Toby and the Secrets of the Tree Read online

  In a murky corner of Tiger’s mind, there was also the idea that he might perhaps retrieve the Tree Stone.

  “I don’t think my son is of this world anymore,” said Sim Lolness. “But I would thank you with all my heart if you could prove me wrong.”

  Sim turned his back. He knew he’d made a big mistake.

  “Be very careful,” Tiger told him.

  “You don’t frighten me,” muttered Sim Lolness.

  “Are you sure? We have a friend in common, Mr. Lolness. He used to say the same thing as you.”

  Sim stopped. What did this man still want from him?

  “I was the guard of Nino Alamala many years ago.”

  Sim turned and looked Tiger straight in the eye and immediately understood.

  Alamala had been a very dear friend of Sim’s. Everybody remembered the painter who had been accused of killing his own wife.

  Sim had defended his friend in the trial.

  It was a terrible story, and one that had changed the lives of the Lolnesses forever.

  Beautiful Tess Alamala had been found on a branch with her skull smashed. She was a dancer and a tightrope walker. It soon became clear that she had fallen from her high wire a few branches higher. Nino was inconsolable.

  The initial investigations concluded that it had been a stupid accident. Many people insisted that Tess Alamala had brought it on herself. Nobody had asked her to balance on a wire. Why couldn’t she walk like everybody else, with her feet on the branches?

  Soon the reproaches were directed at Nino, the painter, who had chosen an equally dreamy and pointless vocation and who had been the one to let his wife climb up high like that. People kept saying that it was irresponsible and criminal — they had a baby to look after.

  These last accusations had led to an inspector coming to Nino Alamala’s house, to rummage through his affairs. He had found a small painting in one corner. The portrait depicted Tess walking on air, and a sentence on the back served as a title: I will cut the wire to see you fly.

  The same evening, Nino Alamala was thrown in prison.

  The trial began a few months later. Defending his friend, Professor Lolness’s speech was brilliant. He claimed that poetry itself was on trial, that life wouldn’t be life without painters and tightrope walkers. Sim had said, “If I write to my wife, ‘You are my little flame,’ I don’t necessarily intend to grill her in my fireplace. The marvelous Tess Alamala died in an accident, practicing her art. We can only mourn this loss with Nino.”

  Nino Alamala looked dignified and handsome, sitting on the bench for the accused. He had been instantly reproached for turning up with paint stains on his hands. People talked about a lack of respect. He had apologized humbly.

  Sim became angry. Rather than looking at the hands of a worker, as one inspects those of a child about to sit down at the table, it was his face and his heart that needed reading and, above all, the gentleness of his paintings! Nino was innocent.

  Sim liked Alamala’s paintings. They were miniatures. And his signature always appeared at the bottom, with its curves like an undulating landscape, a signature so harmonious that you could still read it back to front: Alamala.

  One night, before a verdict had been reached on the trial, Nino Alamala was killed in his cell. There wasn’t really an inquiry into his death, on the pretext that you don’t run after the murderer of a murderer. One of his guards was vaguely suspected of having wanted to enact a speedier justice.

  The story was sixteen years old, but the memory was intact. Sim knew that long before the arrival of a Joe Mitch or a Leo Blue, hatred was already growing like a grub, ready to leap out.

  Watching Tiger walk away, Sim Lolness realized that the killer of Nino Alamala had just been standing before him.

  Tiger was satisfied. At nightfall he would pay the Grass people a visit. Moon Boy wouldn’t be able to resist him for long.

  There are fun ways of making a ten-year-old child talk.

  Toby and his two team members had hung their net from a disheveled moss garland that swung above the void. They were taking a nap in this hammock, rocked by the drip-drip of snow melting around them.

  It was the third sunny day they’d had this January. Nature was being duped by things warming up. The whistling sound of insects could be heard, and there were cracklings in the branches as on the first day of spring. Toby wasn’t asleep. He was listening to the Tree waking up in the hollow of winter. He knew that the winter fairy would come swooping down again on the branches the following day, sending the world to sleep under its white wings.

