Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

  The two men had learned to love each other.

  Nils felt a draft. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked at the big map of the Tree again. His father would be in a region at the top, celebrating Christmas with his friends.

  Norz knew how to live.

  Nils picked up a bowl and a paintbrush.

  “There’s work to be done.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I like working.”

  It took Nils a few seconds to realize that someone had just spoken behind him. If he had turned around, he would have seen a young woodcutter his own age, who had entered his office as if by magic. But he kept on looking at his map, drawing his green paintbrush over a vast region.

  “I’m woodcutter 505,” said the boy.

  “I know,” replied Nils. “Aren’t you celebrating Christmas with your family?”

  “No,” said woodcutter 505. “You neither?”

  “No. What do you want?”

  “I wanted to say thank you and to ask for your help.”

  “Ask for the help first; you can thank me afterward.”

  “You already helped me, a long time ago.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You risked your life for me.”

  Nils Amen stopped painting. That . . . well, that had only happened once. Was it possible that —“Toby?”

  “Yes, Nils.”

  Now, at last, he turned around.

  Nils took in Toby’s outfit, then burst into tears and fell into his friend’s arms. They hugged, looking at each other every once in a while before immediately giving each other another hug. They couldn’t stop laughing and shedding silent tears. So many months had gone by, so many years. . . . Each of them knew what he owed to the other.

  Finally Toby said, “Now I understand why your woodcutters like you so much, if this is how you greet them all.”

  Nils smiled and pushed Toby away. “Be quiet, 505.”

  He made his friend sit in front of him.

  “You’re wearing my men’s uniform.”

  “They were looking for woodcutters. I wanted to see you. I got hired.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Two days, if that.”

  “Tell me,” Nils went on. “They think you’re dead here. You must have something to say.”

  “Yes. I’m hungry.”

  Nils pulled on a rope that was hanging from the window. A basket filled with cold meats and sweet pastries appeared. Toby dived in with his hands and bit into a syrupy waffle.

  Years earlier in a woodcutter’s hut not far from here, while he was being chased by hundreds of men, Toby had enjoyed another meal thanks to Nils Amen. The menu had improved since then. . . .

  “Who prepares this for you?” asked Toby, his mouth full.

  “Friends.”

  “This tastes like the homemade food I grew up with.”

  Toby was thinking of the delicacies from Seldor Farm.

  “Where’s your home now?” Nils asked seriously.

  Toby stopped chewing. He hadn’t been able to answer that question for a long time.

  “Tell me about the Tree,” said Toby, changing the subject.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Pretend I’ve come from somewhere else.”

  Nils looked at his friend. He certainly did come from somewhere else, that much was clear.

  Toby’s appearance had changed a bit. His hair was longer and wilder. His shoulders didn’t yet fill his new woodcutter’s jacket, but his actions were powerful.

  Nils started to tell the story of being reconciled with his father, the advance of the lichen forests, his small business taking off. . . . He said all this modestly, taking little credit and insisting a lot of it was luck. He explained the organization of his huge forests, how they were divided into different sections, about the woodcutters’ villages and the calm prosperity of his line of work.

  Toby listened carefully and watched Nils moving his hand like a butterfly over the map of the Tree, explaining the names of the main regions, the types of lichen, the difficulty of cutting wood in areas of bearded lichen, with its long trailing strands.

  “So there you go,” Nils finished. “It’s not so bad. Life takes care of me.”

  Toby was silent for a while. He wiped the crumbs from his hands and fixed his eyes on Nils. “And what about the rest?”

  “The rest?”

  “Yes, the rest. The rest of the Tree. When you stick your nose outside your own woods . . .”

  “Ah, yes. The rest of the tree. I don’t think it’s very good.”

  “You don’t think . . . ?”

  “I’ve . . . I’ve got a lot of work, Toby. I can’t take care of everything.”

  Nils stood up. He went over to a small cupboard and took out a bottle.

