The Lie Tree (25 page)

The Tree had not let her down after all. The tiny fruit was half an inch across, and wore some cream-coloured, papery tatters that looked like the dried-out remains of a flower. It was perfectly
round and textured like lemon peel. She could just make out pale streaks against its dark hide.

Faith could only hope that it was ripe. She could scarcely glue it back on to the Tree.

She hesitated. It was tempting to take the fruit back to her own room, so that she could eat it in relative safety. At Bull Cove, however, she would run the risk of being discovered
semiconscious and yellow-eyed. Here at least she had privacy.

Her mind was made up. She would eat the fruit here and now, in the cave.

Everything needed to be observed properly and methodically, including her own reactions.

Faith found a ‘seat’ in the entrance cave where the boat was tied. Here she could sit with her back against a stone pillar where a stalagmite and stalactite had melded into one. She
removed the lantern’s coverings to give herself more light. Her little hand mirror she propped on a ledge, so that she could see her own face reflected. Using the battered pocket watch she
timed her own pulse. It was rapid, and she realized that she was frightened.

She sat down, and lashed herself to the stone pillar using a damp rope from the boat. She did not know sailor’s knots, but she hoped it would be enough to stop her wandering into the sea
in a drugged daze.

Faith made a note of the time on the clock. She laid her notebook and pens on a stone shelf within reach. Then she took her knife and very carefully cut the Lie fruit in half.

Instantly the cold smell became so intense that she winced. Blinking as her eyes stung, she held up the fruit to examine it more closely. The flesh seemed to be made up of dozens of tiny
juice-filled cells, like that of a lemon, but a deep, rich red.

A dribble of juice ran down Faith’s hand on to her wrist, and reflexively she raised her hand to her mouth and licked it off. The taste was searingly bitter, worm-juice and rotten walnuts.
Her tongue went numb. Pins and needles spread through the skin of her mouth.

Faith did not give her resolve a chance to falter. With her thumbnail she eased the red flesh of the fruit free from the peel. It came away trailing downy white strands like spider web. Bracing
herself, she pushed the red pulp into her mouth.

She tasted bitter ice, and her throat tightened. Only by covering her mouth with both hands did she stop herself gagging and spitting the fruit out again. She struggled to swallow, and briefly
the pulp was a clinging sour mass at the base of her tongue. Then she forced it down, shuddering and grimacing.

It was done. She had eaten the fruit. It was too late to turn back. Almost immediately her fears set upon her.

She could feel the cooling slither of the fruit flesh down her throat, then a numb tingling started to spread through her chest. Faith drew in breath after hasty breath, and each was a little
harder than the last. It felt like somebody was stealthily drawing in the laces of her corset, a little at a time, cutting off her air.

There was a sound in her ears that she hardly recognized as her own heartbeat, a
whump, whump, whump
like a carpet being beaten. Her tongue and throat were paper dry. Before her eyes,
colours deepened, darkened and crawled with motion. It came to her that the world was a tapestry, and she was watching it being eaten by black beetles.

She was in a tunnel, racing ever faster into darkness, while great black wheels spun and hummed on either side of her, and the world shook with a heartbeat quake . . .

She was fighting it, fighting the darkness and drum of it, the helpless swoop and fall of it, and the fight was terror. She fought to keep the light, her wits, her control, and screamed inside
as she felt all of these things pulled away from her like petals . . .

. . . and then they were gone, and there was no more panic. Only a deep and silent soul-fear rolling on like unheard thunder, too strange and strong for her to really feel it.

Faith walked through a midnight forest. The trees were pure white, and rose high above her head, disappearing into a blue-black darkness. There was no wind, and yet the
snow-white leaves shivered and whispered.

She raised one hand to push aside low-hanging foliage, and felt her fingertips brush paper. The trees were flat and pale. The ragged-torn ferns stroked the skin of her hands, paper-cutting her,
slyly cruel.

She was not alone.

Beside her walked a figure, warmly familiar. She could hear the crunch of foliage under heavy boots. Then there was a snuffled exhalation that she recognized.

‘Uncle Miles,’ she said aloud. ‘Uncle Miles, why are we here?’

