Toby, on the other hand, had countless followers, but he knew that a knife against his mother’s throat was all it would take to cede all power to the enemy.
Tiger was the first to appear, above the footbridge. He was clutching Maya as a human shield.
Toby watched his mother. Standing very upright, with a calm expression, she surveyed the crowd around her. When her eyes met Toby’s, she raised her chin, her spirits buoyed by joy and pride.
This image of Maya at the mercy of barbarians affected Toby so profoundly that he found it hard to return her smile. He would have liked for Elisha to have been close to him. Where had she gone?
Toby took a step forward and waited for Tiger to speak. Clouds began to gather in the sky.
“We’ll kill both of them!” shouted Tiger. “We’ll kill them at the first move made against us!”
Toby shuddered.
“What do you want?” called out Vigo Tornett.
“Joe Mitch will tell you shortly.”
Tiger pushed Maya inside the Egg. They disappeared.
Elisha was lost in the crowd. From far off, she had heard Tiger’s threats. She was struck by how beautiful Maya Lolness was.
Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Elisha barely recognized the hollow-eyed man who greeted her.
“Clot?”
Clot started trying to bow, but Elisha was quick to pull him back up again and hug him.
When he wasn’t hiccupping, he managed to say, “I goth outh, dithn’t I?”
“Yes, Clot.”
He was too intimidated to hug Elisha back, so he kept holding his arms out wide as if she was sticky to touch. Elisha had put her head on Clot’s shoulder.
Then she saw something that instantly blocked out Clot’s stream of explanations. Elisha scrunched up her eyes. She had seen something sparkling gently in the overcast sky. Like a flash.
She waited for a few seconds before seeing that little glint of sunshine again. She hadn’t dreamed it.
“I’ll be back,” she told Clot.
Elisha pushed him gently aside and made her way through the crowd to go find Toby. He listened to her and quickly glanced at the sky. His face lit up.
The next thing she knew, Elisha was watching Toby head off. Had she done the right thing, by giving him this idea?
A few minutes later, she saw Toby appear at the top of the Egg behind the crowd. He got up, stood there for a moment, and took a deep breath. Apart from Elisha, nobody had noticed him.
He opened his arms and took a step into the void. Elisha closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Toby was walking in the sky.
Slowly, step by step, arms outstretched, he was walking toward the South Egg. The wind had dropped. A small cloud passed by in slow motion behind him, filling in the last scrap of blue sky.
A spider had spun its invisible thread between the Eggs, and a glint of sunshine had revealed it to Elisha: a long thread that linked the tops of the two towers. This was the only way of taking the hostage-holders by surprise.
Down below, all eyes were on the entrance to the Egg as everyone waited for Joe Mitch’s demand. Nobody saw the tightrope walker moving across the sky.
Little by little, Toby was making progress. His foot kept mysteriously finding the right position on the thread. It didn’t occur to him that he was all but walking on thin air. He felt as if he was following someone.
When the crowd became agitated, Elisha thought that Toby had been spotted.
But it was Joe Mitch. What had just emerged from the Egg bore no resemblance to a baby bird peeking out of its shell. More than ever, he looked like a grinning lump.
Mitch was gripping Professor Lolness by the collar, and he held a huge crossbow with four arrows in the other hand. He relished the sight of the gathered crowd. The fact that everybody here was at his mercy provided him with a kind of desperate pleasure.
For one last time, he could do something utterly evil, and Mitch fully intended to surpass himself. He had vowed he wouldn’t botch the atrocious crime he was about to commit. It would be his masterpiece, even better than building his empire on the murder of El Blue. At the time, it had been enough to accuse the Grass people and then present himself as the defender of the Tree against the threat they posed. Now he intended to top that.
Just as he was about to begin the blackmailing process, someone stepped forward from the first row of the crowd.
Joe Mitch grunted and raised one of his heavy eyelids. Who dared . . . ?
Elisha was on tiptoes, trying to understand what was going on. A man was heading toward Mitch.
The crowd clamored as it recognized Leo Blue. He was walking calmly toward his father’s murderer.
He didn’t look crazed. Nor did he look like he wanted to die. For the first time, a spark of joy was visible on his face. From now on, he would no longer have to fight against ghosts. His only enemy was directly in front of him.
After a few more steps, the carnage began. Joe Mitch loaded his crossbow. He aimed blurrily. An arrow landed in Leo’s thigh. But the young Blue didn’t stop; he just continued to push forward.
A second arrow pierced the top of his arm.
Elisha started shouting, but the roar of the crowd drowned out her voice. She was struggling to get through the front row.
Leo Blue didn’t slow his pace. He took the third arrow in his right side.
Joe Mitch was starting to puff up with fury. Drops of sweat, as big as beetle eggs, were dripping down his back.
Tiger appeared at the door to the Egg, and he was shouting, “Leo Blue! Throw down your weapons!”
Leo obeyed. He reached slowly for his boomerangs, which were secured on his back, and tossed them to either side of him.
“Halt!” roared Tiger.
But Leo had started walking again.
Mitch let go of Sim Lolness, who fell to the ground. He took a step forward and fired his last arrow.
