Tree Magic

by Harriet Springbett

  Rainbow looked for signs of Mum getting spiritual. But she could see nothing dreamy about her. In fact, she looked almost business-like.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I know a lot of healers, love, though I’ve never heard of anyone healing trees. What exactly do you do to them?”

  Rainbow relaxed. Mum wasn’t slipping into her faraway mode. Perhaps things would be all right. If Mum didn’t get spiritual then Bob wouldn’t get angry and he wouldn’t leave them.

  “Well, I touch the bark and concentrate, and the fibres ease apart and the branch stretches,” she gabbled. She longed for contact with the tree again. She clenched her hands together in an effort to squash the ache.

  Mum didn’t ask any more questions. She simply nodded and then hugged her. They sat together in the wet grass, haloed by the dim torchlight in the dark of the night. Rainbow started to shiver. Mum eased her up, retrieved the torch and led her back along the drive to the house.

  “You’re a different shape today,” Rainbow told Mum over breakfast the next morning. Mum was sitting upright in her chair and digging into her yoghurt with unusual vigour.

  “It’s because our souls have made contact.”

  Rainbow’s chest constricted. Mum mustn’t say things like that. Even so, she tingled with complicity. She couldn’t wait to demonstrate her gift.

  “Don’t start on that mumbo-jumbo again,” muttered Bob. His pint-sized mug of tea obscured his face.

  The day took an eternity to pass. After school, Rainbow cycled home from the bus stop as fast as she could. Would her gift still work, or had her experience with the willow yesterday been a warning not to touch?

  She dropped her bike inside the front gate and was about to speed to the privacy of the woods behind the pumpkin patch when she heard a miaow. Acrobat! She clapped a hand to her mouth and looked up at her tree house. How could she have forgotten him and his kittens? She hadn’t even told Mum and Bob about them. Gingerly, she laid a hand on the bark of the trunk. Her body tensed in expectation of a shock wave.

  There was nothing. She let out her breath and shinned up the ladder.

  Acrobat climbed out of the box and nuzzled her. She stroked him and peered into the nest he’d made. There were four kittens – a ginger and three tabbies – and they looked like little logs of warmth, blunt-faced with squinty lines where their eyes were squeezed shut. They writhed over each other in search of their mother’s protective mass. She could guess who the father was. They would either be divvy or fighters, or perhaps divvy fighters. She resisted the urge to touch them. Instead, she sat cross-legged, pulled Acrobat onto her lap and stroked him. Which traits, apart from shortness, had she inherited from her own father?

  Acrobat padded back to look into the box. His swollen teats brushed Rainbow’s fingers as he passed. Perhaps she ought to refer to him as ‘her’ now. She swung out of the den and slid down the ladder. Acrobat edged down his pole, and they walked through the grass to the house.

  The Mini and the van were both there, the van parked ominously askew. Rainbow braced herself. She pushed open the door and followed Acrobat into the kitchen.

  Mum and Bob were sitting on opposite sides of the table, glowering at each other. Rainbow headed straight for the fridge to fetch Acrobat’s tinned meat and some milk. She could feel Bob’s eyes on her.

  “It’s not the cat’s dinner time,” he growled.

  “She needs it to feed her kittens,” replied Rainbow.

  “Kittens? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a tom.”

  “I thought so too. But he’s a she.”

  Rainbow sneaked a look at Mum. Her eyes were fixed on Rainbow but she remained silent.

  “How many? Where are they?” he said.

  “Two. In the woodshed.” There was no point taking any risks.

  Mum interrupted before Rainbow could establish Bob’s intentions.

  “Rainbow, love, I think you’d better tell Bob what you told me last night.”

  Rainbow dropped the tin.

  “Mum! It’s a secret.”

  She’d been sure Mum wouldn’t say anything to Bob. Mum kept lots of secrets from him. He had no idea of the spiritual seances she held when he was out gigging alone.

  “Bob won’t mention it to anyone. And perhaps, at last, he’ll accept that science doesn’t explain everything.”

  “Come on. Your mum’s getting weird on me,” said Bob. “What’s the trick?”

