The Trees

by Ali Shaw

  The girl unstrung a stone from her slingshot and said nothing.

  Adrien clasped his hands. He very nearly prostrated himself at her feet. ‘You!’ he exhorted. ‘You! It was you! Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!’

  The girl looked at him with perhaps a hint of a smile, but still did not say a word.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Hannah, wiping her forehead. ‘And thanks. You just saved our lives.’

  ‘You . . . you shot them!’ said Adrien, suddenly full of adrenalin. ‘You nailed them!’

  Clearly the girl didn’t think much of it. She had dealt with the wolves so bravely that it took Adrien a moment to realise she was cold, and shivering almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Here,’ said Seb, in a sudden hurry, producing from his pack his spare hoodie. The girl hesitated before taking it, then nodded and put it on.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Seb, staring at her.

  The hoodie was baggy on her and its cuffs covered the girl’s hands entirely. She raised the hood, and between the shadow of its brim and her fringe her eyes were hidden.

  ‘That was incredible,’ said Seb.

  She shrugged. ‘Difficult to miss at that range.’

  Her voice was quiet but assured. A stealthy sort of voice, Adrien thought.

  ‘You ripped those wolves apart!’ he declared triumphantly. ‘You destroyed them!’

  She spared him the slightest smile. ‘You’re funny.’

  ‘Come with us,’ asked Seb, breathlessly, then looked as surprised as the rest of them that he had suggested it.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Seb,’ said Hannah, suddenly wary. ‘She doesn’t even know us. Why would she want to come with us?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . .’ said Seb.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked the girl.

  ‘West,’ said Seb in a hurry. ‘Barely a week from here is my uncle’s house.’

  ‘But,’ added Hannah, ‘no doubt you have family of your own you’re heading towards.’

  The girl shook her head. ‘Not on this side of the planet.’

  ‘Are you American?’ asked Seb.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Japanese.’ But her accent was American.

  ‘Oh . . . so . . . where are you going?’

  She shrugged again. ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘Then come with us!’

  There was an awkward pause. The girl headed back over to the ragpile she’d emerged from, and from there picked up a rucksack, which she slung onto her back. ‘I’m not really a people person. I’m better off alone.’

  Seb looked glum. ‘Well, you can keep my hoodie. That’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Hold your horses, everyone,’ said Adrien. He had spotted two pheasants hanging from the girl’s pack. At the sight of their red cheeks and banded tail feathers, something had dropped open in his stomach, a sudden hunger that only meat could satisfy. ‘Why don’t you hear us out?’ he said, licking his lips. ‘I’m not really a people person either, but those wolves are still out there, and God knows what else. Surely there’s strength in numbers, right?’

  ‘Steady on, Adrien,’ said Hannah, gravely. ‘Last time I checked, you weren’t coming with us any more.’

  He gaped at her. ‘I thought you . . . I thought we . . .’

  Hannah folded her arms. ‘Just because we didn’t want you to be eaten by wolves, doesn’t mean we’re going to put up with you behaving like you just did.’

  ‘But . . . but,’ he gasped. Their argument of earlier seemed a million years ago now. ‘I will be eaten by wolves! I didn’t mean any of that stuff, Hannah!’ He clasped his hands. ‘None of it at all. I’m so sorry! I’m a shit, I know, an ungrateful little shit. But I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll . . . I’ll carry all of your bags. I’ll pick all the mushrooms and the berries you want me to.’

  ‘You’re not strong enough. And you’d poison yourself.’

  Adrien looked imploringly to Seb, but it was as if Seb had forgotten him and had eyes only for the girl. Adrien wetted his lips, his mouth drying out with panic. He felt entirely sure that, were he left alone, the wolves would come back for him. They would have their revenge on him for the wounds the girl had inflicted.

  He sank to his knees. If ever in his life there had been a time to beg, this was the moment. ‘I am so, so sorry, Hannah,’ he grovelled. ‘I’ll do anything, and if there’s nothing I can do I’ll learn something. I’ll be your dancing monkey, if that’s what it will take.’ He took a deep breath. Hannah looked unmoved. ‘Goddammit, Hannah, I’ll die! I’ll die if you leave me alone! If those wolves don’t come for me then the trees themselves will.’

