Time of Breath Page 8

  “Sure it does. People are made up of a multitude of simple systems, and that leads to complex behaviour. Accepting things on faith is the least surprising outcome.” Drakeforth shrugged.

  “I’ve heard you rail against religion often,” I reminded him.

  “Religion, certainly. It’s a manufactured system of idiocy. Remember, Pudding, people like to believe in things. It gives them comfort.”

  “No one would ever believe half the things I know to be true.” I ripped the persimmon open and wished I had a spoon.

  “Exactly.” Drakeforth patted a goat that was trying to eat his trousers.

  I ate my persimmon without using a spoon.

  Chapter 17

  Goat made tea as I watched in morbid fascination. Surely, at some point he was going to laugh, tell us it was a joke, pull out a proper kettle, some nice Oolongjera, and make a proper cuppa.

  Instead, he beamed proudly and added a blend of dried pers­immon leaves and sand packed into an old sock. Instead of water, he used goat’s milk. He heated the milk by adjusting a mirror that caught the sun’s rays and focused them to a point of light that seared the wooden table. From the black lines that criss-crossed the floor, tabletop and walls, it seemed it was something he’d practised often.

  The golden dot of light touched the open pot of milk, which started to steam immediately. After a few seconds, Goat jerked the mirror away, breaking the beam as he dunked the sock into the hot milk.

  “Water would be fine…” I whispered hoarsely.

  “Noooo, it really wouldn’t,” Drakeforth murmured.

  With a ceremonial gesture, Goat lifted the sock and then dunked it once, twice, and a third time. The dark liquid seeping through the fabric did look like tea.

  Goat dealt out small earthenware bowls as if they were playing cards. Shaking his hands out, he took a deep breath and lifted the sock out of the pot with the care and focus of a bomb disposal technician with hay fever.

  Taking a pair of bone sticks in his other hand, he used them to squeeze every drop out of the bulging sock, and laid it aside. With both hands, he lifted the pot and filled three of the bowls.

  Drakeforth and I accepted the offered cups. I was watching Drakeforth out of the corner of my eye, waiting to see if he would drink it. He bowed his head and then tilted the cup, taking a small sip. Drakeforth set the bowl down, nodded and gave a grim smile.

  “A proper Pathian tea ceremony. Quite the honour, Pudding.”

  “Indeed it is,” I smiled and nodded at our host.

  “Drink your tea, Pudding.” Drakeforth was still holding his set expression. Goat was beaming at us both, the expectation clear on his face.

  “I hate you, Drakeforth,” I murmured, and sipped the strange potion. “Hey, this isn’t bad,” I said a moment later. The taste was unlike any tea I had drunk before. It was refreshing, complex, and hardly tasted like goat-smell at all.

  “Tea-hee-hee!” Goat toasted us with his own bowl and took a long sip. I took a second mouthful and discreetly rescued a goat hair from my tongue.

  “The time has come,” Drakeforth said, “to speak of many things. I’d like to start with your search for the tree.”

  “Tree,” Goat nodded, and saluted us with his cup.

  “Tree!” I agreed and took another swallow.

  “How long have you been searching for The Tree?” Drakeforth asked.

  “Tree!” Goat toasted me again and I echoed him, as a wonderful warmth flowed from my stomach and through my tired bones, before blooming in my head like flowers in a time-lapse video.

  “Drakeforth, this stuff is great,” I said gravely.

  “It is the fermented goat’s milk that adds that special something,” Drakeforth agreed.

  “Very special,” I nodded.

  “Goat, how long have you been searching for The Tree?” Drake­forth asked again.

  Goat scratched the matted lump of hair that had once been his beard. “Tuesday,” he said eventually.

  “Tuesday?” Drakeforth asked. “You’ve been looking for The Tree since Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday?” Goat asked.

  “Yes, you said you have been looking for The mythical Tree since Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday…” Goat took another sip of his tea.

