Moon Boy touched the bark for the first time.
“It trembles,” he said.
Toby put his forehead against it. He could already feel the flow of sap that was fighting for survival in the depths of the Tree.
One evening, the trio stopped underneath a root that formed an arch. There, hidden in the grass, another boat was moored. They walked around it. The rain hadn’t risen to this level since the fat springtime droplets. Jalam touched the side of the boat, whose grass hull had dried out and was starting to crack in places.
“This boat was made among our people,” said the guide.
“Who by?” asked Moon Boy.
“I don’t know. Its passengers must have abandoned it. I hope nothing happened to them.”
Just then, Toby saw a blue linen rope tied to a blade of grass. He undid it and showed it to the other two.
“It’s as I feared,” said Jalam.
“Mika and Liev . . .” whispered Moon Boy.
Toby wound the linen around his wrist.
Mika and Liev were two close friends, about the same age as Toby. They had set out in search of wood at the start of spring. The Grass people had tried to discourage them, but Mika had already made up his mind.
He would look after Liev; he was used to it.
You might wonder why a strapping young man like Liev needed looking after. But it only took a short time to realize that there was something different about him.
Liev had suffered from oats disease, which targets the five senses, one after the other. At ten, he had gone deaf. A year later, he had lost his sight. By a strange twist, the disease had stopped there, leaving him his three other senses: touch, smell, and taste.
“Without the blue rope,” said Toby, “I don’t know how they would have been able to manage.”
This rope linked the two friends. It allowed Mika to direct Liev as well as to communicate with him by tugging on the rope.
“They must be dead,” said Jalam.
Luckily, even wise old guides with a great deal of experience are sometimes wrong.
Somewhere in the Tree, Mika and Liev were still alive.
In the hollow of the valley, in the middle of the highest mountain range, Toby caught his breath. He had escaped those on his trail, but he needed to stay on his guard.
He was alone now and had been since the previous day. Toby had separated from his two traveling companions because the season was too far advanced. Jalam and Moon Boy needed to head for home before they got caught by the winter. Toby promised to find out what had happened to Liev, Mika, and all the others.
The three companions had said their good-byes in the manner of the Grass people. Which is to say, without much show of emotion.
“Good-bye.”
“Be brave.”
“See you soon, Little Tree.”
They hadn’t even shaken hands or touched foreheads. Then Jalam and Moon Boy had rushed down the slope.
Toby had to stop himself from running after them and giving Moon Boy a fierce hug. He would have liked to kiss Jalam’s hand, to have called out to them to think of him, not to forget him. He longed to tell them what an impression life in the Grass had made on him.
Later, Toby frequently regretted not having done this.
In his two months of traveling, despite all the trials, Toby hadn’t really felt as if he’d left the Prairie. The challenge remained the same: to live or survive in spite of nature, or rather, with nature.
But since the previous night, the rules of the game had changed.
Hunters had appeared on the scene.
Toby quickly realized that these hunters weren’t after him. They wanted to capture the Grass people. They had chased Toby as if he was just another Grass person risking the Trunk. And it would be fair to say that, in just a few years, Toby had started to look a lot like the men of the Grass.
Toby surveyed the countryside around him: the lake, the green valley, the mountains rising up behind, and the outline of the gigantic Trunk above them, in the light of the gray morning.
It was a long journey ahead. But something up there was drawing him to it, sucking him in like a black hole: the great shadow of the Tree and the labyrinth of branches where he was needed. Toby set out at a trot, leaving the valley behind him.
All day long, without stopping for a moment, he climbed walls, jumped over streams, crossed mountain passes, skirted around bark craters as chiseled as lace, ran on high plateaus, dropped into valleys, and climbed up the other side.
He didn’t feel tired. He decided to keep on running the following night, sprinting over patches of low-lying moss, ducking under waterfalls that sparkled in the clear night. He felt invincible. Nothing could stop him.
By dawn, indestructible Toby had used up all his reserves and found himself in a small green valley.
A small valley where a wood louse had come to drink, just as he did every morning. The wood louse noticed Toby and was thoroughly taken aback.
Well, really! Hadn’t he already witnessed this scene the day before?
Panting, Toby looked at the lake, then the wood louse, then the valley. His eyes started rolling in their sockets. He looked at the lake again, then the wood louse, then the valley. He collapsed to the ground.
High mountains are not to be undertaken lightly. Toby had set out impulsively, his blood whipped up by his boundless energy.
He hadn’t stopped to think.
He had worn himself out for twenty-four hours, only to find himself back at exactly the same spot. Mountains are traps. You can’t treat them like parks, crossing them with your nose in the air.
If he kept going like this, archaeologists excavating the ridges of a small bark valley in a hundred years’ time might find a peashooter and a few bones, in memory of Toby.
So he went back to the beginning. Sleep.
When he woke up that evening, Toby’s head was back on his shoulders and he had put aside his thirst for revenge and the drunken attitude of a hero. At last he could think.
That was when he saw an object left behind on the shores of the lake.
Toby bent down to pick it up. It was a black fur hat lined with worn silk, which a hunter must have forgotten, and it provided an answer.