  “So you don’t know anything?” asked Toby.

  “I know some things.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “I know that the Tree isn’t well. I know that your parents are in the fat lunatic’s Crater. I know that the other dangerous madman controls the Treetop. I know that people everywhere are suffering because the world belongs to the reckless. I know all this, Toby, but I’m not the guardian of the Tree. I take care of those around me, and that’s already a lot.”

  He served a gray-colored brandy in two little wooden goblets.

  “It’s eau de Tree from Usnay. It lifts the spirits.”

  Toby gently picked up the conversation again. “I know about your courage, Nils. It’s thanks to you that I’m alive. But what I don’t understand is how you can talk to me for so long about the Tree without mentioning the Grass people, or saying the names of Joe Mitch and Leo Blue. . . .”

  “I take care of those around me,” repeated Nils. “What about you? Where have you been? What have you done for the Tree?”

  The hut was bathed in silence. All they could hear was the sound of small clumps of snow occasionally sliding off a lichen bough and falling to the ground. The two friends looked at the floor.

  “Sorry,” said Toby after a while. “I’m criticizing you for something I criticize in myself.”

  Nils looked like he was on the verge of saying something, but he checked himself and silence fell again. Eventually, he explained, “Everything you’ve just told me is what I think about every night. I don’t sleep. I think about all that’s wrong in this world. I think about your parents. I only saw your mother once, in the Treetop when we were little. For three years now, I’ve thought about her every evening. Every evening! But I lack the strength, Toby. . . . Where do we start?”

  “That’s the only question that matters,” Toby told Nils. “Where do we start?”

  “You look exhausted.”

  “The hotels haven’t been up to snuff these past few months,” said Toby, stretching.

  “I may have something better to offer you.”

  Nils showed Toby the way. They climbed down a rope ladder and walked for an hour through the dark woods, snaking their way between moss creepers.

  Toby noticed Nils’s tricks to avoid leaving any trace. There was a secret path in the ivy with hidden routes and creeping hallways under the bark.

  Later, they went into an area of sticky lichen that grew its leaves as high as a man.

  “Are you taking me to the end of the world?” asked Toby, bending over.

  “Yes. We’re nearly there.”

  The forest was a tangle. Nobody seemed to have explored these branches for at least a century, and the bushes closed up again behind them.

  They crossed a suspension bridge over a bark abyss, and then headed back once more into the woods. Suddenly, a white ball fell from the lichen arch overhead. Toby jumped backward, but Nils didn’t have time to move out of the way. The ball covered his head and shoulders, and he shook himself to get rid of it. Toby thought it was a lump of snow.

  Sure enough, his friend exclaimed, “Snow!”

  But hands and feet had just poked out of this white bu
ndle, as well as a head with two eyes.

  “Snow, let go!” Nils Amen called out again.

  He caught the living ball by its feet and threw it into the real snow.

  It was a little girl, three years old, who was microscopically tiny and wearing a cape of thick white silk. Hopping mad, she made a cloud of snow fly up behind her and disappeared.

  When the cloud of white dust settled again, Toby wondered if he hadn’t been dreaming. But Nils confirmed what he’d seen. “That’s Snow. The terror of Amen Woods.”

  A few moments later, they saw her at the door to a house covered entirely by lichen bushes. Snow was sitting on the back of a young woman. Both of them watched the approaching visitors.

  “The little one told me you were on your way with company.”

  The woman didn’t recognize Toby at first, but he exclaimed, “Lola!”

  He hadn’t forgotten Lola Asseldor’s beautiful face.

  “Toby?” she asked, as if talking to a ghost.

  She touched his head to make sure he was really there, in the flesh, in front of her. Snow couldn’t take her eyes off the new arrival.

  Just then, Lex Olmech appeared at the door. Little Snow went from her mother’s back to her father’s shoulders. Toby embraced the whole family.

