Toby and the Secrets of the Tree Read online

  Elisha insisted that it be Clot, and nobody else, who brought her meals and looked after her. This funny character’s fantastical speech made her laugh out loud.

  Unfortunately, she had explained to him that you shouldn’t turn your back on a lady. Since that day he always walked backward while in the Egg, stumbling over every obstacle. He would try to find the exit by groping the wall behind him. Elisha would say, “To your right! Left!” to guide him. And when he banged his head on the shell, she had to stifle her laughter.

  She had fun taking expressions such as “Putting your foot in it” and “So easy you could do it with your eyes closed” or “Head in the clouds,” and deliberately mixing them up in front of him.

  And, seeing as he repeated everything she said, this led to him making confessions such as “You know me, miss, I’m a bit of a dreamer, always putting my feet up my nose and my fingers in the clouds. . . .”

  He would say this fluttering his eyelashes, head tipped back. It was rather touching.

  Elisha continued eating her cardboard pancakes.

  “Would you like some?”

  “No, thanks,” said Clot.

  “Still on your diet?” Elisha smiled.

  For some time now, Clot had considered himself to be a bit chubby in the knee area. He had admitted to Elisha that he went on diets.

  “No. This time it’s my teeth.”

  “Your teeth?”

  “I got new teeth.”

  “What are they made of?”

  “Bread crumbs.”

  “I noticed your elocution. Bravo.”

  Humble Clot started blushing. “You smatter me too much about my speechiness,” he said gratefully. “I also wanted to warn you: He’s back.”

  Elisha finished off her third pancake as if she hadn’t heard anything. But Clot didn’t give up. “The boss is back. He’s with the young stranger who came this summer. Without meaning to speak out of brine, I think there’s something going on. . . .”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I don’t care about the boss.”

  “I get the impersonation that you don’t like him.”

  “You’ve very observant, dear Clot,” Elisha remarked.

  Clot made a humble face.

  “I’m going to sleep,” said Elisha.

  She lay back down. Clot didn’t move. In the end, Elisha had to get up again.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  Clot clearly felt uncomfortable. He was tapping his bread-crumb teeth with his fingernails. “I . . . Perhaps I can collect your plate?”

  Elisha shot him a dark look as she took out the plate, which she had hidden in her nightshirt.

  “You’ve got eyes in the back of your head, Soldier Clot.”

  “I like to be fernickety,” he said, squirming with satisfaction.

  He took back the plate she’d been counting on converting into sharp pieces to give herself a winter haircut or for her next escape. Elisha lay down again on her mattress.

  Clot drew a little closer.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “I’m taking my key that you’ve slipped under the mattress.”

  Elisha was having fun in her corner. Every evening it was the same charade.

  “And what else?” she grumbled. “Do you want your laces too?”

  “Exactly so. Gladly. They must have led me astray yesterday.”

  Elisha removed two black shoelaces, which she’d hidden beneath her clothing. Behind his comical manner, this guard was scrupulous to the last degree.

  “You’d be better off wearing your slipperties,” she said, lying down again. “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about laces.”

  It was Elisha who had introduced Clot to the delights of slippers, by giving him a pair that she had made herself. He called them slipperties, and he adored them. Recently, he hadn’t worn them so much because he was wary of robbers.

  “They make people jealous. . . .” he announced with satisfaction.

  Clot tidied his laces away into his pockets.

  “Perfect. I’ve got it all now. Tip-top. Good night, miss.”

  He walked backward as far as the door, banged his head, lost his balance, and exited, tottering.

  A few steps away, on the other side of the footbridge, the East Egg was lit up. White steam emerged from the bath and spread over the ground. A delicate smell of bud oil filled the room. Old Arbayan was standing at a distance, with the steam licking the soles of his feet and a serious expression on his face.

  “You know how much I trust your intuition.”

  “I know, Arbayan,” said Leo, with the water up to his chin.

