “I made a date with her on a nettle! Young fool that I was! We were too young to wear much linen in those days. . . . People saw us coming back, both of us with our arms and legs on fire from the nettle’s stingers. Our love didn’t stay a secret for long. . . .”

  Toby laughed with him. But no sooner had they done so than both of them thought of Moon Boy’s shiny eyes and the mood turned serious again.

  Jalam admitted to having been too harsh.

  “I’m a little afraid of children,” he said.

  “Didn’t you have any of your own?” Toby asked.

  “No,” said Jalam.

  “Didn’t you want any?”

  Jalam didn’t answer. It was more a matter of the children not wanting him. He and his wife had dreamed of having children for a long time. Perhaps, deep down, Jalam held that against children.

  Toby took his hand. Danger exposes hearts and brings them closer. They stayed like that for a long time, almost peaceful in the small hours of the morning.

  Later, Toby talked about Isha Lee.

  Ever since he had found out that Elisha’s mother was born among the Grass people, he was burning to find out more. Toby dived into the old man’s silence.

  “What about Isha? Did you know Isha when she was in the Grass?”

  Jalam’s eyes glimmered, and there was another long silence.

  “Little Tree, I’ve told you, my wife was the most wonderful thing that happened to me in my life; she brought me great happiness. I hold to her like the soles of my feet. But for a long time, I thought I would never be able to forget Isha.”

  “You . . . ?”

  “I asked for Isha’s hand in marriage thirty-seven times.”

  He looked down.

  “And I wasn’t the only one. Some asked her a hundred times. Nouk threw himself out of his ear of wheat for her. For beautiful Isha . . . If you knew, Little Tree, what she represented for us. . . .”

  Jalam’s face clouded over, and he added, “There isn’t anybody among the Grass people who doesn’t regret what we all did.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Our hearts are gentle, Little Tree. I don’t know how the story of Isha could have happened.”

  “What story?”

  “We’re all responsible, because she made all of our hearts leap.”

  “Jalam, tell me what happened.”

  Suddenly, the Bramble Thicket was shaken convulsively, and then everything stopped. Jalam gestured at Toby. The old guide was waiting. The silence lasted several minutes, then Jalam said, “It’s over. That’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen a bird free itself on its own after two nights. Usually, he frees himself the first day or you have to wait a week for him to die of exhaustion.”

  “A week?”

  “Yes. And I can tell you that my old body wouldn’t have lasted a whole week. You had your youth to count on, Little Tree. But I thought I’d be ending my days here.”

  Toby held both of Jalam’s hands.

  “But you laughed when you were telling me your stories. . . .”

  A shout echoed in the distance.

  “That’s the little one!” said Jalam. “He’s survived!”

  The old guide rushed toward the entrance.

  “Moon Boy!” he called.

  The boy’s voice answered him.

  Jalam called out the child’s name again. He was glowing with happiness.

  “I’m coming, Moon Boy! I’m coming!”

  Day was breaking. The Prairie was rippling beyond the last brambles. Jalam slipped outside.

  Despite his relief, Toby was still haunted by the mystery of Isha Lee.

  It took several days for Toby and Jalam to realize that Moon Boy was responsible for their freedom.

  “I was lucky,” he said. “I was in the right place at the right time.”

  But his adventure was much more than a good-luck story.

  After being thrown from the bramble when it first started shaking, Moon Boy had lost consciousness. He had woken up on the stem that was holding a blackbird prisoner. He could feel the bird’s warmth just below him, as well as the panic-stricken beating of its heart while its wings whipped the brambles.

  To withstand the storm of feathers, Moon Boy had tied himself to the stem using the end of his linen cloth. He’d waited for night to end.

  At dawn, he had spotted a place just next to the bird’s head where the bramble was weak; it was half worn through by the bird’s thrashings. The bird would be free if not for this tiny stem.

  Moon Boy had dragged himself in that direction as quietly as possible, not daring to let the starving bird see him.

  He had tried tearing away at the thorny stem for hours, until nightfall, using both teeth and nails, but it was a hopeless battle.

  “That was when I had my little idea,” he explained. “Who could help me? Who would save me? Who, in the Bramble Thicket, was strong enough and close enough to rescue me?”

  Jalam and Toby looked at each other. An understanding smile spread across their faces, and their chests got all puffed up.

  “Us!” they said in unison.

  “No . . . not you,” answered Moon Boy, almost apologetically. “But the bird! The bird, with his beak right there next to me! I was hiding from him when he was the only one who could help me.”

  Toby’s and Jalam’s feathers were a bit ruffled. Their friend continued, “On the second morning, I took my cloth in my hand like a long train. I climbed the stem and started dancing.”

  As he was telling the story, Moon Boy began to dance close to the fire.

  “In ten seconds,” said Moon Boy, “I saw the blackbird’s eyes rolling my way. I saw his beak open and get close. At the last moment, I threw myself to the side, flat on my belly. He had snapped the bramble stem instead of me.”

