TREE OF LIFE BOOK II
CHAPTER 12
Two hours later and still early into the wee hours of the next morning, Julian was wide, wide awake. Though his mind told him he really ought to get some rest, what with everything that had happened that day but somehow, he just couldn’t make himself fall asleep. So he gave up. Just now, he was perched on the edge of the tree platform with one foot on it, one foot off, and his arm looped around a branch from the next tree over like a little monkey, only bigger and just a tad less hairy. Hanging off it, he swayed back and forth as he gazed into the distance and the smoking edge of forest that marked the limit of the latest Movartis modernization project. “You know, Nicole…”
Nicole was trying to get some shut-eye herself but was also having no luck. And it didn’t help that Julian kept trying to talk to her. She frowned, and then twisted around in the sleeping bag to put her back to him. “Julian, I can’t talk to you like that.”
He turned around to face her. “What?”
“Go put on some pants first.”
He looked down. “Oh.” He grabbed his pants that had been tossed off to one side in their earlier haste. “I didn’t hear you complaining about that before…”
“What?”
“Nothing.” As he got dressed, he spoke to her over his shoulder. “Do you think it’s too early to go back?”
“You mean, ‘now’?” She scoffed. She closed her eyes and stayed horizontal. “He said ‘two days’.”
“No, he said ‘at least two days’.”
“Well, there you go.”
“But…”
“How many days has it been? Like zero?”
“Yeah, but…”
Nicole opened her eyes and rolled them, but still had her back to him. “Oh, right. I almost forgot. You can’t count to three, let alone two…”
“Oh, you had to go and bring that up! That was like a mega-tera-jillion years ago.”
“Yeah, but who does that? Nobody does that! Nobody says they’re going to count to three and then just says three! Who does that?!” Nicole sat up and turned around.
She glared at him. “What are you doing?”
Julian was completely dressed and was gathering up his things, like he was packing to leave right then. “Nothing.” He was holding a set of binoculars in his hand. He put it back down.
“Nothing?”
Julian sighed. He hung his head and sat back. He shoved his pack off to one side.
Nicole shuffled over to him, with the sleeping bag still wrapped around her. She had nothing on underneath besides her locket. Now, as she snuggled up next to him, the necklace had sneaked past the sleeping bag and was dangling back and forth on its chain from her neck.
“You’re worried,” she said.
Julian nodded, while gazing out into the distance.
She shrugged. “So, let’s go.”
~~~
It was almost morning. The sky was lightening on one side. The sun was just threatening to come up and over the top of the trees. Nicole and Julian had been flying through the forest, jumping from branch to branch for about an hour now. They were almost there. Just another ten minutes or so and they would be back at the city of the Tree. The two were just going to head down to ground level to run the remaining half mile to the entrance of the clearing, when Julian pulled up short and signalled for Nicole to do the same. He crouched down on the branch that he was on. She remained standing on the one behind.
He pivoted around to face Nicole on the tree behind him. He put his finger to his lips.
Nicole put her hands up in a signal—‘what is it?’
He waved her over to his branch. She jumped over and then crouched down beside him.
Julian leaned over and spoke into her ear. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” She whispered back. “What is it?”
Julian frowned. He lifted his hand to the middle of his chest. He closed his hand into a fist.
Without thinking, Nicole lifted her hand too and touched her own chest.
It was strange. Strange that she hadn’t noticed it until now when Julian had pointed it out. It was quite faint though and not really noticeable. But now that her mind was on it, she did feel something out of the ordinary. It was…it was hard to describe. Like a lump in your stomach. Or a weight on your chest. Like somehow, your heart was feeling exhausted and didn’t want to go on beating anymore.
Julian swung around to face the front again.
Frowning, he pointed into the distance. “Can you see that?”
Nicole squinted her eyes in the direction he indicated.
Maybe. Nicole thought she might be seeing some odd movement, way out there in the distance, no less than three hundred yards away.
“Here.” Julian handed her his binoculars.
Nicole put them up to her eyes.
Yes. Movement. In the undergrowth. And it looked like…a man. Yes, yes it was a man. In the distance was a man, snaking away through the vegetation and moving quickly too. At least as quickly as Julian or Nicole could have managed. He was covered from head to toe in a long, flowing, hooded black cloak.
She handed the binoculars to Julian so he could have a look. “How does he even breathe in that thing?”
Julian had a look himself. “You mean the cloak?”
Nicole nodded. “I’m sweating just looking at him.”
“Did you see the other one?”
Nicole took the binoculars from Julian, focused and saw what she had missed the first time around.
There was someone else there, a young child, by the side of the hooded man, walking along beside him—no, not walking. Floating. Floating along by his shoulder.
Nicole whipped her head around. “Is that…?” She frowned. “…but no. That’s not right. Joseph’s not a child anymore. He’s a young man…”
Julian shook his head. “No, that’s not Joseph. Though it looks like him…”
Julian made to take the binoculars from Nicole but she wouldn’t let him. She was still gazing out at the strangers in the distance.
The floating child that was accompanying the hooded one was dressed in a light, off-white tunic that now and again, fluttered in the early morning breeze. He was small. Just a toddler. From what she could make out from here, he appeared to be no older than a three-year-old child and glowing yellow gold.
Julian went to take the binoculars again. She wouldn’t let him.
“Nicole…”
“No, look!” She pointed at the two in the distance.