  “I’m just asking you to be careful. This boy came to see you six months ago, offering his help. That’s what I call a ‘lucky coincidence.’ I’m wary of him. For years, he ignored you, and now all of a sudden here he is!”

  “He’s got a thousand woodcutters taking orders from him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We need him.”

  “But does he need us?”

  “Yes,” said Leo. “Who doesn’t need us?”

  Minos Arbayan frowned. He looked at his boss in the pigeon-claw bathtub. The adviser took a step toward the lamp. He let a corner of cloth fall on the glowworm’s cage. The light dimmed softly.

  Sometimes Arbayan wanted to leave, to set out in search of his butterflies, to drop this horrible battle. He didn’t like the mediocrity of those around him.

  At least Leo Blue wasn’t mediocre. He was crazy but gifted, and Arbayan had signed up because of him. The others were all cowardly, stupid, and rough.

  “I’m voicing my concern, because I’m always honest with you,” he told Leo sharply. “When I say to one of my men: ‘Uncover that glowworm, because it’s dark,’ I know perfectly well that it isn’t actually a worm. But I want to keep things simple; I want to be understood. I know as well as you do that what everybody calls a ‘glowworm’ isn’t a worm at all. It is, in fact, a ‘coleopteran,’ or beetle. But I degrade myself and say ‘glowworm,’ like an ignorant person, in order to be understood by ignorant people. With you, Leo Blue, I use real words, just as I did with your father, long ago. With you, I don’t lie. And the truth of the matter is, I don’t trust the way this Nils Amen has become your friend.”

  Leo had been completely still while he was listening. Now he dunked his head in the water and disappeared for nearly a minute. When he reappeared, his face showed no sign of breathlessness.

  “You keep on telling me what you think fit to tell me, Arbayan. And I’ll do what I think fit to do. Leave. Go and get me Nils Amen from his room.”

  Arbayan bowed before his boss and left. Leo kept on thinking for several minutes, in the warmth of his bath.

  He had taken this pigeon-claw bath from one of the ruined houses pillaged by his men. The claw had been filed down, and its horn shape was so white, it was almost luminous. Eventually, Leo stood up. He could sense someone waiting outside. He took a thick towel and wrapped himself in it.

  “Enter,” he said.

  Nils Amen appeared.

  “I was just thinking about you,” Leo said. “You sought me out this summer. You suggested a secret alliance between Amen Woods and the Nest. . . .”

  “Yes, I think we’ll be stronger that way.”

  “You weren’t always of this opinion.”

  “A child listens to his father. Previously, my father, Norz Amen, rejected the idea of an alliance. But today . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Today I’ve learned to think for myself.”

  “Your father remains an obstacle.”

  “Don’t worry about my father. We just have to make sure he doesn’t know anything about our agreement.”

  “Normally,” warned Leo, “I destroy any obstacles.”

  Nils shuddered. “Like I said, I’ll take care of my father,” he repeated coldly.

  Leo went over to a table where his two boomerangs had been placed on a square of cloth. He took one in each hand and began sh
arpening them against each other. They resembled two dangerous knives, twenty thumbs long, in the shape of an upside-down V. Leo made the blades vibrate as he ran his finger along them. He put them back down on the table.

  “And now you’re offering me this new kind of assistance.”

  “If you need me.”

  “Why would I have brought you here if I didn’t think you could help me? This time it’s about what matters most to me and is most secret.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you think you can change her mind about me?”

  Nils didn’t answer the question. He took Leo by the shoulder and said, “We aren’t always as others think we are. That’s what I’ll say to her.”

  The next day at noon, Elisha noticed the return of the Shadow on the top of the Egg.

  The Shadow . . . The young girl prisoner couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it — a month ago, perhaps? She was happy to be reunited with its reassuring presence.

