Toby Alone

  He just kept quiet.

  “I understand,” she whispered.

  Toby glanced at her, convinced he hadn’t said anything out loud. He paused. “I’ve never told you the story of why we came to the Low Branches.”

  “No one said you had to.”

  No, he didn’t have to. You never have to tell your friends about the big stuff in life. But the day you do, life tastes sweeter. So Toby gave it a go.

  “You’ve never met my parents, Elisha. You always turn back as soon as we’re near my house. But I know you’d get on with them. The way my mother tells stories, you’d think she was a book crammed with illustrations. And she can make pollen bread rolls too.

  “My father’s got very big hands. He calls me ‘my little snail.’ My head fits in his hands. And there’s something else – he’s a very great scientist.

  “I’m not saying that because he’s my father. I’m saying it because it’s true. My father has discovered things nobody dreamed of before. Paper, for instance; he as good as invented paper. Before, people used wood pulp and it kept on breaking. But if you just extract the cellulose from the wood of the Tree, you can make good paper. That’s one invention, but I could just as well tell you about the time he discovered that the lichen that grows on the bark is actually the marriage between an algae and a mushroom: two plants that decided to stick together forever. He also realised that the Tree was sweating, fifty litres a day! Then there are the secrets of the buds, of the flies and sky, of the rain and stars. He even gave me a star called Altair.”

  “Gave it to you?”

  Elisha was incredulous.

  “Yes. He showed it to me and told me it was mine. That’s all it takes … I can lend you Altair one night, if you like…” Toby explained.

  Elisha wanted to ask another question, but Toby was off again.

  “My father has researched everything and made loads of discoveries. People used to admire him for that. But there was one discovery he’d prefer never to have made. The one that changed our lives…”

  They were both staring out towards the far end of the lake, where the bark cliffs rose up. Toby took a deep breath and began his story.

  “It would have been better for my father if he hadn’t got out of bed that day – he should have given his neurones a lie-in. But as it was, he got up early, went into his workshop and started on his experiments.

  “I remember it was my birthday, and for the first time, he’d forgotten it. He stayed locked away all day long, and all night too. Not even his assistant, Tony Sireno, was allowed in.

  “My mother and I kept joking, ‘Is he making jam in there?’ Because there was this smell of burnt syrup. But Sireno didn’t seem to think it was funny at all. He didn’t like being kept in the dark when it came to his boss’s work.

  “The next morning, my father came out of his workshop. Sireno hadn’t turned up yet. My father had a big smile on his face. He sat down and drank a cup of strong black bark juice. He drummed his fingers on the table. He looked really happy, even if his eyelids were collapsing with tiredness like two crumpled pillows on his cheeks.

  “He took off his beret and glasses, scratched his head, and asked, ‘Can you hear that strange noise?’

  “My mother and I strained our ears. Yes, we could hear an unusual sound coming from his workshop. We went in – there was something moving on the parquet floor of his study. And I knew exactly what it was: Balina.

  “When my mother and I saw Balina walking all by himself, our eyes nearly popped out of our heads.”

  Elisha’s eyes were wide open now too.

  “I’ve never told you about Balina,” Toby went on. “He’s a miniature woodlouse I made when I was small. A piece of wood with several legs. That’s all.

  “That morning, Balina started walking across the room. He was carrying a black box and a tiny bottle on his back. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was the best birthday present ever.

  “Tony Sireno arrived… He fainted from shock my father caught him just in time. Sireno knew Balina was just a wooden toy; he’d mended one of his legs the year before. But that morning, he saw him walking on his own.

  “When Sireno came to, he heard the sound of Balina’s footsteps and fainted all over again. In the end, my mother tipped a bucket of water over his head.