This time Leo Blue paused briefly, winded. His left leg buckled. It looked as if he would fall in the middle of the footbridge, but it wasn’t a fall. It was a step. Another step toward the man who had destroyed his life, toward the person who had made a monster of him.
Joe Mitch threw away the crossbow. His hands were empty. He started retreating.
Suddenly, his cigarette butt reappeared in the corner of his mouth.
He was smiling.
Mitch had remembered that he still had one weapon left, a final weapon to stop Leo Blue: the ultimate weapon. He went over to Sim Lolness, who was writhing on the ground, and put his foot on his skull. He grinned like a snail — it was a slobbery smile that made him look soft in the head. His cigarette butt slid down his chin.
Leo Blue froze on the spot.
The slightest movement from him and Mitch would make the professor’s head explode.
Elisha had stopped trying to push forward. She was watching, just like everyone else. The rain began to fall. There was an eerie silence in the Nest.
And then the silence was interrupted by a spinning, whistling sound.
It all happened in a thousandth of a second.
The boomerangs that Leo had carelessly thrown to either side of him were both heading back at the same time, on the left and right. Having just completed a tour of the Egg, they now embedded themselves soundlessly in Joe Mitch’s skull.
His eyes rolled in their sockets a few times. His mouth started to twist. He subsided onto the footbridge, like a puddle of mud, next to Sim.
Leo fell too, with a smile on his lips.
Terrified, Tiger hid in the Egg. He grabbed Maya, holding her tightly against him. He waved his harpoon. They were alone in the middle of the shell when Sim appeared at the door and shouted, “Maya!”
The wife called out her husband’s name, but the spikes of the harpoon threatened to slit her throat.
Sim didn’t dare advance any farther.
A cry.
A shadow falling out of the sky.
There was a sound
like a piece of fruit going splat in the Egg.
Maya felt the spiked weapon slide against her skin; Tiger stiffened and then fell to the ground.
Toby had just leaped through the narrow opening at the top of the Egg. He had landed on his mother’s attacker, crushing his ribs. Tiger wasn’t breathing anymore.
Trembling, Maya rushed toward her son. Toby’s head had smashed against the ground. Sim ran to join them.
Together, Sim and Maya leaned over Toby. He wasn’t moving.
Maya spoke into his ear. Toby opened his eyes.
He looked at his parents. His lips moved. “You’re wonderful.”
Sim was too overwhelmed to say anything but his son’s name: “Toby.”
As he lay there on the ground, Toby opened his arms, and Sim and Maya snuggled up to him.
Elisha stayed for a long while, holding Leo Blue’s head in the rain. He was still conscious and had just enough strength left to smile.
“It’s over,” he was trying to say. “It’s over.”
Elisha shushed him.
“We’re going to take care of you. My mother knows how to cure everything. You’re going to live, Leo. Your father wanted you to live. Life starts now, Leo. Life is only just beginning. . . .”
Leo’s eyes clouded over; he couldn’t feel his wounds anymore. Perhaps something was beginning. The rain soaked through his clothes.
Elisha ran her fingers through Leo’s hair.
“My little sister,” he said.
As they carried Leo off to be attended to, it was time at last for Elisha to be reunited with Toby. She walked inside the Egg, her hair and face soaking wet, and saw him together with his parents.
Maya recognized her instantly and called her over, holding out her hands to Elisha. It wasn’t a reunion, because this was the first time they had met.
Sim and Maya left Toby and Elisha in the Egg, to the sound of the rain beating down.
Just as they were leaving, Sim glanced for the last time at Tiger’s lifeless body. They walked through the doorway.
“Life has some strange twists,” Sim remarked to Maya as he sheltered her under a black cloak. “Leo Blue has gotten rid of Joe Mitch, who killed his father. . . .”
Maya took him by the arm, finishing off his sentence, “And Toby has killed Tiger, the murderer of Nino Alamala.”
She suddenly recalled that far-off night when Sim had brought Toby to her as a little baby, wrapped in blue swaddling clothes.
“His father has just been killed in prison,” Sim had explained, holding out the child to Maya. “He hasn’t got anybody left. . . .”
Maya had pressed him to her heart. She had stroked the child’s hair.
“What’s his name?”
“It used to be Toby Alamala,” Sim had said. “But we can’t use that anymore.”
“Well, then,” Maya had whispered, “we’ll have to call him Toby Lolness.”
A summer and a winter went by. That was year 1. Everything had started again.
The Treetop Nest was forgotten about. An owl had moved in there the following spring. At dusk, its hooting could be heard as far down as the Low Branches.
The owl had laid five eggs and brought up its little ones.
The years went by. More owls nested there.
One day, one of the birds saw a man in a beret suddenly appear. The owl didn’t move. It was protecting its babies, who were sleeping beneath it. Sometimes a little ruffled head would appear between its feathers, but the owl would tuck it back under, never taking its eyes off the visitor.
Not that the visitor looked dangerous. He could barely climb up the steep branch that overhung the Nest.
“Piece of cake!” he said as he reached the top, exhausted. He greeted the owl with a nod and took off his beret.
