Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

I walked away from the house, away from the castle, along a narrow roadway. The route was heavily shaded by the thirty-metre-tall native oaks, ash and yew which lined it. It smelled sweet. The ground was soft, thousands of years of falling foliage and bark laid on the earth, giving me a spring in my step as if I could run from corner to corner in Lycra doing somersaults. It was a hot day, but I was cool under the elderly trees. The birds were like hyperactive monkeys, with constant chirpy calls and doing Tarzan-like swoops from one tree to another. Tired from my all-nighter with my friends, I just kept walking, my head bursting with their conversations, the things I had learned-Laura had had to take the morning-after pill-but none were as loud as the conversations I was havingwith myself in my head. That, I could never switch off. I don’t think I’d ever thought so much, and talked so little, in my life.

Every now and then, when the trees broke their security barrier, I could see the castle in the distance, looking out over its lawn, at the lakes that dotted the grounds, at the majestic trees that stood alone punctuating the landscape. Lone tall and elegant poplars raised up like feathers to tickle the sky, wide oaks with heavy caps spread like wild mushrooms. Then the castle disappeared again, playing peekaboo with me, and the pathway began to curve to the left so that I would soon be able to turn and face the keep head on. Another twenty minutes’ walk and I could see the main gateway further up ahead on my right. I immediately slowed. The darkened gothic entrance did not appeal to me, all chained up like some prisoner of war left to rot along the side of the road. Long grasses and whatever else decrepit weeds there were climbed the relatively new gate and poked out through the rusted bars, like long gangly starved arms waving at passing cars to be fed or released. The once grand roadway that led directly to the castle had been ignored, unused and unmaintained. It was overgrown and hidden by grasses, like the yellow brick road in the Return to Oz. I shuddered. Despite losing its glory, I didn’t take to it as I had to the castle. Its scars were grotesque. Unlike the castle’s which made me want to raise a hand and trace them with my finger, these scars were ugly and made me want to look the other way.

I decided to find another route to take, anything to prevent me from passing that ghastly gothic gate and so I broke through the trees and walked across the grounds instead. I felt safer then, cocooned in the bosom of the trees rather than on that well-worn path which Normans and their horses had pounded, wildly waving in the air peasants’ severed heads on the tips of their swords.

The tree trunks were fascinating, aged and wrinkled like elephants’ legs. They twisted around one another like lovers. Some rose from the ground arched as though in agony and reaching out, then growing on, turning and shifting to a new position. The roots snaked their way from under the surface, rising above the ground and back down again gracefully, as though they were slippery eels in the waters. I tripped often on a raised root, and was caught each time by a helpfully placed tree trunk. The trees did that-tripped me and caught me, tickled me with their leaves and webs, and smacked me in the face with their branches. I pulled back branches in order to pass by, and felt them immediately spring back like catapults to spank me cheekily on the behind.

From one city of trees I made my way to another. The air smelled sweet, bees filled the flowering trees, greedily hopping from one cluster of petals to another, wanting it all, too impatient to choose just one. Around me on the floor was fruit of some kind, there from seasons ago, some decayed and rotten, some dried out like prunes. I stopped to pick one up and tried to decipher what it once was. I smelled it. Vile. As I dropped it and wiped my hands, I realised the trunk beside me was covered in engravings. The poor tree had been carved into over and over again, like a pumpkin emptied of its flesh to bear its fangs. Clearly it hadn’t been inscribed all on the same day, nor the same year, not even the same century. From seven feet up all the way down it was covered in various names etched into the bark, some framed by hearts, others in boxes, but all declaring eternal friendships and loves.

I ran my finger over the names ‘Frank and Ellie’, ‘Fiona and Stephen’, ‘Siobhan and Michael’, ‘Laurie and Rose’, ‘Michelle and Tommy’. All declared eternal love. ‘2gether, 4ever’. I wondered if any of them still were. None of the other trees bore the same scars. I stepped back to examine the area and discovered why. There was more of a clearing around this tree. I could imagine blankets laid down, picnics and parties, friends gathering and lovers sneaking out to be together under the fruit tree.

I left the orchard and searched for the next tree town. A wall came into view ahead of me and suddenly my game with the trees was over.

I tried to tread carefully without making a sound, but the woods gave me away. Exaggerated sounds and echoes of twigs snapping and crunching beneath my feet and leaves rustling as I pushed through them alerted the walls to my arrival. I didn’t know what building was ahead of me but it wasn’t the castle, for that was too far away. I didn’t know of any other buildings on the grounds apart from the dilapidated cottages at the other three gate entrances, long closed up as though there was a day, the unspoken day, when everybody upped and left. The stone of the wall wasn’t the same as the castle’s but to my unexperienced eye it wasn’t far off. It was old and crumbling. The top of the wall was uneven, it no longer touched what it once reached for. There was no roof, just a wall. I couldn’t see a door or a window for the wall’s entire length, and for the most part, unlike the castle, it had survived the bites life liked to take for energy to keep going. I stepped to the edge of the woods, feeling like a hedgehog that has just left its natural habitat to be faced with a main road, revealed by headlights, and tentative. I left my tall friends behind, and under their watchful eyes I walked the length of the wall.

When the wall ended, I turned the corner and saw it continue down another way. Then suddenly I heard a woman humming, from behind the wall. I got a jolt. Apart from my uncle Arthur, I wasn’t expecting to come across any other human. I hugged the book close to my chest and listened to the humming. It was soft, sweet, happy, far too liberated to be Rosaleen, too joyous to be my mother. It was passing-the-time kind of humming, a distracted sound, a tune that wasn’t familiar to me, if it was a real one at all. The summer breeze blew and it brought a sweet smell and her song along with it. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall, directly the other side from her and I listened.

As my head touched the brick, she stopped humming and my eyes opened quickly and I straightened up.

I looked around. She wasn’t in sight, and so I couldn’t have been spotted. When my heart slowed to its normal rhythm she began humming again. I moved along the wall, my fingers trailing over the grey stone, tracing the wall, cobwebs, crumbling rock, the smooth of some parts, the rough edges of others beneath my hot fingers. The sun beat down on me, the trees no longer my personal parasol. The wall came to an abrupt stop and I looked up to see a large ornamental stone archway marking the entrance.

I peeked my head inside so that I wouldn’t be revealed to the mystery hummer and discovered a walled garden, immaculately kept. From my position outside the arch I could see a rose garden, large formal beds set against the backdrop of climbing roses, fully bloomed, which lined both sides of the footpath from another entrance. I dared to move a little more to see the rest of the garden. In the centre were more flowers-geraniums, chrysanthemums, carnations, others I couldn’t name. Flowers tumbled out from hanging baskets and oversized ornamental stone pots that lined the central walkway through the garden. I couldn’t quite believe this little oasis amidst all the green, as though somebody had taken a fizzy drink, shaken it and opened it here in the middle of these crumbling walls and this colour had burst out, spraying every inch with different shades. Bees were flying from one flower to the other, vines climbed up the walls twined around beautiful flowers. I could smell the rosemary, lavender and mint of a nearby herb garden. There was a small greenhouse in the corner of the garden, beside that a dozen or so wooden boxes on stands, and then I realised that swept away by my curiosity I had unknowingly wandered into the garden and the humming had stopped.