Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

by Timothee de Fombelle

  In the old days, when Seldor Farm woke up under a blanket of snow, the family didn’t work for several days. They would get out cicada drumsticks and grill them on a spit in the fireplace; they drank warm beer and ate honey cakes.

  In the old days, when Seldor Farm woke up under a blanket of snow, they would play music at the windows and listen. . . . The acoustics off a field of snow are pure and mysterious. Best of all is playing there at night.

  In the old days, when Seldor Farm woke up under a blanket of snow, everyone wanted their whole lives to be like this first morning of winter.

  But Seldor Farm had changed.

  A farmyard muddied by soldiers’ boots; barns converted into dormitories and canteens; raised voices; and, farther off, the old aphid aviaries were now converted into cages for people. The Grass people were detained in this garrison before being driven down to the Lower Colonies.

  Leo Blue had arrived in the Low Branches the night before, after his great journey down the Tree. He listened to his men’s explanations.

  “The cages are empty. We’re waiting for the next convoy.”

  “They’re late. It’s December 20, but —”

  “Quiet,” interrupted Leo Blue.

  He was looking at the front of the great house at Seldor, carved out of the bark. Leo stood completely still. Everybody was watching to see what he’d do next. He inspired fear. His story was well known. First, that his father had been killed by the Grass people on the Great Border, when Leo was small. And then his own story, in which revenge had little by little become an obsession.

  Seeing that he was interested in the farm, Garric, the Garrison Commander, ventured some explanations. “It’s the home of the Asseldor family.”

  “Quiet,” Leo ordered again. “I didn’t ask you anything.”

  Leo knew all about it. A family had been living there when the barracks were set up. And he had made his own journey to this house to find Elisha.

  He felt he was registering how handsome this building was for the first time: the thick scars in the wood revealed its age.

  A figure passed by — a young woman carrying a bucket around the perimeter of the house, before quickly disappearing inside.

  “That’s the Asseldors’ daughter —”

  “I know!” Leo lashed out.

  He stroked the boomerangs hanging on his back, and nobody made a sound.

  The Asseldor family had chosen to stay within their own walls despite all their land being confiscated. They had been offered other farms, higher up in the Tree, but they had refused. The soldiers tolerated their presence in these old walls. The family scraped by from hunting and gathering.

  “I don’t like them staying here,” said Leo. “They mustn’t disturb the work.”

  “They don’t disturb us,” said a soldier. “They used to play music, but Joe Mitch banned it a year ago.”

  “Was it nice?”

  The man didn’t answer. How could he say that the music had made him weep?

  “The risk is that they help the Grass people,” said Leo Blue. “Keep an eye on them.”

  “We search the house every evening, and we do surprise daytime searches three times a week.”

  Leo Blue looked unconvinced. When it came to fear, he was a perfectionist. He knew that one of the Asseldor sons, Mano, was on the run. Mano’s name was on the Green List of most wanted people.

  “What about at night? Search them at night! That’s an order.”

  Leo Blue set out the same day.

  The young woman with the bucket who had just gone inside the house closed the door behind her and leaned against it. It was Lila, the older Asseldor daughter.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” she said under her breath.

  She wiped her face with her sleeve, picked up her bucket, and carried it over to the fireplace. Then she started talking in an upbeat voice.

  “I’m here. Everything’s fine. It’s been snowing. It’s very white out there. There’s a bit of sunshine. The boys have found a maggot over by Onessa. They’ve saved some of it to preserve in honey, and we’ll have the rest for dinner. Our parents are on their way. They’ll be here in an hour.”

  The room was empty. So who was she talking to in such a reassuring voice? She emptied her bucket into a big pot that was heating on the fire.

  “I’m melting the snow,” said Lila. “I’m going to take a bath. I feel cold.”

  There was something extraordinary about hearing this young woman describe her every movement.

  When the Asseldor parents arrived a little later on, they played exactly the same game.