  In among the water droplets from the thaw, Toby saw muddy streaks passing through the air. Melted snowflakes, perhaps. He also heard the reassuring sound of Shaine and Torquo snoring next to him.

  What if, one day, the Tree didn’t wake up? Toby wondered.

  He knew the danger that weighed on the branches. Last spring, a certain number of buds had dried on the spot. People blamed the moss and the lichen, but Toby, who had lived in the Prairie, knew that lichen could grow even on rocks. It couldn’t be accused of sapping the Tree’s energy; it simply took advantage of the space and light caused by the disappearance of the leaves.

  Moss and lichen are like traveling people who are owed a debt of gratitude for setting up camp on abandoned lands. Who would reproach nomads for colonizing branches ravaged by drought or fire?

  Toby could have continued meditating like this for a long time, if he hadn’t suddenly heard the sound of his friends’ breathing come to an abrupt halt. He stood up and turned his head slowly in the direction of Shaine and Torquo.

  Nightmare. Two leeches shaped like long sticky hats were covering the men’s heads all the way down to their necks. They were preparing to choke them before sucking them dry and reducing them to bloodless sacks. So that’s what these muddy streaks falling around him were: springtime leeches that had come too soon.

  Toby hurled himself with his ax onto Shaine’s head. The elastic, slippery substance of the leech refused to be tamed. The blade veered off and threatened to break the poor woodcutters’ necks. Toby started shouting. Other leeches were raining down around him in the net.

  Run! It was the only answer. But even if Toby could escape, the image of his companions writhing in agony would haunt him until his dying day.

  A fat leech turned its sucker toward Toby’s shoulders. He thought he was done for when, out of nowhere, a flaming arrow pierced right through the sticky beast. The leech pulled back in a sudden jerk and fell to the bottom of the net.

  More arrows flew in from all sides. The hammock caught fire, and the animals were struggling. In a flash, the faces of Shaine and his brother-in-law reappeared. The leeches released their hold as they curled up, rolling into the middle of the flames. Toby let out a victory cry, but all that was holding up the three Flying Woodcutters was a line of burnt netting. It suddenly gave way.

  The men fell a drop of several centimeters and landed in a brown goo that came up to their chests. Saved! They found their feet again and hugged each other, with their bodies and faces covered in this near-black substance. Toby was watching the strange sauce they were swimming in drip off his hands. Where were they?

  “Are we disturbing you?” asked somebody next to them.

  Torquo, Shaine, and Toby had fallen into a big tank mounted on a feather sled. They were surrounded by crossbowmen and torchbearers, who weren’t looking at them forgivingly. Torquo and Shaine shot each other a worried glance.

  “Mr. Mitch is making his black pudding!” Torquo said between gritted teeth.

  Toby turned this phrase over and over in his head, thinking it must be a coded message.

  “Mr. Mitch is making his black pudding. . . .” he repeated slowly, trying to understand.

  Just then, something huge was lifted level with the rim of the tank; it was enormous, it was clothed in a small hunting suit, and it was spilling out of a sedan chair.

  Toby froze.

  It was Joe Mitch. And
he wasn’t looking happy.

  Studying him properly, Toby thought this man looked more and more like a lump. He didn’t have a definite shape at all. Every time he breathed out, there was a shlurping noise as distinguished-sounding as jam going splat between two pieces of toast.

  Would the monster recognize Toby?

  “Mr. Mitch is making his black pudding,” explained somebody next to him.

  This phrase was clearly the height of fashion. What Toby hadn’t yet understood was that Joe Mitch really was busy preparing his winter black pudding.

  Surrounded by a large team, he was out hunting leeches. They were tapping the branches because leeches drop when they feel vibrations. The animals were being killed with flaming arrows and were squeezed on the spot to harvest their coagulated blood.