  “I didn’t really understand how important this discovery was to begin with. If my father could make Balina walk for my birthday, he could also fix it so that my bee, which I’d made out of moss, would be able to fly next year – fantastic! But the professor and his assistant were giving each other odd looks. My father picked up Balina and put him in a cupboard, which he locked. I didn’t dare remind him that the woodlouse was my present. I think Sireno must have felt a mixture of disappointment as much as excitement on his way home, because he still didn’t know the secret magic that made Balina walk. Tony Sireno really didn’t like being kept in the dark.

  “Everything happened very quickly after that. A week later, Balina was presented to the Tree Council. The chamber was full to bursting. I’d gone with my mother and we sat right at the back, in the top gallery. My mother was very proud to be there. She gripped my hand. She’d put on her red hat with the veil. I was wearing a knitted tie because I’d turned seven the week before. And I had a black hat I was supposed to hold in my hands. I still can’t see the point of a hat you don’t wear.

  “People were waiting and chattering. I saw Sireno come in. He was up in the top balcony like us, but on the other side. He kept pushing people out of the way to get to the front. He was red, sweaty, and he didn’t look happy about being up there.

  “Down below, we saw my father make his way over to the platform and call for silence. He held a small box in his hands. Nobody said another word. He began to talk, and my mother gripped my hand even more tightly.

  “‘Whenever I come here, dear friends, I always talk to you about the Tree. I talk about how strong our Tree is. If I describe a bug, it’s because it sucks our Tree’s sap. If I talk about rainwater, it’s because it gives our Tree life. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Balina. Our Tree lies firmly at the heart of this discovery. But I won’t reveal the secret until next week.’

  “He looked up at the sky. The Council Chamber was built into a green woodpecker’s hole in the middle of a lateral branch. It had an open roof, and the criss-crossing of branches and sky above was plain to see, because we were very close to the Summit. A shaft of sunlight projected across the room, illuminating the dust particles in the air. Looking up into the light, my father spotted us right at the top. He gave a little twitch of his nostrils, which nobody would have noticed except us, it was our secret sign. The crowd was silent.

  “My father put the tiny box down, opened one of its sides, and everyone saw Balina get out. My birthday present was walking across the floor, with his little black box and bottle still fixed on his back. A quiver ran through the whole Chamber. People were amazed! I even saw one of the wise elders from the Grand Council start crying. How could my Balina have such an effect on people? Balina was rewriting the Tree’s history.

  “There was a standing ovation in the Council Chamber; a big cheer rose up that warmed my mother’s cheeks, made Tony Sireno go red with frustration and the leaves on the Tree flap all the way to the last branch.

  “The following week was a nightmare. Every day, twenty, thirty, sometimes fifty people would queue up outside our house to talk to my father. While they waited in the kitchen, we served them hot drinks. My mother smiled at each and every one, but she was worried about her husband because his face was slowly changing.

  “My father wasn’t talking any more. Or eating. Or sleeping.

  “In just five days, he looked thirty years older. And on the sixth day, none of the people waiting ever saw my father’s study door open. My mother apologised on her husband’s behalf, and asked them to go back home. Reluctantly, they accepted and went away.

  “I saw my mother disappear into the workshop.
I was busy creating a fly from chlorophyll paste, so my father could make it fly one day. My hands were full.

  “A few hours later, my mother came out. She looked calmer now. She just said, ‘Your father will speak to the Grand Council tomorrow.’

  “The next day, the Council Chamber was even more packed and buzzing than it had been the week before. This time, my father had given us permission to go down and join him, close to the stage. From there, you could see all the bigwigs in their fine clothes sitting in the stalls, and in the different balconies that rose up in tiers, the crowd of ordinary folk, who’d come for the show.

  “Everybody knew my father was going to explain Balina’s Secret. Nobody really expected to understand the complicated scientific explanation, but everyone just wanted to be there. There were hundreds of people who couldn’t get in, so they had to gather around the branch instead. You could see heads poking through the big hole in the roof. There was even someone hanging from a wooden trapeze above the crowd. The spectators kept laughing and throwing titbits up to him on his perch. He was thrilled to catch their attention.