  Lola, the beauty from the Ladies’ Pond! And Lex, the miller’s son from the Low Branches! Memories of Seldor Farm, of the Olmechs’ Mill, and of the prison at Tumble jangled inside Toby’s head. He looked at tall Lex, his wife, their little Snow, and then at Nils Amen.

  “He’s the one who lets us stay here,” said Lex, pointing to Nils. “Nobody knows this house even exists. My parents live with us. And this is our daughter. . . .”

  Toby noticed two shadows inside the house. He went in and greeted Mr. and Mrs. Olmech.

  A long time ago, this couple had betrayed him. One look at their faces was enough to see they weren’t the same people today. Mrs. Olmech knelt at Toby’s feet.

  “My little one. My little one . . .”

  Toby tried to make her get up, but it took the combined strength of the three other men to get her on her feet. She kept on saying, “My dear little one . . .”

  Everybody was laughing tenderly to see her so emotional.

  “Mom, don’t let the Christmas pudding burn!” said Lex, knowing this was the best way of getting his mother to disappear into the kitchen.

  Toby surveyed the table in all its finery. It was that magic Asseldor touch, capable of putting on a feast at the end of the world. And in the great tradition of Seldor, places had been set for the two visitors, even though they hadn’t been expected.

  Toby glanced at Nils. Earlier on, to counter Toby’s accusations, his friend could have defended himself by explaining about this family he was hiding in the depths of his woods. . . . He hadn’t said anything.

  “I take care of those around me,” Nils had simply repeated. His heart must be as big as a banquet table to hold all those people.

  It’s hard to say what makes a party unforgettable. An unforgettable party is a mystery that can’t be manufactured.

  But among this small group of people hidden deep in Amen Woods, there were a thousand ingredients to turn a meal into something magical: parents, grandparents, a little girl, a friend whom everyone had given up for lost, good bread, absent friends and family in their hearts, a reconciliation, a fire in the hearth, somebody who’d been expecting to spend Christmas all on his own, snow outside the window, the fragile emotion of happiness, Lola’s beauty, wine that slipped down with ease, shared memories, and black pudding.

  It’s amazing what you can fit inside a small room that’s not even big enough for a ladybug to stand up in.

  Toby now understood where the basket of provisions which Nils had shared with him came from. During the meal, they told him how the rest of the Asseldor family had stayed on at the farm to protect Mano. So Toby found out what Seldor had turned into and what had become of the whole Tree.

  The people from the Heights and the Branches were living in dread and poverty. They were grouped together in the former Welcome Estates, which were protected by ditches and walls against dangers that didn’t exist. Close to Joe Mitch’s Crater, long lines of wretched people came to beg for a scrap of sawdust to make into revolting soup.

  Pol Colleen hadn’t been lying. The branches were in an alarming state. The timer was going backward, and the countdown had begun.

  After putting a stethoscope to the Tree, any reasonable doctor would have said, “This is looking serious. You have to stop everything. Rest for fifty years; watch the clouds go by. And then come back and see me after that.”

  When Toby found himself alone in front of Lola — the others had gone out to watch Snow ice-skating on a frozen stream — he dared to say, “I wanted to ask you . . .”

  Lola smiled. She knew what he wanted to find out about. She didn’t even wait for the end of the question.

  “He came to get her. . . .” she said, looking sadly at Toby. “We were all at Seldor. Leo Blue came to get her. . . .”

  Outside, they could hear little Snow laughing.

  “Elisha and her mother were living with us,” Lola continued. “Mitch’s men had destroyed their worm beetles. So they came to seek refuge at Seldor. One day . . . One day, Leo Blue turned up with three soldiers to take her. He had only met Elisha once on the slope of the Grim Branch, an hour from the farm. There was nothing we could do. The next day, her mother, Isha, left too, unaccompanied. We don’t know where she went to hide. . . .”

  “But what about Elisha? Where is she now?” asked Toby.

  “Lex says she’s in the Treetop. There’s a lot of talk about the Nest. . . .”

  “The Nest?”