  Elisha knew she wasn’t the only one to have come across it. Clot had said that everybody was afraid of this mysterious shape that roamed about in the Treetop. Recently, to explain the Shadow’s lengthy absence, a guard had boasted about having killed it and claimed it was a black bloodsucking spider. But today the Shadow was back. The guard had lied.

  When Arbayan entered Elisha’s room, the Shadow remained flattened against the shell. The old butterfly hunter stood stiffly in his handsome uniform. He didn’t look happy.

  “Somebody has been given permission to speak with you, miss.”

  A young man entered behind him. He had a gentle face with fine and delicate features. He looked pointedly at Arbayan, who understood that he should leave them alone. Elisha was crouched at the bottom of the Egg, against the wall.

  Arbayan exited, teeth clenched.

  The visitor ran his eyes over the large room. He didn’t appear to be paying Elisha any particular attention.

  “My name is Nils Amen.”

  Nils. Elisha recognized this name. A long time ago, someone named Nils had saved Toby’s life. What could a friend of Toby’s be doing here? Elisha felt her breath quickening. She glanced to check if the Shadow was still there.

  For his part, Nils Amen felt as if he was losing his balance.

  So this was her. Elisha.

  He thought of Toby, hidden in his moss forests far below. Toby’s two friends were face-to-face today. Nils and Elisha.

  But how had Nils Amen managed to become close enough to Leo Blue to approach the boss’s fiancée all alone?

  It had all started one summer’s morning, six months earlier.

  Nils was about to leave the Lower Regions where thirty of his woodcutters had just chopped down a colony of lichen that was threatening Joe Mitch’s Crater.

  The woodcutters from Amen Woods would agree to any job, provided it didn’t involve shaking Mitch’s sticky paw or Leo Blue’s cold hand. Nils was thinking about only one thing: providing work for his men.

  The woodcutters had therefore sawed up several centimeters of dense thicket, and great parasols of cut lichen were strewn across the path that led to the Crater. It was June, and it was hot. The lichen was dry and light.

  When Nils heard the thunderstorm rumbling, he knew that everything was about to change.

  Lichen has the special property of drying out in the sun but springing back to life at the first drop of rain. This was what Sim Lolness called anabiosis: an incredible capacity to adapt according to the climate. Nature is a magician. In the rain, the lichen soaks up water and regains its color, but it also becomes sticky and untransportable.

  If the path to the Crater wasn’t cleared before the storm, then the access would be blocked for several days. The woodcutters started moving the gray mossy branches. There was at least a day’s work here, but the rain was only a quarter of an hour away.

  Nils paused for a moment or two. He could see only one solution, and it went against all his principles. Warned by another roll of thunder, he realized he had no choice.

  So he sent one of his men to ask for help from the Crater.

  Moments later, the woodcutters saw the heavy door to the Enclosure swing open. They heard voices and the sound of whips being cracked. A dozen guards surrounded a misshapen troop. Those who strayed from the group were shoved back into place with sticks.

  Nils soon found out that these weren’t animals.

  “The Grass people . . .” he whispered to his men in a voice choked with emotion.

  There were dozens of them on the branch, all huddled against each other. One of Mitch’s soldiers came over to speak to Nils. “We’re going to help you. It’ll all be over in an hour.”

  “Too late,” said Nils. “It’s raining. You won’t make it. Give these people some shelter.”

  Nils thanked the sky for sending the first drop. He didn’t want to see a people already reduced to slavery suffering even more.

  The soldier flashed him a grim smile.

  “Are you saying I’m a liar? I said an hour. And it’ll be an hour.”

  “Leave it,” Nils repeated. “We’ll handle this in a few days, when it’s dry again.”

  “Are you going to keep on insulting me?” asked the thug. “You see if I don’t keep to my promises.”

  He let out a wild shout. The whips started whistling again and the thunder rumbling, as the rain came down twice as hard. And in this hellish atmosphere, the Grass people set to work.

