The Trees

by Ali Shaw

She wetted her lips. ‘Would it be a trap?’

  ‘Nobody’s forcing you to say anything.’

  ‘Hiroko . . .’ she began, speaking very hesitantly. ‘Hiroko had him tied up. It was because . . . he’d killed my brother. That bastard killed my brother and he hardly seemed to think it mattered. I don’t know if he even believed he was in any sort of danger. He didn’t think any of us had the guts to hurt him.’

  Leonard nodded. ‘He underestimated you.’

  ‘He killed my brother, and he was just so fucking puffed up about it! So smug! He said . . . he said all kinds of stuff, all kinds of things I can’t shift out of my head, however hard I try. Do you . . . do you . . . I mean since . . . do you think about it all the time?’

  ‘I used to. I can’t say for sure if it’s normal to do so. It probably is.’

  She ran her hands back through her hair, then took the seat Leonard had offered her. ‘Hiroko had him tied up, and . . . I went for a walk to sort myself out. Hah! When I came back I was seething. I was the angriest I’ve ever been. There was nothing I could do to calm it. Perhaps I didn’t want to.’

  ‘What was your brother’s name?’

  ‘Zach.’

  ‘Maybe you felt like you owed it to Zach to stay angry.’

  Her heartbeat was racing. ‘You’re right! I was just so angry and I couldn’t . . . I refused to let it burn out, because wouldn’t that be like saying everything was okay? So I . . . I kicked him over, in the chair. He was against the wall. And he kept talking. He was wedged against the wall but still he just kept talking.’

  ‘He didn’t think you had it in you.’

  ‘Exactly. That bastard thought I would never go through with it. He said so himself, there and then. And I . . . I . . .’

  Leonard gave her time.

  ‘I shot him,’ she said, through clenched teeth. ‘I fucking blew that bastard’s brains out, because he killed Zach for no reason. My brother never hurt a fly, and that man killed him for no reason at all. I shot him because he deserved it. I shot him and I’d . . . I’d . . .’

  ‘You’d do it again.’

  She burst into tears.

  ‘Do you want a tissue or something? I could get you one.’

  Hannah dragged herself back together and shook her head. ‘He told me . . . Right before he died, he told me that he’d killed the second time just to try to forget the first.’

  Leonard laughed. ‘Idiot.’

  She wiped her eyes dry. ‘You . . . you said you don’t remember any more. So how . . . how . . .’ She swallowed her guilt. She needed this. ‘How did you forget about David?’

  ‘Him? I never thought much about him. It was the first ones that stuck with me.’

  At that Hannah felt as if a trap had just sprung closed on her, seizing her in place. Yet there was something almost pleasing about its cold vice, as if a part of her had long needed its security. ‘How many have there been?’ she asked.

  Leonard sat forward, and the shack seemed suddenly far smaller. ‘Seven.’

  ‘Seven . . .’

  ‘And I have forgotten them all.’

  ‘Seven?’

  ‘Would you like me to tell you how I forgot? I won’t, if you don’t want me to.’

  Hannah could hardly move. She wondered, with a frost lining her vertebrae, whether this, all along, was what the kirin had been leading her towards. This piece of knowledge that only a man like Leonard could impart. She offered him the stiffest of nods.

  ‘What were you, Hannah? Before the trees came.’

  ‘I was a nursery worker. At a flower nursery.’

  ‘I was a landscape gardener.’

  Hannah shrank against the back of her chair. She thought again of the pinkgill, whose rarity he’d spotted at once.

  ‘You didn’t like hearing that,’ smirked Leonard. ‘All the same, that’s what we both were. Gardeners.’

  ‘There are a lot of gardeners in the world.’

  ‘Were,’ he chuckled. ‘Not so many any more. Did you enjoy gardening?’

  Hannah chewed her lip. Even if the answer to that was that no, in the last few years she had begun to find the nursery another kind of chore, she felt suddenly protective of the place, and of poor Diane who had died there.