  Hannah’s arms were folded. ‘This is pathetic.’

  But the girl had covered her mouth with the back of her hand, and behind it she was giggling. ‘He makes me laugh,’ she said. ‘Maybe I will come, after all, as long as he does.’

  ‘Deal!’ pronounced Seb before his mother had a chance to speak.

  Hannah looked pained for a second, then said, ‘Fine. But you’d better mean it, Adrien, if we’re going to get along again.’

  ‘I mean it,’ said Adrien, climbing light-headed to his feet. He did, and he hoped he sounded like he did.

  When Hannah turned her back on him he looked at the girl and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’

  She grinned back at him with such a predatory smile that it was itself almost something canine. Adrien bridled a little then, an ounce of pride returning to him. It suddenly didn’t feel so good, to have been saved from exile just because he was ridiculous.

  Seb was still staring at the girl. ‘I’m Seb, by the way, and this is Adrien and my mum, Hannah.’

  She nodded. ‘A family?’

  ‘Not Adrien. He’s just a . . .’ he glanced at his mother, ‘a friend.’

  ‘And your dad is . . . ?’

  ‘Not around.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  Seb frowned, but the girl had asked it so matter-of-factly that Adrien did not think she’d intended offence.

  ‘No. Probably not, anyway. Just gone. Years and years ago. Don’t much care where.’

  She nodded for a moment, reflecting on this. ‘My dad is an asshole too.’

  Girl and boy looked at one another. Then, briefly, they shared a smile.

  ‘Can, er, can we get moving now?’ asked Adrien, still conscious of the odour of wolves. ‘I’d really love to get out of here.’

  ‘You haven’t told us your name yet,’ said Seb.

  The girl smiled at him again. ‘My name is Inoue Hiroko.’

  11

  Slingshot

  Seb tried to talk to Hiroko as they walked, but for the most part she responded monosyllabically, or with dead-end answers, and eventually he stopped trying. She stalked along with the hood of his borrowed top pulled up like a cowl, and from what Adrien could glimpse of her face she remained deep in thought at all times. When they stopped to eat that night, and upon hearing that Hannah and Seb were vegetarians, she sat at a deliberate distance and piled up sticks for a small cooking fire all of her own. Hannah offered her some of the mushrooms she had gathered that day, but Hiroko only shook her head and opened her rucksack. In it were all kinds of useful implements, the sorts of tools Adrien wished he’d had the sense to pack or even own in the first place. Among them was a tinderbox, which she used to ignite some old newspaper she had found for kindling.

  While the flames gathered Hiroko selected one of the pheasants she had been carrying and began to pluck it with nimble fingers. Now and then, when a brand in the flames cracked and fizzed up sparks, the orange firelight revealed her face beneath her hood. She looked by turns stoic and bitter. Adrien supposed that he might look like that, too, were he in Japan and his home so very far away.

  Some time later she used her knife to tease out the last entrenched quills of the pheasant. By now the fire was in full blaze, and she pierced the meat with a metal rod and placed it over the flames. As the pheasant cooked
, the smell of charring game tormented Adrien. He lost all appetite for the carrot he had been chewing: he would rather inhale smoke for his supper. Eventually he could bear it no longer and approached the girl’s fire, not daring to meet Hannah’s disapproving gaze.

  ‘May I,’ he asked, ‘um . . . I know you’re the one who caught it, but . . . may I have anything that’s spare? Of the pheasant? Just anything that’s left when you’re done. I could trade you, I guess, um, some carrot, for some . . .’

  She jiggled loose one pheasant breast with the tip of her knife, then tore off a leg and held both cuts out to him balanced on the flat of the blade. ‘Thank you!’ he exclaimed when she tilted the metal and the hot succulent meat slid into his cupped hands. His eyes streamed gratefully as he devoured it, enjoying the grease that smeared his cheeks and whiskers. When, with messy chops and meat stuck between his teeth, he tried to thank her more formally, with a stiff bow such as he had sometimes seen people from Japan exchange, she laughed at him as if he were a jester.

