John Lenahan - Prince of Hazel and Oak

He nodded.

‘Yeah, me too. I thought something was shadowing us over to the left but maybe it’s just these damn trees.’ I said ‘damn’ wordlessly so the trees couldn’t hear me.

We decided that we were better safe than sorry (or dead) so we kept watch. I looked right while Brendan tried to observe left. (Until our necks got sore and we traded sides.) The shapes that this forest made were so different than any nature we had seen before it really spooked us. We were like scared cub scouts by nightfall.

Essa built a tiny fire with the kindling from her pack. It was enough to make some tea and provided just enough light to pitch our tents by. No one complained because the person that did knew that they would have to be the one to ask one of the scary trees for wood. Brendan and I thought we should keep a watch and since we were the only ones that suggested it – we got to do it.

‘I’m going to go out on a limb and say, I don’t really like the Pinelands,’ I said.

‘I’m with you on that one, Mr O’Neil. Miserable, ain’t it?’ Brendan said, trying to warm his hands on the pathetic fire. ‘For the first time in a long while I’m glad my daughter isn’t with me.’

‘You don’t talk about her much.’

‘I think about her all of the time, that’s enough.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Ruby.’

‘Ruby, that’s a nice name.’

‘You think? I like it now, Ican’t imagine her having any other name but when my wife suggested it I thought it sounded like the name of the local good-time girl.’

‘It’s also the name of a precious gem.’

Brendan smiled a sad smile of a homesick man. ‘That’s my pet name for her – Gem.’

I wanted to ask him more about his family but it was too cold and too dark.

‘Screw this,’ I said, standing. ‘What is the point of keeping watch if it’s so dark that you can’t even see anything coming?’ I turned to the woods. ‘And I’m freezing my butt off.’

‘You going to bed?’ Brendan asked.

‘No, I’m gonna get some firewood.’

‘From where? You’re not going to talk to those trees, are you?’

‘What are they going to do, kill me?’

‘Didn’t you tell me that there are trees in The Land that can?’

He had a point, but I ignored him. If this stupid quest was going to force me to be out of doors in the middle of the winter I was going to have a roaring fire, damn it. I walked up to the nearest pine, which wasn’t very close. We had chosen a campsite in one of the few clearings we had found. The closer I got to the trees the worse this idea got. My courage slipped out of me with every step. The faint light from our poor excuse for a campfire cast creepy shadows. I started to think, do I really need to be any warmer? I’ll just throw another blanket over me. I stopped under the huge gnarled tree. A cold sweat ran down my armpit and then a shiver shook me from ear to knee. What am I, I asked myself, am I a man or a mouse? I knew I didn’t have any cheese with me so I closed my eyes and touched my hand to the rough bark.

When you first touch most trees in The Land it’s like a brain-scan. You don’t tell them anything, they just zap into your cranium and take any information they need. I squeezed my eyes closed and waited. Nothing. I opened one eye and quietly said, ‘Hello?’

‘Are you a Pooka?’

That question shot into my head but instead of it sounding (or should I say feeling) like a nasty old hillbilly, I got the impression of a scared kid.

I tried to reply just by thinking – still nothing. Hello, I thought, then out loud I said, ‘Anybody in there?’

‘Are you a Pooka?’ the tree asked again. His voice sounded frantic, laced with childish overexcitement.

‘No, I’m…’ I sighed and admitted, ‘I’m a Faerie.’

‘Do you know where the Pookas are?’

‘No, we are looking for them ourselves.’

‘Oh, when you see them could you tell them…’

I don’t remember anything after that for a while. Brendan said I shot straight back about three feet and was out huge gr about five minutes. At first he thought I was dead. When I came to I had a huge throbbing headache and couldn’t really make sense of anything for a while. Brendan helped me over to the fire, gave me some willow tea and put me into my tent. In my dreams, I was a pinball going from pine tree to pine tree. Every time I was just ready to stop, a pine would whack me and I would bounce around the forest until I stopped at another, then I would get whacked again. I wouldn’t call my night… refreshing.

I awoke to the smell and sound of a roaring fire. Everyone was up. Essa and Nieve were in the distance with their arms around trees. Brendan handed me a cup of tea.

‘Where’d you get the firewood?’ I asked.

‘From the pines. They are very nice once you get to know them.’

‘Or until they attack you with some sort of brain-exploding beam.’

‘No one tried to explode your brain. It’s just that M over there’ – Brendan pointed to the tree I had chatted with last night – ‘has been way behind on his emailing. He got overexcited.’

‘M?’

‘Well, I can’t pronounce his name – I think it starts with an M so that’s what I call him. He likes it. He never had a nickname before. Nice kid.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘OK, here is what M and L over there’ – he pointed to a big old tree – ‘and Nieve have told me. Trees communicate with one another in The Land. Like when you told me not to talk around the beech trees because they gossip and I thought you were bonkers?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So when you enter a wood, the whole forest knows about it ’cause they talk to each other.’

‘Brendan, you’re not telling me anything I didn’t know.’

‘Yes, but that’s the point. Pine trees can’t talk to each other. And nobody knew it, except the Pookas.’

‘So why did M attack me?’

‘He didn’t attack you – he just got carried away. The Pookas carry messages from one tree to another. L, that old tree over there, told me that they do it without even thinking. Apparently Pookas just walk through the forest touching trees, picking up and dropping messages as they go. They’re like tree postal workers.’

‘So where are they?’

‘Well, L over there thinks he has seen a couple of Pookas in their animal forms but they haven’t spoken to him and he hasn’t seen one in human form since the middle of the summer. Poor M is just a kid. He hasn’t been able to send a message to any of his gang in ages. When he talked to you he got excited and loaded about five months’ worth of notes into your head. It was equivalent to having a hundred pound mailbag dropped on your noggin. He told me to tell you he was sorry.’

‘So where are the Pookas?’

‘That’s what Nieve and Essa are trying to find out. It’s slow going. Every time you talk to a tree they beg you to pass a message on for them. It’s hard to say no.’

That day’s journey was slow going. I had no intention of touching a pine again, but Essa, Araf, Brendan and Nieve had all promised a tree they would pass along a couple of messages. Turlow and I would go a couple of hundred yards and then wait while our companions zigzagged all over the forest. I got so bored with waiting, I actually struck up a conversation with the girlfriend-stealing Banshee.

‘How come you’re not playing Postman Plank?’

‘I, Prince Faerie, am not an admirer of wood.’

‘You don’t like wood?’

‘Oh, I like it fine in a chair or a fire but I don’t like trees.’

‘How can anybody not like trees?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Have you ever spoken to an oak or an apple?’

‘I do not speak with trees.’