  ‘I loved landscape gardening, to begin with,’ said Leonard. ‘But I was a young man, in my twenties when I started. I couldn’t believe my luck to be paid to do something I enjoyed. So, you know, I thought I was happy. I don’t know exactly when it all changed. Life just drifts along, doesn’t it? Before I knew it I had people who depended on me, had all kinds of bills to pay . . . what I thought I loved had become just another way of putting money on the table.’

  ‘What does this have to do with what you did to David?’

  ‘And what you did to that man. Listen, have you ever had one of those nights when you guess how many healthy years you’ve got left and think, Oh shit, that’s not enough? Call it a midlife crisis, if you want, but I looked at my gardening and I knew I needed something bigger. I’d always said I wanted to work with nature, not flowerbeds and decking and fucking patios.’

  He shook his head, and the shack fell silent. Hannah clasped her hands in her lap. Yet it was true there’d been times when she’d longed for something bigger and more meaningful. Hadn’t that been what she’d confused the trees with, on those first days after their arrival?

  ‘I made it my mission,’ said Leonard quietly, ‘to work out what I really wanted. My family were . . . not supportive, but it was a compulsion. I had no choice. To begin with I went off on my own to the moors, to the bogs and the national parks. I taught myself how to get by, but it wasn’t enough. This country, so many countries, I realised, had been tamed. No bears any more, no wolves. The worst dangers are ditches and fog. So I went abroad. I used to have a sister in Alaska, so I stayed with her until we fell out. I hitchhiked all the way across North America, and I crossed through Mexico and stayed in the Amazon for a while. I stayed in other places, too, and everywhere I went I saw . . . the faith other people had. Would you say you have faith, Hannah? Faith in anything?’

  Hannah thought at once of the kirin, dead by this man’s hand. She thought of her brother. Her mother.

  ‘I know it’s a funny question,’ said Leonard eventually, still staring at the floor. ‘And I’m not a religious man, believe me. I tried to be, when I first grew up, but I’ve always found faith a hard thing to understand. Then, like I said, I set out to see the world, and everywhere I went there were people putting faith in things. Faith in their gods, their countries, even in their fucking economies. But how few, I thought, put their faith in this.’ He stomped his foot and the army boot he wore made a loud thud against the timber floor. ‘Maybe I’m lucky. Down to earth, people have called me. I’ve always known that the ground beneath us is the only real thing we have.’

  ‘But you killed the kirin as if it was just . . . just an insect to squash on a wall. Don’t try to make it sound like you have any kind of faith in nature. I saw what you did.’

  Leonard looked up with the same indifferent stare he’d met her with in the coal pit, when he’d had the kirin’s blood all over his arms. ‘I probably haven’t been clear enough,’ he said. ‘I still don’t give a shit about your kirin. That’s what I’ve been saying to you.’ He bent forward in his chair, and a kind of zeal was glistening in his eyes. ‘People like you and me, Hannah, we know about the ground. Sounds like your brother did too, if he was a forester. We were the ones who tried to stay close to nature, when everyone else was sitting indoors. We were the ones who knew all along that the earth is all we have. What did you think, when the trees came? Back in those first days, before you found your brother, what was your response?’

  ‘I thought,’ admitted Hannah slowly, ‘that nature might have come to save us.’

  ‘If the trees had come five or six years ago, I would have thought the same. But I’m further down this path than you. Like I said, I travelled through the wilderness. I stood
on the tops of mountains. I was among the elephants flapping their ears. I climbed a giant redwood. I sat in the wind that blew the cherry blossom. It was all very beautiful. Sometimes it even moved me to tears . . .’

  Hannah waited, expecting him to go on, but a minute later he still hadn’t said another word.

  ‘I thought you were going to tell me how to forget.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like it.’

  ‘I went to a chimpanzee colony. I watched two patrols of rivals clash. After the fight one patrol ran away, but there was a chimp who was injured and couldn’t run fast enough. The victors caught up with him and tore his arms and legs off. Then they ripped open his belly and ate his lungs. They even ate his balls.’