  Toby and his friends had fallen into the tank of blood that would be used as the chief ingredient for large black puddings, long and thick as a woodcutter’s arm. Even without the coating of black liquid on his face, Toby wouldn’t have been unmasked by Joe Mitch. He had changed too much. But somebody who was squeezed onto the running board of the sedan chair had recognized him instantly.

  This person was attached to a leash held by Mitch. He was being treated like a domestic animal.

  When he saw Toby Lolness, his hunted-animal expression suddenly lit up. Toby recognized him instantly. It was Plok Tornett, the grubber from the Low Branches, Vigo Tornett’s mute nephew. The two of them exchanged glances.

  “We’re woodcutters,” Torquo said to Joe Mitch.

  This sentence seemed to vex Mitch, who had been counting on integrating these three vermin specimens into his black pudding. He snorted and scratched his ear, then signaled to one of his team. The man leaned over, in order to hear his boss’s whispered, slobbering message. He stood up, looking very pale and embarrassed at having to contradict his boss.

  “Friendly Neighbor, I . . . You will recall that we don’t touch woodcutters. . . .”

  Fresh rumbling from Joe Mitch.

  “It was an accident,” said Shaine. “We were being attacked. It won’t happen again.”

  Mitch tugged on the leash and rubbed Plok Tornett’s hair. For the time being, the corporation of woodcutters was untouchable. Joe Mitch looked forward to the day when he’d make a big kebab out of this bunch with ideas above their station. Just thinking about it relaxed him. He also liked feeling young Tornett’s small head trembling beneath his hands.

  After a few minutes of negotiations, the Flying Woodcutters were allowed to leave the vat, and Joe Mitch’s procession swung off, abandoning them there.

  The three woodcutters found a puddle where they could rinse off the blood before all the predators in the Tree swooped down on them.

  Wringing out his woodcutter clothes, Toby watched the tiny dot of Plok disappearing at the end of the branch. Anger flared in his eyes. When would the hour for revenge come?

  And then he thought of Elisha.

  Would she remember? She was so wild. Why would she have waited, when she didn’t want to belong to anything or anybody? It was as if Toby had left a living butterfly on a bud years earlier and expected to find it again in exactly the same spot, with powder on its wings! Impossible . . .

  Nils had gone back to the Treetop with Leo Blue. Perhaps he was talking to Elisha right now. Toby was suddenly very scared. Did he still exist for her?

  Yes, Nils was talking to Elisha. But she wasn’t listening.

  She looked down her nose at him. She would rather spend time alone with the Shadow that was back in its observation post at the top of the Egg. The Shadow was less tedious company; there was always something unsettling about its arrival. Whereas Nils never stopped muttering inanities.

  Elisha stroked the sole of her foot. It seemed a long time ago now since she had hidden the luminous blue mark drawn on her at birth in caterpillar ink.

  Her mother had spoken to her about it one day, in the Low Branches, just before their animals had been massacred.

  “I never thought it would come to this,” she had said.

  On that day, after a silent supper, beautiful Isha had held her daughter’s face in her hands.

  “Elisha, I’ve never tried to hide from you where we come from.”

  Elisha made a face. She knew she came from the Grass, that her mother had grown up among the Grass people. But what else did she know about her origins? How had they both arrived in the Branches of the Tree?

  Elisha hung her head a bit. She had never asked her mother anything about it and didn’t feel she could start that evening.

  “You know, Elisha, the world is becoming a dangerous place for us.”

  Isha had taken a bowl filled with brown dye.

  “It’s powder from a moor moth.”

  Elisha watched her mother catch her ankle and smooth the brown, slightly greasy powder over the soles of her tiny feet.

  The glow in the luminous ink went out. The marks had disappeared. Elisha shuddered. She felt naked. Isha held out the bowl of powder to her, and the young girl took it: now it was her turn to smooth the moor powder over her mother’s feet.

  Both of them felt the seriousness and sadness of this act. The sole of the foot is sacred for the Grass people. It’s called the “sole of the foot” because it’s the sole (or only) body part that enjoys this constant relationship with the surface of plants.