  “Leo Blue lives in the Nest. She’s almost certainly up there with him.”

  Toby glanced over at the door. Nils was standing there. He had heard everything. He knew Elisha by name, as the girl who Blue had found in the Low Branches. But until now he hadn’t known that anything linked her to Toby. . . .

  Lola and Nils exchanged a faint smile when they saw their friend’s shiny eyes. Toby was the only one in the room who didn’t realize he was in love with Elisha.

  At the end of this special day, Nils headed off alone. He arrived at the foot of his hut during the night. When he opened the door, he saw traces of snow on the floor. Someone had been here while he was away.

  Nils lit a lamp. There was a man in his armchair, sitting in front of the big map of the lichen forests, with his back to Nils.

  “Where have you been?” asked the man.

  “It’s Christmas,” answered Nils.

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today.”

  “Ah . . .”

  “I was with some friends,” Nils went on.

  “My aunt never liked Christmas. I used to live with her when I was little, so I didn’t often celebrate it. But I know that woodcutters like to keep traditions alive. . . .”

  The man turned toward Nils. It was Leo Blue.

  “I was passing by,” he said. “So I climbed up.”

  Nils looked at him without moving. Leo’s winter outfit had been specially commissioned by him and was made from the black fur of a hornet’s belly. The window was battered by snow, and the wind let out high-pitched shrieks around the hut. It was as if whining children were throwing snowballs against the windowpane.

  “I told you not to come here,” whispered Nils Amen. “We mustn’t be seen together.”

  They shook hands.

  Toby soon settled into the house with Lola and Lex. For the time being, even if he’d wanted to leave, he’d have had to take Snow with him, because the little girl clung to his neck and wouldn’t let go under any circumstances.

  Toby was happy in this refuge, lost in the woods. He liked the warmth of this family around him and knew that he could sleep here when he wasn’t at work.

  His job as woodcutter 505 remained key to his plans. He didn’t want to disappear into the woods f
orever. He knew that it was only by spending time with the people in the Tree that he would be able to build on his plan.

  Elisha was breathing in the sweet smell of pancakes. She could see the colorful drapes and mattresses, the curves of her home in the Low Branches. She was alone, except for a shaft of light that was being cast through the open door to form a pool on the floor.

  Suddenly, fine particles of golden dust flew and spun around the beam of light, as a scorching whirlwind from outside spiraled around the walls. It’s Toby, she thought, trying to walk over to the door, but the wind was too strong for her.

  Then she felt a hand touching her arm.

  Elisha woke up in a flash. Without opening her eyes, she rolled up into a ball, fast as a spider under attack. She balanced on her heels and suddenly uncoiled, springing half a millimeter off the ground and crashing down on her assailant, forcing his arm behind his back.

  “Not teeth, miss. Don’t smash my teeth.”

  Elisha finally opened her eyes.

  “It’s me; it’s Clot. Don’t smash my teeth — they’re new.”

  “Clot?”

  “I was bringing you pancakes.”

  The smell of pancakes . . . that’s what had inspired her dream.

  “Sorry, Clot. And thank you for the pancakes.”

  “My pleasure, miss, but it is I who is greasily yours.”

  Good old Clot. His flowery language wasn’t always as accurate as it could be.

  “I thought . . . What time is it?” stammered Elisha.

  “Midnight.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “Might you be in a position to let go of my arm, if I’m not abusing you?”

  Elisha laughed and let go. She hadn’t even noticed that Clot had spent the first part of their conversation with his forehead touching the ground. She took a pancake and folded it in four. They were chunky pancakes, as thick and dry as a bad book, but Elisha wanted to pay homage to her guard’s culinary skills.

  Elisha had a soft spot for this soldier, having been reunited with him on her arrival in the Nest. Clot had immediately recognized the girl who had caused him so many problems in Tumble prison. But he was also grateful to her for introducing him to the joys of language and refinement. So he didn’t let on to anybody that he already knew her.