The Trees Read online

  Adrien sighed. With no Zach to teach him otherwise, he supposed he was stuck being Adrien Thomas. Only now did he acknowledge what a fantasy his plan had been all along. No doubt he would have chopped his own arms and legs off before he managed to learn axework from Zach. No doubt he would have trapped himself in the first rabbit snare he built, and been caught and cooked and eaten by the rabbits to boot. Yet it was not, deep down, woodcraft that he had truly sought to learn here. It was how to be a man who wasn’t weak, and who was sure of his place in the world.

  He took from his pocket his photo of Michelle and marvelled at her smile and her wedding dress and the flowers in her hair. He fell asleep sitting against a tree, slumped with the photo in one hand and his glass tipping sideways in the other, the last of the cider dribbling out across his jeans.

  It was an overcast night, cool and dank, but Adrien slept from one end of it to the other. In the morning the dew came and put droplets on every spiderweb and leaf, and on the lenses of his glasses. He woke to bright sunlight and the realisation that he was damp from top to bottom. After standing with a stiff groan he stamped about to get warm, and it was just as he was doing so that he noticed the concrete edge of an outbuilding.

  He was some distance from the lodge here, but he vaguely recalled Hannah mentioning a garage Zach had never used. Adrien didn’t remember whether or not she’d said she’d looked through it, so he picked his way closer to investigate.

  Old leaves of ivy cloaked the building’s frame, each like the battered metal of some knife from ancient times. It must have been years since that wiry parasite had sealed access via the garage door, but the trees had forced a new entry through one of the side walls. Over this a sheet of tarpaulin had been pegged, and weighed down at the bottom with stones. That had been done recently, and Adrien stopped in his tracks and stewed for a minute, wondering whether he dared investigate further. He watched a fly drone towards the tarpaulin, then another. Fat, inkdrop flies such as they had found on Zach’s body. They landed on the edge of the plastic and raced each other over its hem to reach the garage interior.

  He was about to turn back and find Hiroko when it occurred to him that there was no way that the pegs and stones could have been placed from inside. Whoever had sealed this opening had done it from out here, and that fact gave him courage to approach. He paused at the tarpaulin to listen for sounds of occupation, but all that he heard was the occasional stop–start whirr of a bluebottle’s wings.

  He removed enough pegs to peel back the plastic covers. The smell that rushed out yanked him back from the opening and made him stagger a few paces, expecting to vomit. A putrid stench such as the one that had greeted them when they’d first arrived at the lodge, although this was a different kind of putrescence. This had a salted, wooden quality like a butcher’s workbench. Covering his nose with his sleeve, he again flapped back the tarpaulin and looked inside.

  A pig had been lashed by its hind legs to a branch that grew across the garage ceiling. The animal’s carcass looked pale as a salamander in the concrete dark, its entrails removed and all of its ribs welcoming the intruding daylight. Whoever had butchered it had done a haphazard job. Stringy tufts of flesh dangled from its wounds, where the meat had been hacked and not cleaved. The pig hung low enough for its snout to nuzzle the garage floor, and its head was bent at an awkward angle that showed off the crimson indent near its ear. It had been shot before it had been strung up there.

  Back in the lodge, Adrien broke the news to Hannah as gently as he could. She said she wanted to see the pig at once, and charged off with him scurrying after, trying to advise her against it. She ripped the tarpaulin away entirely and stood in the opening with her arms folded, as if oblivious to the stench on the air.

  After a silent minute, she said, ‘Zach didn’t keep the pigs for their meat. If he’d wanted to slaughter one he’d have taken it to an abattoir, or at least done it properly if he’d had to himself.’

  She turned back for the lodge, and Adrien followed with one last gaze at the pig. It wasn’t the animal’s fate that disturbed him, even if he found that plentifully grim. It was the bullet wound in its cranium. It was whoever had fired it, who was out there somewhere still, in the woods.

  3

  Slingshot

  When Hiroko found Seb, not far from the grove where they’d tasted the birch sap, she exaggerated the heaviness of her steps. Carter had taught her to walk in silence, but she didn’t want to scare Seb by appearing unannounced. When he still didn’t hear, she cleared her throat extra loud. He turned to look and it was obvious he’d been crying.

