Roger felt rather sheepish about having upset Mary and reminding her about her poor mother locked away somewhere in an Institution. But he was also now getting increasingly concerned, the further they went on through the Bad Wood. The plain fact of it was, it was very late in the day now, and he just couldn’t see them getting back home before dark.
“I’m going to be grounded for a gazillion weeks for this!” he thought to himself, ruefully.
He decided he should at least say something and get Mary’s agreement that they’d just go on as far as the Smoking Tree and then go no further. After all, as they’d told the three Giant Owls, they could always come back here, another day, when they would be better prepared, couldn’t they?
“H-h-hold on a bit, Mary!” he called to her. “Can we agree we go as far as the Smoking Tree this trip and no further? I really am in an awful lot of trouble for doing this, you know.”
Mary could tell by the tone of Roger’s voice, that this wasn’t the right time to tease him.
“That’s O.K. Roger. Sure. If you insist. I think we’ll both be grounded for weeks, but let’s get to the Smoking Tree at least, and then we can go home and maybe return another day.”
Roger nodded, and with that agreed and done and dusted, he set to, a wee bit happier now. He trundled along, satchel bumping on his back and his magnifying glass now in his hand.
And every now and again there was an enthusiastic cry of “ooh!” or “aha!”, or an “oh my!” And on one such encounter, Roger got very excited when finding a very peculiar green caterpillar, nearly a foot long, splattered with red dots, and which seemed to be wearing a big and bright, yellow moustache!
“Oh, Mary, come here, you must look at this!” he called out to her.
“Now, now,” laughed Mary, “just look who’s dawdling around now! Come on; let’s get there before dark so we can at least see about this mystery of the smoking tree. There must be some reason it’s billowing smoke like that. There’s no flames or anything. Weird, huh?”
“Yes. O.K. Mary, Northward-Ho then!” Roger replied.
Roger carefully returned the bright, green caterpillar to its branch, and trotted on after her.
Just a little while later, with less than an hour of daylight still left, they found themselves standing at the edge of a round, grassy clearing. Here the woods came to a sudden halt, and so did they, now both gazing at a most grand and curious sight.
At last, they had found the long sought for, ‘Smoking Tree!’
Ahead of them spread a large, bowl-like clearing, like a raised, round swelling of green, right in the middle of the so called ‘Bad Wood,’ between Hooter’s Hill and the River Tymes. It was as if this grassy and flower-speckled meadow was some sort of grand stage or a raised royal dais, put there on purpose, like a natural open-air throne room or a royal audience chamber, for some great Wood-land King.
The mighty Smoking Tree stood there alone, tall and proud and still billowing out smoke; Towering up from the middle of the greensward. And soon to be the centre of attention for all of the creatures of that particular area of the Great Forest of Lundun!
CHAPTER 9:
OF UPS AND DOWNS
The gentle, up-sloping mound was a broad area full of beautiful, lush green grasses, speckled with little white and yellow flowers. “Oh, what a lovely meadow!” exclaimed Mary excitedly, as they moved eagerly onward toward the majestic tree.
At the meadow’s center, the smoking tree stood like a mighty hand spreading upwards and outwards, as if trying to grab the very sky itself! Its thick shaggy, grey trunk and its mossy, leaf-filled branches were gnarled and ancient looking. It was like some lonely monument, signifying the relentless struggle of all life on Erf.
And from its branches, gouts of grey smoke coiled up into the early evening dusk.
Mary saw that it still had an abundance of leaves, and these were large and a grey-green color, but in some areas all the leaves had died away, leaving brown patches. She assumed this was due to the smoke that belched in repeated billows from its trunk, roots and branches. It was almost like it was puffing on a pipe.
“This Smoking Tree’s a worse smoker than even my Gran!” she thought.
“Well, what do you think’s causing this smoke then, Mary, any ideas?” Roger asked her.
“Not really,” she answered, “but, if it was the tree itself on fire then we would see some flames somewhere, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes, I’m sure we would,” Roger agreed.
He looked over the tree, studying it closely, looking for any sign of flames; but there was none to be seen at all. “This is very mysterious,” he thought, “after all, you can’t have smoke without fire, can you? That would defy the laws of Physics!”
Above him, a hazy stratum of cloud was being swept away into the slowly darkening skies of the eastern horizon by the warm, westerly wind. Roger felt torn between staying longer and solving an intriguing scientific puzzle or leaving for home immediately.
But he didn’t want to seem too eager to tear Mary away from her treasured reward of reaching the Smoking Tree, as he’d agreed and promised. He knew though, it would take them a good two hours of hard walking to get back to the Quaggy, even with them taking the easier route and going around Hooter’s Hill.
“Well, well,” said Mary, in her most teacherly voice, and inadvertently disturbing his reverie. “It’s definite; this is an ‘Ulmus Glabras,’ no doubt about it; but a really big one!”
“A what?” exclaimed Roger. “What are you on about?”
“Oh, that’s just the fancy Lateen name for a Wych Elm tree,” she replied. “An’ I bet you don't know a Wych Elm tree is also the symbol for the spiritual connection of all Humans to the Erf itself? My Gran taught me that, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” muttered Roger, once again grudgingly impressed by Mary’s vast knowledge of the natural world.
“Anyway, I’d say there’s a proper an’ real ol’ mystery here,” Mary continued, musing half to herself. “Either this ‘ere tree’s got a very bad smoking habit, juss like my ol’ Grannie does, or there’s something else goin’ on! What do you think, Roj?”
“Well. Yes, indeed,” muttered Roger, as together they walked warily around the tree’s large trunk. “Can you see any f-f-fire anywhere; or anything like that?” he asked her.
“Not a flicker or a flame,” she answered, in a bewildered tone. “But I know what me dear ol’ Grannie always says; she says there ain’t never no smoke without no fire!”
“Yes, I know. But then where is it, where is the fire making the smoke?” murmured Roger, increasingly intrigued despite the lateness of the day. He was definitely getting the idea that there was indeed some real scientific exploration to be done here.
“Well, we’ve not got very long to find out, now, have we? We’ll have to come back and explore another day, I s’pose,” Mary replied in a disappointed tone.
“Yes, we did agree we’d only go as far as the Smoking Tree, didn’t we?” Roger replied.
The sun was now hovering very low in the sky and Mary glumly nodded her agreement.
“Well, least we got to where we said we would, didn’t we?” she said, with a forced smile.
They both knew they would have to make a very hasty return indeed now, before the full darkness of night-time descended on them. This would require them running a lot of the way back just to get to the River Quaggy, and thereby to the safety of their familiar Good Wood.