  Erasing the line was an extremely rare act, one that recalled the great tragedies of this people.

  That night, Elisha and her mother slept lying against each other in their house of colors. They thought they could hear the lugubrious wing beats of an army of moths out on their night flight. The mournful sound made them feel even more alone.

  As a prisoner in the Treetop, Elisha was now looking at her extinguished feet. She knew that her mother had saved her life that evening by erasing the sign.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “No,” said Elisha.

  Nils Amen was in front of her, giving her a long lecture about Leo Blue.

  “You’ve got the wrong idea,” he continued. “We always tend to have fixed ideas about people. I know Leo well. . . .”

  Here we go, thought Elisha.

  She had gotten the message and was starting to wonder if this boy was completely stupid. She glanced up at the top of the Egg, with a look that begged the Shadow perched up there to free her from this total bore. But, as usual, the Shadow didn’t move.

  “Leo Blue isn’t what you think. Leo Blue . . .”

  “I’ve understood!” exclaimed Elisha, exasperated. “I’ve understood! I’ve understood!”

  Nils went quiet. He knew the moment had come.

  Elisha breathed again. How could Toby have been friends with this dolt? Leo Blue, Nils Amen . . . She tried to comfort herself with the thought that perhaps it was better Toby was no longer around to see what had become of his old friends.

  A strange sensation suddenly took hold of Elisha. Was it because she had just been thinking about Toby? She closed her eyes and realized that Nils had started talking again.

  But not in the same way.

  He was talking slowly, hanging every word on a thread of voice that was touching and fragile. Nils Amen was unrecognizable.

  “Life is an abandoned bees’ nest, Elisha. You walk around. The light looks like honey. The weather’s nice. You’re lost. You can smell the wax. You call out. Your voice echoes. You’re looking for the person you’ve lost. And that’s life.”

  Nils took another breath.

  “And then a big worker bee buzzes very close to you. You lie on the ground, with your arms protecting your head. The bee passes overhead. You get up; your dress is covered in honey. You’re frightened. You hear a voice. It’s the other person. He’s there. You run down the hallways of the nest. You find him again. You don’t tell him you were frightened. And that’s life, Elisha.”

  Elisha turned her head away to hide her tear-covered face in the darkness. What was happening? What was going on
?

  Standing directly above this scene, Leo Blue had just imperceptibly squinted his eyes. What did these strange, incomprehensible words mean? Where did this emotion come from that rose up to reach him?

  Nils didn’t know whether his message had reached beautiful Elisha, its target. He was simply saying what Toby had asked him to say.

  “And there’s a heavy downpour over the moss forests,” he continued. “You think you’ll hold out, clinging on up there, right until the end, right until the last drop. Down below, you’re being asked to climb down. You’re shivering. You’re going to be ill. You have to stop, to go and find shelter, Elisha. But you stay there. And even your clothes are melting. You’re too stubborn, Elisha.”

  Up above, Leo Blue was thinking about Arbayan’s suspicions. His hand was trembling lightly on the shell of the Egg. Who was Nils Amen really?

  As for Elisha, she didn’t know where she was anymore. That voice was going around inside her head.

  It was no longer Nils Amen’s voice. It was another voice that had returned from far away, a forgotten voice, hidden beneath years of sadness: the voice of Toby Lolness.

  Memories weave a secret, inviolable language.

  The bees’ nest. The great downpour. Nobody but Toby and Elisha could recognize these faraway memories. They were some of the most intimate things they had shared.

  She was sure about it: Nils was speaking to her in Toby’s name.

  Listening to Nils Amen’s voice, in the wretched solitude of the Egg, Elisha could hear Toby’s silent message, his coded message, stitched between the words. A message that lifted her off the ground and transported her elsewhere.

  Everything suddenly became possible again, because this message was “I’m coming back.”

  Two months later, winter was still lingering in the Branches. But what had plunged Norz Amen into despair, what wrenched at his guts, was the fact that there could no longer be any doubt about it.