  Seb dragged his palm across his eyes. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said, ‘I was just stopping here to think. Just, you know . . . thinking. What are you up to?’

  ‘Hunting,’ said Hiroko.

  ‘Oh. Oh yeah, of course.’

  Seb was sitting cross-legged on an embankment, where rabbits had corked the soil. The trees grew with their arms horizontal, as if held out for balance on the burrowed earth.

  ‘Have you got a minute?’ asked Seb, in a quieter voice than before.

  She took a seat there alongside him.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, gripping his hands together hard, ‘if I’m really honest, I never really liked Zach. And now I just feel so guilty.’

  Hiroko didn’t say anything.

  ‘I was dreading coming to live with him, because we only ever did outdoors stuff when we came here, but now I’d give anything to set up our lives here. Isn’t that stupid? Only now that he’s gone do I miss him like crazy.’ Seb rubbed his sleeve across his face. His eyelids were bright red. ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to unload on you like this. But I haven’t got anybody else to talk to. Mum’s got enough on her plate, and Adrien . . . well, he’s Adrien.’

  After a silent minute, a rabbit jumped out of its burrow and surveyed the pair of them, all heartbeat and twitching nose. Then it plunged down a different tunnel.

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ said Hiroko, ‘if it makes you feel any better.’

  Seb looked at her with confusion. ‘What wouldn’t?’

  ‘Setting up your lives here. It wouldn’t have worked out like you wanted.’

  ‘What makes you so sure about that?’

  She stared at the shadowed circles of the rabbit holes. ‘Carter used to say that our lives are just fish out of water. We can’t make them do what we want to. It’s a wonder if we even manage to keep hold of them for long.’

  Seb frowned. ‘Who’s Carter?’

  ‘He was my friend.’

  ‘Hm. Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never tried to hold a fish.’

  She laughed. ‘You should try it some time.’

  ‘Zach used to fish a lot. His stream is somewhere near here, I think.’

  Hiroko wondered whether Seb had it in him to knock dead a fish when it had been reeled in on the line. ‘You might enjoy it,’ she said. ‘It gives you time to think. And . . . you know . . . you can put a fish back in the river once you’ve caught it.’

  ‘I think I’d struggle to catch it in the first place,’ said Seb. ‘Even with a rod and a net or whatever. Everything I know about is . . . is the Internet. Is computers and stuff. Things that have vanished in a puff of smoke.’

  ‘Carter said the Internet was only ever smoke and mirrors, anyway.’

  Seb smiled. ‘Carter knew a lot about the Internet, did he?’

  Hiroko crossed her arms. ‘He knew about the things that mattered.’

  Seb nodded, and reached beneath his collar to pull out his memory stick. ‘This is the stuff that mattered to me. Most of it, anyway.’

  ‘On there?’ She stared at the thumb-sized strip of plastic. ‘But that’s just a piece of junk now.’

  Seb laughed. ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  He turned the memory stick between finger and thumb. ‘Of course I know it’s nothing without electricity, but this stick is like . . . an old
film reel I don’t have a way to play any more.’

  She unfolded her arms. ‘Can I see it?’

  Seb looked surprised. ‘Er . . . sure.’

  He handed it to her and it was warm from hanging against his chest. Hiroko held it up to the light and swung it like a pendulum. ‘What’s on it?’

  ‘A website.’

  ‘What’s on the website?’

  ‘Just ideas. A project of mine. I suppose you could call it a scrapbook.’

  Hiroko handed it back to him. ‘You’d have been better making an actual scrapbook.’

  Seb retied it around his neck. ‘Are you seriously telling me you’ve never had a keepsake?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You ought to give it a go.’

  ‘No. They’re a bad idea. An unnecessary attachment.’

  ‘Did Carter say that?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘They help you remember things.’

  ‘Help you be more hurt when they’re gone.’

  Seb watched her for a moment. She looked away at the nearest rabbit hole, and realised that she had folded her arms again.

  ‘You told us your dad was an asshole,’ said Seb. ‘What did he do to be called that?’

  ‘I also told you that I don’t like talking about it.’