The hunters. He just had to follow them. Winter was setting in, and they would certainly be heading home.
Toby’s job was to hunt the men who were hunting him.
He threw the hat into the air. It landed on his back, catching the top of the peashooter, and stayed there. Toby walked around the lake, finding the tracks of the convoy right away, and began following them.
The next day, in the valley, the wood louse waited for Toby to come, but he didn’t see anything. The wood louse was almost disappointed. It’s funny how quickly you can feel attached to something.
“Hey, it’s snowing.”
“Yes, it’s snowing. Winter’s starting now.”
“You don’t have your hat?”
“My hat?”
“Your hat! You don’t have your hat.”
“No, I don’t have my hat.”
Two hunters were guarding one of the feather sleds loaded with crates. The troops had finished crossing the mountain range. Tomorrow they would begin the assault on the vertical Trunk. They were going to take the Ring Road, a route that spiraled up the Trunk.
A third man stepped out of the shadow. It was a hunter with a harpoon.
“It’s me, Tiger.”
“Can’t you sleep?”
“No. I’ve been thinking about that one we let get away.”
“Don’t worry. The boss’ll still be happy.”
“It’s not that. . . .”
“What is it, then, Tiger?”
“I don’t like leaving leftovers. It’s messy!”
The two others started laughing loudly, but they were half terrified of Tiger. The snow was starting to fall heavily. Tiger knocked on one of the guard’s heads.
“Rat-a-tat-tat! No hat?”
 
; “No, I don’t have my hat.”
“Where is it?”
“I lost it.”
Tiger stood up. He went over to the crates and started whacking them with his harpoon handle.
“No sleeping, you inside!” he roared. “No sleeping. You should be thinking long and hard about your uncle Mitch, who’ll be taking care of you in a few days.”
The three hunters laughed together. The one who’d lost his hat added, “Things might be calm for you in your crates at the moment . . . but the good life will be over soon enough!”
At the same time as a fine film of snow was covering his body, Toby felt his heart being covered with frost. He was stretched out in the dark, just three paces from the hunters. He hadn’t missed a single word of their murky conversation.
An hour earlier, Toby had moved in closer to steal a few warm clothes. He had found a thick jacket and a pair of boots that one of the men had taken off in order to sleep. He was heading off furtively when he heard the guards talking.
He closed in. Good news. The convoy was transporting Grass people, and there were nine in total. Everybody who’d disappeared since last spring, no doubt. When he heard Joe Mitch’s name and how aggressive Tiger was, Toby pushed his face against the bark to keep himself from shouting out.
What was going on in the heads of these peaceful people when they heard the hunters banging on their wooden cages and shouting? And even if they did escape, how could they contend with the winter, the snow, the hugeness of the Tree?
Poor oppressed people!
“We’re going to crush you,” Tiger continued, standing on the crates. “We’re going to crush you, one by one.”
Then Tiger stopped. He felt something on his left foot. A small hand had poked out of a hole in the crate and grabbed hold of his ankle. Tiger struggled to break free. Another hand escaped from another crate and grabbed his right foot. He roared like an animal and went sprawling on top of the crates.
It was a nightmare. There were hands gripping Tiger’s arms, hair, and belt. He kept crying out in horror, seeing himself stuck like a suction cup to the pile of crates. The other hunters had woken up and were coming over to try and wrench him free. They pulled him; they shook him; they banged on the Grass people’s crates.
When all the hands let go at the same time, the hunters who were tugging on Tiger’s clothes went flying, and, along with Tiger, they all ended up crashing into a bark wall. A block of snow became dislodged and covered them.
Toby grinned, wide-eyed. How could he have forgotten how brave and strong his friends were? A poor defenseless people? Poor powerless victims? No! They didn’t need Toby’s pity. They were noble fighters who had confronted far worse opponents than Tiger and his sidekicks.
They were going to put up a fight.
Toby retreated and disappeared into the night.
An ambush. That’s what he needed to set up: an ambush to free the prisoners. It didn’t matter that it was snowy and cold. If they got away, they’d manage to get home alive. At least winter is a predictable enemy.
Toby ran through the snow. The Ring Road was narrow but well worn. There was no risk of getting lost. He wanted to get ahead to put his plan in place. In the leather jacket and boots, pants cut off at the knees, and his bumblebee fur hat, with the peashooter slung across his back, he was quite a sight. He braved the wind and snow on this highway carved around the Trunk.
The Ring Road had been a major undertaking in recent years. It coiled snail shell-like around the Trunk, all the way to the uppermost branches, ensuring that the captured Grass people could be driven swiftly to the top. As a matter of fact, they were the people who had been used to dig it in the first place. The building site lingered in common memory as being particularly lethal. Every day, a few Grass people, suspended parallel to the Trunk to dig the Ring Road, fell off.
As he walked along the cliff road, it looked to Toby as if the snow was giving off a soft light. It was a clear, crisp night, and his feet weren’t yet sinking into the white carpet.
After climbing for two hours, Toby stopped at an awkward bend in the road. A block of bark had become dislodged and was jammed between two branches five millimeters above the road. The snow was getting heavier now. It might only take one kick for the chunk of bark to fall and block the road.