Julian turned to look. Even without binoculars, He could see what she meant.
The hooded one in the distance had stopped.
His floating companion came to a stop too.
The hooded one rotated around. To face them. Their general direction, at least.
“What the…?” Julian went to grab the binoculars again.
“Uh, Julian…” She touched him on the arm.
Julian turned around. Nicole was pointing at her own chest. She spread the collar of her shirt apart to show him.
Julian’s eyes widened.
It was her locket. The one that Julian had given her. It had been sitting on top of her chest. But now it was rising into the air and glowing.
She stared into his face. “What’s going on?”
Julian turned back to the strangers. They were still stopped and facing their direction.
Julian reached out and grabbed Nicole by the hand. “Come on!”
He took off for the next branch, back in the direction they had come. With her hand still locked up inside his, Nicole followed along by his side.
After five minutes of all out running away, flying through the treetops, they stopped for a second and took a breath. They turned around and checked. Nicole finally let Julian have the binoculars.
He stared into the distance behind. No one. No one coming their way. The hooded one and his friend had not followed them. Both gave a sigh of relief.
“What do we do now?”
“Let’s get back to the Tree first.”
Nicole agreed.
~~~
It was a full hour after that before they broke through the trees to enter the clearing once more. It had taken them this long because they had to take the long way around to get in from the other side. But now, finally, Julian and Nicole had broken past the tree line and were dashing up the slope toward the base of the Tree of Life. Even at a distance, Nicole noticed that the Tree was different, somehow. It seemed smaller, older and its bark was more red, making it appear like it was wounded.
At its base, Julian and Nicole slowed to a walk. At the same spot where they had had their meeting before, the two of them now found that a group of men and women had already gathered and were shrouded in a cloak of whispers. Willibald was there too. At first the group had not noticed, but now they stopped talking, parted and made a way for the couple to approach the bench, the same one that Joseph and Nicole had sat on in the meeting just yesterday. On it, at the top of the grassy slope, now laid an old man all dressed in white. A group of villagers were tending to him, handing him a cup of water, wiping his brow for sweat. The old man saw them coming but even so, he remained reclined on the bench, propped up on cushions, and did not move much save for the slow drawing in and out of breaths.
“Oh, no.” Julian rushed over to the old man. He crouched down beside him by the edge of the bench.
Puzzled, Nicole followed him.
Julian touched the old man on the shoulder. “How is this happening? The process has accelerated so much…”
The old man shook his head and smiled. He pat Julian on the hand a few times.
He turned his gaze onto Nicole.
Nicole pored into the old man’s eyes and she finally understood. “Oh…Joseph…” She turned to Julian. “What is happening? How is this possible?”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know. But when I first left him to go rescue you from Brian, he was still a three-year-old child, like when we had first saved my father at the group home.”
Willibald shook his head and went to say something. “Julian…”
“No, no…” Joseph interrupted him but began to cough.
Nicole went to rub him on the back.
Being this close, Nicole could see every line on Joseph’s face and they were many. The white tufts he had for eyebrows were sparse. Brown spots dotted his forehead. And though he still glowed golden and warm as he always had, Joseph’s light was now but a whisper of a flicker as compared with before, like a candle that was going to go out at any minute, at any time.
Julian sighed. “I’m sorry we came back early.”
Joseph shook his head. “No…no, it is good that you have. I was about to send for you.” He tried to get up.
Others rushed in to help but he waved them off. He struggled up to sit on his own. “Come. We must get started. There is no time.” He made to get up.
Julian rushed in to support him by the shoulders. “Time? Why? What is it?”
Joseph just couldn’t make it to his feet. He remained sitting on the bench, but worn out from the effort of trying to get up.
“Joseph…” began Julian.
Joseph waved him to silence. He coughed before he could go on. “I have come to a decision. It is one that I had put off for fear, but now it is forced upon me. The danger is before our very eyes and I can see but one solution, one way to avert the disaster yet to come for the sake of us all.”
Julian bit his lip. “Does it have to do with the stranger? The hooded one?”
Joseph’s eyes were as saucers. He seized Julian by the shoulders. “The hooded one? Have you seen him? Has he seen you…?” Joseph relaxed and let out a sigh. He laughed to himself. “No, no…if he has, you would not be here…”
“Who is he? Why had he come? What does he want?”
“Oh, Julian…” Joseph shook his head. “…Julian of the Thousand Questions. When will your tongue be still? Worry not. In a very short period of time, everything that I know will be yours to know as well. All you need to understand for now is that the moment is upon us. I cannot be sure if my solution will suffice, but nonetheless, it is my destiny to try. Come.”
As Joseph tried to get up again, one of the villagers rushed in to kneel at the foot of the bench. “My lord.”
Joseph eased back down onto the bench. “What is it? It cannot be him! Has he returned so soon?”
“No, my lord. It is the human. The tree slayer. He is at the edge of the forest.”
Nicole turned to Julian. “Brian?”
Joseph turned to Willibald. “My old friend. Your time has come. It is as we discussed.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You will do your best?”
Willibald bent to one knee. He crossed his arm across his chest. “My lord…I will give my life.”
Joseph smiled. He took Willibald’s hand in both of his and shook it. Willibald bowed his head and kissed Joseph’s fingers in return.
Joseph nodded and Willibald got up. He turned and took off across the clearing. A group of men followed.
Wincing, Joseph braced himself. “Julian. Nicole. Help me up.”