  “I noticed that my father made his assistant come and sit next to us. Tony Sireno looked a bit less cross than he had the week before. He was wearing a ridiculously tight shirt and sitting bolt upright. For once he hadn’t been completely overlooked.

  “Then came the announcement that my father was about to speak. I can remember that exact moment. People were smiling at us, at me and my mother. It was the last time anyone smiled at us in the Treetop. Ever.”

  Toby glanced at Elisha. She gave him a smile. Luckily, in the Low Branches, there were smiles worth all the smiles in the Treetop put together. He faltered for a moment or two.

  By the time he was ready to go on with his story, his voice was strong again.

  7

  Hatred

  “My father stood up in the middle of the hushed crowd. I felt my mother’s hands go clammy. The way she was looking at her husband, Professor Lolness, it was as if there was something woven between them in the air. Something only I could see. An invisible rainbow.

  “I remember every word he said. We were expecting a rather dry technical explanation. I think everyone was surprised to hear my father using the same clear and simple words he always did.

  “‘You all know about sap. It is at the heart of your daily lives. Sometimes, you can even hear it bubbling away under your feet. You make cups and plates and furniture out of it, you extract sugar from it for sweets, you make glue out of it, tiles, toys, cement for your houses… The sap is always there, behind the bark. All you have to do is drill a small hole, just like the greenfly that feeds on it does. In fact, I’m going to let you in on a secret – I wish I’d been a greenfly. Sometimes, at night, I get dressed up in my greenfly costume, and I jump…’

  “The nervous laughter that had started among certain levels of the public spread throughout the Chamber. Only Joe Mitch, the big digging tycoon, who was spread over two chairs in the front row, carried on snoring. On either side of him, his sidekicks, Razor and Torn, were trying hard not to smile. My father signalled for silence again.

  “‘Let me get back to my stories. Stories about sap. Having never made it as a greenfly, I made my own small hole in the bark and took a look. What I saw was something that had never caught my interest before. I saw that the sap was travelling down. Nothing so extraordinary about that. The sap had been travelling down the evening before too; it had been travelling down a hundred years before, and next year, touch wood, it will travel down as well. But, being a short-sighted greenfly, I hadn’t really thought properly about it.’

  “He looked up and saw a spectator on a trapeze.

  “‘Listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you. Listen to my reasoning here. If Mr Clown, up there on his perch, falls off; if all the people craning their necks up in the balconies fall as well; if everyone jumps from the balconies, the result is a downwards movement. Which is to say, a movement from the top towards the bottom, just like the sap. I might even describe it as a pretty movement, if the young lady with the parasol were to jump as well…’

  “A girl in the third gallery blushed. A few boys whistled. My father smiled in my mother’s direction.

  “‘So, for a while, everything falls. But after an hour or two, when everyone’s piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Council Chamber, there won’t be anyone else left to fall. The movement will stop. The sap, on the other hand, just goes on falling and falling. It falls the length of the Tree, and it never stops. So I asked the question you’re all asking right now: where does it come from? It can’t be created from nothing up in the Summit. Where does the falling sap come from?’

  “This question met with a perplexed silence.

  “‘Like you, I couldn’t find the answer straightaway. At first, I thought the leaves at the Summit drank the rainwater, which then fell back down in the form of sap. But I discovered that the leaves in fact repelled moisture. Perhaps you remember my speech about how the Tree sweats?’

  “Smiles lit up certain faces. I think everybody could remember the presentation in which my father had imitated a leaf transpiring, by making the sound effects of a simmering saucepan.

  “‘I came to the following conclusion: since it’s not falling out of the sky, the sap has to rise somewhere in order to travel down again below the bark. But where does it rise? My idea was to go and see what was happening deep down inside the branch and the Trunk.’

  “He paused for an instant.

