“O.K., Roj, I’m on my way,” she called down to him. “I won’t be long.”
She could tell that Roger was becoming very anxious and started making her way down, nimbly retracing the route she’d taken to get to the top. “We’re definitely coming back and getting to the bottom of this strange Smoking Tree and ‘Disappearing Animals’ business,” she resolutely muttered to herself.
Inside the lower part of the tree, it had already become a dark and dismal world of inky, glaucous gloom. She had to slowly feel her way from branch to branch. She lowered her feet, one after the other, like two tentative, searching tentacles; feeling out for a firm foothold and getting the instep of each foot stably onto a branch below her. While at the same time, tightly holding onto the branch she was lowering herself down from. In the deepening gloom of the tree it was very easy to make a mistake and slip and fall; and after all, she’d promised Roger she wouldn’t get into any trouble.
But as she made her way cautiously downwards, she suddenly caught sight of something lurking within the tree, hidden within the multitude of dark leaves. There had been a flicker of – something. She couldn’t tell what it was exactly. It had been so fast and so, well, blurry! She got the definite impression there was something else alive in that tree, and she was right.
But this, so secret and hidden something or someone, wasn’t yet ready to show itself.
Roger could hear that Mary had finally gotten to the lower branches. He stood there nervously, hands on hips and impatiently craning his neck up and waiting for her to appear. He heard every rustle of leaf and crack of twig, as she made her descent. Then, all at once, there she was, smiling and cheerily waving down at him. She nimbly swung herself down from the bottom-most branch, landing near to him, between two, large tree-roots.
As she did so, Roger heard a sudden, very loud crack, and then a great gout of thick grey smoke billowed up from where she had landed.
Without a single moment’s warning, Mary had been swallowed up and completely disappeared. She had totally vanished under the ground.
And Roger was left, with jaws dropped wide, utterly and terribly alone!
Seconds slowly ticked away to minutes in the stunned silence that followed Mary’s sudden and dramatic disappearance. Roger’s heart was beating madly, and he was feeling sick, dizzy and lightheaded. He felt caught in the blood-draining grip of a relentless terror and panic.
He rushed over and dropped to his knees, right next to where Mary had last been standing, and saw a gaping crack; a gash in the ground, in between the roots where Mary had landed when she’d jumped from the tree. He peered down into it, staring into its dim, damp-smelling depths. But there was nothing to be seen. She had really gone; just vanished without a word, and without leaving a single shred of evidence that she had ever existed at all.
Roger’s mind had seized up with the sudden shock of it. “What d-d-do I do, what do I do?” he kept babbling, over and over, looking wildly about, unable to focus on anything.
All he could see below him was impenetrable blackness. Then he realized he should at least call out to her and see if Mary could hear him. After all, maybe she hadn’t fallen far; maybe she’d soon be scrabbling to the surface, any minute now, and they’d both be laughing about her little fall down a rabbit hole. Desperately he yelled down into the dark, murky pit.
“He-e-e-ello! Mary, are you all right? C-c-can you hear me?”
He called several more times; then waited, listening for a moment, but there was only a still and eerie silence. He had never ever felt so alone in his life.
After a while he spent several painful seconds having a difficult argument with himself, just trying to decide as to what he should exactly do next.
“Now, let’s be scientific here! Let’s just keep calm and be logical about this, shall we?” He umm’d and err’d, frantically talking to himself, not knowing whether to stand up or crawl, whether to come or to go. “Surely, the best thing I can do now is to go and get help, isn’t it? I can’t possibly do anything all by myself, now can I?”
He was having to face up to his own fear and uncertainty. He was having to look himself very squarely in the heart … and ask himself a very simple but very hard question:
“To Flea or not to Flee?”
After calling for Mary several more times and still not getting any answer, he finally got a grip on himself and began to realize that in actual fact, he didn’t have any real choice at all. He just had to thoroughly convince himself of that first though.
“Well, R-R-Roger, me lad, it’s just up to you now and n-n-no one else, let’s face it!”
Roger was rapidly realizing, that whatever happened now, whatever the future may hold, for both himself and for Mary, it was all down to the decision he made, right there and then.
He cautiously approached the edge of the smoky hole that had swallowed up Mary and got down onto his stomach and peered into its murky depths.
“Maybe I can be like a real Knight and rescue a damsel in distress, after all!” he thought. “I can’t just leave her down there, in the dark, all alone and defenseless; and prey to any wild animal that might come along, can I?” he argued, desperately trying to convince himself.
“Anyway, let’s not be silly, eh? Let’s be realistic. I‘d get lost in these woods all by myself, but I’d get lost going off down into the dark too, now wouldn’t I?”
He rolled onto his back and looked up into the depths of the great Smoking Tree above. He saw that its leaves and branches were hazily blending together, darkly coalescing into the gathering gloom of the oncoming twilight.
“You definitely wouldn’t be able to tell the smoke from the wood now, Mary,” he thought, gazing up at the gathering gloom of the night sky, now being slowly filled with the distant bright dots of the Heaven’s host of flickering stars.
“O.K., Roger m’boy, no time to dither, it’s time for action!” he said to himself out loud.
Roger knew all along, in his very heart of hearts, that he always only had the one choice; there was after all only one thing he really could do, and this time, it definitely wasn’t to run!
He emptied out the contents from his satchel and found his school journal. He tore out a blank page and hurriedly wrote a note. Just in case, he thought, meaning … just in case he never came back!
The short note read: “To whom it may concern: My name is Roger Briggs and I have gone down under this tree to rescue my friend, Mary Maddam.” He then very carefully wrote out his full address: The Manor, Mottington, Under-Lundun, South East - Sector 9, Inglande, Erf; and dated and signed it.
He returned what he was going to take with him into his satchel, his torch, his compass, his old school scarf as well as assorted hankies and a packet of biscuits and a flask of water. He folded and wrapped the note up in a hanky and placed his ammonite fossil firmly on top, to keep it from getting wet or blown away.
As for his precious tobacco tin of highly trained Fleas, he just couldn’t decide what to do. “Just who’ll look after them, eh, if I don’t make it back?” he grimly thought to himself.
Eventually, Roger made the very painful decision to let his Fleas go.
“If only they were b-b-bigger, they’d just hop down that horrid hole and bring Mary up in a jiffy, no p-p-problem!” he ruefully muttered,
He knelt on the ground and carefully opened the lid of the tobacco tin, and then gently tipped it onto its side. He then ensured that all twelve of his precious fleas hopped safely away, off on their new and unknown roads to freedom.
“Goodbye, fellas, take care of yourselves,” he sighed, wiping away the tears in his eyes.