  Two rabbits hopped from the burrow and crouched together in the scattered light. Hiroko wondered if they were always that frightened, even in their shadowy places beneath the earth. Then, out of nowhere, she remembered hunching in a ditch in a forest in California, her father alongside her. Both of them were trembling with fear and exhilaration, for a bear was loping towards them through the gorgeous cedar forest.

  She forced the memory out of her mind. There would be no more days such as that, even were she with her father in Japan. They would be stuck in the metropolis and there would be no use crying about it. She had two pictures of her father in her mind. In the first he crouched with her in that ditch in California. In the second he was suited and groomed and gazing out of his apartment window, high up in the clouds in Tokyo, with Saori making tea in the background and their brand-new puppy playing on the floor.

  ‘Thank you, by the way,’ said Seb after a moment, ‘for stopping here and speaking to me. This is, like, the longest you’ve talked with any of us.’

  Hiroko’s smile came and went in a flash.

  ‘And, um . . . thank you for burying Zach. Adrien would have been of no use, without you. Thank you, well . . . thank you for just being such a badass.’

  ‘I’m just a country girl with a slingshot.’

  ‘I’m just a techie kid with a useless memory stick. We don’t have to beat ourselves up about it.’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘Do you really think I’m a badass?’

  Seb grinned. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t feel very badass.’

  ‘You’re the baddest I’ve ever met.’ He nodded towards her slingshot. ‘Now my turn. Can I take a look?’

  Hiroko unclipped it from her belt and tossed it to him. He tried to catch it but missed, and it landed in his lap.

  ‘Carter could shoot cans out of the air with his,’ she said. ‘He could make them fly off in any direction you wanted.’

  ‘And Carter was . . . your dad’s friend, did you say?’

  ‘In America. My dad kind of hired him, to be a sort of babysitter. This was back when my dad was different.’

  Seb held up the slingshot and practised stretching back the rubber. Hiroko didn’t reckon he’d have half the strength needed to fire it properly, and when he let go of the rubber it fell out of line without any twang. He threw it back to her and it was an overthrow but she caught it anyway, one-handed.

  Another pair of rabbits hopped out of their burrow, twitching their noses left and right.

  ‘Could you hit one of those, do you reckon?’ whispered Seb. ‘I mean . . . enough so we could eat it.’

  Hiroko fitted a stone, pulled back the rubber, took a half-second to choose her target and then fired. The rabbit was dead before the breath had even caught in Seb’s throat. The stone had clipped its skull back at a right angle and there was blood across its muzzle. Its companion bolted down the nearest hole, a white tail vanishing into shadow.

  Seb had covered his mouth with his hands. ‘You . . . you . . .’ he spluttered, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Didn’t mean what?’

  ‘Didn’t mean actually kill it! Jesus! It was a hypothetical question! And you just . . . you just . . .’

  She scowled at him. ‘It was only a rabbit. Get over yourself.’

  ‘It was a living thing!’

  ‘And now it’s not.’ She folded her arms, suddenly feeling like she used to at school: the stupid one who answered questions wrong. That was the reason why she didn’t do much talking. Talking was deceit, one of the games people played to keep themselves from looking the world in the eye.

  ‘Hey,’ Seb said, after a moment, ‘hey, I’m sorry. I . . . I think I just . . . only said what my mum would do. On instinct, or something. I don’t know if I actually meant that myself.’

  She conceded a nod. Although she would never admit it, often she didn’t know what she meant either.

  ‘I’m just not used to things being shot, unless it happens in a game or a movie or something.’

  Hiroko didn’t play games and she didn’t watch movies.

  ‘It’s not the same,’ said Seb, standing up, approaching the dead rabbit. ‘And yet it’s kind of just as simple.’

  He stood over it with his hands in his pockets. He looked lost in his thoughts, and Hiroko wished she could tell what they were. He seemed different from the other kids her age, and she almost reckoned she could trust him. Even if, when he said shoot a rabbit, he really meant don’t shoot one.

  ‘That was an amazing shot, by the way. I reckon your friend Carter would be proud of you.’

  She bit her lip. ‘It’s nothing. Anything you do a lot of, you get good at.’