  “We’re back,” said the father. “I’m taking off my socks. Your mother has got some snow on her scarf.”

  If there hadn’t been so much tenderness in their voices, it would have been laughable.

  “Mo and Milo are just behind,” Father Asseldor continued. “Here they are. They’re coming in. Mo is wearing that hat I don’t like.”

  “It took a long time,” Milo, the older brother, said. Sure enough, he was wearing a torn old hat. “But we’re back. We won’t go off like that again. I’ve got the maggot in the bag and a mushroom. Mo has put the mushroom on the table. Lila is getting out a knife to help him.”

  Mo and his sister did exactly as Milo narrated. Lila started chopping the mushroom into huge chunks, big as fists.

  Father Asseldor went into the room next door, followed after a moment’s discreet hesitation by Mo, the younger brother.

  He found his father in the girls’ bedroom.

  What they called the girls’ bedroom was in fact a larder. The room hadn’t been used to sleep in since Lola, the youngest sister, had left. Lila slept alone in the living room now, in front of the fireplace.

  Father Asseldor was busy moving a large grasshopper ham that was hanging from the ceiling. Mo came in, closed the door, and went over to him.

  “What’s wrong, my son?”

  “We’ve got to leave, Father. We’re suffocating here. We have to leave Seldor.”

  “All of us?”

  “Yes,” said Mo.

  “We can’t all leave Seldor — you know that.”

  “I know it’s hard when this was your father’s house, Dad.”

  “It doesn’t matter about it being my father’s house; I’m not the one who can’t leave. You know who I’m talking about. If I could, I would already have taken you far away from here.”

  “We can take him with us,” Mo said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Milo burst in.

  “Come and see!” he said.

  His father and brother stared at him.

  “Come right away!” Milo insisted.

  They dropped everything and followed him.

  Lila was standing in front of the window, with a folded piece of paper in her hand.

  “It was just pushed under the door. Look.”

  “Again . . .” said Mo.

  He took the letter and held it out to his brother.

  Written in big letters was: FOR THE YOUNG LADY.

  Milo unfolded the piece of paper and read out loud.

  “‘Meet me behind the aviary at midnight. . . .’ I’ll go myself and I’ll slit his throat,” Milo remarked to his sister.

  “Stop it, Milo. Read the rest.”

  “‘I want to help you. I know.’”

  Father Asseldor tore the letter from Milo’s hand and read it again.

  “‘I know.’”

  In any other family, someone would have asked, “What does he know?” but this didn’t even cross their minds. Here, they knew full well what nobody, absolutely nobody, was allowed to know.

  Father Asseldor folded the message again. As usual, there was no signature.

  For several months now, Lila had been receiving letters addressed to “the young lady.” Her father had intercepted the first few before she’d seen them. But Lila Asseldor had found the little bundle of mail under the boxes of herbal tea.

  “What’s this, Dad?”
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  “They’re . . . letters.”

  “Who for?” asked Lila.

  “They’re addressed to ‘the young lady.’”

  Mrs. Asseldor, who knew all about it, looked as embarrassed as her husband.

  “Are you the young lady?” Lila had asked her father.

  “I . . . I thought they were for your mother. . . .”

  Gallantry can sometimes come in handy. Mrs. Asseldor wasn’t exactly a young lady. She still looked young and was very beautiful, but she didn’t try to hide her sixty-five years.

  Lila read all the letters. They were very ardent and very clumsy. They talked about her eyes being as blue as flies, and her hair like fine noodles. A real poet . . . Some of them suggested a meeting. Others were columns of numbers. The author was doing his finances and ended with a final sum, which he underlined in red.

  As you can see, miss, I am quite rich, which never hurts.

  The letters kept on coming. Lila never replied.

  Of course, Lila was less indifferent than she let on. When you’re twenty and you live with your brothers and parents, when you’ve seen your little sister carried off by a brave young man, you’re bound to feel something when someone invites you on a date — even if he’s a big fat bug.

