In fact, Norz was thinking about Nils.
He was having a few regrets.
He kept telling himself he should not have got so angry when Nils found Toby’s message. Norz never managed to be kind to his son. He realised this as he walked along, and he turned his head so his two friends wouldn’t see his eyes filling with tears.
He was thinking about his wife. A girl lighter than his axe when he hoisted her onto his shoulder. He had no idea why she had fallen in love with such a big hulking woodcutter who had trouble expressing his feelings.
Above all, he had no idea how he had survived her death.
For the first time he realised that Nils, with his love of words, took after his mother. Norz preferred the language of rough and ready gestures. A thump on the back for “I like you,” a slap in the face for “I disagree.”
And for the first time, Norz recognised that he blamed his son. Secretly, he blamed Nils for causing his wife’s death.
Why was it that on this particular night, as he walked towards the great clearing, Norz finally understood that the tragedy had nothing to do with Nils? How did he come to realise that Nils was actually a part of her that had lived on?
Burly Norz Amen suddenly began to love his son. As if a bridge of the finest silk had been woven between them by a spider from the heavens.
How strange, the unfamiliar pitter-patter of his heart. He was even eager to see Nils’s face again, after those long hours of giving chase.
If the two other woodcutters had been able to overhear this giant’s thoughts as he made his way to the clearing, they would have teased him and called him a “big girl’s blouse” too.
In woodcutters’ jargon, when a forest has been drastically cut back, you talk about a “pale cut” because the bark looks like a pale stain on the dark spread of the forest. But at dawn on this particular day, right in the heart of the Tree’s branches, the great clearing was dark with people. Woodcutters mingled with the hunters who had come down from the Treetop. They all wanted to see the person who had made them run: enemy number one, the thirteen-year-old criminal – Toby Lolness.
Norz Amen was leaning on a lichen stump at the edge of the clearing. He was trying to catch sight of Nils in the crowd. He had made up his mind to talk to him, father to son. He couldn’t see him yet. He was grappling for the right words. He would start with, “The thing is, Nils…”
But then it got too personal.
They saw Joe Mitch appear, flanked as usual by Razor and Torn. Torn was carrying a case that looked like it was bulging with money. Joe Mitch’s hands rested just where his belly began. He couldn’t clasp his hands in front of him. He was one of the few people who had never seen his own belly button, because his view was blocked by the mountain of his belly.
Joe Mitch stared blankly at the group heading towards him.
There were four of them. They had put Toby in a bag, which they were dragging. The four hunters had tried to smarten themselves up to receive their money. They had plastered their hair down with water, giving each of them a ridiculous side parting that made their hair flop over one eye.
One of them began to address Joe Mitch so loudly, the entire clearing could hear. His voice trembled with emotion.
“Friendly Neighbour…”
He cleared his throat. Joe Mitch insisted on being called Friendly Neighbour.
“Friendly Neighbour, here’s the prey we’ve been chasing for days. I’d just like to apologise for the condition of the goods – you see they’ve gone off a bit. Got a bit damaged on the way back…”
The public laughed and Norz felt obliged to follow suit.
A cigarette butt dangled from Joe Mitch’s lips. He started chewing it like a piece of gum.
He always did that, Joe Mitch. He would light his cigarette, chew it, swallow it, burp, spit it back up again, relight it, chew it again, swallow it again. Charming. Delightful, in fact.
This time, he burped it back up between his lips, took it in his fat sausage-like fingers and used it to scratch his ear. He popped it back in his mouth and the butt disappeared for some time.
One of the four hunters wanted to shake his hand, but Mitch wasn’t even looking at him. He had sat down on a tiny stool that had disappeared under his astronomically large posterior. Razor had even stepped back a little so his boss wouldn’t squash him if the stool suddenly collapsed under his weight.
“What d’you want us to do, Friendly Neighbour?” asked the hunter.
Joe Mitch glanced at Torn and his suitcase. Quick slimy glances were his way of giving orders.