‘It is all for the best,’ came the answer. ‘The very best.’ His voice sounded strange. It was droning and slack, like that of a sleepwalker.

‘I know this place!’ Faith felt a gnawing sense of familiarity, but it brought unease, not reassurance. ‘We do not belong here! Why did you bring us here?’ Out of the
corner of her eye she could just make out the plum-coloured cloth of her uncle’s coat. The moonlight fell unevenly, and he was only visible in fits and starts.

‘They promised me . . .’ murmured Uncle Miles.

‘Who? What did they promise you?’ Faith turned to face her uncle, and found that she could hardly see him. He was flat, perfectly flat, and from the side she could see only a
paper-thin edge.

‘The fellows at the Royal Academy laugh at me,’ moaned the flattened shape. ‘I hear them. At the clubs. Old Miles – he never gets his name on a paper, never gives a
lecture, never names a species. Follows his brother-in-law around like a dog. I
needed
to bring him here.
They
asked me . . .’

‘What do you mean?’ Gripped by apprehension, Faith seized her uncle’s arm and pulled him around to face her.

His eyes were crude splotches of Indian ink, his mouth a smiling smear. The broken moonlight glimmered on his clumsy, sausage-like hands and the rough spirals that patterned his waistcoat. From
top to toe he was a childish drawing, but one that narrowed its blot-eyes and leaned forward to peer into her face.

‘They wanted Erasmus,’ said the ink mouth, flexing and undulating. ‘They only ever want Erasmus . . .’

‘Who? What do you mean?’ Faith gripped her uncle’s arm more tightly, and to her horror felt it crumple under her grip. She released it and stepped back, but her uncle was
emitting a thin hiss. His long, papery arms reached for her, one now deformed and creased.

‘Tell me!’ Faith struck out in a rage born of terror. Her slap caught his arm, and ripped it from his shoulder. The great paper head lurched towards her, and she lashed out, ripping
a great tear in it, through one eye and down his cheek.

‘Always Erasmus,’ he hissed. ‘So I brought him to them.’

And he was so horrible, so misshapen, swaying there before her, that Faith struck out again and again, tearing and ripping and rending. Fragments of Uncle Miles drifted on the air like
snowflakes and streamers. At last all that was left was a paper mouth, fluttering like a butterfly, still shaping doleful, slack words. She caught it between her fingers, pinching it cruelly and
stretching it almost to tearing point.

‘What have you done?’ she demanded.

‘They promised that I could take part in the excavation,’ whined the mouth. ‘My name would appear on their paper. Recognition, at last! But only if I could persuade Erasmus to
come too. He had already turned them down. It was hard to convince him . . . but then there was the scandal. I saw my chance.
Vane is my chance.
’

You
used
us!’ exclaimed Faith. ‘You brought us here to help yourself! You just wanted to join the excavation! Why did they ask for father? Why?’

But she tugged too hard on his grimacing mouth, and it tore.

Looking desperately around, Faith saw another familiar figure in the distance. The sight of it filled her with a hot, welling sorrow, and she could not for that moment remember why.

‘Father!’ she called, and ran through the paper forest after the receding shape.

The figure moved away from her faster than she could run. It seemed to glide, and she had the uncanny feeling that its legs were not moving.

‘Father, wait for me! There is something wrong! We are not supposed to be here!’

She thought he might slow. She thought he might turn. Neither of these things happened. Instead there was a disturbance in the foliage above, a scattering of paper leaves, and then a great
shadow hand reached down into the woodland.

Faith screamed out a warning. The sound of the scream went on and on, even when she had no more breath to give it. Her father’s head was crushed between a great finger and thumb. For a
moment she saw him, staggering, half of his head a mangled mess. Then the hand closed into a fist around him, and dragged him upward out of view.

‘No!’ Faith sprinted forward. ‘Bring him back!’ And then, as she heard sounds of rending from above, ‘I will kill you! I will
kill
you!’

There was a pause. Craning upward, Faith could just make out a huge dark shape amid the tree cover, silhouetted against the star-freckled sky. Above her, foliage rustled, boughs creaked and
thwacked. Dry white leaves fell on to her upturned face. The hand was coming down again.