  Michael had advised her to keep her gift a secret so that she wouldn’t be exploited. But surely Mum and Bob wouldn’t exploit her? Michael may have been wrong. He’d been wrong about Acrobat being a tomcat.

  “All right.”

  She fetched the book that had belonged to Michael’s great-grandfather from her tree house. The cover was damaged by dried blood, where Acrobat had given birth on top of it. Inside, however, the line drawings, black-and-white photos and Rainbow’s notes and sketches were intact. She pushed aside the papers on the kitchen table and laid the book in front of Bob.

  “I found this at the village fete last summer,” she said.

  She leafed through the pages and showed Mum and Bob the notes she’d written next to the trees she’d grown. Mum admired Rainbow’s sketches and read a couple of entries aloud. Bob hardly looked at the book.

  “Yeah, yeah, but I want to know how you make it work,” he said.

  “I put my hands on the tree and kind of push.”

  “I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.”

  “Believe what you like. It’s all the same to me.”

  Bob narrowed his eyes at Rainbow.

  “Is that what you did to your tree house?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re lying,” he muttered.

  Rainbow put the book onto her chair and sat down on it, grinning. Bob looked seriously freaked out.

  “You’d better give us a demonstration to prove it,” he said.

  Her smile disappeared. She suddenly regretted telling Mum and Bob. It felt as if she’d been unzipped and emptied. With her gift exposed, she had nothing left to hug to herself except the fading memories of her time with Michael.

  Michael. He’d said her gift was part of her. Conviction gripped her. She had to use her gift, even if it meant people staring at her, like Bob was at this very moment. She didn’t care about the looks. She was used to being different from other people, anyway. Michael had died because of her gift. If she stopped the work he’d helped her to start, she’d be rejecting what he’d given her.

  She had to use her gift. For Michael. To keep her memory of him warm. And to stop the creeping ice-fingers of guilt from freezing him out of her reach forever.

  “I need to work alone first. I’ll show you after school tomorrow,” she said.

  Chapter 11

  Rainbow stood in front of a young alder tree and studied her hands. They had softened over her treeless winter, thanks to Mum’s lily-of-the-valley hand cream. The backs of her hands were idle-soft now, but there was nothing to be done about the palms. Neither cream nor willpower could erase the rough, cracked skin. She stroked them and struggled to remember the pleasant tickling sensation that stroking them used to evoke. The touch of her fingers came from a distance, as if her skin had developed its own bark.

  Behind her, Bob slid the tongue of his steel tape measure in and out of its casing. He was frowning, his feet planted wide apart in stubbornness. He liked to think he was a scientist, his garden being his major scientific experiment. Yesterday evening, when she’d shown him her book, he’d been bewildered. By nightfall, his mood had worsened to disbelief and he’d accused her of wilful deceit. This evening, he looked determined to prove her wrong.

  Mum had chosen the alder for Rainbow to work on. It had two trunks growing from the same knobble. Rainbow brought her face close to the first trunk and smelt its vigour. There were alders everywhere in Wymer Hill Wood. Last autumn she’d noted their energy in her book. Now it was spring, and she wondered if the rising sap wo
uld make the stretching even easier.

  She felt uncomfortable in front of an audience. She’d asked them to turn away. Mum didn’t mind, but Bob said she’d pull one of her tricks if he didn’t keep her in his sight, and had refused. If she was going to spend her life doing this, she’d have to get used to people watching. Even so, she used her body to block his view of her hands.

  The right spot was easy to find. She closed her eyes, concentrated on the connection and then asked the alder to stretch its trunk a little. The alder jumped to attention and responded eagerly. Rainbow felt an immediate responsibility towards it. She had to be careful not to let it overstretch itself.

  Bob’s voice encroached on her thoughts. “Have you finished yet?”

  She stepped aside and showed him the curve in the trunk’s profile.

  “Goddammit!” He stroked his chin and then bent and slapped the tree. “How did you do it?”

  Rainbow pushed his hand away from the alder. He flinched, stroked his skin where she’d touched him and then grabbed her wrist, which he turned over so he could examine her palm.