“Open the bag,” Torn croaked.
Trembling, the four hunters bent over the sack. They paused before opening it.
One of them piped up, “We did warn you, he’s gone off a bit. But he’s still breathing…”
Even from far away, Norz recognised the little body they took out of the bag.
It was Nils.
9
The Crater
Norz Amen’s piercing cry cut through the early autumn morning.
The crowd rose to its feet.
Norz rushed to the centre of the clearing, shoving aside everyone in his path. This random violence and a cry of pain were the only ways he could express himself.
“Niiiiiiiiiillllllls!”
Most of the woodcutters had also recognised the young Amen boy as the son of one of their own. But no one grasped the real tragedy being played out. They watched an enormous crazed man running towards a blood-splattered child.
The four hunters didn’t have the foggiest idea what was going on, which was probably just as well. When you’re about to beaten to a pulp, there is no great advantage in knowing about it ahead of time.
As for Joe Mitch, Razor and Torn, they didn’t flinch, but just stood there, mouths wide open, staring at the sack and the child. All they knew was that it wasn’t Toby.
Norz hurled himself to the ground, taking Nils in his arms. The boy’s eyes were wide open. He was staring at his father. Norz was no longer ashamed of his own tears, which fell on his son’s wounds.
“Nils, my own special Nils…”
Nils had a horizontal mark that carried on where his lips left off. It wasn’t a scar like Toby’s, but a mark that had been painted on. Norz had remembered the description they had been given: thirteen years old, a scar on his cheek. Yes, with that brown mark, you could have mistaken Nils for Toby.
“Why?” groaned Norz Amen. “Why?”
He stood up, holding the child in his arms.
“Why?”
He put his ear to his son’s face. Nils was trying to say something. His mouth moved a fraction. A barely audible whisper, a breath escaped his blue lips.
“For … Toby…”
Norz understood in a flash. Nils had wanted to save Toby. He had deliberately drawn that scar on his face. He had tried to pass himself off as Toby. He had interrupted a child-hunt involving thousands of men. He had allowed himself to be dragged for three hours over the roughest bark to win time for Toby. He had risked his own life for that of his friend.
What Norz was experiencing right now was something very new. And it put a stop to his shouting and tears.
Norz recognised how brave his son was.
This child, who he had never looked at properly, who he had never really listened to, his own son was quite simply a hero.
A hero.
Norz Amen stood there, like a giant in the middle of the clearing. The crowd was hushed.
Norz noticed a faint clicking sound. He glanced round. It was the teeth of the four hunters. The chattering teeth were accompanied by a tapping noise. The knees of the four unfortunate men were knocking together, beating out a rhythm of fear.
If Norz Amen had been a hero too, he would have walked past them. “This is my son,” he would have said, with a dark look, and he would have gone back home, carrying Nils in his arms. But Norz was just the hero’s father. So, for a few moments, he entrusted Nils to a friend’s arms. He approach
ed the leader of the four terrified hunters, and looked him up and down. The man was still trembling and he’d started to dribble.
“I th-th-think there’s b-b-been some kind of mistake,” he managed to stutter.
“So do I,” said Norz.
There are different accounts of what happened in the minute that followed. Either Norz grabbed the leader by the neck in order to knock out the other three. Or he banged them against each other, in pairs, like cymbals. Or he seized all four of them in his arm, like a bunch of flowers, and whacked them with his free hand. Or else they flattened themselves on the ground like a pile of slug dung before he got a chance to raise his hand against them.
Norz swore the last version was true. But the first is more likely.
Norz Amen took his son back in his arms and disappeared into the crowd.
Joe Mitch’s cigarette butt took a long time to pop back up again between his lips. At one point, it was even seen poking out of a nostril. Mitch was in a thick, foul mood. Torn had taken the suitcase under his arm. Like the coward he was, Razor couldn’t resist going over to kick one of the hunters who was lying there, crushed, on the ground.