  Lola, the youngest Asseldor daughter, had left several years ago. A neighbor in the Low Branches, Lex Olmech, had come for her. It had all happened one night. Now they lived in secret somewhere very far away, with Lex’s parents.

  Mr. and Mrs. Asseldor had no regrets about this relationship, even if they missed their daughter. Lola had proved her love for Lex over a long period of time, and Lex had proved his affection and courage. The whole family knew that Lola was better off in Lex’s arms than between the walls at Seldor.

  But Lila’s mystery suitor didn’t inspire the same confidence. Grandfather Asseldor used to say to his daughters, “The ridiculous won’t kill you, but watch out: it’ll try to marry you. . . .” The author of the letters belonged in this category.

  “I’m going to the aviary at midnight,” said Lila.

  She had a hard time convincing her family. Milo paced up and down the room. Mo sharpened his hunting dagger. Their parents were forced to admit there was a menacing tone in the most recent message and they needed to find out more.

  Night fell early. They waited for the sounds of footsteps to die down in the farmyard.

  “All clear,” said Father Asseldor, spying out the window.

  He fitted a wooden board over the windowpane. Mo removed the pot from the fireplace and doused the fire.

  “We’re putting out the fire. Mo has removed the soup pot. We’re coming.” (Again this odd habit of describing every action out loud.)

  Lila blew out the lamps. She left just one candle lit on the table. The two brothers were crouched in the fireplace, where they pulled out a board from the back.

  “Come on, it’s nighttime — you can come out now, Mano.”

  Mano Asseldor had been living, hidden behind the fireplace, for the last three years. For three years, he hadn’t seen daylight. For three years, he had come out only at night, walking around the house a little, washing and eating, but before dawn he always had to go back inside that recess full of soot.

  The family had hidden him there when he had escaped from Joe Mitch’s Enclosure with Toby Lolness. He was only supposed to stay in the cubbyhole for a few weeks, but he had been trapped by the arrival of the soldiers stationed around the farm. Every exit from the garrison was guarded, the house was searched, and Mano was on the Green List.

  The boy who emerged from the fireplace looked like a moth, with black powder on his cheeks. He stretched and uncurled his arms and legs, as if emerging from a long hibernation.

  “At one point, I couldn’t hear you anymore,” he said.

  “We warned you, Mano,” his mother reassured him, taking him in her arms. “We had to go out for a few hours in search of food. We would never desert you.”

  “I couldn’t hear you anymore,” Mano repeated.

  Milo put his arm around his little brother’s neck.

  “We’ll get you out of here,” he promised.

  “I thought you’d left. . . .”

  “No, Mano. We always come back. And we always talk to you as soon as we get in.”

  As they watched Mano eating, they told him about their day again. Then silence.

  Mano never had anything to tell them about his day. Never.

  Lila was skirting the wall. She wished the snow was still crisp and crunchy so she could hear any approaching footsteps, but she was walking through black sludge. She crossed the path, walked along the hedge, and came out near the old moss garden.

  In the old days, there were thirty kinds of creeping moss in this garden. One that flowered only on New Year’s Day, another that produced delicious little beans, another that smelled like caramel. But now the bark had been scraped away and lichen was taking over.

  At last Lila reached the aviary, where she followed the wire caging for a few paces.

  “Turn around!”

  Lila turned to where the order had come from. A lamp was being shone in her direction; it dazzled her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Lila’s eyes were gradually getting used to the light. She could now make out a face. It was Garric, the Garrison Commander.

  “You’re not allowed to come out at night,” he stated.

  By now, Lila was sure it was him.

  Garric was the author of those letters. She recalled a few intense looks when she’d been walking through the farmyard. Now, alone in front of Garric, she wanted to run away, but she had to find out if he really did know . . .

  “Good evening.”

  She chose her gentlest and most caressing voice, her musician’s voice.