  I was delighted to discover that if I held the cup just so, and blew bubbles, the resulting foam tickled my nose.

  “Why are you looking?” Drakeforth asked.

  I elbowed him, keen to share my discovery. ”I made bubbles,” I said.

  “Yes, you did. Goat, what started you on this search for The Tree?”

  “Tree!” Goat leapt up from the table and ran to the battered trunk. He returned with the skin-scroll and unfurled it again to show us.

  “Tree!” I shouted, saluting with my cup.

  Drakeforth stood and marched over to Goat. Taking the scroll, he tossed it aside and shook the ragged man by the shoulders.

  “I need you to focus. Tell me what you know.”

  I got up and had the disconcerting feeling that my head was rising at half the speed as the rest of my body.

  “Steady…on,” I muttered. It was as much of an instruction to myself as it was to Drakeforth. The pattern of fractured light coming through the holes and gaps in Goat’s airship cabin whirled like a kaleidoscope.

  “We also die…” I whispered. The vortex of colours echoing that fateful moment in Godden’s office.

  I fell to my knees, everything colliding and spinning, falling into darkness. Like a rock in the tempest, the discarded scroll did not move. Focusing on it helped my nausea, and I stared harder as I crawled over to it.

  The image of The Tree appeared painted on the scroll. Like one of those weird pictures that change from a rabbit to a goldfish the more you look at it, the patterns shifted. Layers of grey-white ink cracked and lifted. Dying butterflies of ash peeled away from the scroll and took flight before melting like dark snow.

  Veins of empathic energy pulsed through the scroll, searing the carefully sketched roots and branches. It all became very clear in that moment, and I felt unexpected relief at how neatly everything fell into place.

  “Tree…” I whispered, a slack and drooling grin spreading across my face.

  Chapter 18

  “Pudding?”

  Warm air wafted over my face, and I frowned at it.

  “Pudding, wake up.”

  “Don’t want to,” I mumbled.

  “I quite understand. Now wakey-wakey!”

  My eyes opened, while my face arranged itself into a frown.

  “I don’t feel well,” I announced to Drakeforth as he helped me up.

  “No one does,” Drakeforth said, patting me on the shoulder.

  Goat sprang into my personal space and peered closely with an expression of exaggerated concern.

  “Tree?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied after a moment. “Yes. I understand about the tree.”

  Goat’s eyes searched my face. I worked on smiling reassur­ingly, and felt like I was leering. I shook myself.

  “Right, well, I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Fine,” Drakeforth agreed. “Goat? All okay?”

  The strange man shrugged as if not entirely sure.

  “Wait. He put something in the tea. He drugged me!”

  Drakeforth went to the abandoned table and examined the cups. He sniffed each one in turn, wiping a finger through the remnants and tasting it.

  “Goat milk tea,” he declared. “Rather good, but completely normal.”

  “Well, he gave me something,” I insisted.

  “Goat?” Drakeforth asked. “Care to explain?”

  “Huge,” Goat replied. “Huge whispers. No one listens to shouts. Shhh!” He cocked his head and nodded. “Erskine. Uncouth
.” Goat nodded again, as if agreeing with someone we couldn’t hear. “In-dubby-tibbly?” he asked. “In-doo-dub-it-ably?” Goat’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Gab, gab, gab.” He made an apologetic gesture at us, as if he were on a phone call and the person on the other end didn’t have the decency to get to the point.

  I stared at the man curiously.

  “Drakeforth, do you have any experience with people hearing voi—?” I caught myself asking one of the daftest questions ever conceived.

  “Why yes, Pudding. I have experience with people hearing voices. I am also knowledgeable about people seeing colours, I have a nodding acquaintance with people feeling confused and I even find reports of people believing things to be plausible.”

  Ignoring Drakeforth got easier with practice.

  “Is it possible that he is using some kind of earpiece? A comm­unications device both small, and highly advanced?”

  “Indubitably,” Drakeforth said.