Only three words were heard on the subject of Toby, three words that were spat out by Joe Mitch as they bounced on his triple chin like spittle.
“I want him.”
But that morning, the woodcutters decided not to carry on with the hunt for Toby, because the Amen son had been the victim of this child-chase.
That day has been remembered as Nils Amen Day. For the first time, the woodcutters chose not to obey Joe Mitch, the Friendly Neighbour. They went back home instead.
Whether he survived his wounds or not, Nils had already made a difference to the history of the Tree and to Toby’s story too.
As it turned out, Nils did survive. His mission was not over yet.
The woodcutters set off into their forests. And everyone else who had been chasing Toby from the Treetop resumed their hunt for the diminutive criminal. As they left the clearing, they stared long and hard at the suitcase of money tucked under Torn’s arm. Money. That is what they wanted.
It didn’t occur to any of them there wasn’t a single note in that suitcase. Joe Mitch, who was as deceitful as he was cruel, never had any intention of parting with a single coin. All anyone would have found in that suitcase were a few grisly devices to make Toby talk once he was captured.
What Joe Mitch didn’t know was that on the morning after his fourth night on the run, Toby had reached the damp region of the Lower Colonies. This hefty chunk of branches was owned outright by the Friendly Neighbour. Without realising it, Toby had entered the forbidden zone. He was on Joe Mitch’s patch now.
Joe Mitch had a gang of one hundred and fifty men at his service, plus the thousands of people who followed him because they had no choice. Those one hundred and fifty men were the dirtiest scoundrels the Tree had ever produced. A hundred and fifty pieces of scum, but equal to a hundred thousand in cruelty and stupidity. Most of them worked on Joe Mitch’s enormous property.
Toby ran the risk of meeting one of them at any moment, and being chopped up into mincemeat for the weevils. But he knew nothing of this and just carried on his way through the bleak landscape where the bark hung down in wasted tatters. Toby had never passed through here before on his way down to the Low Branches. But he realised that the Low Branches looked like paradise compared to these grey, disease-stricken middle regions.
Toby jumped to the side and hid behind a strip of bark peel.
He had heard a noise. It was mid-morning and the first time he had continued to walk after dawn break, but his growing impatience was starting to make him take risks. He would be in the Land of Onessa tomorrow, back on home ground. Just the idea of it made him forget the dangers.
From his hiding place, he watched a gloomy-looking procession go by.
He saw the weevil first. One of the biggest weevils he had ever come across. It was bound with ropes, which were being pulled taut by a dozen men in hats. These men had the letters JMA printed on the backs of their skin coats.
Toby quickly realised where he was. Even after six years of exile, he’d heard of Joe Mitch Arbor, the destruction business owned by the Friendly Neighbour.
The men called out to each other as they tugged at the ropes on either side of the weevil.
“Don’t let him go,” one of them shouted.
“Every night a few get away. It’ll just mean one more in the wild…”
“If they decide to count, they’ll realise a weevil’s missing.”
“The boss has got so many, he’s lost count,” someone else said.
So, Toby was very close to Joe Mitch’s rearing farms. He decided to follow the small group that was accompanying the animal towards the enclosure. He knew that escaped weevils were a great threat to the Tree. A weevil can dig out three times its own bulk in a day. At that rate, it wouldn’t take long to reduce the Tree to sawdust.
The group reached a fence that girdled the branch. They stopped to open the vast gates and let the weevil through. It was trussed up like a sausage with all the ropes.
Toby, who was watching from a way off, decided he’d seen enough. Lying flat on the ground, he was about to turn and face the opposite direction when another man, also wearing a Joe Mitch Arbor hat and coat, rose up behind him. Luckily, the man was too agitated to notice Toby. He shouted at his co-workers: “There are a hundred hunters on their way. They’ve come down from the Treetop. They’re looking for the kid. They mustn’t see a weevil on the loose.”
One of the men tugging at the beast used his thumb to push his hat up. Toby recognised him straight away.