  It didn’t even take an hour. Between whippings and shouting, the horde of Grass people achieved the impossible: moving hundreds of trunks, as soggy as sponges. Those men who fell were shoved to their feet again. There was no letup in the downpour. Anyone who slowed down got kicked, as together they waded through the green mud that was streaming off the lichen.

  Nils noticed a youth who had fallen to the ground: a boy with dark eyes that didn’t appear to move. Another young Grass person rushed over to help him. The lash of a whip came stinging across his back, but he continued to try to coax his friend back on his feet, using small reassuring gestures.

  Nils guessed that the boy with the unmoving eyes was blind.

  Before leaving the Crater, the triumphant soldier came over to Nils Amen.

  “If you need help, we’re here. All you have to do is ask. They call me Tiger.”

  The Grass people and the guards disappeared behind the big gate.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Nils collapsed in shame and disgust, his face in his hands.

  “Mr. Amen?”

  A young woodcutter tried to help Nils get up.

  “I’ll be all right,” Nils answered, leaning on the bark.

  Back in his hut, Nils had locked himself up for four days.

  So this was the independence and freedom his father boasted to him about. . . . Close your eyes; don’t see anything; let others suffer at the edge of the forests.

  As a result of being hemmed in by other people’s prisons, Nils Amen’s freedom had become a dark cell.

  Nils knew now that he had to fight, but he also knew that you don’t attack Joe Mitch or Leo Blue head-on. You don’t rise up before them, ax in hand.

  Nils was familiar with the traditional woodcutters’ recipes for destroying old lichen stumps. You have to attack them from within, by piercing the middle and sliding the acid inside. Poison the heart of the stock.

  From that day on, Nils only had one aim: to win Leo Blue’s trust, in order to get inside his system and destroy it.

  Now Nils Amen was standing right in front of Elisha, and he was staring at her.

  She hid her hands in her sleeves. Her hair was very short, and she didn’t allow any sign of fear or surprise to cross her face. Nils wondered what this little bundle of courage was made of. Where does she come from, he wondered. Where do girls like her grow?

  He understood Toby’s feelings for her.

  On Christmas evening, before climbing up toward the Treetop Nest with Leo Blue, Nils had hurriedly gone back to Lola and Le
x’s home.

  He had spoken with Toby, telling him everything. His big secret. The false friendship that he was gently building with Leo Blue.

  “I wasn’t expecting to tell you about it,” Nils had said. “It’s my way of fighting back. Danger is something you don’t share. Nobody knows about this. Not even my father. But when I found out that . . . that you knew Elisha, I thought I might be able to do something for you two. . . .”

  Overcome, Toby had charged Nils with speaking to the young female prisoner on his behalf.

  Standing before her, Nils only had one wish: to tell Elisha that Toby was alive, that he was there in place of his friend, that nothing was lost, that life would flow again in the branches.

  Up on high, the Shadow was motionless.

  It was the figure of a young man, balanced above the arch of the Egg, hands firmly on the shell. There were two boomerangs on his back.

  The Shadow of the Tree.

  For months now, he hadn’t been able to find any other way of approaching Elisha and weaving something between them.

  Something . . . It didn’t have to be much. A hint of mystery and intimacy. Anything rather than indifference. He had invented the Shadow of the Tree in order to become Elisha’s secret.

  At the top of the Egg, Leo Blue was straining his ear, because Nils Amen was about to speak.

  Sure enough, Nils opened his mouth to tell Elisha everything. But his eyes came to rest on a circle of sunlight at his feet.

  It was midday, and the sun was at its highest point in the sky. The hole in the top of the Egg allowed a perfectly drawn ray to be projected onto the floor.

  In this splash of light, a shadow could be seen. It was the profile of a face.

  Somebody was listening to them.

  Nils swallowed his desire to be sincere.

  “Miss, I want to talk to you about Leo Blue. It’s my belief that you’re mistaken about him.”

  Elisha’s heart dropped.

  For a moment, she had thought she’d found a friend.