Then, and only then, did black terror consume Faith. She looked down, and for the first time saw her own body properly, a ragged girl-dress outline criss-crossed with wild black scribbles. She
was paper. She could be ripped apart with ease. She had made a terrible mistake.

She dropped to the dark ground and wriggled under the white ferns, wincing as she felt herself crumple and slightly tear. She lay there stiller than still, while the great hand felt its way
blindly through the forest. Looking for the source of the screamed threat. Looking for her.

Seconds drew themselves out to breaking point. Faith’s heartbeat seemed to be slowing too but getting louder, sending vibrations through the ground. The pallor of the trees was trembling
and fading, the shadows encroaching. Then somewhere above, the moon guttered and went out, and all was darkness.

Roar and hiss. Roar and hiss. Faith did not know where she was, except that she was somewhere cold and painful. There was a clammy ache in her limbs and neck.

She opened her eyes a slit, and blinked at a blurred vista of shadowy stone. After a few blinks the pale blobs became stalagmites, and the dark smudges became openings to other caverns. Faith
was still slumped against the pillar, the rope digging into her waist.

Faith was shivering. Everything ached. Her mouth was dry and tasted of lime and bile. Even her eyes felt dry, and her lids rubbed awkwardly when she blinked. However, she had survived.

Her dream was still a shadow in her mind. She blinked as her fuddled thoughts tried to disentangle reality from the strands of phantasm.

Faith remembered tearing Uncle Miles to pieces . . . but that had not happened, she realized with unutterable relief. She was not in a paper wood, and a giant hand was not looking for her. She
had not seen her father die. Then she remembered that he really
was
dead, however, and felt a tumbling sense of loss.

She pressed her fists against her temple, trying to squeeze thoughts from her numb brain. A great hand reaching down into a bone-white forest . . . there was something familiar about that image.
It had been eerie because it should have been comforting, harmless, comical . . .

‘Howard’s theatre,’ she whispered, as realization struck. ‘I was in the forest of Howard’s toy theatre.’

Faith’s lantern had burned itself out, and yet she could still make out her surroundings. Pale light was seeping in through cave’s seaward entrance. She fumbled for her pocket watch.
To her horror, it was five in the morning.

She needed to leave! If she was not back soon, she would be missed and asked a thousand questions to which there were no good answers. Then she remembered the Tree. She could not leave until she
had fed it another lie.

With numb, trembling hands she managed to unpick the knots in the rope and struggled free. When she hauled herself to her feet, the cavern danced ring-a-roses for a moment. Steadying herself
with one hand against the wall, Faith tottered to the entrance of the larger cavern and gazed into the darkness. She could just make out the inky outline of the Tree.

What could she say? Her vision had not identified her father’s murderer. What
had
she learned?

Until now, she had assumed that the killer must be somebody her father had angered since arriving in Vane – a frustrated cockler, a friend or relation of the boy maimed in the gin-trap or
somebody angered by the treatment of Jeanne. If her vision had shown her the truth, however, somebody had planned to kill her father long before the Sunderly family arrived on the island. Whoever
they were, they had persuaded Uncle Miles to bring his brother-in-law to Vane, and into a trap. They had played on Uncle Miles’s ambition, and he had snapped up the bait.

If this was true, then one thing was certain. The murderer had to be somebody involved with the excavation. Who else could have bribed Uncle Miles with the offer of an invitation? Perhaps the
incident with the malfunctioning basket had not been an accident at all. After all, who could have guessed that Faith and Howard would be ones to ride in it, rather than their esteemed father?

There were three keen natural scientists involved in the excavation – Lambent, Clay and Dr Jacklers.

Faith weighed each of them in her mind. Lambent seemed too boisterous and uncontrolled for cold-blooded assassination. Then she remembered the neat precision of his curiosity cabinet, the
immaculate labels, the pristine evidence of an ordered mind. There was more to him than met the eye then. His bluster might be sheath to a dangerous knife.

Dr Jacklers seemed honest to the point of tactlessness, but he was a cauldron of bitterness. He was the sort to collect grudges, she suspected, and rear them tenderly. And if he was the
murderer, what better role to take than coroner and medical expert investigating for suspicious circumstances?