Authors: Frances Hardinge
Faith reached into the pocket reticule and pulled out her father’s pistol, then drew back the hammer so that it was ready to fire. She let out a long breath and managed to hold the lantern
steady in her other hand.
Some ten feet away, amid the vine-tangle, the foliage shivered again. This time she knew it was no mistake, and amid the cat’s cradle of stems could make out a dark blot. It was taller
than her, and in the shape of a human figure.
There was nowhere to run. Standing there with her lantern, she was obvious. Whoever they were, they had seen her, and if they moved again she would lose track of them.
Faith pointed the pistol directly at the blot, her heart hammering like a hummingbird’s wing.
‘I can see you! And I know you can see me! Come forward – slowly – or I fire!’ She had no idea whether she had it in her to pull the trigger, even if the other leaped at
her, but somehow she kept the terror out of her voice.
The dark shape stirred, swayed slightly. For a moment she thought it would duck back into the shadows and be lost to her. Then it began to approach, one arm raised to push stray vines out of the
way. At last it was close enough for the dim golden light to fall upon its face.
The intruder was Paul Clay.
Paul Clay, Faith’s ally and enemy. She was overwhelmed by fear, confusion and distrust. He had discovered her lair, and seen more than she could allow anybody to see.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, still aiming the pistol.
‘Don’t point that at me!’ he protested, blinking in the dim lantern-light. ‘What are
you
doing here? Why is everything . . .’ He looked around at the
night-black jungle.
‘How did you find us?’
‘Us?’ Paul looked nonplussed.
‘Me – and the plant.’
‘Is it yours?’ He stared up at the vines. ‘What
is
it? Where did it come from? And will you put down that pistol or not?’
Faith said nothing, nor did her pistol hand waver.
‘Then you can stay here with your death-ivy,’ growled Paul, backing away a step. ‘I hope you have a good evening together.’
‘I can’t let you leave.’ Faith knew her arm was shaking, despite the lightness of the pistol.
‘What?’ Paul’s angry look gave way to one of alarm.
‘Somebody is looking for this plant,’ said Faith. ‘And they are willing to kill whoever has it. And that killer might be you.’
‘Is that a joke?’ Paul gaped at her. ‘You asked for my help!’
‘I had to trust somebody!’ Faith could see that he was standing with his spare arm crooked, as if cradling something bulky. ‘Perhaps I chose the wrong person. There are two
killers. They might be lovers or accomplices . . . or they might be a father and son.’
‘Hey!’ shouted Paul. ‘My father never hurt anybody in his life!’
‘How do I know that? What do I know about any of you? Your father was allowed on the excavation site – he could have sabotaged the chain of the mining basket.’ As she spoke,
Faith recalled something else. ‘And the day we arrived, he came to meet us. The carriage was too heavy, so he suggested leaving the box with this plant behind – and offered to stay with
it and keep watch. He would have been left alone with the box containing the plant, if my father had not refused.
‘Somebody has been searching our glasshouse and the garden for the plant. They were seen, but mistaken for a ghost. And I
know
you have been searching around our house – I
caught you doing so! You said you were looking for a lock of hair, but how do I know that was true?
‘And now . . . here you are. Exactly where the murderer would wish to be.’
There was a pause.
‘I was up on the headland,’ Paul said at last, ‘and I saw you rowing by in your boat—’
‘What were you doing there at this time of night?’ interrupted Faith.
‘Taking pictures.’ Paul gingerly turned about to show that the object in the crook of his elbow was a box camera.
‘At night?’ interrupted Faith. ‘Nobody can do that!’
‘I was taking a picture of the moon!’ Paul blurted out. ‘I heard it could be done – pictures clear enough that you can see the shadows and the peaks. Whenever there is a
full moon and a clear night . . . I go out and try my luck.’ He looked angry, and Faith realized that he was embarrassed.
‘When I saw the boat, I guessed it was you. After my friends told me you “vanished” on the headland last night, I thought maybe you had dropped down into one of the caves. When
I saw you disappear into the cliff, I knew which one.’
Faith chewed hard at her lip. Curiously enough, Paul’s self-consciousness convinced more than his camera.
‘So that is how you found me,’ she said more quietly. ‘But why? Why did you follow me down into the cave?’