  Astounded, Jalam acknowledged for the first time how these few milligrams of a slip of a boy were packed with courage and imagination. So that’s what a child was.

  Moon Boy acted out the scene by firelight. When he was playing the role of the bird, he got closer to the flames and his giant shadow was projected onto the grass.

  “He retreated a bit. I got up and started dancing again on the same spot. The bird attacked for a second time; I jumped back. His beak tore off a strip of the bramble. . . . And that’s what my little idea was.”

  Toby and Jalam were starting to get the picture. With a mixture of fondness and fascination, they watched their young companion dance. A little idea? He called that a little idea? Jalam looked away. He was overcome. Moon Boy had saved their lives.

  “With the final snap of the bird’s beak, the bramble broke. The blackbird was able to spread its wings, disentangling itself at the cost of a few feathers. He flew off. I was flung upward again, but my linen cloth was caught on a thorn and kept me hanging in midair.”

  Moon Boy got even closer to the fire.

  They had set up camp on a dry clod of earth, having already put the bramble far behind them. But this was the first time that Moon Boy had told them about his feat.

  “I was in the right place at the right time,” he said again.

  Jalam corrected him, “The worst place, young man, at the worst time. But you were the right person.”

  The downpour began the next day. Tepid rain, with drops as big as houses.

  “That’s just as well,” said Jalam. “I’ve been waiting for this day.”

  He took his peashooter and started tapping the tall grass spindles around him. With each tap, he strained his ears to listen to the acoustic of the stem. Finally, he pointed to one and got out a small knife made of har
d wood, which he wore on his belt.

  “Let’s lay this one down.”

  Toby and Moon Boy took their knives and followed orders. The grass fell with a hissing noise. Felling a green blade of grass was a rare and solemn moment. In the Prairie people talked about “laying down” a blade of grass. Dried grass was sufficient for everyday use, but on a few occasions the laying down of green blade of grass was necessary.

  The main reason was building boats.

  They worked for two days in the rain to build a handsome green boat. It was a good centimeter long. The greenness of the grass weighed it down and made it float well. At the back, two long poles enabled the sailors to push their boat forward.

  The water was starting to rise.

  It was autumn, and as with every autumn, the Prairie was being transformed into a flooded forest.

  The voyage over the waters lasted several weeks. Time seemed to slide by in slow motion as the boat drifted between the blades of grass. They had devised a small shelter at the prow. One of the sailors would sleep there while the other two pushed their poles behind them, in the rain.

  Toby savored the gentleness of this boat journey.

  He liked the way time had slowed down, the easy tedium of life on board, one day blurring into another. His hair was always wet, the rain clinked over the marsh, and water bugs skated between the droplets.

  Jalam would bathe before dawn, while the youngsters were still asleep. With one eye half open, Toby would watch him climb back into the boat, naked in the cold November air, wrapping his long old man’s clothing around him. He would throw off the moorings and start pushing with his pole, then signal to Toby to drink a bowl of hot water with him.

  Jalam was relishing every moment of his last voyage.

  In the evenings, Toby would light the fire on a floater next to the boat and cook standing in water up to his shoulders.

  The rest of the time, nothing happened. . . . Just the boat being pushed forward, the way it swayed, a concert of toads in the distance, the rippling water, the Grass Forest unfurling — all this was enough to fill their days.

  In the course of these long stretched-out weeks, the water began to have an effect on Toby’s memories, as if the autumn rain was dripping onto the dust that covered his past.

  For the first few days, terrible memories were exposed, so that it was like black mud in Toby’s heart. The nightmare he had lived through in the Tree was still there, intact: flight and fear. He could see himself running through the branches, pursued by his own people. He rediscovered the horrors of the prison at Tumble, along with everything he had left behind when he went to live in the Grass.

  But, slowly, the pure rainwater washed away these black memories. And all he was left with was the dazzling beauty of what he was setting out to win back.

  First there were his parents, Sim and Maya Lolness. Their faces floated above the boat, in the shadows of the marsh. And their voices . . . Voices Toby was frightened of forgetting, but that came back to him, whispering in snatches.

  He could even feel their lips brushing against his ears. He closed his eyes and gently drew in his hands, hoping to grab his mother’s silk scarf, to climb up it like a rope ladder, until at last he could touch her skin, her hair.

  He only ever found air, the damp air of those rainy days. But he wasn’t sorry to have believed, even if only for a moment.

  Toby tried to picture his parents. They were in Joe Mitch’s hands. Would they be able to hold out until their son’s return? Would Sim deliver Balina’s Secret, the invention that threatened the vital energy of their Tree, to the enemy?

  Another ghost haunted the young adventurer.

  When he was resting at the front of the boat, he could feel a hand touching his own and playing with his cheeks.

  “Wait,” he whispered sleepily. “Wait for me. I’m asleep; I have to get strong again.”

  It was as if this hand was trying to take him somewhere, tugging at his hand insistently.

  “Not just yet. I have to finish this journey,” Toby repeated.

