“The crowd applauded. Yes, the Balina Method was going to change their lives. They were ready to carry my father in triumph.
“But he went on ‘The only problem is that I like this life of ours, and don’t especially want to change it. All I want to do is prove the Tree is a living organism. Is it right that I give everyone access to crude sap so that they can build machines that fold newspapers in four, or machines that think on their behalf?’
“No one moved a muscle. The atmosphere was oppressive. My father went very pale. You could tell he was about to get to the core of his speech.
“‘Yesterday, I spoke with my wife. I have decided not to reveal how my little black box works. I believe crude sap belongs to our Tree. I believe the Tree lives thanks to that sap. To use its blood would be to put our world in peril. Everybody is free to look for what I found. I won’t stop anyone trying to discover Balina’s Secret. Once again, all you have to do is look closely at a flower or a bud to understand how it works. But I’d rather say no more, so that one day my son’s son will still be able to lean against a flower or a bud.’
“I was pinned to my bench. I didn’t really understand why he was talking about my son, when I’d only just celebrated my seventh birthday. I wasn’t sure what son he was talking about, but I thought perhaps this fib – making everyone believe I had a son – helped him in his explanation. Like when he told everybody he had a greenfly fancy-dress costume, even though I hadn’t seen him wear a single insect outfit, not once.
“As for the rest of what he said, I think I understood everything and it was brilliant. Seeing as there was this big silence, I thought I’d get the clapping going. But I soon realised I was the only one whose arms were moving in that silence. In the end, I put my hands back on my knees.
“It came from right at the back, almost in slow-motion. It went splat on my father’s face: a honey fritter.
“I don’t remember much after that. Everybody was seized by a kind of madness. People were yelling, throwing things at the stage, insulting my father, pushing me towards the front, shouting in my mother’s ears. What I do remember is that Tony Sireno, my father’s assistant, had subtly distanced himself from us.
“My father, on the other hand, rushed over to our bench. He protected us with his long arms, and we made for the exit. By this time, and egged-on by Joe Mitch’s lot, even the bearded wise old men up at the front were shouting things I’d have been punished for saying; they behaved so badly. The insults were getting nastier, and the first blows were raining down on us.
“I began to wonder why my father had pretended I had a son, if it made people as mad as this?
“When my mother was hit on the shoulder, my father took off his glasses and rolled them up in his beret. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him before. He went bright red, his arms and legs flailing in every direction. The crowd pulled back when they heard Professor Lolness shouting. We managed to make our exit and get back home to The Tufts. We locked the door. The whole house had been ransacked. The furniture was upside down and the crockery was lying in pieces on the floor. My father held us close to him.
“‘I think they must have found out that I don’t have a son,’ I blurted out.
“My father laughed through his tears. ‘You might have a son one day. That’s what I meant, Toby. I hope you’ll have a son or a daughter when you grow up.’
“He looked so sad, I didn’t want to dash his hopes.
“We stayed locked up at home for several days. My mother had asked her mother, Mrs Alnorell, to put us up for a few weeks in one of her Summit properties.
“My grandmother wrote us a little note back, on a fancy card:
Naturally, my dear child,
in your situation,
please be rest assured
it is out of the question.
“The card was signed: Radegonde Alnorell.
“My father made lots of jokes about her first name. But my mother just cried. She kept thinking about what had happened to us, repeating, ‘It’ll blow over.’
“But it didn’t blow over.
“It was impossible to go out without being attacked by objects or insults. I’d started to collect the rotten mushrooms and all the different kinds of missiles that landed in front of our door as soon as we opened it.
“One day, my father was summoned by the Grand Council. Off he went. My mother and I stayed at home. When he came back, he was walking in his socks, his face white and crumpled, like a cloud. There were peelings on the shoulders of his best grey jacket.
“I realised that the Grand Council had taken his shoes from him. This was the most serious rebuke he could receive. They remove the shoes of criminals and child-snatchers. My father had been punished for ‘dissimulation of capital information.’ I had no idea what those words meant.
“He told my mother we were going somewhere very far away. The Tufts was being seized. In exchange, they would give us a small plot in the Land of Onessa, in the Low Branches. That evening I went to find my friend Leo Blue. Since the start of the Balina business, we’d met up secretly every day, in a dry bud. This time, we spent two days and three nights in there. Leo Blue was my friend, and we had made a pact together. I didn’t want to leave. It was my father who found us in the end. Leo wouldn’t stop clinging to my arm.
“It all happened so quickly. Our world was crumbling…”
Elisha was such a good listener, you could have followed every chapter of the story in the pupils of her eyes. She’d had no idea about this adventure. Vigo Tornett had simply told her that the Lolness family weren’t living there by choice. And the Asseldors, who lived right at the top of the Low Branches, were always sighing and referring to “that poor Lolness family!”
“If you want to sleep at ours tonight, my mother’s got an enormous cricket drumstick that the Olmechs gave us. We’re going to grill it, in honey sauce.”