Why did you have to come down and see all of this? How can I possibly let you leave now?
‘I was curious,’ Paul answered promptly. There was a long pause, during which he lowered his gaze and frowned slightly to himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I . . . I
don’t know why I climbed down a hole after a crazy woman. It makes no sense. Every time I talk to you, you make
me
crazy too.
‘Everything has gone mad since you and your family came here. Vane never had riots, or people setting fire to houses! And right in the heart of it all, there is you, coming to me for no
good reason with your wild tales of murders and wheelbarrows and mining baskets . . . and I can’t help listening. You’re ripe for Bedlam, but somehow I keep believing what you
say.’
‘I don’t want your trust!’ The darkness settled on Faith again. ‘You do not know me! I am . . . I am poison. Every lie on Vane is my doing.’
‘Have you lied to me?’
Faith realized that she had not. She swallowed and said nothing.
‘So your father was murdered,’ Paul said bluntly. ‘And no photograph will make you feel better. And if you never find the killer, there will be a ghost in your head forever. I
know how that feels. My mother drowned – no body, no burial, no stone in the churchyard. The only picture of her we have is a hidden-mother photograph. You saw it. It’s the one on our
shelf. The little boy in that picture is me. My father – he is good to me, but he smiles at me as if I’m a photograph of her. Sometimes I have the feeling he is waiting for me to leave
the room so he can go on talking to her in his mind.’
Faith flinched. She felt as though tentacles of sympathy were reaching out for her. She wanted to throw them off, shoot them, burn them away.
‘Do you want me to weep for you?’ she asked, as coldly as she could.
‘I want you to make up your mind!’ erupted Paul. ‘You want my help, you want me to die in a ditch, you tell me secrets, you hide things, you seek me out, you run away, you ask
favours, you point a pistol at my head . . .’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘Choose! Trust me or not, but choose! Once and for all!’
Shoot him.
It was a consensus murmur among the floating voices. Paul knew too much. Paul wanted too much. Paul bored his way inside her head and stopped her thinking straight.
Lowering the pistol pained Faith. As she returned its hammer to the safety notch, she thought she heard the Tree hiss and felt as though she was betraying her father and his secrets. Paul
released his breath and let his shoulders slump a little.
‘Well . . . it is too late to stop you seeing the Tree,’ Faith said, trying not to sound too shaky. ‘Right now I suppose I must trust you or shoot you – and it would be
annoying to have to reload the pistol.’ She had an uncomfortable feeling that this still sounded like an apology.
Paul advanced a few wary steps.
‘I thought you were leaving,’ said Faith tersely.
‘I will if you will.’ Paul looked around, and batted vines out of his face with a suspicious air. ‘This is not a good place. Nothing grows this fast. Nothing that was in a box
two weeks ago should be this big. And I keep hearing . . .’ He trailed off and shook his head. ‘There is something very wrong with this plant.’
‘I don’t fully understand it myself yet,’ admitted Faith, feeling defensive in turn. ‘I can see where it gets its moisture, and maybe it takes minerals and nutrients from
the cave rock, but its energy . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It may be carnivorous.’
‘Does it eat people?’ Paul did not look reassured.
Not exactly.’ Faith reached out, stroking the nearest vine. She felt jealously possessive of
her
Tree,
her
father’s secrets. But somehow she had done something
irrevocable in lowering her pistol. She had agreed to trust, and torn a big, ugly gash in her own armour.
‘It feeds on human lies,’ she said. ‘Human lies that are believed. It’s a symbiote – a species that survives by cooperating with another species. Humans feed it
lies, and in return it bears fruit that give visions of secret truths. At least that was what my father believed.’
‘Was he right?’ Paul asked bluntly.
Of course he was right!
Faith wanted to shout.
My father was a genius, of course he knew what he was doing, of course he would not have destroyed his career and his family’s
fortunes for no good reason!
Instead she found herself picking over the evidence with a cold, analytical brain. Could the swelling of the fruit be coincidence? What had she really learned from
the visions?
‘I still cannot be certain,’ she confessed, reluctantly. ‘The fruit
seems
to open up an extra sight, and show me things I did not know . . . but I cannot tell yet how
true they are.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I will know better if we find the murderer.’