  But he didn’t put up much of a fight. He was enjoying the invitation, and his gentle refusal encouraged the other person to linger.

  “I’m coming — I promise. Just give me the time to get up there.”

  He woke up when he uttered his ghost’s name.

  “Elisha.”

  That was when he realized that his hand was sticking out of the shelter and being rained on. The invitation had come from those big raindrops on his hand. He sighed but left it outside to find Elisha’s rain fingers again as quickly as possible.

  Toby kept trying to encourage old Jalam to continue with Isha’s story.

  “I’ve told you what I know,” answered Jalam. “She was there with us in the Grass, and then one day she left. I don’t know anything else.”

  “But you were starting to tell me . . .”

  “I don’t know anything else.”

  Toby couldn’t quite understand.

  “But . . .”

  Jalam’s face was inscrutable.

  “That’s all, Little Tree.”

  In the Bramble Thicket, Jalam had started talking about everything because he thought he was going to die. But he’d been given back life, with all its locks and barricades. Perhaps it would be better if your whole life had that same transparency as in its final moments.

  Today, Jalam was back in the world, and he had slammed the door on his memories.

  A door.

  During all his years in the Grass, Toby had never seen a single door. The ears of wheat were left wide open. He had forgotten that down there, like everywhere else, there are still doors inside people’s heads, and one jab of the elbow is enough to close them again forever.

  Jalam fell quiet. Toby lifted the long pole and pushed it behind him. He was reflecting on all this. Even Grass people have secrets and things they’re frightened of.

  Deep in the eyes of Ilaya, Moon Boy’s big sister, there had always been several locked doors. Toby had never tried to open them, preferring to stay outside her secrets.

  But it would have taken so little for those barriers to crumble to dust at his feet.

  Ilaya was in love with Toby.

  He had felt the heat of her passion for him. An all-consuming passion into which she threw the loss of her parents, the death of a fiancé, and all the unhappiness that had built up since she was small.

  Ilaya was a bundle of despair, ready to set herself on fire for the first man that came along.

  When Toby announced that he was leaving, she could think of only one thing: holding on to him. Even if it meant killing him in order to keep him all to herself.

  “The line’s heavy.”

  Toby surfaced from his thoughts.

  “What?”

  “The line’s heavy,” old Jalam repeated.

  Toby let go of his pole and grabbed hold of a fishing line that was attached just behind him. He tugged it deftly out of the water.

  “A pupa,” said Jalam, who was helping Toby remove a small gray insect. “A mosquito pupa. My wife makes a stew from these.”

  Toby looked at his older companion. Clearly, he wasn’t going to find out any more about Isha Lee’s story.

  The water level started to drop at the end of November. On the first day of December, the boat ran aground. Moon Boy was the first to set foot on dry land. He disappeared, running off.

  Toby and Jalam turned the boat over on a mud beach and tied it to a grass trunk.

  “You never know,” said Jalam. “I might be able to use it on the home journey with the little one, if the snows don’t come.”

  “But what if it does snow?”

  “If it snows, then we’ll use boards.”

  Toby had discovered boards for the first time when he arrived in the Grass. They were slats of wood strapped lengthways under the feet, used to glide over the snow. The front of the boards rose up and curled like a snail shell.

  Toby and Jalam heard shouting and
saw Moon Boy running toward them.

  “Come and see! Quick!”

  The boy led them a few centimeters away. They clambered over grass crushed by the rain and emerged on a leaf that formed a sort of terrace. They followed Moon Boy right to the edge.

  As far as the eye could see, bark-covered hills rose up in the middle of the Grass, like a giant wooden snake that went underground and came out again.

  “What is it?” asked Moon Boy.

  “We’re closer to our goal than I’d thought,” said the old guide.

  “Is it the Tree?”

  “Yes.”

  Toby was startled. No, his Tree didn’t look like this.

  “It’s the Underground Tree. These hills are in the open air, but all the rest of the branches are underground. The Underground Tree . . . It shares the same Trunk as your Tree.”

  Toby’s face lit up. He was thinking of his father and his big research files. He could picture the little image that he had carved at Onessa, on the door of their house in the Low Branches. The same sign that he carved everywhere. The emblem of the Lolness family.

  During the long voyage by boat, Toby had sculpted the sign on a wooden medallion that he had given to Moon Boy.

  “These are roots,” Toby had explained. “The roots of my Tree. They come out at this spot, but most of them are underground. My father knew they existed.”

  Moon Boy was looking at the emblem around his neck.

  Jalam smiled grimly when he heard Toby talking. Roots . . . Why that word? Couldn’t we just as well say that the Branches in the air that Toby knew were actually the roots of the Underground Tree? Who was to say which way was up for the Tree? And which were its Roots?

  But the old guide remained quiet; he didn’t want to stir up a debate that was too old and too painful for the Grass people.

  An hour later, the travelers arrived at the foot of the first bark hill. Slowly, Toby walked over and put his hand on the wood.

  “The days are shorter,” said Jalam. “I hadn’t even noticed. We’re in the shadow of the Tree.”