  For a moment he was indignant, but then conceded that he would do handstands and cartwheels for her if it bought him more meat. He grinned, and turned over the bones to check for final morsels. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘how come you know how to do all this stuff? I mean, I’m in my forties and I can barely follow a trail of breadcrumbs through the woods.’

  Again that made Hiroko smile. ‘My dad taught me. An old trapper taught me.’

  ‘Your dad’s an old trapper?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Whereabouts was this trapper, then?’

  ‘California.’

  ‘You are American.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sound it.’

  ‘I’m from Iwate Prefecture in Japan.’

  ‘Do they speak with American accents there?’

  She frowned. For a moment she looked less like a fierce fighter of wolves and more like a teenage girl a long way from home. ‘I guess I haven’t spent much time there.’

  ‘But that’s where your family comes from, right?’

  Hiroko nodded.

  ‘After you saved us from the wolves, you said your dad was an asshole.’

  She flinched for a fleeting second.

  ‘My dad was an asshole, too,’ he said softly. ‘And Seb said his was, so that makes three of us. We’d better ask Hannah what her dad was like.’

  Hannah stoked her fire with a branch.

  ‘I suppose it must be hard,’ said Adrien, ‘being this far from home.’

  Hiroko folded her arms. ‘It’s fine. Everything’s fine. And, Adrien? I don’t want to talk about it.’

  The next day, Hiroko caught a wood pigeon. They were walking through birch woods when she did so. There the black cores of the trunks were bandaged with silvery bark and their slender columns had caged and pierced the cars along the road. One elderly driver lay curled up in a ball on the back seat of his vehicle, barred in by the trees. Hannah yelled to him but he did not move, and they heard flies buzzing on the vehicle’s bodywork. Later, they saw a roadside café crammed with slender birches, their serrated foliage spilling from the open windows and the door’s letterbox. The tables within were wedged between the narrow trunks, still balanced with ketchup bottles and salt and pepper pots. Four young men were trying to break in, but the birches grew so close together that they could find no way between them, and when Hannah shouted a hello they turned back from the café with hungry eyes.

  ‘Thieves,’ whispered Hiroko, hands on her slingshot at once. ‘The fat one has a woman’s backpack.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean they’re thieves,’ said Hannah as the men started to pick their way back through the maze of birches.

  ‘I think they might be,’ said Seb, and Adrien was more than happy to agree. They hurried away before the men could reach them, and Adrien was glad of the enfolding woodland that quickly shielded them from sight.

  An hour later, Hiroko made a loud hissing noise and they all stopped and looked at her in surprise. It was the only sound she had made since her warning about the men at the café.

  Through the silence that followed cut the throaty purr of the wood pigeon, and the girl nodded towards it and selected a triangle of stone from her ammunition pouch. She fitted it to her slingshot’s rubber, aimed, and the sling flicked out and knocked the pigeon off the branch. Hiroko strode across the leaves and picked it up, then nodded to them to carry on walking.

  For a minute they all stared at her: Hannah horrified; Adrien wanting to pump his fists in the air; Seb somewhere else in between. How simply, Adrien thought, the pigeon had presented its life to her. How casually she had reached out and accepted it and tied it with the dead pheasant still hanging from the straps of her backpack. Hiroko could stay as closed a book as she liked, if she kept claiming food for them like that.

  In the afternoon they found a road that led them through a valley of broken villages. People watched them pass with blank expressions, and although sometimes they stopped to exchange small talk, Adrien always got the impression that such folk would be happiest once they’d taken their leave. In between such ruins, they hardly saw another soul. They heard them, sometimes, laughing or shouting or conversing on the edge of hearing, but it was as if such sounds stemmed from a parallel woodland, ever out of sight of their own.

  Sometimes Hiroko walked in front, with Seb hovering as close as he dared. Sometimes she dropped back and watched the undergrowth with keen eyes. Adrien took one such opportunity to fall in alongside Hannah, who acknowledged his presence with a cursory nod.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Are you still mad at me? Because I’ve got something for you. I mean, I found it, but it’s yours now, if you want. It’s meant to be a kind of present.’