  “Jeez! Look at this, Jaz.”

  Rainbow tried to pull away. Mum glanced at Rainbow’s hand and then told Bob to let go. She seemed unfazed and had hardly looked at the elongated trunk.

  “This is freakish,” Bob said. He wiped his hands on his jeans as if the contact with Rainbow had dirtied him. “Do it again … on the other trunk.” He knelt down, measured the height to the lowest branch and pointed to a spot halfway up. “Right here.”

  “I can’t do it just anywhere,” scorned Rainbow.

  She stroked the trunk and took her time to settle her hands in the right place. Then she let Bob measure from the ground up to her chosen point. She felt like a magician, under pressure from an audience. Mum and Bob were holding their breath in expectation of silk handkerchiefs turning into doves.

  She suddenly realised she’d made no mental contact with the trunk. She frowned and concentrated. Still nothing.

  “We haven’t got all night,” grumbled Bob.

  Rainbow tried to commune with the second alder trunk. It was a twin and, like Chris and Mike Loach at school, this trunk seemed to be the opposite of the first. It was slow, reluctant and uncommunicative. Rainbow opened her eyes and stood back.

  “What’s the matter? Lost your nerve?”

  She didn’t bother to reply. She laid her hands back on the trunk and ran them up and down. It was definitely the right place. Nowhere else was possible. She tried again. Her eyes closed and she opened her mind to all that her hands could feel. The fibres were vibrant and the sap-beat was strong. She could feel no resistance. There was no power struggle; the alder simply didn’t respond. It was like having normal hands again. She let her arms drop to her sides.

  “Your thing isn’t very reliable.” Bob was smug. He tossed the tape measure from one hand to the other.

  Mum came forward. “Can I look at your hands, love?”

  Rainbow held them out and looked at them cupped in Mum’s beautiful, long-fingered hands. Mum had artiste’s hands. Her fingers were stretched by octave-jumps and tipped with purple nail varnish. Rainbow’s hands looked even more scabrous beside Mum’s creamy ones. Not magic-looking at all.

  Mum closed Rainbow’s palms together like butterfly wings and held them tightly. “Try later,” she said.

  “No, now,” said Bob. “I’ve not come out here for nothing.”

  “She mustn’t. She’ll hurt her hands.”

  “Rubbish! You’re too soft on her.”

  “The show’s finished, Bob. Go home.”

  “Rainbow, get over there and do it again,” he said.

  Mum released Rainbow’s hands and spun around to face him.

  “She’s shown you once. It’s enough.”

  Rainbow remained beside Mum.

  “But I want to measure it. I need proof,” said Bob.

  Mum marched right up to him. She was slightly taller, Rainbow noticed. He stepped back. Mum jabbed his shoulder with her finger.

  “Why? You saw the other trunk stretch. Isn’t that enough proof for you? Her hands will bleed if you force her to continue.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’ll have me crying in a minute.” Bob shoved his tape measure into his pocket and stamped away.

  Mum fingered an alder leaf. Her gaze wandered over the tree and she lifted the leaf to her cheek. Rainbow knelt down beside the alder, placed a hand on each trunk and laid her forehead between them. She apologised and then stood up.

  “I don’t understand why it didn’t work. It’s the first time I haven’t felt anything.”

  “Don’t try to understand,” said Mum. “Accept it. There isn’t always an explanation. Our scientific knowledge is limited, so sometimes we have to be humble and just believe what we know in our hearts. It’s the nature of life.”

  She strolled back towards the house. Rainbow watched her meander through the vegetable patches and stop to caress a plant from time to time. Was Mum right? Couldn’t science explain everything?

  On Saturday morning Fraser breezed into their home and shut himself in the recording room with Bob for a blues session. He and Bob excluded Mum. Rainbow spied on them through the hatch window on her way upstairs to get dressed. They were actually recording, not simply smoking and strumming.

  It had rained all week. Acrobat didn’t want to move his kittens into her bedroom and it was too cold and dreary to sit in her tree house. She’d spent the evenings after school in her room, staring out of the window at the greening woods and looking through the coloured photos of Trees in Western Europe, a book she’d borrowed from the school library.