Toby climbed the wall to look down on the Ring Road. His goal was to split the convoy in two. He’d release the block just in front of the feather sleds carrying his imprisoned friends. He’d have enough time to free them.
With one foot, he brushed against the chunk of bark hanging in the balance. It moved a little. Perfect. He simply needed his trap to hold out until morning and not melt or topple over before then.
As if the snow had heard his wish, it started falling less heavily.
Toby settled himself just above the action spot. Huddled in a ball, his arms around his knees, he waited.
His first thoughts were of Moon Boy and Jalam. It was reassuring to know they were in the Prairie. Now that the snow had come, they would make themselves boards and the return journey would be quick. One long slide back home.
The Prairie was perfect terrain for snowboarding.
Last winter, Toby had set out with Moon Boy and Ilaya for eight days in the snow. They’d gone to fish for damselfly eggs in the frozen marshes.
It was a happy memory. The sun had shone strongly on the snow-covered grass. Boards strapped to their feet, they had glided through a white world. After spending a large part of the winter shut up in their ears of wheat, they suddenly found themselves in a landscape of infinite purity.
Moon Boy hooted as he sped down the slopes with his arms in the air. They left board marks in the powdery snow. Ilaya smiled at Toby, who waited for her when the climb back up was too steep.
Winter fishing involves building big fires on the ice. A hole forms and the larvae rise to the surface of the warmed water. Damselflies are small dragonflies with green and black bodies; their larvae remain underwater for years. The aim is to catch the youngest larvae, which are succulent and sweet.
Toby could remember moments together with Ilaya, as they crouched on the ice. They had stuck their boards into the snow, a little way off. Moon Boy was keeping an eye on the fire, on the other side of the marsh. Ilaya would say to her brother, “Leave us.”
If Toby had looked Ilaya in the eye, he would have understood what she meant. Ilaya was in love, and Toby should have realized this. Why had he closed his eyes to it?
Thinking about it now, Toby was forced to admit that perhaps he had led her on to try and recall that forgotten feeling. To find with Ilaya what he had tried to sweep away forever: Elisha’s beautiful eyes and her fierce bravery.
Moon Boy would sneak up on them, grab Ilaya’s foot, and laugh as he made her slip on the ice. She would shout angrily.
From a distance, they would have looked like three specks of dust and a tiny fire.
Toby was woken by muffled voices. He stood up abruptly, feeling a bit lost. Where was he? His nose was cold and his hair icy. Suddenly, he remembered his plan to ambush the convoy.
“Here they are. . . .”
The troops were still a few centimeters from the bend. Toby eased himself into the spot from which he could set his trap.
The first hunters passed by. They walked in silence. The rest followed, dragging their feet. The Ring Road was narrow. They were hugging the Trunk. At last, Toby saw the sleds being pulled by the men. The crates were there. Toby waited for the right moment before giving the block of bark a hefty kick.
Nothing.
Nothing happened.
The bark hadn’t budged.
He gave a second kick. Again, nothing. He only had a moment to play with. He started jumping frantically, to no avail.
Toby climbed onto the block of bark to watch the convoy pass by. He had failed. He fell to his knees, unaware of the danger that threatened his perch.
Enormous snowflakes were starting to fall again.
The crates were about to disappear around the corner, when Toby realized the airholes had been blocked. A traumatized Tiger had given the order to prevent the previous night’s fiasco from happening again. The nine prisoners were having trouble breathing.
Toby noticed a finger that had managed to slip between the slats of the smallest crate. It pained him to see. But he didn’t know the worst.
That hand, a tiny, frozen hand sticking out of the wooden crate, belonged to Moon Boy. He wasn’t down below in the Prairie, snowboarding, slicing through the air on snowy slopes. He was directly below, huddled in a crate, worrying about the health of old Jalam in the crate next to his.
“How are you holding up?”
The reply took a while.
“I’m up.”
Just then, Moon Boy heard the dull sound of an avalanche reverberating in the distance. The sled stopped. Feet pounded over the snow as someone ran to see what had happened.
The man reappeared, breathless.
“It’s on that bend we just came around. We were lucky. A big chunk of bark has collapsed under the snow.”
“Is the road blocked?”
“No. It rolled over the precipice.”
In the old days, when Seldor Farm woke up under a blanket of snow, the girls of the household would go out at dawn, each carried by one of their brothers. Lola and Lila would put up a fight, but the boys were too strong and they couldn’t escape. With the girls in their arms, the boys waded into the snow until it reached their thighs, their bodies steaming in the cold light of morning.
A bit farther out, they would toss the girls in their nightgowns into the thick whiteness. The sisters disappeared almost completely, shrieking and refusing to laugh.
In the old days, when Seldor Farm woke up under a blanket of snow, their mother would come out of the house, extremely upset to see such barbaric customs still being enacted. She would bring hot towels and try to rub her daughters dry while scolding her sons.
Snow baths make young girls grow into wise women. So claimed three generations of Asseldors.
This generation had fun with a tradition invented by an eccentric grandfather, but Mrs. Asseldor didn’t join in the laughter.