An offer like that to a little boy in pain might not sound like much, but it was exactly what Toby needed. Elisha knew Toby well enough by now. In fact, she knew him so well that she added, “I’m going to help my mother get it ready. Why don’t you go for a swim before joining us?”
And she stroked his hair, which was something she never normally did.
She disappeared into the woods. Toby was all on his own now. But the lake where they’d first met spread out in front of him, and a few moments later he was floating on his back, looking up at the canopy of branches above him. The leaves were light green and huge. Just one of them would have sheltered a hundred people from the rain. Toby could feel the waves splashing against his legs. The lake water seemed a bit salty. But he wasn’t crying any more.
8
Nils Amen
It is time to leave behind those memories – some happy, some not so happy – and return to the present, to the long nights Toby spent as a fugitive, criss-crossing the Tree on his way down to the Low Branches.
Toby was taking the same path and heading in the same direction as he had done years before, when he was with his parents and the two grumpy porters on their way to the Low Branches. But he was alone this time, unless you count the hundreds of men and ferocious soldier ants on his trail. It would take five or six nights to get from the Treetop back to that wild country, to feel safe at last and find friends who could help him.
Toby had already walked for two whole nights, and the third one should have been easier. He had managed to reach the Main Trunk, and was making his way down through lichen forests, where every sprout or shoot was three times his height. The bark was becoming mountainous and less inhabited, with gorges and deep canyons. Lichen forests tumbled away from the vertiginous landscape.
The troop of hunters had decided to avoid this region. They’d taken less precipitous branches. All Toby came across was the odd hamlet of woodcutters and a few huts belonging to trappers.
He happened to pass close by a plantation that belonged to his grandmother. Even though the old lady lived up in the Summit, Mrs Aln
orell’s properties extended all the way down to the relatively Low Branches. This estate was called Amen Woods, after the plantation workers who lived there. Toby knew the woodcutter’s son; they’d played together when he was lit tle.
Toby couldn’t decide whether or not to knock on the cabin door. He wondered if they knew about the big hunt for him. Was there still anyone left in the Tree who might be able to help him?
Hunger eventually made him knock quietly three times. Nobody answered. He knocked again, but the cabin was silent. Could he still trust a friend he had shared a summer with a long time ago?
Toby pushed the door ajar. The house was dark, but the remains of a fire, at the back of the fireplace, meant he could see the edges of the room. It was a modest cabin, home to the woodcutter Norz Amen and his son, Nils.
Toby had never been to these remote parts before, they were too much of a diversion. But six years earlier, during the summer before the Balina business, father and son Amen had come up to work on a Summit estate where Toby was spending the month of July. They were based in a moss forest. The two children hit it off straightaway. And they would definitely have seen each other again, if the Lolness family hadn’t been exiled for six years.
Toby took a step towards the table.
“Nils…” he called out.
Toby’s eyes had become accustomed to the dark now, and he could just make out that the room was empty. A cloth bag was hanging on a chair to the left. Toby went over to it. In the bag was a big chunk of bread, a few pieces of cured meat and some biscuits. It didn’t take Toby long to make up his mind. He took the shoulder bag and, before disappearing into the night, wrote three words on a scrap of paper left behind on the table.
Thank you.
Toby.
Those three words would be enough for the trap to close in around Toby again.
A few minutes after he’d gone, four men and two boys who looked about thirteen or fourteen entered the wood cabin.
“I just want to get something to eat.”
“Hurry up, Nils, you clot head.”
“The bag’s ready, Dad…”
The boy who had just spoken was near to the table. He lit a candle with a brand. Nils couldn’t believe his eyes.
“The bag’s not there any more.”
“Are you sure you packed it up?”
“I left it on the chair.”
Another man urged them to get a move on.
“I’ve got enough, we’ll share mine. Hurry up, they’re waiting for us.”
“But … I know I left it here,” Nils insisted.
“Drop it, you nincompoop. We’ve got to keep an eye on the wood, even if we’re pretty sure the Lolness kid won’t be coming this way.”
The others were already outside. Nils had stayed by the chair, deep in thought. In the end, he moved as if to follow the group. But when he got to the door, he realised he hadn’t blown out the candle. Nils went back over to the table, took a deep breath…
And stopped in his tracks.
Toby’s note was lit up in front of him by the flickering candle.
For a few seconds, his heart hung in the balance. Yes, Toby had just come this way. Should he raise the alarm? In a flash, Nils could see his friend’s face again, and everything that had brought them together during their time in the Summit.
These were undoubtedly Nils’s happiest memories, no doubt about it. The unfamiliar pleasure of having someone to talk to. Just being able to talk.
But instantly he thought of his father calling him a “big girl’s blouse” in front of everybody: according to him, Nils was too floppy and dreamy for a woodcutter’s son. And he imagined how proud his father would be if he discovered the fugitive’s trail. He, yes Nils, whose father had so little faith in him, would become the hero of the whole Tree.