  She pressed her nose against the glass of the hatch window and watched Fraser sucking up to Bob. It was strange to think that the same kinds of trees grew on the other side of the English Channel. How had forests managed to cross the sea to France and Germany? None of the books answered her question. She wondered who she could ask without getting sideways looks. Certainly not Fraser. And not Michael anymore.

  Mum appeared from the kitchen, tapped her on the shoulder and motioned her outside with a tilt of her head. Rainbow wondered if she was going to be told off for spying. They weren’t supposed to make any noise when Bob was recording, so she knew she hadn’t broken that rule.

  Outside, it had stopped raining. The sun came out. Mum sipped from a cup of herbal tea and Rainbow watched her step into the uncut grass. She didn’t seem cross. Her wrap-over skirt loitered in the grasping, wet tendrils. Rainbow traipsed after her, swishing her hands through the long stalks until they dripped rain.

  Mum walked towards the orchard beyond the pumpkin patch. She’d woven a willow shelter in the entrance to the orchard a few years ago and called it her ‘boudoir’, which sounded like something out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It had three woven willow sides and an arch with roses growing over to make a roof. Underneath were a bench and a small table. The boudoir was the summer equivalent of her creative corner, and she’d chosen a view over the woods for inspiration. Rainbow considered the boudoir to be a miracle: the concept of Mum creating anything solid on her own was too difficult to believe. She had spent two complete weeks building it, to the exclusion of everything else. She hadn’t looked after the roses properly though, and they trailed wildly instead of bushing neatly like Bob’s hybrids in the front garden.

  Mum stopped at her boudoir and pulled the plastic sheet off the bench. Rainbow plumped herself down beside her and waited. Mum was like a deer: you had to be careful not to surprise her with too many words, otherwise you could startle her and she’d bound away from what she was going to say. She sipped her tea and then turned to Rainbow.

  “How was school this week?”

  “All right.”

  “Are you still being bullied?”

  Rainbow thought about home tutoring. “No.”

  There were a few seconds of silence.

  “Does anyone know about your gift?”

  “No.” Not anym
ore. “Why?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Mum.

  She finished her tea and gazed over the curly head of the woods.

  Rainbow waited, but Mum said nothing more.

  “Thinking what?” she asked.

  “How about trying again this morning, love?”

  Rainbow looked down at her wet pyjama trousers. She’d been hoping to do it alone. “I’m not dressed yet.”

  “Bob won’t bother us.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She ran back to the house, where she threw off her pyjamas and slipped into jeans and a sweatshirt. She hadn’t worn these particular jeans for a while, and she noticed with glee that they were too short. She kept them on. It was satisfying to look down at the ankle gap and see proof that she’d grown.

  Back in the orchard, she walked around the fruit trees. She’d already tweaked the apple and pear trees last September. Mum stayed on the bench. Rainbow turned around, wondering whether she’d fallen asleep, and saw that Mum was watching her intently.

  She decided on the walnut tree. It was too high to climb into, so she fetched the stepladder from the shed.

  “Won’t the metal affect your contact with the tree?” asked Mum.

  Rainbow shrugged and leant the ladder against a branch. Mum came over and insisted on holding the bottom, despite Rainbow’s protests that she was fine. She climbed up to the first horizontal bough and, keeping her feet on the ladder, ran her hands over a slim, vertical branch.

  “This one is happy to move.”

  Mum leant against the ladder and watched her, shading her eyes. Rainbow ignored her and let her concentration funnel: from the calls of chiffchaffs and magpies, from the distant road and faraway voices, to the murmur of leaves and the pulsing of the trunk. She stretched and bent the branch towards the outer canopy of the tree.

  She opened her eyes and examined her work. The branch looked odd, curving from vertical to horizontal. She corrected the angle to an easy bend and jumped down from the ladder.

  “Hands,” said Mum.

  Rainbow held them out for inspection. Mum ran her fingers over the palms. There was a responding murmur from her nerve ends.