Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

by Timothee de Fombelle

  He didn’t understand anything.

  Mo was thrown onto a bench. He could feel the fresh air on his face, and he could smell the forest.

  They were taking him on a sled somewhere.

  Mo Asseldor didn’t wake up until the next day. Elisha’s big eyes were hovering right above him. He was lying on a feather sled with a blanket.

  Back at Seldor Farm, Elisha had promised that she wouldn’t say anything to Leo about Garric’s monumental mistake.

  “Really, do you mean it?” Garric had implored.

  “On one condition, Mr. Panic. Let me take this little one out for some fresh air.”

  Elisha had stopped with Mo in a completely white clearing, and she was making him drink tepid water under a sky of entangled branches.

  “Where are we going?” Mo managed to ask.

  “We’re going to my mother’s,” answered Elisha.

  And once again, she started dragging the sled over the melting snow.

  It was the third day of Isha Lee’s fever. She was lying down in her house of colors. She knew she needed help but didn’t expect anyone to come to her rescue.

  Nobody had been inside the house for months.

  Isha had caught a fever when she fell into the lake. The ice had cracked under her feet, and she had been shivering so badly from the cold that she’d barely been able to drag herself all the way back home.

  She knew the remedy for her suffering.

  Isha knew every single remedy.

  But her body lacked the strength to go as far as the thicket that was growing close by in the bark, which could cure even the most violent fevers.

  Isha wasn’t afraid. Clasping a little portrait in the palm of her hand, she was shivering on her blue mattress. She had managed to get up to throw more wood on the fire, and now, to her eyes, the burning flames were distorting the light and casting strange shadows. Slowly, these shapes were being transformed into landscapes and people.

  Isha saw the Prairie of her childhood again, an endless expanse that sloped toward the sun.

  She heard the buzzing of wasps in the morning.

  Isha used to sleep inside a flower in those bygone days, and sometimes she would be woken by the flight of a bee at dawn. She would open her eyes as the tiny tornado approached: the deafening noise of the insect, the air stirred up by the beating of wings, and the smell of honey. The pollen lifted by the bee made a little pink cloud all around her as she got up.

  Isha wasn’t afraid of wasps or bees or large hornets. All she had to do was leave the place to them, with a curtsy. She would slide between two petals and drop down the stem.

  Isha sometimes liked to linger around the butterflies. She would stroke their bellies with the palm of her hand: nothing is more ticklish than a butterfly.

  Isha had been the most beautiful and the wildest of the Grass girls.

  The fever had thrown Isha Lee back into her memories. For a while she tried to resist, to hold on to her grip on reality.

  But when she had no strength left and was crushed by the fever, she let go.

  The years flowed over her. She found herself back on the day after her fifteenth birthday, the day that had determined the course of her whole life.

  Isha was taking a nap on a wide blade of grass that towered over the Prairie, in the shade provided by a butterfly. She had just argued with her father, who had asked her to choose a husband.

  Isha always had a dozen escorts around her, and they all dreamed of marrying her. The young girl didn’t do anything deliberate to attract them. But just catching her eye was enough for any beholder to join the army of sighing men.

  Some of them had done extremely stupid things in a bid to attract her attention. Nouk had leaped from his ear of wheat, using a dandelion seed as a parachute: he had broken both his knees.

  Actually, there was nothing Isha enjoyed more than being on her own, and she would disappear for several days without anyone knowing where she was. Her father had gotten used to it in the end, because each time, Isha came back.

  On this particular day, she was thinking about her next trip, when the butterfly that was shading her from the sun suddenly flew off, revealing a man on the other side.

  He was carrying a large basket on his back.

  “Hello.”

  Isha didn’t answer him right away. She could see that he was different. His clothes didn’t look like anything she was familiar with. He had an injured arm tied up in a sling.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s my fault for making it fly off. I didn’t see you.”

  Despite the fact that he was clearly tired and his eyes were sad-looking, there was something very solid about this man.

  Multicolored butterfly powder had spread all the way up into his hair.

  Isha had never paid much attention to men, but this one made her curious.

  “I come from the Tree,” the man said. “I’m working on butterflies.”

  “Working on butterflies.” The expression sounded peculiar to Isha’s ears. The words didn’t fit together.

  The traveler wanted to take the basket off his back, but he stopped mid-movement. His arm was hurting.

  Isha got up and went over to him. For the first time in her life, she paid a tiny bit of attention to how she put one foot in front of the other, to how she walked in her dress. With her fingertips, she adjusted her linen cloth that was too tight at the hips.

  She looked at the wound, running her hand delicately over it. “You’re in pain,” she said.

  “It’s nothing. A mosquito attacked me three nights ago. Are you a Grass person?”

  “That arm needs taking care of.”

  The traveler looked at her and smiled.

  “If you knew what gets said about your people . . .”

  “Come with me.”

  “They say you eat your visitors.”

  Isha started laughing.

  “Right now, you’re spoiling my appetite with your gross arm.”

  Isha was laughing, then suddenly both of them were laughing: it was all decided in that one moment.