  “Oh, don’t you start.” I stepped close to Goat and snapped my fingers until he blinked and fixed his attention on me.

  “Pay attention. Real person talking here. Okay? Good. Now, what did you put in my tea?”

  “Oolong, fresh milk, two-thousand years of cultural tradition and pageantry… Oh, and essence of persimmon rind.”

  “You may have just had a funny turn in the heat,” Drakeforth suggested.

  “Fainting would be a funny turn; I saw…” I shuffled a mental deck of word cards looking for something to describe it. “I saw some really weird things. Clearly, this man spiked my drink!”

  “Spike?” Goat asked. “Spike no milk. Spike,” Goat put his hands on his head and curled his fingers.

  “What in the Cretaceous is he talking about?”

  “I think he is saying that Spike is a buck, a male goat,” Drakeforth replied.

  “Why are you so calm? This man tried to drug me!”

  “Pudding, there’s no evidence of that. You are overreacting. Besides, even if he had, I wouldn’t let any harm come to you.”

  I made angry fish noises until my astonished fury subsided enough for me to speak.

  “That is very kind of you, Drakeforth. However, what in the half-eaten sandwich makes you think that protecting me from some kind of assault is more important than say, people not committing assault in the first place?!”

  Drakeforth frowned, then started to speak, thought better of it and went back to frowning.

  “Charlotte,” he announced. “You make a very good point. I apologise. Goat, we need an explanation.”

  “And another thing,” I interjected. “Just because you have apologised to me for the first time in living memory, does not make any of this okay!”

  “Tree?” Goat squeaked. “She see Tree?”

  “Yes, I saw something that may have been somewhat tree-like.”

  Goat nodded and scrambled to retrieve the tree scroll. “Tree!” he jabbed at it.

  “Maybe it’s déjà vu, but I am sure I have seen that before,” I muttered darkly.

  “Déjà vu is actually—” Drakeforth started. I shut him up with a glare.

  “Not the time, Drakeforth. I saw this, and there was empathic energy. Double-e flux. The driving force of the modern world, all over it. And it went beyond the scroll. It went, well, everywhere. In lines.”

  “You saw lines of empathic energy?” Drakeforth asked, going for the silver medal in the stupid questions Olympics.

  “Yes. It was very disconcerting. However, I know what I saw: Double-e flux. It’s everywhere. At least, it’s everywhere according to the scroll.” I stopped and took a deep breath; confusing myself was exhausting.

  Drakeforth took the scroll and held it up to the fractal pattern of sunlight that ricocheted through the gaps in the cabin of Goat’s airship.

  “It’s Living Oak,” Drakeforth announced.

  “It’s all Living Oak,” I corrected. “You probably know all this, but allow me to explain, because I need to hear it to make sure I’m not completely ninth-hole bunkers.”

  “Go on, then,” Drakeforth said.

  “Living Oak, the original source of empathic energy. Discov­ered by my great-grandfather and developed by his cronies into one of the greatest examples of things we would rather not think about in the history of everything. Which is all the exposition I have breath for right now. It now seems that every fragment of Living Oak is connected to every other fragment. This scroll is made from the bark of a Living Oak. It’s connected to every other tree and log and even my desk. Goat’s magic tree is also Living Oak. Why that makes it important to find it, I have no idea. Perhaps he had a bad breakup and has been out here sulking for so long that he’s been consumed with guilt and can’t find the right way to go back and apologise.”

  Drakeforth remained silent.

  “And here’s Vole with the weather,” I said.

  “You’re mostly right,” he said. “I mean, I can’t speak for Goat’s guilt, or his relationship status, though I imagine if he’s been away for this long, it is likely that ship has sailed into a burning bridge by now.”

  “That’s sad,” I said.

  “Indeed. A tragedy. Speaking of relationships. This is going to be bigger than Living Oak. It is the relationships.”

  “Which relationships?” I felt like I was trying to grab the thread of a conversation during a high wind.

