But they weren’t that keen to return to the hot water they knew they were both in, either. Roger was still feeling torn between staying and going. And unbeknownst to him, Mary was feeling the same.
Mary, however, felt she should have at least one quick climb up into the tree’s branches, just to see what she could see before they left for home.
“Listen ‘ere, Roj, will you let me ‘ave one look up the tree before we go?” she asked, imploringly, looking at him with her pleading blue eyes. “I promise it’ll be a quick climb, cross me heart and hope to die and all that!”
“Oh, Mary, do you really have to?” he answered, pretending reluctance in allowing her request. He well knew though, before he’d said anything to her, he was going to agree.
“We’ll be able to come back another day, you know, Mary, and it’s getting near dark now. We should really be heading back.”
Mary did her feminine magic trick again, saying nothing, but gazing intently at him and biting her bottom lip and just allowing him time to realize he was still going to say O.K.
“Oh, O.K., then Mary,” he ruefully agreed, “but you b-b-better be careful. I’ll stay down here and keep a l-l-lookout for you, but you promise not to get into any trouble, all right?”
“Oh, all right, Sir Roger,” Mary laughed, “I’ll be very careful,” and with that, she quickly pulled herself onto the first branch and began her exploratory climb, up into the green depths of the ‘Ulmus Glabras’, as she called it. Otherwise known as the mysterious, ‘Smoking Tree.’
Mary was a very accomplished climber and this tree was a very climbable one indeed, being full of large and broad branches. “I won’t be long,” she called down to him, as she disappeared into the green, trembling world of the leafy canopy above.
“Make sure you avoid the smoke,” Roger called up to her, “and please don’t do anything silly!” he added, gazing upwards and anxiously watching for clues of her progress, shown by the occasional shaking of branches and fluttering of disturbed leaves.
Mary speedily and easily climbed upwards and indeed made sure she kept well clear of the dead areas where smoke had billowed through more often and sometimes was still doing so. She was well used to finding the right footholds and handholds for tree climbing, and this tree was one of those trees that seemed to have been specially grown for children to climb in.
She found it very exciting being up, right in the heart of a tree. She always felt she had been miraculously transported to another world; simply by climbing up into the shimmering, green world within a tree. There you could really think and breathe and be like the tree.
And soon she had got to as near to the top as she could go. Whenever Mary climbed a tree, her objective was always to get as near to the top as she possibly could.
Up there, the branches were a lot thinner and she could feel the bounce and sway of them as she climbed up higher and higher. She felt like a tree-sprite, flitting amongst the trembling leaves and the crackling twigs. She was, once again, an intrepid explorer, discovering a new tree-world; Just like Amerigo Vespucci did, discovering Ameriga, in the Fifteenth Century.
But this was the world of the Tree, and at the top of it, the wonderful world of the sky. That was where clouds and birds soared, through the vast, limitless freedom of the sky.
It was then, as Mary poked her head up out from the top of the tree, that she suddenly realized she had seen no birds, none whatsoever. Which she knew was very unusual for any sort of a tree and especially a whole Wood.
“It must be all this smoke,” she mused, “but what on Erf could be causing it?”
Then, she suddenly realized something even more astounding. Something that had been so blindingly obvious and had been staring both her and Roger in the face, ever since they’d left Hooter’s Hill. She wondered how they could possibly have ever missed it?
THEY HAD SEEN NO ANIMALS IN THE BAD WOOD AT ALL!
Ever since they’d left the Giant Owls at Hooter’s Hill, they had only seen various sorts of plants and insects and nothing else at all. They must have all left; there didn’t seem to be any sorts of woodland animals in this part of the Bad Wood anymore. She had seen no dogs or deer, no wildcats or wolves, no ferrets or foxes, no badgers or bears; no rats or mice, no squirrels or snakes; just no animals whatsoever!
They had been so busy with their own individual excitements and interests in plants and insects, that the obvious fact of not seeing or hearing even one lone bird or one single animal, had just completely escaped their notice. Juss where can all the bloomin’ birds and beasts of the Bad Wood be? she wondered to herself.
Sitting up in the top of the tree, she looked all around her, far across the broad, speckled meadow that the Smoking Tree was in the middle of. She could see right down to the edges of the surrounding woods. And the odd, lifeless silence of it now struck her for the first time.
The light was now definitely dimming. But up here at the Smoking Tree’s top, she could feel the last, lingering fingers of the sun’s rays, stroking and warming her face. It was almost a shame to have to climb back down into the gloom again. But she knew she had to report back to Roger; he’d be worrying, and she had to let him know that there was an even bigger mystery here than that of the Smoking Tree. Just where had all the animals gone, and why?
Then, as she gazed outwards, pondering on this thorny question, she felt a small tremor pass through the tree, like a rippling wave, and she and all the leaves around her trembled together in its aftershock.
“That’s strange!” she thought. “We don’t usually have Erfquakes in Inglande!”
Then she noticed something else or thought she did. Some sort of a motion by the trees. But it wasn’t a quick movement, like an animal, nervously darting behind a bush that just suddenly caught your eye. No, this was like the whole surrounding edge of the wood out there was moving. Or at least, the wood’s trees containing things you couldn’t quite see.
Some things out there were moving and filling up the shadows at the edge of the woods. Like a host of grey ghosts, or dark unerfly creatures, flickering between the tree-trunks.
“That’s spooky!” Mary thought to herself, worriedly. “That’s not just trees swaying in the wind, more like a host of haunting shadows; all twitching and scratching, like some restless, fidgeting crowd; all gathered together and impatiently waiting for something.”
She peered out into the edges of the darkening woods that encircled the Smoking Tree’s broad meadow, and suddenly got goosebumps.
“I can’t actually sees ‘em but I can feels ‘em!” she told herself. “Maybe it’s the trick of the fading light. What does Gran call the feeling now? That’s right, the ‘Crepuscular Creeps!’ But I’d swear there’s something out there, just silently watching and waiting!”
Mary felt her skin crawl as another chill shudder of fear passed through her. “Must be getting cold,” she told herself. She didn’t want to think that out there, at the edge of the meadow, there might be nasty things surrounding them, things far too scary and horrible for Mary or Roger to deal with.
She hadn’t got any closer to discovering why the Smoking Tree was smoking but she decided she’d best hurry back down to Roger anyway and tell him what she had discovered about the missing animals and the shady creatures in the distant trees, before he started to get too impatient; but it was too late, Roger was already on her case.
“What are you d-d-doing up there?” he yelled. “Come on, Mary, we’ve really g-g-got to get going; it’s definitely getting a lot d-d-darker now!”