  The butterfly passed by again overhead.

  Isha led the traveler to her father’s ear of wheat. They looked after him, keeping him in their home for the first week. The Grass children came to watch him for hours on end.

  At first, they didn’t dare draw near, but little by little the stranger tamed them as he showed them the contents of his bag. He was carrying long boxes, each one divided into compartments containing thousands of colors. The Grass people were familiar with a few only simple colors: red, yellow, and green, which they never mixed. They took all their colors from the Prairie plants.

  But this visitor from the Tree was on a quest for butterfly colors, of which there is an infinite number. The hues went from golden to black via every kind of brown, ocher, silvery gray and orange.

  The variety of all these colors fascinated the Grass people, who referred to the traveler among themselves as Butterfly.

  They would file past, one by one, and Butterfly would put a dab of color on the tip of their nose.

  Isha didn’t disappear off on her trips anymore. She sat in the corner and never took her eyes off the man. Sometimes he turned toward her when he was talking to the children. She would lower her gaze as she tried to rekindle the wild look in her eye that she’d always had before. But, faced with this man, there was nothing wild about her anymore. She could have stayed there forever, like a pet animal, in her father’s ear of wheat.

  After two weeks, the wound had unfortunately healed.

  “It’s not perfect yet,” Isha insisted, as she looked at the arm.

  “You think not?” asked Butterfly. “I can’t see anything. . . .”

  “It’s . . . It’s inside. . . .” Isha explained clumsily.

  The two of them were alone that evening, and, lit by the flames from a straw fire, Butterfly was showing his forearm to Isha.

  “I can’t feel anything anymore.”

  “We
don’t always feel what hurts us. You need to rest here some more.”

  He looked at her in silence.

  “I have to leave, Isha. I have to get back to the Tree.”

  “But you’re not cured,” she insisted in a voice choked with emotion. “It’s serious; it’s very serious. You need to rest.”

  This time, Butterfly noticed her long eyelashes laced with tears.

  “What is serious?” he asked gently.

  Very close to the fire, Isha answered, “I’m the one who’ll hurt if you leave.”

  Cracklings, rustlings, the sounds of night, everything fell quiet to mark this moment.

  Isha put her head on Butterfly’s shoulder.

  How many men in the Prairie would have dreamed of being in Butterfly’s place?

  Neither of them dared move now.

  “Me too. I’ll hurt if I leave,” said the man. “But there’s something I haven’t told you about, Isha.”

  He let the little fire in front of them hum to itself for a few moments.

  “I had a life in my Tree. I was married to someone. I lost the person I loved. It’ll take time.”

  “I like taking time with you,” Isha whispered in a broken voice.

  Butterfly decided to stay on a little longer. They kept this secret to themselves, and things carried on this way until the end of the summer.

  The Grass people went on treating their guest with great kindness.

  The old people invited Butterfly to sip violet nectar with them. The young ones followed him on his butterfly hunts. The women combed his colors into their hair. Small children hid in his basket when he set out on a walk.

  They had all gotten into the habit of passing by the ear of wheat belonging to Isha’s father to receive their little dab on the nose.

  One day, however, things changed. Somebody saw Butterfly walking hand in hand with Isha at the foot of a clump of reeds.

  The rumor spread through the Prairie as fast as wildfire.

  Nobody was allowed to touch Isha: she was the favorite, the Grass princess. Nobody could imagine a young stranger from the Tree coming to harvest this forbidden flower, this wild flower with its scent that not a single man from the Prairie had been allowed to breathe.

  Something that had never happened before took place among the Grass people: malicious tattle-tale, mumblings, secret meetings. Lee, Isha’s father, didn’t enter into this game. As soon as the old man approached, people fell quiet.

  Children were instructed not to visit Butterfly anymore. The old people sipped violet nectar among themselves. Women no longer cared for Butterfly’s colors.

  But the worst happened at the very end of summer, when a small assembly summoned the stranger and ordered him to leave.

  The next morning, the lovers disappeared.

  They had gotten married without telling anybody. Now they were setting off in the direction of the Tree.

  Alone, Isha’s father bid them farewell in the middle of the night. There was a bitter taste on his lips. Did he know that he would never see them again?

  The old man stayed for a long time at the foot of a clump of clover. He watched the two shadows disappear, together with their secret.

  He had just learned that his daughter was expecting a child.

  Remembering this departure from the Grass, sixteen years earlier, Isha, who was burning up with fever, felt the heat reach her belly, in the place where her baby had grown. Just at that moment, she heard a voice saying, “It’s me. . . .”

  Isha knew that she was sinking into a delirious state. She had relived these memories with an overwhelming clarity. She was finding it more and more difficult to breathe.

  But there was still this heat on her belly, this insistent voice. “It’s me, Mom.”

  A strong light fell across her eyelids.

  She opened her eyes to see that the flames were high now. Someone had thrown dry wood onto the fire beside her. Isha tried to raise herself a little.

  “Who’s there?”

  Somebody had put their head on her belly.

  “It’s me,” came the voice.