So Nils called out. His father’s bulky figure appeared. He saw Toby’s message, elbowed Nils out of the way, and roared: “Why didn’t you say so sooner? You big girl’s blouse!”
His father bounded outside, waving the note and shouting, “He’s not far! We’ll get him!”
Huddled in the corner of the room, Nils was sobbing his heart out; his whimpers were weak and painful as he hit his hand against his head.
“Sorry… Sorry… Oh, no … Toby…”
A draught snuffed out the candle.
Toby might have got an hour’s head start, but everybody now knew that he was following the axis of the Main Trunk. The tiny fugitive didn’t realise he’d been pinpointed.
He decided to cut across towards the humid northern slopes, where his experience of the Low Branches would give him an advantage. He wasn’t afraid of the slippery zones, which he attacked barefoot, with his shoes knotted to his belt, Elisha-style.
He’d eaten a portion of his rations and was feeling refreshed. Toby silently thanked Nils for the meal he had unwittingly offered him.
A bit higher in the branches, Nils stood up, pale-faced and desperate.
The new hunters gathered in a clearing where they were given their instructions. Razor, Joe Mitch’s right-hand man, addressed the gathering. The fugitive was a millimetre and a half tall, thirteen years old and had a small horizontal scar on his cheek. He had to be caught alive. A bounty of one million golden coins had just been promised to the person who captured him.
When they learned the size of the bounty, the woodcutters looked at one another. They would have to work in the lichen forests for a hundred years to earn half that amount.
“And what’s he done, this Toby?” enquired a bold woodcutter with very short white hair.
“Crime against the Tree,” said Razor bluntly.
His answer was met with murmurings. Nobody knew what it meant, but it must be very serious if so much effort and money was at stake.
The woodcutters set off in pairs in every direction. These peaceful men of the woods suddenly felt violent, stirred up by the promise of the reward. Some carried their work axe, others a hunting spear.
Meanwhile, the men who had come down from the Treetop to hunt Toby were resting in another clearing, a bit higher in the lichen woods. They were fast asleep, and deafening snores could be heard rising up from the hundreds of sleeping bodies.
The horrible Torn, Joe Mitch’s left-hand man, had been assigned the task of setting them back on the chase. He went over to a small group that was mounting guard around a fire.
“The woodcutters have just set out…”
“Really?”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” Torn confirmed.
“Are they looking for the kid?”
“And they’ll catch him too, even though you’re the ones who’ve worn him out all the way from the top. You’d better set off before they find him. One million. Get a whiff of that! Get a move on, boys!”
One man agreed. Then a second. The gold was already glowing before their tired eyes. Word spread. Tired as they were, they got up, one after another, and set off again. Torn had won.
A competition between the two groups had begun.
The hunters from the Treetop didn’t think twice about setting their ants on any woodcutters who got in their way. The woodcutters, meanwhile, used their knowledge of the forest to lay traps and sabotage shortcuts. It was all-out war.
This rivalry, combined with Toby’s nimbleness, meant he should have reached the Low Branches ahead of his pursuers.
But he could only move under the cover of night, while the others hardly ever stopped.
The woodcutters were particularly hardy, because they were used to criss-crossing their forest, as well as climbing the bark mountains that form the regular landscape of the Main Trunk. They were also fresher. They’d only been on the chase for a night and a day, which is why they were sure they would be the first to find Toby.
So when news reached them in the middle of the second night, it was greeted with anger and surprise.
“The hunt’s over!”
“What?”
“They’ve got him.” br />
The announcement had been made by a woodcutter with grey eyes.
“Who got him?” the two others wanted to know.
“The men from the Treetop, they caught him after a three-hour chase. He looks rough…”
“How did they find him?”
“It was dusk. He was walking at the bottom of a bark valley. He’d left the lichen bushes and didn’t realise they were trailing him. There was still a little bit of daylight left. A group of men was walking on the ridgeway. They spotted the kid at about six o’clock in the evening.”
“What about us? How did he slip through our fingers?”
“Well, what we do know is he gave them a run for their money,” the man smiled. “I wouldn’t like to have been in their shoes. He kept them going up and down those peaks for three hours. When they finally cornered him, they brought him down into the big clearing. They were so fed up, they dragged him on the end of a rope for hours. The kid’s in a really bad way. They’re saying he looks like an open sore.”
“The instructions were to find him alive, but not necessarily kicking!”
Nils’s father laughed as he pointed this out. Norz Amen had lost his wife when Nils was born, and he had never worked out how to behave towards his son. People thought Norz was nasty. Actually, he was just a big clumsy woodcutter who was very unhappy. But that didn’t stop him being beastly as he guffawed dirtily and kept saying, “Oh yes! They’ve made mincemeat of that Lolness boy!”
Norz Amen swung his axe onto his shoulder and set off towards the big clearing with his two colleagues. They had several hours on foot ahead of them. The rumour was that Joe Mitch, fat Joe Mitch himself, was going to present the reward to the four hunters who had found Toby. The ceremony would take place in the clearing, close to Norz’s house.