‘You have eaten fruit from this thing?’ This seemed to horrify Paul more than the pistol.
‘Yes, and I am here to do so again.’ Faith glared at him. ‘I must! If you do not like it, you can leave. Otherwise, you can make yourself useful. The fruit will put me in a
trance. I tried tying myself up so I could not wander, but . . . that . . . was not entirely successful. It would help to have somebody watching over. You can make observations at the same
time.’
Paul approached, glancing at the rope looped over her shoulder. He looked less than happy at the suggestion.
‘Five minutes ago you would not trust me to move a step. Now you trust me to stand guard over you while you are unconscious?’
You told me to choose,’ Faith told him tartly.
The fruit was bitter as ever, and sent her on a dark and twisting downward road echoing with the hoofbeats of her heart.
Then it was too dark to see, but she knew that she was pushing through jungle. There was no rock floor beneath her feet. She scrambled and climbed, over cat’s cradles of vines strung out
like suspension bridges, past mighty trunks of plaited creepers, mounting vast wooden spirals as if they were stairways. All the while the air softly hummed with murmured lies.
There were kind lies.
You still look beautiful. I love you. I forgive you.
There were frightened lies.
Someone else must have taken it. Of course I am Anglican. I never saw that baby before.
There were predatory lies.
Buy this tonic if you want your child to recover. I will look after you. Your secret is safe with me.
Half-lies, and the tense little silences where a truth should have been. Lies like knives, lies like poultices. The tiger’s stripe, and the fawn’s dusky dapple. And everywhere,
everywhere, the lies that people told themselves. Dreams like cut flowers, with no nourishing root. Will-o’-the-wisp lights to make them feel less alone in the dark. Hollow resolutions and
empty excuses.
Faith heeded none of them, but climbed and climbed, because she could smell her father’s pipe smoke.
She found a great knot of vines, ten foot wide, hanging suspended like a spider’s cocoon. Dull blue smoke eddied out through the cracks and crevices, and Faith’s heart ached at the
familiarity of its smell. She tore at the vines with her fingers, wrenching open a gap, then struggled through the hole.
She found herself standing in a hot, darkened cellar. The tiny specks of swatted mosquitoes could be seen against the whitewashed walls. There was one tiny high window, showing a turbulent
purple-grey sky and letting in a roar of rain and a scent of warm mud.
A man lay on the earth-strewn floor, the iron shackle on his leg out of keeping with his gentlemanly clothes. His brown moustache and beard had once been neatly clipped, but neglect had seen
them break their banks, flooding his chin and cheeks with stubble. His hair was limp and dark with sweat and grime, and there were bruise-dark shadows under his eyes.
‘You must help me,’ he said. ‘You must talk to them, Sunderly. Tell them who I am, why I am here. You have papers from the consul – they will listen to you. You can vouch
for me.’
At first Faith thought he was talking to her. Then another faint gust of blue smoke issued from beside her. She turned her head, and there beside her was her father, the Reverend Erasmus
Sunderly, shiny with the heat but otherwise immaculate.
Faith wanted to throw her arms around him, but the sight of him held her back. She had forgotten how inaccessible he could be. With his cold, unrevealing gaze, his presence was almost as distant
as his absence.
‘Winterbourne, sir,’ he said, in his usual detached tone, ‘you are asking me to testify to your character – to give my word as a gentleman. I barely know you. We first
met less than two weeks ago. I know only what you and your party have told me, and that was fantastical and incredible.’
‘Please!’ Winterbourne looked desperate. ‘Consider that I am not alone here – I am not the only person who will suffer! Have some compassion!’
‘If you can give me proof of your story,’ said the Reverend, ‘then you will convince me, and will give me means to convince the authorities. Tell me where I may find this
Mendacity Tree. If it matches your description, I shall place my faith in you.’
The chained man looked astonished, then briefly angry and mulish. Winterbourne met the Reverend’s gaze for a few seconds, then wilted before it, his face desolate. ‘I have no choice
but to trust you,’ he said bitterly. ‘Before I was seized, I found some of Kikkert’s notes. If I have understood his map, there is a building three miles due north of his house,
on the edge of a river that runs through the bamboo forest. I believe that is where the plant is hidden. But hurry, Sunderly!’