  It wasn’t until then that Isha recognized the face that was so close to hers. The short hair gave those features a strange energy.

  “Elisha.”

  Elisha buried her head in her mother’s neck.

  “I’m going to look after you. I’ve come back.”

  Elisha wasn’t alone. The figure of Mo Asseldor was waiting behind the fire, thin but smiling. He watched the embrace between mother and daughter.

  Isha was still holding the portrait of Butterfly tight in her fist.

  At exactly the same time, but much higher up, at the point where the Tree touches the sky, Nils Amen was walking into Leo Blue’s Nest.

  He wanted to see Elisha.

  He didn’t know anything about the last few days’ adventures, or about Elisha’s marriage and her escape, because he had been traveling through the Boughs of the North, deep in a jungle of lichen and creepers. He had been looking for a group of Flying Woodcutters.

  Nils had been trying to find Toby, who hadn’t visited the home of the Olmechs and the Asseldors for a long time. The families were worried about his disappearance. Nils had promised Lila that he’d find Toby again quickly.

  “Can I count on you?” asked Lila.

  Nils and Lila dared to look each other in the eye.

  “I am your man, miss,” Nils had answered.

  He’d immediately realized there was another meaning to these words, but Lila didn’t seem to be upset by this. She pushed back a lock of hair that was falling in her eyes, tucked it into her black velvet hair band, took off her glove, and shook his hand.

  When it was time to let go of Lila’s hand, Nils held on to her fingers for a second longer. There was as much tenderness in that second as in a kiss.

  When they left each other, both of them felt as if they were seeing a little piece of themselves walk away.

  Nils couldn’t make up his mind whether or not to turn around. He told himself he’d feel disappointed if she’d already gone back inside the house rather than staying to watch him leave. But he decided to chance it. On the crest of the damp bark hill, he turned around slowly.

  There was nobody left outside.

  He smiled ruefully and set off walking again.

  Behind the window, with her face and hands pressed against the windowpane, Lila’s emotions were welling up inside her. She had seen him turn around, and she was starting to wonder if he wasn’t a tiny bit in love with her.

  Nils spent several days searching for Toby. He ended up tracking down his group of Flying Woodcutters, but Shaine and Torquo explained that Toby was no longer with them.

  As a result, Nils was feeling distinctly concerned by the time he reached the Treetop Nest. He didn’t want to miss his regular meeting with Elisha, but he was impatient to get to the bottom of Toby’s mysterious disappearance.

  Nils entered Leo’s Egg. There was nobody there.

  “Leo!” he called out.

  He walked slowly into the dark Egg, headed over to the pyramid-shaped cage where the glowworm was shining, and pulled off the piece of material covering it. The spurt of light illuminated a general mess in the middle of which Nils recognized Elisha’s yellow mattress.

  Something must have happened.

  “I didn’t have time to straighten up. I was on my balcony, up there.”

  The voice coming from the shadows belonged to Leo.

  “I’m here to speak to Elisha,” said Nils.

  Leo’s breathing was audible, and he was behaving very oddly. Nils tried to stay calm and upbeat.

  “I’ve come to see her. I think she’s getting better,” he went on. “She listens to me now.”

  Leo headed toward Nils Amen.

  “I trust you,” said Leo in a voice of ice. “If you think she’s getting better . . . I trust you.”

  “It will have taken a winter,” said Nils.

  “Yes. A long winter. Do
you know what I just was thinking?”

  “No.”

  “I was reflecting on the fact that you’re the first person I’ve trusted in a long time.”

  “Thank you, Leo. I’m your friend.”

  Leo Blue couldn’t suppress a slight chuckle. Nils tried smiling as well.

  Eventually, Leo went right up to Nils, stared hard at him, and opened his arms.

  “My friend.”

  He hugged him.

  Nils closed his eyes, before saying, “Can I go out on your balcony? I’ve never been up there before.”

  Leo made a sweeping gesture, as if to say, “Make yourself at home.”

  Nils turned his back on Leo and climbed the staircase that spiraled around the interior wall of the Egg. Leo watched him, following his every move.

  When he had disappeared, Arbayan burst in with ten men.

  Leo didn’t even look at them.

  “He’s up there,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

  The men headed in the direction of the first steps. Leo signaled to Arbayan, who came over to him.

  “Well?” asked Leo.

  “I’m worried she may already be far away. All our troops have been in action since the first day, but the Tree is so huge.”

  “If you don’t find her, I’ll look for her myself.”

  With a bang, the men pushed open the door that led to the balcony.

  Arbayan was the first one out. He had unsheathed his hornet’s stinger sword, which was hanging from his belt.

  Nobody.

  The Treetop landscape stretched as far as the eye could see. The little balcony that was attached to the shell of the Egg towered over the Nest. It gave a view over the White Forest, the bundles of sticks that formed the Nest, and, farther off and pointing toward the sky, the buds whose snowy tips stood out clearly against the light. But Nils Amen had disappeared.

  “After him, guards!” roared Arbayan. “He can’t have gone far.”