  “‘You know that, right from the outset, I’ve been opposed to the great tunnel that is currently being hollowed out of the Main Trunk. It is, in my view, a project that is both ridiculous and irresponsible. But since the tunnel exists, I went to see it. When I got there, I was told that work had been interrupted. What a surprise! Nobody could work there any more. At a certain depth, enormous quantities of liquid rose up from the ground, making it impossible to carry on digging. There must have been fifty weevils working on that building site, fifty weevils specially reared for the project. These are extremely greedy beasts. Since the closure of the building site, they no longer had the wood from the tunnel to munch on, and nobody knew what to give them to eat. They’d bred these fifty giant creepy-crawlies but they couldn’t feed them any more! I’ve rarely seen such a horrific spectacle as those starving weevils in their cages. I’ll end my digression by repeating my view that our world is walking on its head.’

  “Mutterings were heard. Nobody had imagined the tunnel could ever be criticised. The proof of this was in its name: the Eco-Tunnel of Progress.

  “All eyes were on Joe Mitch. Big Joe Mitch woke up with a jolt, rolled his gloopy eyes and bared his teeth. Flanking him were Razor and Torn, scrawny and cutting as a piece of paper. Neither of them knew how to react. Joe Mitch is a big-time breeder of weevils, and he’s behind all the recent digging projects. Criticising the tunnel means criticising Joe, and that can be very dangerous.

  “My father gave him a small bow and a polite smile, then he picked up with his speech again.

  “‘I put on a hard hat and went inside the tunnel. When I got to the area that had been flooded, I saw exactly what I was hoping to see. The liquid was gushing up from the ground in great spurts. That’s right, it was travelling from the bottom towards the top. It wasn’t water, but it wasn’t sap as we know it either. I looked closely at the tunnel walls: the liquid was rising at speed up through the wood fibre. According to my calculations, it was rising every second by the height of my son. That works out at roughly five metres per hour. I put a little bit of it into a bottle and went back home.’

  “This time, my father paused for a while. Everyone was hanging on his next words. They’d almost forgotten about Balina’s adventures. We were captivated by the mystery of the Tree.

  “‘I went back home and washed my hands.’

  “There was an outcry from the public, eager to know what happened next.

  “‘I kissed my wife
and my son, Toby.’

  “More complaining. My father looked annoyed that people were being so impatient.

  “‘It’s very important to kiss your wife and your son. That’s not irrelevant, it’s the heart of everything.’

  “Back to silence. I puffed out my chest under my tie and twizzled my hat in my hands. My father’s voice filled the room again.

  “‘So, I set to work. I quickly realised I’d just found the point where the sap rises before it falls. In the wood of the Tree, in what is known as sapwood, the crude sap rises. That’s where the Tree’s energy is. The life of the Tree. It gets transformed by the leaves, the air, and the light, before coming back down as a different kind of sap that flows under the bark. But it originates in the rising sap, the crude sap that I had just discovered in the heart of the Tree.’

  “The public was starting to get a better idea of what he was on about. My father carried on, punctuating his sentences with silences.

  “‘My only goal is to prove that the Tree is alive. That the sap is its blood. That we are passengers in this living world. This has always been the objective of my research, as you know. By demonstrating the energy contained in the sap, I could reach my goal. So I invented a small mechanism that can produce energy from crude sap, much as a leaf on the Tree does. It’s something very sim ple that fits into a small black box. To make it, all I had to do was look at a bud, a leaf. I put my magic box on Balina’s back, together with a small barrel of crude sap, and I connected this up to Balina’s feet. That’s all. Balina started walking.’

  “From where I was sitting, on my bench, I could tell that the crowd was disappointed. The professor still hadn’t explained the real secret of his invention. My mother’s hand, holding mine, became nervous, cold and damp. When I look back on it now, I think she knew what was going to happen.

  “My father carried on: ‘This week, hundreds of people have come to my home. They all wanted to present me with a possible use for my invention. They were all very smart, and some were very well-meaning too. They talked to me about systems for baking bread more quickly, for travelling faster, for generating heat and cold, for cutting, digging, transporting, communicating and mixing things; they even talked about thought systems. The Balina Method was going to change our lives.’