A young man joined him. It was Toby. They sat down next to each other, on a twig.
“We’re disturbing them,” said Sim, indicating the enormous owl below them.
But Toby was looking somewhere else. His eyes were on the horizon, picturing the Prairie beyond.
“They say he’s down there. . . .” said Sim.
“Yes, Isha Lee is looking after him. Like a son.”
“She knows all the medical cures the Grass has to offer.”
“She’s brought him back from the brink.”
“Poor Leo.” Sim sighed.
“He’s getting better. People also say that there’s a girl with him, someone I know. . . .”
Sim smiled. A girl . . . That was still the best medicine in the world. He put his beret back on.
“Her name’s Ilaya,” said Toby.
Sim turned toward his son. He looked at him for a long time and wanted to talk, but gave up on the idea. . . .
“Were you going to say something, Father?” Toby prompted.
Sim was trying to come up with a sentence to replace the one he’d originally intended.
“No . . . Er . . . The butterfly hunter has stayed down there too?”
Toby confirmed this.
Arbayan . . . For months, he had pursued the two fire-raisers sent by Leo to burn down the Prairie. And so he had followed the route down the Trunk, through the roots and Grass, which was the very journey he hadn’t dared make years before, the great expedition that had cost the life of his friend El Blue.
His mission accomplished, Arbayan had stayed in the Prairie, not far from Isha.
“And what about that crazy old poet, the one you told your life story to, my son?”
“Pol Colleen?” asked Toby, smiling. “He’s started writing again. He’s nearly finished.”
“He’s got such a talent for hearing everything. When we were young, I used to call Colleen the Grasshopper!”
It was the professor who had discovered, a long time ago, that grasshoppers hid their ears in their front legs.
Toby slid onto the branch below and ran down it.
Sim stayed on alone. He lifted his beret to scratch his head. Once again, he’d failed to tell Toby what he wanted to.
He sighed. The owl wasn’t paying him any attention now. A gentle breeze stirred in the Treetop.
Toby reappeared.
He was holding the hand of a fragile and elegant woman. Sim Lolness got up and helped her to sit down.
“You shouldn’t have climbed, Maya.”
She patted his hand. “Don’t pretend you’re such a young man yourself, professor.”
She was surveying the beautiful landscape.
“The Tree is doing better,” she said.
And the Tree was indeed coming back to life. The lichen forests were slowly retreating. The Amens and Asseldors worked on them together.
The Crater was just an old scar that the bark was gradually covering over. Life had healed it.
Nobody knew that the Tree Stone lay there, six cubits under the bark. Toby had left it at the bottom of the Crater, and the new wood was burying it, year after year, far from the greed of people.
“The Tree is alive,” said Sim. “They believed me in the end. It’s been a long time now since anyone asked me for Balina’s Secret. . . .”
And now he came to think of it, Sim wondered what had happened to the articulated toy that had started all the fuss.
“Tell me, Toby. . . .”
Sim turned around. Toby had disappeared again.
Maya and Sim contemplated the Treetop, in the horizontal evening light. The tips of the branches formed an endless plateau that made you want to stride over it.
The moon was rising and the sun hadn’t yet gone to bed, giving a strange light.
“Did you talk to him?” asked Maya.
“No.”
“You’ve been wanting to tell him for years.” She smiled.
“I don’t know,” said Sim. “I’m not sure how to. . . .”
“He’s bound to know the story of Nino and Tess Alamala. You just have to talk to him. He has a right to know the names of his parents. . . .”
Toby was listening, just behind th
em. He hadn’t intended to surprise them, but as he climbed slowly back up in silence, he had heard everything.
Someone on his back, with her arm around his neck, whispered to him, “So now you know, my Toby. It’s what you always wanted. . . .”
Two memories from the past rose up violently inside him: the winter spent in the cave by the lake and the way painting had mysteriously helped him to survive; and then walking on the thread, between the Eggs, the day that Joe Mitch had died. Walking on a thread . . . He remembered what it had felt like. That feeling of following somebody.
The painter and the tightrope walker. Nino and Tess.
His parents.
They had never left him.
When a red-eyed Toby turned to Sim and Maya a few moments later, he was still carrying a young woman on his back.
Let’s not say she was pretty. She was better than pretty. Her hair was in two long braids. Sim and Maya made room for her.
“Piece of cake!” Toby said, laughing, even though he was out of breath.
“She can’t be that heavy,” said Maya.
“She’s not heavy at all,” Toby said. “It’s the other one. . . .”
Elisha held a tiny baby in her arms.
Pol Colleen
The Low Branches, Christmas, Year 6
Timothée de Fombelle is a much-admired French playwright whose plays have been translated and performed in Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Canada, and his native France. Toby Alone was his first novel.
François Place has illustrated many books and is also a well-known author in his own right.
Sarah Ardizzone (née Adams) received the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation for her work on Toby Alone. In addition to being an award-winning translator and a journalist, she is also the director of literary events for International PEN. She lives in London.
Timothee de Fombelle, Toby and the Secrets of the Tree
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