  It took an effort, but Hannah managed to shrug. ‘Everyone knows that chimps are violent.’

  ‘I was swimming in a reef and there were baby porpoises. Cute things, not much bigger than rugby balls. Some dolphins came. Swimming with dolphins and porpoise calves at once, can you believe my luck? People would have paid good money for that. Then the dolphins started ramming the porpoise babies with their noses. Charging at them through the water and smacking them to death. Those calves made a funny sound while they died, Hannah.’ He made the sound with the back of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘I don’t think I need to tell you about the worms that hatch in people’s eyeballs, or all the other parasites under the sun.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that I should be heartless, just because nature is?’

  ‘I don’t blame people for turning away from nature,’ said Leonard pensively. ‘It makes sense to want to put your faith elsewhere. But the fact remains that the real world is the only one we have. Even people like you and me and your brother, we used to live our lives as if nature was our fucking picture gallery, something to wander around in and admire.’

  ‘This doesn’t explain why you killed seven people.’

  ‘You didn’t ask me to explain why. You asked me to tell you how to forget.’

  She held her breath.

  Leonard clasped his hands and looked her in the eye. ‘There is nothing, nothing real, to have faith in. Anything good you can think of is nothing but a dream, dreamed up by a human hoping. The truth says that you and I and your brother and the man you killed are just lives. You killed a man. You brought yourself face-to-face with the truth, whether you wanted to or not. Did that man have a family with him? Did his loved ones come leaping out from behind the trees to grieve?’

  Hannah shook her head.

  ‘You’re probably the only person in the world who’s mourning for him. And you had good reason to kill him, when nature, when the real world, didn’t even ask for one. You know you could kill another man tonight, and it wouldn’t matter. It’s all just a few more lives.’

  ‘It would matter to me. I’d break in half.’

  Leonard looked unimpressed. ‘Would you? I reckon you’re tougher than you think.’

  ‘I could never kill again.’

  ‘You could. I’d even be happy to bet that you will.’

  ‘Then you’d be mistaken. Besides . . . I came . . . I came here for the opposite. To demand assurances. That you won’t do it again.’

  Leonard sounded disappointed. ‘You know I can’t promise that any more than you can.’

  ‘I can promise that right now, if it will help.’

  He sprawled back in his chair, laughter all over his face. ‘I’ve tried to explain it to you, but you won’t allow yourself to see the truth.’

  ‘I could never, ever, kill someone again. How’s that for the truth?’

  He watched her closely for a moment. ‘Let’s pretend,’ he said eventually, ‘that someone or other killed your son . . .’

  Hannah stood up abruptly, and turned to the door.

  ‘Killed him in cold blood,’ continued Leonard, ‘almost as if it was a test. Let’s pretend you found the man who did it, and he refused to apologise because he didn’t see anything to apologise for. He thought your son was just another life among a whole pile of lives. And let’s say you had a weapon, and the man was saying all kinds of things that made your blood boil, and all you could think about was your poor little boy . . .’

  Hannah dragged the door open. She didn’t know whether what Leonard was saying was meant as a threat or cruel speculation, but it made her every follicle feel pricked by a needle. As she stepped out into the dusk, Leonard said her name, then said it again in a softer voice. She ignored him. She tried as best she could to walk away calmly, but after a few seconds she was running from his shack. To her great relief, Leonard did not follow.

  Above the valley, the stars were beginning to glimmer. Tired groups of workers headed for their shelters, or the kitchen tents, or the fires beginning to blaze throughout the settlement. To north and south the bare slopes loomed, and atop each an evening haze had thickened, levitating the forest on its bank of grey fog.

  Hannah strode as fast as she could, moving with no clear purpose other than to escape from Leonard. She only wished she could escape her own mind just as easily.