  Garric lowered the lamp.

  “I’m going for a little walk,” she said.

  Garric still didn’t say anything. Few men would have been capable of saying anything faced with Lila’s beauty. She stood there in her pale fur collar, her back against the aviary, her mittened hands gripping the caging. She studied the ground like a runaway who’d been caught, but every so often she stared Garric in the eye. Each time she looked up, it made him step back. He was crazy about her.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

  He chewed on a few inaudible words and then said, “Will you come back?”

  “Possibly, if you tell me what you want to say to me.”

  “Ah . . .”

  Garric knew that he was running a risk. He had discovered that Mano was hiding out in the Asseldor house. He should have told Leo Blue about this. By keeping quiet, he was risking his own life. But the sound of Lila’s breath was all it took to convince him.

  “Come and see me tomorrow,” he said.

  At that moment, horns rang out in the night air. A voice shouted, “Here they are! They’re coming. The last convoy’s coming!”

  Garric took a step toward all the noise. Lila followed him.

  “Tell me what you wanted to say.”

  Flares were lighting up all around. Garric could feel Lila’s hands on his coat. He wanted to disentangle himself. But she held tight. The garrison was waking up.

  “Tell me,” Lila begged.

  “Go back home.”

  “Please . . .”

  Garric stopped. He whispered, “Your house . . . From now on, we’re going to search it at night too.”

  Lila let go of his greasy fur coat. The Garrison Commander repeated, “Come back tomorrow.”

  Lila ran toward the house. She hunched over, not wanting to be seen by the men now marching toward the aviaries.

  “They’ve caught nine of them,” they were saying. “It’s the last convoy. The Grass people will stay for three days.”

  Lila walked into the living room and looked at everybody in turn, her parents, Mo, and Milo, and then she turned toward Mano. She didn’t dare speak. Her breath caused the fur on her colla
r to flutter. She managed to blurt out, “They’re going to search at nighttime too. You won’t be able to come out at night, Mano.”

  Mano stood there in silence for ten seconds, then he let out a long cry that pierced the night.

  The soldiers guarding the convoy of Grass people rushed toward the house when they heard the cry. They forced the door and entered the main room.

  They stumbled upon a strange sight. The oldest Asseldor son, Milo, was lying in the middle of the room, and his sister was sponging his forehead. His parents were kneeling at his side, and Mo, his brother, was blowing on the fire.

  “He fell,” explained his father apologetically.

  “He fell,” repeated his mother, red-eyed.

  They searched the whole house. Garric stayed by the door, his hands behind his back.

  That night, the soldiers didn’t find anything.

  Mano was curled up behind the fireplace.

  Leo Blue always traveled alone. He ate alone; he slept alone; he lived alone. The only company he would tolerate was his trustworthy adviser, Minos Arbayan.

  Arbayan had joined forces with Leo at the start of his battle against the Grass people. He had introduced himself as a friend of Leo’s father, El Blue. Arbayan hated the Grass people, who had killed El Blue. He wanted to help Leo protect the Tree from the Great Grass Threat.

  But there was another reason for Arbayan’s hatred of the Grass people. He felt guilty. He was the one who had urged El Blue to set out on his final adventure. Without him, El would never have traveled down the Trunk and crossed the Border on that fateful day when he was killed. Arbayan hadn’t mentioned this to Leo Blue.

  Leo admired Arbayan’s pride. He knew about his peaceful reputation as a butterfly hunter. One day, eaten up by remorse, Arbayan had decided that he would take up arms after all; provided they helped the cause, he would no longer reject cruelty and violence. He had kept his colorful clothing and was recognized everywhere as the great butterfly hunter he had once been.

  He had simply changed his silk nets for combat weapons.

  Leo started running, chased by a disgusting smell. He had just passed alongside a weevil cemetery. The poor animals had died in an epidemic. There were only a few left now, and Joe Mitch looked after them better than the closest of his fellow beings.