  Seb crouched over the carcass. ‘I’m liking this,’ he said. ‘Talking to you.’ He lifted the rabbit gingerly by the hind legs and, when he stood up, it dangled from his grip with blood dripping from its mouth. ‘Would you teach me how to skin it? How to . . . gut it and stuff.’

  She was surprised. ‘Do you mean actually teach you? If I cut it open, are you going to freak out again?’

  He laughed. ‘I said I was sorry, didn’t I?’

  ‘It’s messy. You’ll get blood all over you.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll be really bad at it.’

  She smiled. ‘Alright. But I don’t do anything fancy once it’s done. I don’t put herbs on it or anything like that.’

  ‘Maybe I can help you with that. Mum’s drilled herbs into me like times tables. I reckon I could concoct a mean dressing.’

  Hiroko flapped a hand dismissively. ‘Better if it’s plain. Carter said things should taste like they really taste.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Seb. ‘Maybe I can surprise you.’

  4

  Gunman

  Hannah said she wanted to get the lodge in order, so they spent the following day cleaning and tidying, chopping back branches, sponging the curtains and rugs where snails had crawled up them, and scraping the droppings of mice and wood voles off the floors. Then, in the afternoon, Adrien found her cross-legged on Zach’s bed, playing with her hair in the manner of a girl. Alongside her were clothes: a narrow-shouldered suit jacket and a set of briefs.

  ‘These aren’t his,’ she said, an edge of fear on her voice.

  ‘Maybe a friend of his left them here?’ Adrien hoped it was true more than he considered it likely.

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Did I tell you I found hairs on a pillow? Blonde ones.’

  ‘A girlfriend, maybe?’

  ‘No. He’d have told me if he had one. And besides, these are a man’s clothes.’

  ‘Perhaps a colleague? A friend you didn’t know about?’

  ‘No, Adrie
n.’ She covered her face for a moment. ‘This isn’t right. Somebody’s slept at least a few nights here. Recently. Probably since Zach died.’

  He stared at the narrow suit jacket. ‘Let’s lock the back door this evening, and barricade the front one. For what good it can all do.’

  Adrien slept badly that night. The forest was alive with nocturnal noises. The thud of wood on wood, the call of a bird and the parting of leaves as something scampered through. When the light of the morning arrived it did nothing to settle his nerves, for in a half-dream as he woke he fancied that the sun had broken like a shattered lamp, and had rained sharp glass onto the forest beneath.

  In the evening they cooked outside on a campfire, using Zach’s store of timber for fuel, but they ate inside at the table, which to Hannah’s obvious distress had five chairs set around it. It was during their meal, when Adrien was in the middle of saying something, that Hiroko put down her knife and fork and looked up like a watchdog, alert. At once the others heard the footsteps, and no sooner had Adrien done so than he realised he had not locked the door as he had promised. The footsteps crunched along the outer wall of the lodge, heavy but cautious. Hiroko picked up her knife and slid out of her chair, creeping around the table with her eyes fixed on the unlocked door. Hannah took a deep, nervy breath and got up after her, taking her knife with less confidence. Seb followed last, obviously terrified, but Adrien remained in place, gripping his spoon as if it were a crucifix. When the footsteps paused, so too, it seemed, did the beating of their hearts. Nobody dared to breathe. Then came a noise of dead leaves crunching under the heavy step of whoever was out there. The wind fled through the eaves of the lodge. Hiroko seized the door handle, steeled herself, then flung it open.

  For a moment they all stood in stiff poses, Hiroko poised with her knife and Hannah and Seb bunched up behind her. Then Hiroko lowered her weapon and Seb laughed. Sensing the danger was over, Adrien climbed out from his hiding place (he had slid beneath the table) and hurried over to join them. A pig was out there, snuffling along the foundations of the lodge, a natural grin on its whiskery lips. It had ears as big as handkerchiefs, which kept flopping over its eyes. It snorted merrily to see them, as if expecting a handful of nuts, then when none were forthcoming grunted in disappointment and shambled off along the perimeter of the lodge. They lost sight of it behind the trees, and the evening shadows.