  He held it out to her and she took it. It was a silver box, only big enough to fill the centre of her palm, but with a large keyhole in its lid. He had discovered it in a doll’s house destroyed by a sapling.

  ‘What’s in it?’ Hannah asked, trying to open it. The lid didn’t budge.

  ‘Don’t know. Nothing, I think. It’s locked. But if you shake it, you don’t hear anything inside.’

  ‘So you’re giving me an empty box that I can’t even open.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ he said.

  She offered him a sheepish smile. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she said. ‘But I can’t stand to be mad at you. And thank you for the box. It’s funny, it reminds me of something . . . When I was a little girl I found a silver key in a magpie’s nest. Back then I thought it could unlock fairy doors in the woods. Now I’m going to pretend it was always meant for this.’

  She slipped the box into her pack, and Adrien returned her smile with interest.

  For that night’s meal, Hannah cooked a soup of sorrel and wild garlic. She made enough for all of them, but Adrien ate his tormented by the smell of the next pheasant smouldering on Hiroko’s separate fire. They were camped beneath a broad beech, whose curtain of branches rippled in time with the rising smoke. Adrien willed himself to remain alongside Hannah, but no sooner had he swallowed his last spoonful of soup than his stomach rumbled its loud dissatisfaction. He tried to ignore it, chewing on the inside of his cheek, but when he looked at Hannah she only looked amused by his sufferings. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she told him anew, ‘but a sweet one. Go on, you don’t have to sit here on my behalf. Go and eat some meat, if Hiroko will let you.’

  With a grateful duck of his head, Adrien sprang up and scurried across to Hiroko’s fire. The girl met him with the same amused look as Hannah, and began to carve the meat into portions.

  Seb stood up and crossed from his mother’s fire to Hiroko’s.

  At once all mirth left the camp. Both Adrien and Hiroko froze as Seb knelt down between them, and when Adrien dared to look back at Hannah she was staring wide-eyed at her son.

  ‘Please,’ said Seb, nodding from Hiroko to the pheasant.

  Hiroko pulled down her hood and brushed back her fringe to look Seb in the eye. Seb met her gaze, and offere
d out his plate. Adrien cleared his throat. He should say something, he knew. He glanced at Hannah and saw she’d turned her back on them. He looked back to Hiroko and didn’t know if he was brave enough to pick a fight with such a girl.

  ‘Um,’ he said, ‘now you two listen . . .’

  Hiroko ignored him. She cut out the choicest part of her pheasant breast and placed it on Seb’s plate. ‘This is your first time?’ she asked.

  ‘In my life,’ said the boy.

  ‘Now then, Seb,’ advised Adrien, ‘think about what you’re doing.’

  Seb closed his eyes and opened his mouth, as if taking a breath before diving into water. He placed a pinch of flesh on his tongue and, after a moment’s hesitation, began to chew.

  Adrien had the sense that even Hannah was watching somehow, through the back of her head.

  Seb swallowed and did his best to smile. ‘It tastes . . . it tastes . . .’ His lips curled both from the flavour and a loss for words. ‘Gross.’ He considered the rest of the meat on his plate. ‘I think I prefer vegetables. But, you know, maybe it will grow on me. You can’t expect to like everything first time.’

  Hannah was quiet all the next day, which was hot from morning until dusk, with every leaf basking in sunlight. Carrying rucksacks and the tent in such weather was thirsty work, but Hannah still insisted that they boil any river water before drinking it. It made Adrien miserable to watch the crystalline liquid they hauled from a stream bubble up and lose its freshness in the heat, but he knew there was no use arguing, and he drank it in its tepid state.

  Unlike every day before that one, Hannah did not halt them to point out rare flowers or edible shrubs. Sometimes she did stop unannounced, to pick leaves or prise out roots, but often the others had already walked ahead some distance before they realised she was crouched far behind them in the undergrowth.

  Towards the end of the day’s walking, Adrien summoned the courage to talk to her. Seb and Hiroko were some way in front, leading the way with the compass, so there wasn’t any need to lower his voice. ‘Am I in trouble again?’ he asked.