  When she remembered Nora’s seashell, she pulled it out and clasped it to her ear. The ocean rolled inside it, but when she looked up at the valley’s slopes they seemed like two converging tidal waves, and the haze atop them the froth of their breaking. In a moment of horror, she flung the shell away, and the deepening dusk swallowed it whole. She threw after it the steak knife, which had proved such a useless defence, then she came to a halt and stood holding her hands to her head. After a minute she hurried after the shell to try to retrieve it, but all she could find was the knife, glinting in the early light of the stars.

  11

  Stargazing

  After his confrontation with Roland, Adrien had not returned to the shelters at the bottom of the valley. He had stayed for an hour or more in the ruins of the hotel, although he had not spent any of that time salvaging on Roland’s behalf. Instead he had pulled up a chair with an inch missing from the bottom of one of its legs and sat on it unevenly, to watch the leaves above him for some sign from the whisperers. The last light of the day had entered the hotel’s upper stories without ever falling so low as the dining hall where Adrien sat. He had been swamped in gloom and shadow, while above him rays of golden light wove through the foliage. Every leaf had warmed in the sun and then cooled again, but Adrien had seen no further hint from any of the little figures who had watched him ever since the trees came. Eventually, he had pushed himself to his feet and trodden out into the dusk, feeling cold the moment he stepped out from under the hotel’s branches and into the deforested valley soft with mud.

  Still he did not return to the settlement, where in the near distance the fires that would burn all night were beginning to grow. He sat on a block of fallen masonry that might once have been the sculpted balcony of a hotel room, and turned up the collar of his jacket and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He wondered what had possessed him to pick a fight with Roland, and supposed he had to take seriously his threat to have Leonard escort him from the valley. There had been a moment, while he and Roland had argued in the hotel, when he’d had the notion that the whisperers were on his side. Now he wasn’t so sure. He wished they would give him some clearer sign to put his faith in.

  He was still sitting on the masonry, some time later, when he saw an agitated figure pacing through the gathering dark.

  ‘Hannah?’ he called out.

  She jumped when he said it, and covered her heart with both hands. Adrien sprang up and hurried towards her, raising his arms so she could see it was only him.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked, when she’d recovered herself. ‘I thought you were back at the shelter.’

  ‘I’ve been watching the stars come out,’ he told her, which was a version of the truth. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m . . . out for a walk.’

  He could tell that was not the whole story, e
ither, but nor did he question it. Instead, he said, ‘Do you want to look at the stars with me? I think I saw one shooting, about half an hour ago. There might be more if we keep an eye out.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Hannah, and shuffled alongside him to look up at the sky. ‘Where do we have to watch?’

  ‘Anywhere. But the last one was over there, by Pisces.’

  She stared in the direction he was pointing, which was towards the southern horizon, but Adrien didn’t think her mind was on the stars.

  ‘I never really learned the names for them,’ she said, ‘although now I wish I had. I wasted all my time learning about plants and animals.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. I used to stargaze a hell of a lot, when I was a kid, and look where it got me. Did I ever tell you about that? I used to know all the names of all the constellations. Over there you’ve got Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn.’

  Hannah sighed and crossed her arms. ‘That’s what Eoin had tattooed on his back. A capricorn. He knew about the stars, as well.’

  Adrien hoped a story might cheer her up. ‘I used to want to be a comet, when I was a kid, or failing that an asteroid or a tiny moon. I sometimes used to draw a chalk sun on the school playground and run circles around it, spinning as I went, until I fell down dizzy and cut my knees.’

  Hannah laughed at him, and it was a small pleasure to hear it.

  ‘I was bullied at school,’ he added.

  ‘I’d kind of guessed that.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, Hannah?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, but her gaze drifted back towards the settlement, and the orange blazes of the campfires. A moment later she said, quieter, ‘I should have been a stargazer, too. Or I should have been an ocean-lover, like Eoin. I’d have even been better off doing computers, like Seb. Anything but the woods.’

  ‘Don’t say stuff like that. We’d never have come all this way without you.’

  She sighed. ‘And what have we come here for? Why did the kirin keep showing itself, if this place is such a dead end? Or are dead ends all it ever wanted to show us in the first place?’