He’d seen the same man in the Low Branches a few weeks earlier. Just thinking about it made him shudder.
He was no taller than Toby, but he had a wrinkled, yellowish face you couldn’t forget. Most noticeable of all was how small his head was, so small that his hat kept falling over his eyes.
“Open the gate, you bunch of dimwits!” he ordered.
Toby had no time to think. He was caught between the enclosure and the hunters bearing down on him. His only hope lay on the other side. He had to climb over. The man with the small head was noisily giving orders.
At this level in the Lower Colonies, the bark is soggy and rotten, and sometimes you even sink right up to your knees. So, as he crawled along, only Toby’s head stuck out from the gloop of decomposed wood. He took advantage of the distraction caused by the men who were pressing against the gate and trying to open it as they got bogged down.
While the boss with the pin-sized yellow head was bellowing, Toby worked his way through the mud like a maggot.
He slithered directly towards the enormous weevil, which was ten times his size. Only Toby’s eyes and forehead stuck out of the goo. With just one millimetre separating them, he passed Pinhead who was busy insulting his men. Toby crawled between the weevil’s legs. Pulling himself up a bit, he grabbed hold of a rope belted around the beast’s belly. He tugged hard and slipped his feet into another rope behind. Just then, the gate creaked open and the procession took off again.
Toby was attached to the weevil, which had started to stir.
And that was how they entered the enclosure. A mud-caked Toby blended into the animal’s body. Pinhead went on giving orders while nudging his hat, which kept falling back down over half his face.
They shut the gates behind them.
The weevil and its keepers walked on for over an hour, before Pinhead shouted, “Halt!”
Slowly, he went over to the animal, made the men step back, and ran his hand under the weevil’s belly.
He grabbed the cord and yanked it free.
The animal could move freely again, unencumbered.
Toby had lowered himself into the mud just a moment before – just in time. From a distance, he saw the animal wade off down the slope. The men climbed in the opposite direction.
For a while Toby lay there in the mud, not moving. It w
as nearly midday. A disgusting smell greeted his nostrils.
The young fugitive began to regret he had ever come this way.
A few hours earlier, he had thought he was close to his destination. But now here he was in an enclosure, hemmed in by barricades and barbed wire. How would he ever get out?
There were two options: the direction taken by the men, or the path taken by the weevil. He made the same choice as the insect, and wasn’t disappointed by what he found after dragging himself through the mud for an hour.
There are some sights you never forget. Others are the look of things to come. Before Toby’s eyes was a double effect. A monstrous vision that engraved itself on the memory forever.
Toby came to a stop on the edge of a vast hole – a gigantic crater in the branch, with open sky above it. But the Crater appeared to be living: it teemed, it swayed, like a bubbling stink. An army of weevils was digging and rummaging about in the soft wood, their feet stuck in the mud. Branded on their carapaces were the initials of Joe Mitch Arbor: JMA.
Hundreds of animals were reared on this farm, and they had been mining the branches for years, digging the sordid JMA housing projects that supposedly protected the Tree from the problem of overpopulation.
What impressed Toby was the fact that he had read a description in his father’s files that bore an extraordinary resemblance to this spectacle. Sim Lolness had predicted this kind of defacement down to the last detail. The Crater was even described in a book that had come out six years earlier, The World Crumbles Away, and then in an article, “Splendour and Crumbling”. Following those two publications, Joe Mitch had submitted a law to the Grand Council, banning paper, books and newspapers. It was a so-called ecological law, to respect the Tree. But its main purpose was to silence Professor Lolness once and for all. Luckily, the law hadn’t been passed on that occasion.
Toby spent a long time just staring at this horrendous sight. Now he understood the reasons for the great weakening in the Tree, which his father had noticed during his six years in the Low Branches. Simply by studying the temperature curves, Professor Lolness had discovered the summers were getting hotter. Toby revelled in those longer, lighter summers, but his father seemed worried.
Toby Alone Page 7