  “The Relationships,” Drakeforth said with a tone that made proper nouns raise their collective eyebrows.

  “Oh right, why didn’t you just say so?”

  “Everything exists because of its relationship with everything else.”

  I nodded, “My pending migraine exists entirely because of my relationship with you? I can believe that.”

  “Exactly. However, not the point I am trying to make. How would you describe the size of the Universe?”

  “Uhh… Big?”

  Drakeforth shook his head, “The Universe isn’t big. It’s every­thing. It’s all there is. You can’t think of the Universe as being defined by ends or edges. Why do you think cats like to climb into boxes?”

  I hesitated. Obvious reasons for this cat behaviour immediat­ely came to mind. They like to be closely confined? It lets them hide from predators? They are hinting they would like to be sent by first class post to somewhere with better food?

  “No,” Drakeforth said, even though I hadn’t answered his question. “Cats have perception beyond human comprehension. Not only can they see at night, they perceive the subtle clockwork of the Universe. Every probability, every sub-atomic particle, every entanglement. Being cats, of course, they ignore most of this until it forms something they might like to eat. Cats sit in boxes because it gives the Universe limits. It lets them feel this is the dimension of my Universe. Everything else is outside of it.”

  “Interesting idea. Though, the box is part of their Universe, which means of course, the box has no limits.”

  “Exactly.” Drakeforth looked like he wanted to seize my hand and shake it vigorously for understanding his point. He quickly regained his composure. “It is the relationship between the cat and the box that defines the Universe.”

  “I seem to remember a point being made about the connection between all Living Oak?” I asked. My headache rose like a spring tide on the beach of my frontal lobe.

  “Living Oak is entangled. Every particle is infused with the same energy as the whole. Every tree is part of a singular mass. If you take one sliver of Living Oak from a tree, it will still hold the same empathic energy as the entire tree. Though it will have a far smaller presence.”

  “Which helps us how?” I asked.

  “Clearly, if we have a parchment made from the bark of Living Oak, then we have a connection to the Living Oak that it came from. Not only that, but we have a connection to every other tree and piece of Living Oa
k.”

  “So, if the tree that Goat is so desperate to find is also Living Oak, then we can find it, because it is all connected…”

  “Yes,” Drakeforth said.

  I sighed. “Next time, maybe just explain using bullet points? Perhaps a simple infographic?”

  “You cannot distil understanding of the Universe into something so simple,” Drakeforth replied.

  “Cats manage it,” I said.

  Chapter 19

  I woke up feeling light-headed and overly warm. The sun was close to the horizon; I hoped it was sunrise tomorrow and not sunset today. Sleeping was difficult enough without messing up the timing of it.

  The hammock I lay in was a comfortable net of goat-leather strips. I wriggled slightly, getting the sling to swing and watching the way the red and orange dapple of sunlight rippled through the cracks and gaps in the cabin.

  Moments of complete peace are rare, so I gave this one my complete attention. I could go back to sleep. Really get some rest. Sleep until it was all over, let someone else do the work and wake up to read about it in the papers. Like everyone else, I would be concerned about it for half an hour until the next news story took over the collective consciousness of the world.

  Goat emerged, shuffling with the dim-witted semi-conscious­ness of the freshly woken. He paused in an errant beam of sunlight, scratching himself before stretching mightily and yawning. He turned, arms raised above his head, and we made eye contact.

  A moment passed during which I kept my gaze locked on his face.

  “Meep!” Goat yelped, and scrambled up the rigging towards the orchard.

  “Morning, Pudding,” Drakeforth announced with unusual cheer.

  “Good,” I replied and swung the pendulum of the hammock until I reached escape velocity and landed on my feet.

  “A near perfect dismount,” Drakeforth said.

  “It is morning isn’t it? I slept through the night?”

  “Yes. Tea?” Drakeforth raised a chipped mug with a faded cartoon character on it.